Neo-Darwinian Fundamentalism at the Smithsonian

[Nilsen]

Originally posted by Mini D
PS mcgroin: how much error is there in GPS systems right now? Just because people can't figure out how to make them better, doesn't mean they're perfect. It highlights that science will always let us down when it comes to explaining every detail.

or that sience has not gotten there YET

[SaburoS]

What proof is there that God exists?
What proof is there that God created the Universe?

[Vulcan]

What right has a religion to question science who's god and bible is based on icons borrowed from other religions, which preaches the fairy tale story of christ, who's basis for worship is a book of selected short stories contrived by a committee?

[Redwing]

I haven't read the entire thread, but as a student of geosciences, involving biological, paleontological and paleoecological studies it's quite hard not to believe in evolutionary concepts.  They just work too well in explaining earth's past and the proof seems to be everywhere.

Anyway, I don't think this totally denies creation. To me it seems just as valid to believe in some higher deity sparking the big bang and thus starting it all from there as it seems valid to rather believe in absurd mathematical and physical impossibilities that somehow created matter out of nothing and caused the bang. Both involves quite a lot of faith.

[hacksaw1]

Gregory Mendel - by painstaking research adduced the laws of genetic inheritance, called the "Father of Genetics," was a Catholic monk who published his results at his nearest Naturalist society, and that within a few years of Darwin's Origin. Belief in God per se is not anti-science.

I grew up a naturalist, and held such views during the time I was in military electronics schools for more than a year - eight hours a day, five days a week, and top of the class. I was trained to support airborne fire-control radar for radar-guided air to air missiles. The radar I supported was not the sole result of random natural processes. Intelligent designers and a lot of defense cash produced those complex systems. I don't know who those intelligent designers were, what they looked like, where they were from, nothing about them except that they intelligently used engineering skills to design and produce the radar.

At this very moment, each one of you is making use of a highly sophisticated vision system:
•   automated positioning of head and eyes for optimum viewing of the target area
•   automated angular slaving solution for both eyes, according to range, for optimum binocular viewing of the target area
•   automated iris adjustment to control light input to the eyes
•   automated lens control (if you are under 40 hehe) for optimum image sharpness on the retina
•   automated conversion of light waves into bio-electrical information to be sent to the brain
•   automated deciphering capability to decode these squiggly black symbols
•   automated processes to decode the symbols into profound messages

The human vision system is at least as complex as the radar system I supported, and the decipher-encipher capability riding on the vision system is far, far more complex.

Every quarterback who can toss a football is using bio-electrical-mechanical systems, and programming, not unlike the collision course fire-control radar system I supported. The QB locks on to a target long enough to solve a ballistic collision-course problem (including windage if he's any good), automated bio-electrical systems control muscular power output for the collision-course firing solution, and the ball is launched to a place where the tracked target is calculated to arrive simultaneously. Random events produced this complex guidance system? Folks, believe whatever you want. I'd say at the very minimum the universe is the result of some Anthropological Principle.

None of you have ever met me. I imagine that all of you reading this post believe I am a real person (whether you think I am an "intelligent being" or not, hehe). I doubt if any of you believe a fortuitous combination of random EMF signals produced this simple message you are reading. So, there are people who look at the genetic code who do not believe its complexity can be explained by random events.

"Atheism is Kaufman's religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,"

Ruled the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/LG0B3BI8.pdf
pgs 2-9

Regards,

Cement

[Siaf__csf]

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/378/13705_tunguska.html

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/01/31/42821.html

Pravda (translated 'the truth') is the main news source down there.


In addition, if someone doesn't accept darwinian theory of evolution, do they necessary have to believe in creationism or perhaps seek a better and more accurate theory?

We're talking relative physics vs quantum science instead of physics vs religion most likely.

[myelo]

Originally posted by Mini D
I grew up being taught creationism. To date, there hasn't been a scientific discovery that fundamentally disproves it.  

And there never will be. You can’t disprove creationism – it’s religion, not science.

That same for intelligent design. It’s religion (“God did it”) gussied up as science in an effort to get it taught in schools. In other words, it’s a political strategy, despite what it’s proponents want you to believe. You can put a hat on a hog but it’s still a hog.

Originally posted by Mini D
I've seen nothing from science that can explain the presence of the spleen in the human body nor the advanced digestive system of birds. I've seen nothing from science that can explain how so many vastly different types of life exist.

Then you don’t understand evolution. That’s fine; I don’t understand how computers work. But the fact that we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

There is no “crisis” in the theory of evolution among those that work in the field. There is more data supporting evolution than any other scientific theory today. (Realize the origin of the universe is outside the realm of biologic evolution.)

