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Theory of 'intelligent design' isn't ready for natural selection
The Seattle Times ^
| 6/3/2002
| Mindy Cameron
Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
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To: donh
I am not suggesting there were or are multiple universes. And I told you I forgave you for your unclear writing.
To: donh
I agree that abiogenesis is not presently a science. Fair enough. :-)
To: Tribune7
That's right. It should be considered an axiom. That could well be, but it is not an axiom of formal science, as it is an opinion whose relevance to science is as tits to a bullfrog.
683
posted on
06/21/2002 6:32:07 PM PDT
by
donh
To: donh
I have no opinion on this subject, and neither does science. When it comes time to form an opinion, make sure you have enough understanding about the important things in life -- like human nature, especially one's own -- to form the right one.
To: donh
That could well be, but it is not an axiom of formal science, Well, I agree again.
To: Tribune7
And I told you I forgave you for your unclear writing. Your adamant refusal to follow an argument about combinatorial computation is not a measure of my clarity of presentation.
686
posted on
06/22/2002 11:57:15 AM PDT
by
donh
To: Tribune7
When it comes time to form an opinion, make sure you have enough understanding about the important things in life -- like human nature, especially one's own -- to form the right one. When it comes to forming an opinion about science, make sure it is specifically NOT about "human nature, especially one's own".
687
posted on
06/22/2002 11:59:00 AM PDT
by
donh
To: donh
When it comes to forming an opinion about science, make sure it is specifically NOT about "human nature, especially one's own". When it comes to form an opinion about the things that are important it's about human nature.
To: Tribune7
When it comes to form an opinion about the things that are important it's about human nature. When it comes to a discussion about the nature of science and the status of evolutionary theory, opinions about the nature of science and evolutionary theory are sort of what one expects, not patronizing asides suggesting one can't seem to focus on what's really important. Just an opinion, of course.
689
posted on
06/22/2002 3:05:20 PM PDT
by
donh
To: jennyp
Thoughtful stuff ... I've come to beleive that it is various forms of RATIONALISM as opposed to EMPIRICISM that are the heart of the rot. Rationalism has given way in the modern ear to "debunking" of *any* external objective reality. That earlier Peikoff quote hit a nerve.
690
posted on
08/20/2003 10:24:37 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: medved
"The human genome is more than 95% rubbish. Fewer than 5% of the 3.2bn As, Cs, Gs and Ts that make up the human genome are actually found in genes."
Evidence for this?
This may be like the canard of us only using 10% of our brain, where they presume something is useless becaues they havent figured out what it does yet. NB, the brain is quite efficient. What about our DNA?
Wouldnt that be a strike against intelligent design?
691
posted on
08/20/2003 10:36:36 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: jennyp
Sounds like codswallop to me ... truth doesnt have physical dimensions.
"Believing in something that violates logic itself is fundamentally different than believing in something when we haven't verified all the relevant facts."
Godel has shown that any arithmetic system of a certain order is inevitably incomplete. This means that you cant prove all there is do know in certain areas of mathemetics, certain truths lie outside the realm of provable.
But that is not an open door to believe any kind of nonsense.
692
posted on
08/20/2003 10:40:20 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: donh
"Personally, I consider a belief in anything, including anything formally proved, to be a total act of faith. The interesting question, and the one that has driven scientific philosophers from Hume on, is: how objectively reliable (or sharable) are the reasons for one's faith?"
Well stated, although the first of the modern skeptics was Descartes and Hume gave an empirical answer to Descartes.
One things that has made philosophy dry up and split science from faith is this confusion about skepticism and its utility. Skepticism, that only provable things are true things, is a *process* of getting at truth, not a result of it. Mistaking that leads to the error of nihilism. Thre are truths that can be understood not in pure proven ways but in other ways of 'knowing'. for example, much folk wisdom turns out to have some bases (yet imperfect) in truth.
The other error is the weakest link theory of knowledge. It's why people think a few points could debunk evolutionary theory. but can it debunk a fossil record? certainly not. Charles Pierce developed the theory of the 'cable' where strands of evidence support eachother; remove a strand and the theory doesnt fall apart, it only becomes incrementally weaker.
All our thoughts on things are mere models of reality, not reality itself. Our inability to ever "know with certainty" shouldnt stop from "knowing" that reality is out there and that we can, with logic and our senses, get a firm grasp on what the universe is really about.
In the end that knowledge is a matter of faith.
693
posted on
08/20/2003 10:49:31 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: Heartlander
"Look, does science attempt to prove anything? If you do not believe so well, thats an interesting theory
"
Empricial science likes to "model" things and 'prove' that the model holds in general cases. A theory can be shown "wrong" when it doesnt hold up, but it can not really be proved with certainty as 'correct'. It's only a model.
Look at gravitation. newton's theory held as "true" until Einstein showed it was not fully general. measurements based on einstein's theory showed newton was incomplete, so Einstein was "right". But that doesnt make Relativity the last word.
694
posted on
08/20/2003 11:18:56 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: Tribune7
"For an enlightening experience look up the word "liberalism" on Merriam Webster Online. I did and was shocked when I learned that I was a liberal."
Most American Conservatives are Classical Liberals to at least some degree. The problem is what socialists who call themselves liberal have done to the term in the last 90 years.
695
posted on
08/20/2003 11:23:31 PM PDT
by
WOSG
To: WOSG
Look, does science
attempt to prove anything?
(It must attempt to prove.)
Look at gravitation. newton's theory held as "true" until Einstein showed it was not fully general. measurements based on einstein's theory showed newton was incomplete, so Einstein was "right". But that doesnt make Relativity the last word.
Maybe
To: Alberta's Child
The theory of "irreducible complexity" has nothing to do with an inability to explain how a feature came to be -- it is based on the fact, wholly supported by science, that if (for example) you change even 0.1% of the "ingredients" in a human eye, what you are left with no longer functions as an eye. Except, of course, that that isn't true; many creatures have much simpler eyes than ours, all of which function well enough for those creatures to exist.
Ironically, Steven Jay Gould himself was driven to abandon his earlier notions of gradual evolution because even he couldn't quite explain how a human eye could have evolved if 99.9% of an eye couldn't see, how a mosquito wing could have evolved if 99.9% of a wing wouldn't lift it off the ground, etc. He came up with his theory of "punctuated equilibrium," which states that individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety. Interestingly, it should be pointed out that there is no more evidence of "punctuated equilibrium" than there was of Darwin's "pure" evolution.
"Puctuated equilibrium" does not say anything like "individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety." Not even remotely close.
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