Elevation, do the books you read use additional carriage returns to break up large blocks of text, allowing the reader to pause and reflect upon what he or she has just read?

Good post, by the way. Your writing flows well.

experience = 6th tool

Wow...talk about feelings of inadequacy. If you actually read my posts more than once, MAC_and_cheese, you might not feel as threatened by them.

And enigmatic_vivacity, remove the prejudice from your judgment and try to understand what I am saying. When I trust a person, just as when I trust a god, I am not actually directly trusting that person, but I am trusting my imperfect, esoteric understanding of that person, i.e., the ego-concept of them I have created in my own psyche. This even applies to myself. So there is no real difference between the two because they both possess the same inherent blindness. And when you talk about punishment, what exactly are you trying to say? It just sounds you like you have a prejudice against the god-worshipers, like you have somehow figured out a way to be less blind. No matter who or what the object of worship is, people are always just as likely to be sheep, as you so eloquently put it.

-- Made some key edits after rereading it...

Im more into faith than religion

I'm more into logic than thinking.

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Come on. You must know what he meant.

Catholic

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Scientist.

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Also known as the guy that always pisses gondee off with his huge avatars.

Intelligent Design fails on the notion that Genetic Blueprints of humans and chimpanzees and monkeys show that they clearly come from common ancestors. How does intelligent design explain this?

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Prehaps God created the big bang and decided to watch and see if anything happened.

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In other words, god created life, then 4.5 billion years later people created "God"

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transientb.bandcamp.com

Difference between the origins of man and the origins of life.

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The movie you showed employed a very smart technique RE Virus. Showing the other side's (real science) weakest arguments and passing them off as their best.

Also intelligent design is not a theory of origin, all it does is try to find cracks in the theory of evolution, yet there is so many cracks in intelligent design that it's rediculous.

Genetics is a great example, why would god put dormant genes in our DNA?

Why are Christians circumcised, many people say that foreskin is a vestigial organ that should be removed. Well, intelligent design does not allow for vestigial organs my friend.

What about the yolk sac between the placenta and the baby? Completely vestigial.

Science takes in all the evidence available and forms a theory to explain the evidence.

Creation Science takes Biblical notions and tries to find evidence to support it. A backwards and thoroughly wrong way to approach the scientific method.

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A straw man? I didn't notice any. I watched that film in a hurry though, I didn't pay full attention. I thought it was very interesting. Can you show me what straw man arguments the film used?

You seem to be using straw man arguments yourself, but perhaps you're just misguided. As I stated, religious beliefs may overlap, but ID doesn't necessarily mean "God did it". So no, I don't think "god put dormant genes in our DNA".

Dormant genes and vestigial organs are best explained by evolution. Again, you must differentiate between the origins of man and the origins of life itself. Man may be derived from apes, but where do apes come from?

The science related to the origins of life and the universe is often skewed and molded to fit the available knowledge, which is very little. Though it uses the scientific method, the evidence is far insufficient to be conclusive. Man can't really know the answer. Some theories like the Big Bang are better described as religion disguised as science than sound science. Some scientists just wanted a working alternative to the "God did it" explanation that religions offered.

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The problem with ID is that it not only does not explain anything, but it uses this very lack of explanation as the main support of its "theory," which is a total fucking contradiction, and goes completely against the progress that science creates.

So, what I'm saying is, fuck intelligent design. It's the epitome of a cop-out.

And Intelligent Designers don't believe in Macro-evolution. They think God created humans.

The Straw man argument was Irreducible Complexity. They incorrectly explained it, and made it seem impossible, while any moleculuar biology degree holder (my sister for example) could tell you that Irreducible Complexity is disproved using pseudo-science, and ultimately wrong (yet convincing to the general public) arguments.

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The problem with ID and religion for that matter boils down to the question of:

Who made god so complex and powerful so that he is the all pervading super complex entity that is completely undetectable?

ID argues that someone or thing had to engineer everything in nature. We are told that God is omni-present and if you believe that then you can't deny that he a part of nature. So who designed God?

To me the whole ID logic is a joke?

BTW - I'm an atheist. The Jesuits Catholics who educated me didn't maketh the man they planned...

Jesuits don't believe in ID.

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Sarah and Joanne are wrong- this stays in here until it's proven.

So? They believe in God but that didn't work on me.

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While I was thinking how to express my views on this matter, I figured I'd find an article written by someone else, so as to save time. (Emphasis added by me.)