[cpxxx]

A few points, I'll try and keep it short.

Evolution does not preclude the existence of God. In fact in many ways it is a brilliant not to say an 'intelligent design' method. So a fan of evolution or a scientist can see the hand of God in it's processes. God may very well have created the universe and life on Earth. Evolution is a method he could use to maintain life in all it's variation and vitality.

Creationism is a product of the bible.  The problem with many Christian groups is their undying faith in the infallability of the bible. They oppose evolution not because it may disprove the existence of God but that it might disprove a single chapter of the bible, Genesis. If one chapter of the bible is merely a fable a shadow is cast on the entire bible and by definition their entire faith.

Seagoon I suspect, bases his entire faith on the contents and truth  of the bible. Thus evolution is an anathema.

Other Christians for whom the bible is inspirational rather than the entire truth have no trouble with evolution.  

I would agree that many evolutionists defend the evolutionary theory as if it was a tenet of faith. In fact this is largely a result of consistent and ongoing attacks on evolutionary theory virtually since the day Darwin published his book. In fact evolution is one of the few sciences that conflict directly with the religion. Or more to the point as I said above, the bible.  Even today people are trying to give creationism equal time in classrooms even though creationism is religion not science and properly belongs in religious classes.  

Religious opponents of evolution seize on apparent differences between scientists as evidence that the theory is false. Nothing could be further from truth. Science advances because of people who question the status quo and then attempt to prove it.  That is how science works. Take what you know, work on it, make it better.
Religion operates on the basis of certainty. Science cannot.

One point on creationism. It contradicts itself. God apparently created the Earth in seven days. How is that possible when the days could not have existed before the Earth was created? Isn't that a paradox?

I always wonder at the logic of creationists. They dismiss evolution but they offer up instead. 'The entire universe created in a week by a supernatural being.'  

[Lazerus]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
 The standard model of particle physics brought forth by quantum theory can be experimentally measured and mathematically predicted.  

General relativity can be experimentally measured and mathematically predicted.
 

This reminded me of an article I read a few weeks ago. In short, it states that quantum physics and the theory of relativity can not co-exist, and that quantum physics is based on an assumption that a certain particle, the penta-quark, exists. There is no proof that it does, other than the theory of quantum physics, and it is taken as a leap of faith that it does. This means that a scientific theory that is well respected and believed in the scientific community is nothing more than a faith based theory, similar to ID.

Physicists on search for matter

BY DANIEL CONOVER
Of The Post and Courier Staff


About a year ago, I taped a cartoon to my computer monitor: Two scientists in lab coats are looking at a third scientist, who stands in a bizarre pose before a blackboard filled with equations.

Says the first scientist to the second, "At some point his theory becomes so abstract, it can only be conveyed using interpretive dance."

All three are clearly physicists.

Physics is an easy science to love, at least from a distance. In physics, you observe the world and test it for underlying principles.

When done successfully, some aspect of the physical world emerges on paper via the clean, logical language of mathematics. Physics lacks the messiness of biology while offering a level of real-world practicality that advanced mathematics can never hope to match.

Or it used to. Physics waved goodbye to standard conceptions of real-world practicality back in the early 20th century, heading off in two radically different directions more or less simultaneously. Albert Einstein led one group in search of The Very Big Stuff with his general and special theories of relativity; meanwhile, a group of scientists who lacked Einstein's star quality went poking around for clues to explain The Very Small Stuff, proposing theories that collectively came to be known as quantum physics.

At their most basic levels, quantum physics attempts to explain the structure of the cosmos, while relativistic physics tries to understand how that structure behaves and interacts. Each theory matches up well with the subject it attempts to describe, but there's a catch: The math that works so well in predicting The Very Big Stuff completely falls apart when applied to The Very Small Stuff, and vice versa.

In other words, both cannot be correct.

Physicists covet elegant ideas, yet the deeper they delve into the quantum world, the more abstract their theories become. They haven't resorted to interpretive dance yet, but quantum reality is so strange that the English language struggles to encompass it.

Which is why the recent "failure" to find Theta-plus, the elusive pentaquark, was actually a profoundly provocative moment -- and potentially of far greater significance than any "success" would have been.

In the early 21st century, we "know" of two types of matter: particles made up of two quarks and particles made up of three quarks. Everything we see and observe and hold is constructed of these two- and three-quark aggregates.

But because the theory that explains how these quarks stick together also predicts the existence of a third type of matter, a particle constructed of five quarks, the search for the pentaquark is ultimately a test of that theory's validity.

