Intelligent design. Philosophy of ignorance.

OK Jar, you got me. You win!! I will shut up now. It is obvious that I cannot play in your court.

The great thing about this "game" is that you get to set your own winning conditions.If I learn something, I win. If somebody learns something from me, I win - and it's a minor miracle . If I hear a good joke, I win. If somebody likes my jokes, I win.There's no way to lose, really, unless you want to.

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Divine Beginnings writes: Don't give up, learn. You are being lied to and conned by the folk at Discovery Institute, ICR, and unfortunately, lots and lots of ignorant Christian Pastors.They prepare slick looking videos like the one you linked to that are honestly filled with nonsense. They count on the ignorance about science among their audience and the habit of accepting stuff on authority that is all too common in many Christian Communities to allow them to get away with it and convince folk to pony up the bucks.What you do need to know is that there are many, many Christians, every bit as devout as yourself, that have no problems with the Theory of Evolution.Can I suggest that you also look at a few other sites. Theistic EvolutionThe Clergy Project, a list of over 10,000 US Christian Clergy that support the TOE and reject Biblical Creationism. A Catechism of Creation: An Episcopal UnderstandingAll Science teaches us is How GOD did it.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I did multiply them together DB. Let me do the maths for you in simple terms.10²⁰ x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 x 1 /10 = 100That is their maths, corrected (they use 10¹¹, suggesting this is the number of stars in our galaxy, I'm using 10²⁰ to represent the number of stars in our universe).Tell me, what does 100 mean?

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However - science education is under threat. That leads to the scientific dominance of America being under threat. Scientists are passionate about science and education - they have generally spent a lot of time in education about science - so when the education system is threatened, they speak out. It is entirely rational.

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OK. So if I made the inference that a leading causitive factor in heart disease is education, that wouldn't threaten education? After all, I'm just making spurious inferences, 'adding another variable' so to speak.

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Nothing can threaten science.

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The inference that life is intentional does nothing to advance science either. Pretending that that inference is progressive will only lead to other ideas being acceptable to the new lower standards. Funny, here was I thinking that it was the IDists that were making the big stink. Huh? If this is a legitimate claim, then anything is a legitimate claim. Is it scientifically supported? No. Should it be taught in the science classroom? NO! Dogma is resistant to change. Evolution has changed considerably over the past 150 years. New mechanisms have been found and their impact on life is viewed differently every decade. Trying to get it into schools through means of PR campaigns, getting sympathizers in influential positions of power (school boards etc), court cases and popular press books and slogans (Teach the controversy!) So you don't apply the insidious minds theory to them equally? Fair enough then. So, we should present the evidence for evolution to them accurately and let them decide whether the conclusions drawn from that evidence are valid. I'd agree we should do the same thing for ID, once we have some positive evidence for it. Agreed. Recognizing it is seperate from demonstrating evidence for the proposal. For the design inference to be scientific it needs actual evidence, you know? Ideally we'd have evidence of implementation of the design. And we'd have a working solution to the regression problem of 'who designed the designer'. Only if we consider time to be special. The four dimensional space-time could easily self exist with a coordinate system with a zero in one part of it. The point being we have to theorize a self existing entity somewhere along the line, and universe is the only entity in that list we have positive evidence for. The point being that God has traditionally filled that role, but it is irrelevant. Whatever name you want to give to the grand designer, the pitfall remains the same. The OP deals with how the design inference has seemed reasonable before, only for us to discover that with further inquiry, the secret of the illusion is revealed. Since even the smartest people can fall for the design illusion under certain circumstances we should warn against the pitfall and encourage people to keep looking for answers beyond design. It is absurd to demand evidence from which to infer conclusions? Well, I don't see a problem with that. We theorize that black holes are a possible existence in a certain type of universe. We then find physical evidence that supports the existence of black hole's existence and make predictions based on that idea which then pan out... A sequence of events sadly lacking in designer lore. Of course it won't. What part of my early posts in this thread would lead you to make such a statement? I am just saying that the Design inference is a pitfall we should teach students to avoid. I am not trying to undermine the design inference, just its utility for scientific purposes. That, as you say, is entirely irrelevant to a theological debate. And it is why ID doesn't get accepted into the paradigm, it lacks any merit - as you admit it is just based on criticism of evolution rather than as a solid and practical explanatory framework in its own right. ID has a platform. It, in its many forms, has had a platform for thousands of years. That platform is not currently a scientific one, until it meets the current standards that science has. There is a lot to be said about focussing ones attention on propositions that have positive evidence for them, rather than propositions that rely on supposed negative evidences against another proposition. Otherwise we'd all be desperately chasing Russell's Teapot!

