Vatican: Intelligent design is not science

http://www.nativefish.org/articles/conservation_alliance.php


http://www.local6.com/news/3680667/detail.html

Ummmmm...your mother?

Does that support macroevolution?

Did the frogs turn into turtles? Was there new information added, or are you sighting how mutations cause deformities that are useless to the creature?

Mankind's recorded history isn't even a blink of an eye compared to how long Earth has been developing. Even a speeding train looks still when viewed in a photograph of one second's time, but that doesn't mean the train isn't moving.

But the earth is only 6000 years old. Der.

I gave that up for lent

I'll just say this... every argument for ID boils down to the inability to prove a negative and as such is on an even footing with anything else that can be asserted but not absolutely proven false... in other words, everything that can be imagined. Could it be possible? Sure. There could also be invisible submarines navigating through my arteries and Jesus might have been a robot built by aliens. The only reason ID is seen as somehow more valid than any other random assertion is because of religion and because people want to believe it's true. Without any supporting evidence it's just a meaningless thought experiment.

Even Darwin admitted that there should be plenty of evidence in the fossil record. It's not like we have nothing but this one frame of the movie.

The strange thing is, most life suddenly appears in the fossil record, fully formed. There is no link that can show a progression of how they arrived at that time. Scientists normally assume creatures found deeper in the earth are older. We arrive at a deep location showing all kinds of life, but before that time we find nothing to link them.

Chip, the problem is this... some people who reject the notion of a God have one theory. Others, some who believe in a God, have another theory.

The question of origins is really outside the realm of science at this time. Science deals in what can be observed. If there is no way to falsify a theory, it can't really be scientific. At this time macroevolution is in the position of faith, because it can't be falsified or tested.

This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves with ID. The evidence for ID is very strong, the only reason scientists can't embrace it is because its not testable or falsifiable.

My opinion is there should be science based on the belief in ID as much as there is science based on the belief in evolutionism.

Many discoveries were found by scientists who believe in God, so please don't suggest belief in a creator stops science, it's just propaganda to say such a thing. In fact, many scientists today believe in a personal God. Yet their studies aren't negatively impacted. I would say it broadens their mind to consider what others refuse to consider.

I've never heard it put so well in just one paragraph. I think I'll save that one somewhere to paste into future conversations with a couple of creationists I know.

Kevn, you're a perfect example of someone who gives ID undue credence out of religious belief and a desire for it to be true. The fact that macro-evolution hasn't been sufficiently proven to everyone's satisfaction doesn't make ID any more valid. There's a great deal of evidence that supports macro-evolution. There isn't any evidence for ID. But we've gone around and around on this for weeks and it's rather pointless to argue with you about it.

Chip, you're a perfect example of someone who gives macroevolution undue credence out of religious belief and a desire for it to be true. The fact that ID hasn't been sufficiently proven to everyone's satisfaction doesn't make macroevolution any more valid.


See how that can be stated either way?

Your religion is "there is no God" and mine is "there is a God" but they are both religions.

The supreme court has stated atheism is a religion, and only your religion is permitted, unfettered by law, to indoctrinate children before they are old enough to make up their mind.

wow, and there IS lots of fossil evidence. You even had 4 or 5 complete examples of macro-evolution pointed out to you in other threads.

Yet you go on to say this as if you haven't had all this explained to you before...



Should I link to past threads or just copy and paste or what? Oh hey and there's a fascinating discussion on the ARN board about how to find oil if you're a YEC (young earth creationist).

Creationism and Finding Oil

"If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukariotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants."

Bengston, Stefan (1990)
Nature 345:765
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"It is still, as it was in Darwin's day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today.

Denton, Michael (1986)
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Bethesda, Maryland, Adler & Adler, Pub., p.162

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No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seemed to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change--over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.

Eldredge, N., 1995
Reinventing Darwin
Wiley, New York, p. 95

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Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.

Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22

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We are faced more with a great leap of faith -- that gradual, progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks -- than any hard evidence.

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I. (1982)
The Myths of Human Evolution
Columbia University Press, p. 57

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It goes on and on. The fact is, macroevolution is a faith. The fossil record doesn't support macroevolution.

I think I lack the stamina to continue to rebuff Kevn's statements. I've lost count of the number of posts I've made to which there has been no response, and then a week, or a day later, he makes the same, unsupported statements.

Who knows, perhaps I'll jump in again if Kevn comes up with a new statement we haven't already seen before.

No, it supports ID, take a look at the articles:
No cause has yet been identified.
It does concern me and mutations like this shouldn't happen that often

The exisitance of a designer would explain this completely.

They do offer up a possible explanation, but its only a "theory"
Experts say the animals are particularly sensitive to pollutants, which can be absorbed through their skin.

As far as I know they've never replicated this, so it must be false.

Therefore, I propose that in all high school science classes, all students should be replaced with five legged frogs and the teacher read a statement to them explaining that evolution is only a theory.

I *think* what Kevn is refering to is that there has been at least one court ruling (though I don't have a link, I remember hearing about it not all that long ago) where a court ruled that, for the purposes of discrimination, atheism counted as a religion. IE, "Cannot be discriminated based on race, religion, or gender" would included "not by atheism" as well.

I don't, like I said, have a link to the case, however.

I found an article about it. It was an appeals court, not the Supreme court...

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45874

Yeah, I went through that cycle once too. I'll wait with you.

"Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,” those beliefs represent her religion.
We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. (“If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.”). Kaufman claims that his atheist beliefs play a central role in his life, and the defendants do not dispute that his beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.
The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a “religion” for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in McCreary County, Ky. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 125 S.Ct. 2722 (2005). The Establishment Clause itself says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls “nonreligion.” In McCreary County, it described the touchstone of Establishment Clause analysis as “the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”
Atheism is, among other things, a school of thought that takes a position on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics. As such, we are satisfied that it qualifies as Kaufman’s religion for purposes of the First Amendment claims he is attempting to raise."


http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2005/08/atheism_as_reli.html

The bold part is a very important distinction, Kevn. It wasn't a blanket ruling that Athiem = Religion. It says that it counds as a religion when discrimination is in question.

Please don't take my lack of interest in your posts as being rude. If you make a point I feel needs to be addressed from my perspective, I will address it. If I feel your point isn't sufficiently provoking, I won't respond.

So far, your posts haven't been sufficient to spark a response.

I respect your right to believe whatever you read. And if there are things you read that make you believe macroevolution is fact, that's fine. But please don't expect me to accept your opinion or reading material as proof macroevolution is fact. In return, I promise not to expect you to accept as fact my opinions or those things I read, that suggest my opinion is correct.

One of the definitions for the word Religion found at dictionary.com is as follows:

Religion: A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.


Is atheistism a cause or priniple pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion?