Ben Stein vs. Sputtering Atheists

[moot]

I hate too get in too this late (hate to get into it at all) but i have one question, has science explained morality or evolution of the spirit? does it explain the feeling of good and evil inside us all (or most of us)? I have not read all the post's on this thread so I may be asking questions that have already been answered.  I still havent got too see the movie yet but i am planning on going soon!

You have to appreciate the best-guess quality of Science.  It's not about a 100% certainty, it's about producing explanations and putting them to the test like some industrial assembly line of a certain object, where at the end of the assembly line is an assessment test of the object's fitness to satisfy certain criteria. 
The criteria is reproducing the characteristics of some phenomena that's being studied, and the assembly line is science's iteration of any and all imaginable explanations, commonly called hypothesies and theories.  The assembly line is running at full output, trying to come up with the best possible "object".

Does this pattern sound familiar?  It is, because it's analogous to evolution.  Survival of the fittest.

The best answer to your question I have is that the nearest thing to what you describe that I've heard of are a sort of "evolutionary" (I forget what they called it exactly, sorry) robots, or software, that will (much like 1000 chimps at 1000 typewritters) sort of crank out random solutions to the problem they're presented, and be designed to keep track of which traits of the software are most efficient to accomplish their purpose. 
I think it was some guy's pet project, made in his garage, called an "invention machine", or something like that.

Back to your question though, you could read up on "memes" or "memetics", or just general psychology, or pretty much any and all of epistemology or maybe even metaphysics. The problem you're going to run into is the same that some people are running into here: indiscriminate mixing of actual science and abstract philosophy, or even religion.

"has science explained morality or evolution of the spirit? does it explain the feeling of good and evil inside us all (or most of us)?"
"Morality" is pretty subjective, "spirit" is pretty much undefined, and "good and evil" too. 

[SirLoin]

It is the other way around. Evolution is backwards.

Religion is backwards...God did not make Mankind.

It's the other way around.

[moot]

That's ambiguous. Man may have made the idea of God, but if there were some true God, man wouldn't know about it on his own.  It's beyond man's reason to ascertain whether there is a God or not, whether his idea of God is man's own fabrication or if it was placed there by God.

There's a lot of literature on the subject. Many of the posters in here look like they never read any of it.
e.g. Descartes' notes on whether everything perceived is merely an illusion played on him by God.  Whether God or anything else, it's a fork in the road between solipsist denial of everything, and assumption that everything is real - assumption which some people abuse, confusing the root (in assumption) of a consistent trail of reason and that trail of reason's consistency "above" its root.

In another thread, Arlo and a few others were questioning the value of teaching a very strong base of concise philosophy, logic, and math, as early as possible.  The huge lack of clarity and abundance of misunderstandings in debates like these (not the forums but out among freaking adult, experienced professionals) is evidence enough, I think.

Of course those that deny evolution will need to come up with a different explanation. I'm waiting to read if this is because an Intelligent Designer decided we needed some antibiotic resistant bugs for some reason.

There's no end to confounding parable and reality. Not before a whole lot of chlorine gets into the meme pool.

[SkyRock]

Uh huh.  Oh yeah, you're absolutely right Skyrock.  Absolutely.  No way around it, when you're right, you're right.

Because you, as a teacher, know that evolutionists throughout history have NEVER tried to disprove God or anything wacky like that.  Much less many of them.  Uh huh.  That's right.

Do you think the purpose of the theory of evolution is to dis-prove God?

[WWhiskey]

thanx Moot
 

[storch]

Then you clearly don't understand the definition of evolution -- heritable changes within a population over time. More technically, it's a change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. Some contemporary examples of evolution: antibiotic resistant bacteria, disease-resistant tomatoes, Jack Russell terriers.

Are you denying that bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics? Or is your position that an "intelligent designer" decided a few years ago to create a new methcillin-resistant staph that kills 100's of people a year?

As for your other points:

Well documented transitional fossils in evolution of the horse http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html.

Why evolution doesn't violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html

thank you for your response myelo,

in response I will again state that there is no evidence of any living thing evolving into a completely different life form.  there are no fossils in the fossil record indicating that there ever was.  there is no missing link, hehehehe you guys need to find the missing, missing link.  the theory of evolution is a hopelessly flawed but dogmatically adhered to religion by some people in the same manner others follow different religions.  evolutionary science is a lockstep dogmatic religion and nothing more.


in response to the link you kindly provided on the subject of entropy the author went to some great machinations to twist definitions to prove his point.  this is consistent with dogmatic believers on both sides of this debate.  the important point to me is that the presense of a system either organizational or mechanical does not , hell cannot guarantee continous enhancement.  one the contrary (in keeping with the classical definition of entropy) it is subject to continual degradation if it is not kept to a predetermined standard defined in it's original design.  your boy up in that link forgot this principal or just ignored it despite the fact that it is a deeply and empirically recognized and established scientific fact.