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Apologies for the delay, but I am only now regaining my fitness after my unfortunate episode. The response was slightly choppy partially due to this also - so my apologies for that as well.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:

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I could.The question is whether you will learn something. It is a common logical fallacy, and anyone familiar with logic should know it. It is easy to google a term like this and get an answer, or go to wikipedia - either will get you good results.That's what I do when I run across a term I don't know, and it has the benefit of not being misdirected by someone who doesn't really know what they are talking about.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

and thanks for the help about using wikipedia. I often forget about the resources available. I am sorry about the attacks and my attitude toward all you guys. I have a lot to learn yet. I will never relinquish my faith in Jesus Christ to anyone or thing, but I will never quiet my thirst for learning more. I appreciate your patience with me. I know I've been pretty bad myself.
DB

No problem there and no one here will likely challenge such a position. What you need to understand is that Science and the Theory of Evolution are no threat. All we are doing is learning how GOD did it.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

GDR Why do you suppose that is the case? Could it be because the world is not supernatural but natural? It is not wrong to use God of the gaps, it is just not scientific. A "science of the Gaps" {As you so call it} is not of the same character at all though, since any conjecture into the nature of that which is not known by science must be consistent with that which is already known by science. Science consistently furthers knowledge while God consistently becomes less necessary to explain the things we see and, indeed ,clarifies nothing but further muddies the waters we would investigate because there is no consensus at all on just what God entails.

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Dear Mrs Chown, Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.Best wishes, Richard Feynman.

Many people here have been there. It is not a happy place. I hope you work through your faith, and see that faith is not the issue -- but falsehoods that people have told you, people that may be well meaning but ill-informed.If you believe in creation (as many do) then you have to, at some level, believe that what is out here in the world and the universe - the reality of existence - is the final word on what creation was.And not somebodies interpretation of any book or nook or crany.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Sure it could be but the opposite conclusion is just as valid. Actually from what I can see, the more science discovers the more we realize how little we truly understand. Lisa Randall writes,"We understand far more about the world than we did just a few short years ago - and yet we are more uncertain about the true nature of the universe than ever before". I suggest that the more science discovers about the world the more necessary God becomes.Science of the gaps uses pure conjecture to postulate what science can't explain. It isn't science any more than religious faith is.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

"Science of the Gaps" is filled by conjecture, hypothesis based on (a) current theory that explains each side of the gap (b) extrapolation of theory to cover the missing area. This makes a prediction that anything found that fits in this gap will also fit on the string line of the hypothesis between each side of the gap.We see this in physics, we see it in biology. We see it in Tittaalik.BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Arctic fossils mark move to land

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In 1999, palaeontologists Professor Neil Shubin, from the University of Chicago, and Professor Edward Daeschler, from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, set out to explore the Canadian Arctic in an attempt to find the "missing link" that would explain the transition from water to land.

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After several years of searching with very little success, they hit the jackpot in 2004.

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In this case they went looking for transitional fossils of a particular type in a specific sediment that was the right habitat and the right age for the transitional animal to have existed -- they filled the gap in knowledge with a proposed transitional animal and then went and found it.That it was not entirely as expected is also par for the course eh? The fun in life is the surprises.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

​

RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

When Richard Dawkins starts talking about memes, or explanations for consciousness it is just as much a matter of faith as is God did it. If there is no empirical evidence a theistic explanation is just as valid as a materialistic explanation. Both are borne out of faith. Dawkins does a great job of explaining science but he goes beyond science when he evangelizes on behalf of his atheistic beliefs. (Science of the Gaps)

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Memetics: the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memesMemetics - Wikipedia
Jom Emit
Memetics

Wrong. One is bourne out of faith, the other is tentatively indicated by circumstantial empirical evidence.Furthermore, materialistic explanations can be (and are) tested and falsified, whereas theistic positions can't. End of story.As RAZD pointed out above, scientists lacked evidence of a creature like Tiktaalik, so they simply used the knowledge they DID have to try to find one. They now have material evidence (whose discovery was based on an accurate prediction) to support their "explanation".Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.