Your proposition is that space-time is all there is. Demonstrate it.
Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
Your proposition is that space-time is all there is. Demonstrate it.
Like cockroaches?
You might want to add Prometheus, Ben Franklin, Tesla, and Einstein onto that list.
Oh, and Philo T. Farnsworth.
No? It is a fact that new species appear in the fossil record over time. It is a fact that new species appear to be related in their forms to prior-existing species. It is a fact that the DNA of newer species shows a genetic relationship to prior-existing species. Evolution explains these facts. No other scientific theory exists. If you have an alternative theory that does a better job than evolution, let's see it.
They're all in on it, of course. But Edison was the cult leader. Smash your lights! Do it now!!!!!
Roger that... as soon as I pull my foot from the TV.
Hey, is Jim Robinson in on this? Do we have to smash our computers too?
What if I just removed the letter "E" from my keyboard? Einstein, Edison, Euclid, E=mc2, e-mail, electronics, electricity, and Evolution would all be neutralized.
You equate "came from an area East of the Urals" to "came from the tribe of Genghis Khan." Hah!
Asia's a big place. The Urals are a long way from the steppes north of the Gobi. Don't take my word; look at a map. A clue to how far off you are: Mongolian is an Altaic, not Indoeuropean, language. Then, there's the time factor, at least three thousand years.
IOW, you go off base (to the irrelevant Rig-Veda argument), then you go farther off base (to the non-Aryan Genghis Khan)!
How?(That is not a native american welcome, but a question)
It is arguably impossible to determine conclusively the relationship of one creature to another through fossilized bones. There are a whole lot of species found in old fossils that remain with us, without apparently having evolved. Why would that be the case if evolution were such a determining force?
It is a fact that the DNA of newer species shows a genetic relationship to prior-existing species.
All animals have a genetic relationship. All animals have DNA. This isn't evidence of evolution. This is evidence that life requires DNA.
This fellow David W. Burt shows that the human genome has more in common with a chicken than a mouse. Of course, he also says this proves evolution.
Evolution explains these facts. No other scientific theory exists. If you have an alternative theory that does a better job than evolution, let's see it.
Are you saying that an alternative theory is required before an existing one is challenged? If a paradigm falls, it can be and should be replaced by the scientific consensus: "we don't know."
Well, do you believe that God (which you called "He") is a person? You are basically a creationist, aren't you? It's difficult to pin you down, I know, but you're basically on the Cre side. So, doesn't God have intentionality? Doesn't God come up with ideas and proceed to carry them out? Is that not "a person"?
Just saying that God is whatever you find to be good, i.e. equating God==The Good, is hardly enough to account for how or why God could've/would've formed the idea to create the universe and carry out this act. Only actual entities - concrete entities - can form thoughts and act on them. How could a purely abstract concept form thoughts & move atoms around?
But I understand you have to cast about to find good.
ZING!
Oh? Can you provide a reference? Not a reference to some bones that haven't yet been classified. There are many incomplete fossils lying around. I'd like to see a peer-reviewed study of some fossils that have been determined to belong to no known branch of life on earth. Or perhaps by the phrase "without apparently having evolved" you mean some long-ago evolved species that still persists in its original form. This is no problem. There is no requirement in the theory of evolution that says every species is obligated to change into something else.
All animals have a genetic relationship.
Indeed they do. As predicted by evolution, and as NOT predicted by Genesis or so-called "Intelligent Design."
If a paradigm falls, it can be and should be replaced by the scientific consensus: "we don't know."
Evolution hasn't fallen. Sorry, but it hasn't. It's more solid now -- since the discovery of DNA -- than ever before. Of course there are still things we don't know. But so what? These things take time. Our ignorance of some details here and there is most definitely NOT evidence for the account in Genesis (or ID, which is stealth Genesis).
This works because you don't have to start each time from scratch but you have a self-replicator that gets more complex over time due to copy errors (mutations). So those copies that are self-replicators propagate (because that's what self-replicators do) but their coming into existence is extremely more probable than their generation from simple atoms without a template.
The question however is how the first self-replicator came into existence. It must have originated by chance alone because there was no template as is the case with those that follow. Though we don't know what kind of molecule this first self-replicator was it's highly probable that it was rather simple compared to DNA. So it's generation from mere atoms without a template isn't that astronomically high since we also know that rather complex molecules can form naturally without a designer who assembles them atom by atom.
Ah, but that is the whole matter. How can something come from nothing? Science is trying to answer that but it will come to the same conclusion formed long ago. It came either from nothing for no reason or it came from something for a reason. Both answers unpalatable to the materialist. As I said, to you God is at most an abstract concept, but you are too. To me you are as abstract as an abstract thing can be. You "consist" of light emitted from phosphors on a monitor screen. Without that screen or the other things that make the phosphors glow you do not exist.
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