Judge Says No to ID

No, anyone can be a scientist. The problem is that they have to learn to seperate their religious beliefs from scientific fact. Unless their religion is something that does not teach about anything their branch of science delves in. For instance, some branches of Buddhism do not speak about a divine creation event at all. It would therefore be safe to assume a follower of one of those branches of Buddhism would not have a religous bias toward biology.

This is not to say that Christians cannot be biologists. It merely says that if they want the scientific community to take them seriously and if they wish to keep their tenure, they should refrain from interjecting religious bias into their scientific papers.

I don't think that buddhists are any more free of bias than any other group.

No matter what religion you are, if you repeatedly test something and the results come back the same... well, most people come to a conclusion no matter what their starting point.

Trouble starts only when you stop looking for yourself, and rely on others to do the testing for you.

Actually, evolutionism doesn't pretend to supplant Creationism. Evolution has nothing what so ever to do with how life originated. The theory of Abiogenesis would be the competing theory. That theory suggests life originated from non-living matter.

So I don't see why evolutionism is considered the opposite of creationism.

Most scientist do believe in a creator. 40% believe in a God that actually hears prayers.

Wouldn't atheists also have a bias? Does their belief everything came to be without any design cause them to be closed-minded to some possibilities?

Who took the survey? When was the survey taken? What region was the survey taken in? How were the participants selected?

Also, I did not say that they cannot be religous. I said that inorder for the scientific community to take them seriously, they must leave out religious bias. I know some very religious scientists who deliberately stay out of fields of science that their religion causes bias on. Others have learned to seperate the difference between Theology and Scientific Knowledge.

You attempt to twist my words by reading semantics that don't even exist.

For info on the statistics, search for 'scientist religion', there are many sources, pick any. That way it won't seem like I'm picking statistics to suit my argument.

The problem I see is everyone is somewhat biased by their beliefs, because the starting point of their experimentation is biased by their beliefs. Everyone has personally held beliefs that affect their every decision, these beliefs can't be separated from the human experience.

I'm not attempting to twist your words, I am pointing out bias is a two-way street, atheist or theist, neither can be bias-free. Any personal beliefs can bias the experiment.

Nobody can, has, or ever will be utterly free of bias. The only way to be free of bias is to have no abliity to form an opinion. Science is largely about minimizing the impact of personal bias... unlike religion, which consists entirely of shared belief, or 'fields of study' like ID which form as a result of permitting bias to contaminate (heck, originate) said study.

Kevin are you still trying to get your religion taught in public schools? Give it up. It will never happen.

Red herring.

Even if 100% of scientists believe in god, it does not support "Intelligent design". Why? Because intelligent design is not about coming up with a harmony between science and nature; it's an outright denial of science, proclaiming there is no evolution and that the world was created only a few thousand years ago, etc etc.

Right, so if it ever becomes testable, come back to science and say, "Hey, we have something you can test now!". Until then it is entirely irrelevant to science as any other invalid hypothesis (such as the earlier one mentioned about angels pushing planets around on some other plane).



Okay, well since you still perceive bias, let me put it to you in the bus analogy. String theory is attempting to get on the bus and is rooting around in it's pockets for some change. Whether it will find it or not is still up in the air. ID on the other hand keeps trying to hand over buttons, lint and various other noncurrency. So ID keeps getting kicked off the bus and told to come back when it has proper fare while string theory gets to stand in the doorway fishing around in its pockets. String theory, like some of his friends, could get kicked to the curb too. Especially if a shiney new multiverse theory comes along, has proper change and shoves him off.

The important part of this is that the bus driver could care less which theory you are, he just wants proper fare, exact change only.

It's a small point, but I think everyone agrees that life originated from non-living matter.

Replicating molecule soup, or omnipotent god - this was not a 'biologic genesis' either way. Unless the god was made of matter, and biological (meeting such criteria as needing to eat, reproduce, blah blah).

So... 'abiogenesis' is kind of the wrong word, insofar as creationism doesn't really suggest 'biogenesis' either.

Not sure what would be the right word; I'll have to think on it some.

And that pretty much sums it up.

Most people can't accept on animal "turning" into another... which shows a basic misunderstand of what evolution supposedly is and how insanely similar animals are.

I'd start with a smaller jump.. morphology.

The most basic limit is the understanding of how much TIME this takes place over.

No "evolution" took place in the supposed age of the earth according to the bible.

I've read the bible and was a devout christian for years.. I read about things like evolution and choose that instead. For those who think the bible is right instead, that is their right.

But when they start getting in power, screwing with the education system, and who cares about the environment, the end times are just around the corner so we should start a few wars because thats what the prophecy says... then I think it really isn't safe to just tell people they can believe what they want.

If a particular fairy tale doesn't destroy the planet/screw up people's lives etc, then I'm fine with it.

yea but as we say.... 8 of nine members ousted... education changed.. and court case settled..

God bless america!

Bias goes both ways. Starting with the assumption life "just happened" is a major bias. Just as bad as any religious bias, if not worse.

Do you have any points to add to the debate?

I think the point is that all the arguments you're making here have already been shot down in the last ID thread.

Not everyone agrees with the faith of abiogenesis. It's as much a faith as is the belief Earth was created in 6 days. Believe it if you will, but don't call it science unless you want to call creatonism science. It has never been tested, and has no backing in fact. The truth is, science teaches life must come from life, it's called biogenesis.

Please post where my points were already shot down. TY.

ID says nothing about the Bible, how the world came to be, or when the Earth was formed. Why is it those who disagree with ID twist its teachings? To me it's a sign of fear to argue its real merits.

Please show me where ID suggests the Earths age. Also, ID doesn't deny evolution, it denies macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is not testable, so it's a faith just as much as creationism is a faith.

If you think it's settled you're a dreamer



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101959.html

/112/92/70077/1.html

TY for posting an entire thread. Now,please show the posts where my points discussed were shot down.

I don't have time for that right now. Line up your arguments and we can go over it all again when I get back from xmas break.

Edit: If you could do a bullet list with your main points, that would be helpful, since most of the time the discussions seem to run in circles.

Something like:

-point 1
-point 2
-point 3
...

-point1
discussion of argument in favor of point 1
-point 2
discussion of argument in favor of point 2
...

Also, there were long exchanges to define terms, so any ambiguous or non-standard use of terms should be defined. (basically, anything we had to go in circles about last time)

Have a good holiday, I look forward to this.

I also wrote 'Science is largely about minimizing the impact of any personal bias.' Science recognizes that bias exists and tries to keep it from having significant impact. Religion and ID are founded upon bias and embrace it.