[moot]

"the important point to me is that the presense of a system either organizational or mechanical does not , hell cannot guarantee continous enhancement"

Where is this ever the case, in evolutionary theory?  The overall entropy of the universe is increasing. One small freak instance in a very limited space for a very small lapse of time is nothing more than a fluke in that respect.
A refined adaptation to environment such as that proposed by evolutionary theory doesn't contradict entropy: the organism that's not well adapted enough, dies.  The one that's adapted more or less well, survives.  The one that's very well adapted thrives because it's an efficient solution to the problem posed by its environment.

Efficient means simple, it means reduced energy and matter expense, given a same task of Work as less efficient solutions.
Evolutionary theory doesn't suggest increasing complexity.  That's just what I remember off the top of my head, because animal biology was boring to me, so I can't recall the specifics. What I'm sure of though, is that we're nearing the point where we'll have an orbital point of view of evolution (in the literal sense), and some people are going to have foot in their mouth like flat earthers did a few centuries back.

"Science is religion".

Can you repeat this Storch?  Just to be sure it's not some freak typo.

"the author went to some great machinations to twist definitions to prove his point."

Supporting evidence?

[storch]

sure thing moot,  evolutionary science is a religion not unlike islam.  how's that?

[moot]

Ok, then you're either BSing or out of your mind. Science isn't religion.

You need to back up your dismissal of the 2nd law of TD argument with supporting evidence.

[storch]

Ok, then you're either BSing or out of your mind. Science isn't religion.

You need to back up your dismissal of the 2nd law of TD argument with supporting evidence.

ok allow me to quote isaac asimov  "another way of stating the 2nd law then is the universe is constantly getting more disorderly!  viewed that way, we can see the 2nd law all about us.  we have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily.  even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty.  how difficult to maintain houses, machinery and our bodies in perfect working order, how easy to let them deteriorate.  in fact all we have to do is nothing, everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down wears out, all by its self.  this is what the 2nd law is all about" 

[moot]

How does that support your argument that all evolutionary theories pretend that Evolution guarantees continuous enhancement, and/or violate the 2nd TD law?
It's an analogy for the whole universe.  One room isn't the whole universe.  One fraction of a planet's mass neither.  We could very well have a full nuke war and our tiny fraction of time and space in the universe would fall back in line with the universe's average entropy.

A geneticaly ill-adapted organism dies, that's entropy. A more or less well adapted organism will survive maybe 50% of 100% of physicaly possible scenarios, that's entropy too, and some statistical randomness tiping in its favor the other half of the time. A well adapted organism will tend towards being an efficient solution to the "problem" that its environment presents itself as.  I said this already but you didn't show how it's wrong.

Efficiency will tend towards simplicity.  Simplicity means a relatively low energy state.  So again it doesn't oppose entropy by principle. 

[weazely]

What?

[storch]

How does that support your argument that all evolutionary theories pretend that Evolution guarantees continuous enhancement, and/or violate the 2nd TD law?

my dear moot,  you are confused it doesn't dispute evolution.  what the 2nd law clearly demonstrates is that it is impossible for an orderly universe to be the result of an explosion.  do you see?

[SkyRock]

sure thing moot,  evolutionary science is a religion not unlike islam.  how's that?

Wow!


Religion Definition

A religion is a set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.



Science Definition

The word science comes from the Latin "scientia," meaning knowledge.

How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."

What does that really mean? Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. The term science also refers to the organized body of knowledge people have gained using that system. Less formally, the word science often describes any systematic field of study or the knowledge gained from it.


On different ends of the spectrum if you ask me.

[moot]

my dear moot,  you are confused it doesn't dispute evolution.  what the 2nd law clearly demonstrates is that it is impossible for an orderly universe to be the result of an explosion.  do you see?

Well I have to admit your argument is nonsense, how am I supposed to read your mind and figure out which of the infinite number of nonsense reasons you had for getting such an idea? No, I don't see what the heck you're thinking to say stuff like "science is religion".

You mean you're now talking about the big bang theory?  You mean your perception of what order is, dictates whether the universe, as we see it and understand it, does or doesn't break the 2nd TD law?