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Evolution by Chance?
by Michael Langston

I must state at the outset that I am not an evolutionary biologist and that the argument I am about to present is not fully developed scientifically (although I believe that it could be if one were to spend sufficient time researching it). It is presented here only in common-sense, layman's terms. I am admittedly no expert on the subject I am about to discuss, but it doesn't require an expert to see that there is something seriously wrong with the evolutionists' theories on the origin of species.

I am frequently astounded by the arrogance of the scientific community and by their unfounded notion that they now are somehow immune to the error and dogmatism that plagued such established belief systems in the past. It is my belief that science today can be just as dogmatic, just as arrogant, and just as erroneous as it was when the earth was considered to be at the center of the universe and when it was thought that the sun revolved around the earth and not vice versa.

Nowhere is this dogmatism more apparent than in the area of evolutionary biology. How arrogant are the proponents of this theory of evolution, who confidently assert that they understand the mysteries of how species came into being, when they understand nothing of the sort! I don't believe there is a human being alive who has the answers to these profound questions: Exactly how did life originate? How did life forms as diverse from one another as the birds in the trees and the trees themselves come into being? Evolution as an explanation for the origin of the various plant and animal species is just as much a religion based on faith as any other religion. It is a form of secular religion that places its faith in the authority and presumed infallibility of the scientific establishment.

Let's look at a specific example of something they are not able to adequately explain: how flight in birds came into being. Let's ask ourselves the following question: Is random chance alone enough to account for this occurrence?

The first thing that we must understand is that one single "variation" or "mutation" is not sufficient to produce a bird that can fly. Anyone who has ever done any computer programming can attest to the fact that a viable program is the result of many, many lines of computer code all working together to form a harmonious whole.

Living systems are no different. Flight in birds is a complex aggregate of many hundreds, thousands, or possibly millions of discrete genetic elements all working together like the lines of code in a computer program or the tiny gears of an intricate watch mechanism. If one single line of that code or one tiny gear of that watch is missing, the program will crash, the watch will not keep time, and the bird will be hopping around aimlessly over the ground unable to fly.

And this is an extremely critical point to grasp: An intermediate form - for example, a bird with the correct morphology but without any feathers - would have no selective advantage in the natural selection process. The bird could not fly, and thus would probably be eaten by a predator as it hops helplessly on the ground. Thus, the intermediate form's genetic traits very likely would not be transmitted to succeeding generations and would simply die out before they had a chance to be "evolved" in a gradual evolutionary process.

In effect, these partially evolved traits would be entirely worthless. All the disparate genetic elements involved in producing an advantageous trait (such as the ability of a bird to fly) would have to come together simultaneously to produce a viable organism for natural selection to select: one that would survive in the struggle for existence and that would then pass on this advantageous trait to succeeding generations.

In mathematics, the probability of multiple independent events all occurring simultaneously is equal to the product of the respective probabilities of those individual events:

P = (P1)(P2)(P3)...(Pn)

For example, the probability of two coins both coming up "heads" is:

(1/4) = (1/2)(1/2)

As more coins are tossed and more factors are introduced into the equation, the probability of them all coming up "heads" becomes less and less and very quickly becomes exceedingly small, even with a small number of coins. It is not difficult to see that with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of factors - each one much smaller - that the product would be an inconceivably small number. This number represents the probability of the simultaneous occurrence of all these separate events, the simultaneous appearance of all the necessary genetic elements...the probability of flight in birds arising from the process of random chance alone.

I do not know what these numbers actually are in specific, quantitative terms, but it is not necessary to know this. It is quite obvious that the probability of a bird with the capability of flight arising from this random chance process is so small that it would likely take trillions of years, not millions, for such an event to occur. So it is absurd to believe that the evolutionary process, if it exists at all, is driven simply by random chance alone.

In conclusion, let me state that I am not a creationist, and I do not presume to know exactly how life originated or how various species came into being. The means of creation of all the diverse life forms on this planet is a subject too complex for my limited human intellect to fathom. Even something as comparatively simple as a computer program is so complex that the human mind cannot comprehend all its intricacies all at one time. I do not understand these mysteries of life, but neither do the evolutionists. Don't let them kid you. They haven't a clue.
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Mmm, unless there's something wrong with the peer reviewing system, and the scientific method. That article was basically, I don't understand how evolution works, therefore it doesn't...

I'm sure the peer reviewing system will regard it highly, somewhere around general relativity...