Back in March 2004, a group of physicists who called themselves "the CLAS collaboration" (an arcane acronym that includes an arcane acronym, so let's just move on) went to Virginia to confirm or disprove claims that pentaquarks had been observed in the aftermath of high-energy experiments around the world.

One does such things by slamming tiny particles into each other and studying their debris, which sensors record as a spectrum of energy. The CLAS physicists focused on the part of that spectrum (or "channel") where the earlier teams had noticed a tantalizing bump, and they did so with more accurate equipment.

Had University of South Carolina physicist David Tedeschi and his CLAS colleagues confirmed those earlier findings, then the quantum theory that governs something called "the strong force" would have been boosted another notch. Physicists would celebrate an achievement, but here's the irony: Such "discoveries" sometimes are anticlimactic.

As physicist Dan Carman of Ohio University explains it, "because the theory allows for the pentaquark, that means that the pentaquark must exist." Or else. Ultimately, the pentaquark isn't just some quantum curiosity: It's a predicted outcome of a currently accepted theory, and if the pentaquark doesn't exist, then the theory must be re-examined.

That's actually an exciting prospect. When evidence demands the re-examination of an accepted theory, it's often because the original version has overlooked something important -- and therein lie breakthroughs.

This is not to say that the search for the pentaquark is over, or that Theta-plus doesn't exist. One can never "prove" a negative, and even if this experiment didn't isolate Theta-plus, what's to say the next one won't find it lurking in a different "channel"? Besides, Tedeschi still is analyzing one of the 2004 data sets. He won't close the book on his search until late summer.

The conventions of journalism often create the wrong impressions about science. When a scientist says that an experiment "failed to produce" a particular result, he's not saying "the experiment was a failure." Tedeschi put it this way: He's not responsible for the outcome of an experiment, he's responsible for its integrity. Sometimes, the most valuable answer science can give us is "no."

Would a pentaquark change your life? Probably not. But what if its absence leads to a new theory, one that changes our understanding of why stuff sticks together? Like a piece of evidence that should have been at a crime scene, what if this particular "failure" redirects physicists toward an idea that proves to be far more elegant?

Now that would be a result to celebrate, perhaps with verse from some future physicist poet:

All praise the

mysterious pentaquark;

the quantum dog

that would not bark.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Seagoon
His work was further refined by the discoveries of men like Johannes Keppler, a protestant believer who started his educational career with Theology at Tubingen. So I'm failing to see how, when most of the scientific discoveries made prior to the 20th century were made by theists not atheists, why you believe further inquiry into ID would actually end all scientific inquiry and effectively spell the death knell to science.

Hey Seagoon:

I am not opposed to scientists having faith in the divine, it is just that ID is not science.  ID cannot be shown to exist using scientific principles.  Good science begins with raw data, building an explanation from that data and testing the explanation.  If you start out with a preconcieved notion then you can unknowingly overlook data that is in opposition to the preconception.  

When Kepler followed the scientific method he explained planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first natural laws in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, and precise.

When Kepler tried to prove divine guidance in the orbits of the planets using platonic solids and musical interpretations he wasted decades.

Oh and Mini D, the Piltdown Man is one of the greatest examples of fraud in the history of science.  Looking for the missing link in human evolution, the scientific community accepted more or less on faith that the "fossils" found in the UK were what everyone expected and therefore were true.

30 or 40 years later, someone decided to look more closely at the fossils and found organic material on the samples, indicating a modern origin...  this showed the fraud.

Verifiable experimentation, testing, measurement...  ie science found the fraud.  The fact that science was not done on the Piltdown Man samples and the samples were taken on faith is what perpetuated the fraud.

[Mini D]

Originally posted by myelo
And there never will be. You can’t disprove creationism – it’s religion, not science.

That same for intelligent design. It’s religion (“God did it”) gussied up as science in an effort to get it taught in schools. In other words, it’s a political strategy, despite what it’s proponents want you to believe. You can put a hat on a hog but it’s still a hog.

Woa... now you go to the religion card. I get that... it's an easy out. The problem is that evolution has become every bit the religion that creationism is.

This is what seems to be the fundamental issue here. Someone dedicated to fighting the christian agenda is someone dedicated to his own agenda.

A committee dedicated to ensuring science is the focus, not some religious mumbo-jumbo is no different than a board of cardinals that is ensuring the beliefs aren't counter to the church's. All they need is a pope and everything would be stupendous.

Then you don’t understand evolution. That’s fine; I don’t understand how computers work. But the fact that we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

I don't understand evolution? ROTFLMAO! What the hell do you undestand about it?

