This is not random by definition. You can see a pattern. But some people cannot see the information.
Posted on 05/30/2002 7:40:53 AM PDT by Gladwin
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:34 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Two House Republicans are citing landmark education reform legislation in pressing for the adoption of a school science curriculum in their home state of Ohio that includes the teaching of an alternative to evolution.
In what both sides of the debate say is the first attempt of its kind, Reps. John A. Boehner and Steve Chabot have urged the Ohio Board of Education to consider the language in a conference report that accompanied the major education law enacted earlier this year.....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I agree completely!
I'm just reading through the thread, following the discussion, and noticing a few (unprovoked) Christian-bashings.
Seems as though every ID/Evo thread is rife with them. Sad, really.
Okay, consider the question rhetorical.
LOL! If there is a Designer, the explanation is "supernatural" only because "science's" definition of reality is wrong.
Your statement, BTW, is an admission that science explicitly denies the possibility of a God active in history. Specifically, according to your statement "science" assumes it has full access to reality, and that God (if any) played/plays no role in natural processes -- which are, therefore, subject only to a certain constrained set of physical processes. This is an ideological, not a scientific, position.
In the same way, if a scientist brings out God to explain why bacteria become penicillin resistant, wouldn't you question his abilities?
You haven't provided enough information to answer that question.
My understanding of the issue is that it is not a question of whether micro changes stop but, rather, are macro changes supported by the evidence. As I posted above:
...beginning in the early 1970's, this model (phyletic gradualism which is another way to say macro-evolution) was challenged by Stephen J. Gould, Niles Eldredge, and other leading paleontologists . They asserted that there is sufficient fossil evidence now to show that some species remained essentially the same for millions of years and then underwent short periods of very rapid change. Gould suggests that a more accurate model in such species lines would be punctuated equilibrium .
Granted, Gould is referring to only "some species" but I would argue that his theories are a far cry from Darwin's original ascertion.
Two other issues that scientists have tried to deal with when it comes to macroevolution are irreducible complexity and the issue of mathematical probabilities. In reference to the latter, I previously posted that Steve Wolfram in "A New Kind of Science" concluded there has not been sufficient time for random mutations to account for the diversity of life we see on the planet. Now, of course, he is proposing a new theory which I am currently studying given the book came out last week, but my point is that he feels it is necessary to propose a new theory at all.
One more time: I don't have my notes with me so I ask for the opportunity to extend and revise my remarks.
W., get the feds out of education NOW.
It's not that I don't support open discussion of intelligent design in the schools. It's that I think congress has more important things to do right now than telling local school boards what they can and cannot teach.
Cheeeese!
Shalom.
Either that or I saw it when it wasn't there.
Shalom.
Is ID a Christian belief?
I was under the assumption that we were talking about "science" here. Unlike many people here, I find no conflict with Christianity and Evolution. And I find it odd that people who would otherwise claim that God is omnipotent, would also claim that He could not create the process of evolution.
This is good stuff and I think it is an example of where the debate is today. I would make two points: first, your post is example of the new theories I mentioned in my original post that attempt to deal with some of the issues raised since Darwin and 2) I think that ultimately complexity theory will provide insights we have not yet achieved.
I foresee the debate sometime in the future to be whether the "rules" of the complex systems we discover run our universe would need to have been programmed or whether they could have occurred on such a universal scale naturalistically. (Of course, that has always really been the question in one form or another;)
Have you checked out Wolfram's latest? While I might draw some different conclusions from what he has proposed, I find some of the stuff I have been able to get through so far to be extremely interesting and revolutionary.
I think you are right.
I'm no expert, but here's the way I understand it.
Information theory is based on the concept that there is a difference between information and random signals. This is axiomatic since it can not be proven. The closest thing we have to a proof is that we have not yet identified any non-sentient process which generates information. Nor have we actually posited the possible existence of one.
Based on this idea, any signal is processed to determine whether it exhibits the behavior of a random signal or information. This is what is used in the SETI project to mask the noise in the universe from a possible signal.
Now here is the issue where proof comes in. I can not prove to you that there is no natural process anywhere in the universe that can generate a signal that would be considered information according to information theory. I can only say that none has yet been discovered.
But I would insist that, until such a process is discovered, or at least theoretically described, the burden of proof is on the one who posits such a process.
One note here: I'm not an information scientist. I don't know by what mathematical magic they do what they do. I don't even know how WinZip compresses files. But information theory has been around as long as we have had signal intelligence and I think it is pretty valid. If not, don't start posting math flames at me. Just tell me how it has been proven invalid, and on what basis SETI is still going on.
Shalom.
No, but we are made of cells.
No, it would mean he has no brain.
;)
Shalom.
I am not a philosophy expert like the recently deleted EsotericLucidity, but here is what I understand: every system of logic has some premises. These premises have to be assumed. Science has assumptions. The first assumption of science is that natural phenomena have natural explanations. This is a "belief" of scientists. The logical system derived from this belief is useful. This does not prove the premise's truth, but it proves the usefulness of the premise.
So, we agree, but I think that this upsets fundamentalist Christians. Their first premise is that God exists. Their second premise is that God, directly or indirectly, caused everything.
Some of the posters here say that science can't say anything about God because God is outside the logical system that is science. In this way, God could include science as a subset, but only if you agree with the premise that God does exist. This is the position of theistic evolutionists.
This is not random by definition. You can see a pattern. But some people cannot see the information.
They are the devil's agents on Earth and are earning their spot in hell.
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