The only reason that evolutionary scientists seem dogmatic, is that creationists haven't put for a concise theory of intelligent design that explains everything to the extent of evolution... and you know, there's a reason for that... intelligent design can't explain anything other than what their minds can't understand.

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He does understand the theory of evolution. That's what he wrote about. The premise is that it's way too complex to work. No one really "understands" how evolution works in its very basics (irreduceable complexity). It "just happens". Evolution doesn't really explain the origins of life -- nothing does. The theory of "intelligent design" seeks not necessarily to explain the origin of life, but rather to explain that natural selection doesn't explain it either. As I said, some scientists created an alternative to the "God did it" explanation that religions offered, pretending to know the answer to something there's no way we can know.

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RE,

I cant resist getting into this one...

The article you have posted makes several BIG mistakes.

Evolution is not chance! A mutation occurs by genetic faults, that's about the chanciest bit. If a mutation occurs that causes a bird to not grow wings and thus can't feed itself or escape a predator then that bird is less likely to reproduce its DNA, meaning that the mutation disappears from the gene pool of the species. That is NOT chance, it is a self regulating system. Conversely if a mutation does aid the survival of a particular organism (and consequently it reproduces more offspring) the mutated genes will quickly spread through the gene pool. Many mutations are dormant for many generations as they have little effect on the survival of a particular organism until some environmental condition changes (such as we will be able to observe over the new 100 years as this globe warms up).

No evolutionist has said that all the mutations that formed a bird and its particular characteristic of flight occurred simultaneously. The point is that a succession of mutations occurred over a very long period of time and many ancestors to culminate in a bird.

But it should also be noted that there are plenty of FLIGHTLESS birds that have evolved and survive today, ostriches, kiwi birds (New Zealand) for example.

Yes the probability of a successful mutation is very small, but it happens and once it occurs it spreads very quickly through the gene pool. There is even less probability that Gods exists..but statistically he could possibly exist.

Oh and another thing that you need to understand - we did not evolve from apes, we both evolved from a common ancestor - the apes are our genetic cousins.

The writer doesn't know what he is talking about by his own admission. If he was an evolutionary biologist and could disprove the theory with hard facts AND provide an alternative theory also supported by hard facts then I would listen.

He states that he is not a creationist... so what is he... more dogmatic than the dogmatism that he attributes to evolutionists.

After he says he really has no clue about biology he then has the stupid guile to say that the scientists have no clue. Scientists are the only people who are trying to turn "no clue" into understanding. Religion just tries to keep us clueless. And when someone comes up with a thought out and factual argument, the creationist (ID) camp dogmatically jump up and down claiming that the scientist is dogmatic.

I know why you like his argument because you are attracted to his dogmatism, being so dogmatic yourself.

Before you provide anymore fallacy arguments, read some evolutionary books (not 1000 word articles stripped off the Web, but real books). I suggest you start with Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan's - Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors since it isn't to technical (but you probably won't because they're Jews and you're a card carrying anti-Semite), second you should read Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene followed by The Blind Watchmaker. Finally you might read what I'm reading now, Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism.

Best to really know and understand the enemy so that you can really defeat them.

RE,

Virus I just looked at the wing.tv website you lifted the article from, it is another one of your beloved anti-Semite racist sites, with ads for books with titles like "Satan: Prince of this World" "Codex Magica" a handbook on Freemasonry or "The Synagogue of Satan" to name a few.

For those interested, the site promotes the publications of Sisyphus Press and there is plenty said to debunk the site here http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/320531.shtml.

RE this site is up there with the Judicial Inc link you put in the Virginia Tech thread.

I really do hate this push for intelligent design. It's not that I seriously believe life happened completely randomly or that I am dogmatic with the scientific community. There are a lot of things that scientists are doing seriously wrong right now (particularly the global warming scare, among others). But the reason I hate this ID movement so much is that it is so intrinsically negative towards the pursuit of knowledge. It attempts to place a limit on the potential of human knowledge and screams at us that we will never be able to cross that line. That is about as destructive and unscientific a concept as I can think of.

So when it comes to questions about the origin of species, and the origin of life, no, we don't really know. But we have a fairly good idea of what has happened here on this planet the past few million years (evolution), and our knowledge continues to grow. If everyone would just chill the fuck out and stop setting up fucking -ism camps (you're either an evolutionist or a creationist!!!), then maybe our knowledge of the universe could continue to grow a bit more smoothly.

Hey Re Virus, you've gone all silent. Is the pressure too much?

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