I understand that the simultaneous evolution of litterally billions of species over billions of years should mean that we are still seeing it happen. Given the rate at which positive mutation occurs. That is not possible in the current evolutionary model. But it's dismissed because of everything they don't know. This is the magical portion you are so willing to accept on the faith of scientists that know alot less than they're willing to admit. It reminds me of something called the dark ages where you blindly accepted everything from a certain sect believing that they were completely honest with their revelations.

There is no “crisis” in the theory of evolution among those that work in the field. There is more data supporting evolution than any other scientific theory today. (Realize the origin of the universe is outside the realm of biologic evolution.)

Actually, this is where you are quite wrong. There is data supporting numerous species throughout history. There's none that adequately explains the booming transition. Absolutely none. Someone finds a single fostle of something that looks like it might have feathers and they call it the missing link between birds and reptiles. It's widely accepted because it fills a hole in a theory. The end. No knowing if they were really feathers. No knowing what the bone structure of the animal was like. No explaining how birds developed hollow bone structure, advanced tendon systems, advanced digestive systems, rapid incubation systems and so on... all making flight possible... the absence of any one of them making it virtually impossible.

I work extensively in the science field. I have scientific patents. I've worked for 3 years on a project where I do believe we were the leaders in the world on development. IBM came out with an announcement in regards to the material we were working with on how they were going to impliment it in a new manufacturing process. We laughed pretty hard and had considerable data as to the problems with the material, but were silenced because IBM had made the announcement and they obviously had made some magical discovery that blew all of our data out of the water. There wasn't nearly the fanfare when IBM admitted they couldn't get it to work and withdrew it from their process.

Money for projects comes from corperations, interested parties and is directed through school boards. You cannot tell me there is no agenda there. You cannot tell me that this method ensures that you only see accurate scientific discoveries. It's just not possible given the scource.

If Intel wants to do research on the impacts of manufacturing factories on the environment, they'll give a school 100 million to do it and then tell them not to come within 25 miles of one of their factories. That's typical in science these days. Schools are more than willing to ablige because when it comes down to it, you keep the originator of the grant happy.

Of course, there aren't any agendas in the secular schools either. There isn't an insistance that text books should be void of religious refference, accurate or not. There isn't a preference that text books reflect specific PC view points. Nah. That just doesn't happen.

It makes me wonder how my brother-in-law, who isn't even a scientist (historian - PhD) is so popular right now. You see, he writes books about the impact of collonialism on the environment. Only he doesn't view it in an invasive way, he views it from a distance watching actual cause and effect. It's a very non-scientific manner with one glaring exception: It's completely imperical. His books are being widely accepted now for a rather odd reason: he hates women. He hates the mother nature aspect of most books on the subject and the "man is the violator" tone of most literature. He's finding that many universities are starting to hop on board and welcome his books with open arms as a refreshing change to a subject that had gone stale due to agenda. Of course, they replace one agenda with another, but that's science.

[Godzilla]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
So dismissing the issue of who made God is okay?


Science says "I don't know, but I'll continue to investigate" a perfectly logical conclusion, requiring no faith whatsoever.

Being open to the possibilty that a higher intelligence may have created everything does not require faith.

Faith is a good word, because some science was taken as fact.......by what could only have been faith in the flawed science.

Asking who made God is fine, not out of bounds at all. I don't think it's something humans can comprehend......just like humans cannot comprehend where matter came from,  in my opinon.

We do know that matter exists, and asking where it came from is a fundemental question to find and answer to, but I doubt we ever will.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Godzilla
We do know that matter exists,

Do we? (topic for a new thread)

Seriously being open is fine...

If you have faith in science you are not practicing science.  You can trust that scientists have done their work and if you do not trust it you can review their work: you can perform the same experiments to satisfy yourself.  

Faith requires you to accept dogma. Paraphrasing (IIRC) Matthew it says 'Blessed are those who believe and yet do not see.'  Thomas  the Apostle had a crisis of faith… It was not until he saw the resurrected Christ that he started to believe once again… Jesus told him "Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Science requires doubt.  Science requires us to see, hear, detect in some manner, measure, hypothesize, test....  ID requires us to say that we cannot see any other way than the hand of the creator.  A hypothesis that cannot be seen, measured, tested, etc.

ID has as it's underpinning the existence of God.  This is at the present time been found impossible to prove logically.

ID is not science.

[Godzilla]

Holden, even if ID has it's underpinnings in god, that should not rule out science in any way.

I believe in God by faith, but that doesn't mean that I think science is not compatible with my beliefs.

Ruly anything out is just not the answer to me.

[Mini D]

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