[Folken]

Agraba did you even view the whole video?

ahhh nvm im out lol continue:p

[D Man]

caladanbrood;159212 said:

But, but wait....


Bugger my sideways through a hedge, but theres two things there that you said, that in fact contradict each other. I swear it's true! In one you're saying that you don't want me in the discussion, and in the other, that I should get back in.


BRAIN FREEZE!!!!!!


Except no, wait, two contradictory things can seemingly occupy the same brain. Thats awkward.


The point I have always stood by is a rather unpopular one, it being that the two are *shock! horror!* in fact not in direct conflict. Of course you can't involve theology with physical reality, because theology has nothing to do with physical reality. It would be like my Thermodynamics lecturer turning up at 9am tomorrow (eek, today) and starting talking about, say renaissance art. God has no place in science, and science has no place in religion - as everyone seems to keep harping on about - one is falsifyable, the other isn't. So you can't go around judging them on the same basis. They're not the same thing. It's not like a debate between Newtonian black-hole theory and strings. Applying scientific logic to religion simply won't work, nor will applying religious principles to science.

I don't know how better to explain my viewpoint - I'm an engineer, not a linguist:o

By the way, UMIST doesn't exist anymore - you should check your facts;)

Thanks for reminding me!!! I was in UMISTs last graduating year. Now...well, lets just say I took a couple of Manchester courses and they were pathetically easy and scored over 90% with a few hours to learn each course to my UMISTs 70-somethings with several hours work...anyway, I'll stop bitching.

Oh, you can still get a UMIST degree if you enrolled before 2004, btw (you have the option)

You just agreed with me, by the way. Thanks

P.S. If you dont think you do then please explain to me the appropriate time at which to envoke the almighty in a chain of physical events in the physical world. Historically its 'When you dont know the answer' and 'God' sits there as a place-holder while you wait for someone much cleverer to figure it out. Do you have a better suggestion?

[Dolorous Menhir]

Jen said:

http://www.thothweb.com/modules.php?name=G...s&vid_watch=153

have fun.
It's an hour long so watch it when you have some time.

I've watched the video. First of all, I googled every person mentioned by name to get background on them. They were:

Dean Kenyon: scientist who wrote influential textbook in 60's, and was later exposed to young earth creationism and changed his views. Has a history of defending creationism as an expert witness at various trials. Censured by university in early 90's for teaching religion in science classes. Most famous for: authoring a book called "Of Pandas and People," between successive editions each reference to "creationism" was replaced with "intelligent design". Makes you wonder about those claims that ID is evidence-based.

Michael Behe: originator of "irreducible complexity". Uses his secular credentials to bolster his ID advocacy. Testified on behalf of the (pro-ID) defence at the Dover trial, and that testimony apparently was very influential in the loss by the defence. For example (from the judge's verdict) "Consider, to illustrate, that Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God."

Stephen C. Myer: "teach the controversy" advocate and main force behind this video (producer, writer and main interviewee, though he was presumably interviewing himself from his own script. not so many difficult questions that way.) Denies common descent. A founding member of Discovery Institute. Again, came to ID via creationism rather than scientific discovery.

Phillip E. Johnson: "Father" of ID movement. Born-again Christian. A law professor, not a scientist. No scientific background, yet mysteriously an authority on biology. Extremely strange hair (see 3.29 in video). Makes no effort to hide the Christian basis of his anti-evolutionary activism. Denies link between HIV & AIDS. In short, not someone that should ever be listened to in this area.

Paul Nelson: ID proponent who features prominently in this video, and is, shockingly, a young earth creationist! Is anyone seeing a trend here? Nelson has admitted that there is no scientific theory of ID, which directly contradicts his statements in this video. Why we are considering him an authority on biology I don't know, since he is a philosopher.

William A. Dembski: mathematician who attacks evolution from the novel direction of information theory. Total coincidentally, he is an evangelical Christian. The entire foundation of his work rests on "irreducible complexity," which can be described in layman's terms as "so complicated, God must've done it". Work is highly controversial and not generally considered legitimate.

Charles Darwin: we all know who this is. I checked though, and the video didn't make any blatant mistakes about his personal life, and they were even kind enough to not mention the spurious urban legend of his deathbed religious awakening.

Jonathan C. Wells: PhD in molecular & cell biology, so at least he has some relevant background. Another HIV->AIDS denier. Member of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, an organisation noted for its scientific rigour and general saneness. Clearly opposing evolution because of his religion (which explicitly denies evolution).

Michael Denton: wrote a book cited in the video. That book, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" is not considered credible in the scientific community.

Jed Macosko: interviewed in film, no wikipedia entry. Does have a web-presence, but he appears to be of little importance in the whole ID movement.

Scott Minnich: another IDer and irreducible complexity proponent. No info on his religious alignment, though I wouldn't bet against him being a fundamentalist Christian.

Aleksandr Oparin: a Russian scientist. I'm at a loss to explain why he was referenced in the film, since his work seems to demonstrate that life can arise from lifeless material and this explicitly contradicts a large portion of the film. I think they were misrepresenting what he had to say, or rather they just brought him up so they could say (in essence) "that guy was wrong".

Ok, enough with the people. Here are the notes I made during the video.

check out the guy at 3.29 (phillip johnson)

note careful use of negative language - darwinism is "generally assumed" throughout science and academic world (rather than, more fairly, "evolution is well-supported by the evidence and generally accepted by the scientific community). Note also that these people seem to use "darwinism" as a negative word and try to use it in place of "evolution". Perhaps the general public react more negatively to the former word?

growing number challenge? it's asserted several times that a growing number of scientists are challenging evolution. this is not the case that I know of, instead a small but vocal group of non-scientists are pushing creationist (sorry, ID) ideas via entities like the Discovery Institute.

false dichotomy of scale - beak to bird (Paul Nelson fudges big time)

behe - no they weren't convincing arguments (Behe's whole line of argument is "we don't understand this, so a designer did it")

18.17 : no Darwinian explanation for flagellum - an outright lie, look at wiki page and find two right there. but don't worry, the video goes on to debunk the less-popular one of those non-existent Darwinian explanations while ignoring the widely accepted one.

presentation of "irreducible complexity" as legitimate principle. this is misleading, and from this point the video discusses IC as if it was good science. it is not, and anything that proceeds from it is bunk.

19:43 - ic applies to biological systems. not so. (as above)

20.29 - ic now considered established as fact. wrong.

22. - poor presentation. misrepresentation of theory. presents darwin's original text as current understanding, and then shoots down strawman.

23.18 presentation of assertion "no evolutionary explanation of flagellum" as fact

25. wait, there are evolutionary explanations!

28.25 classic line "irreducibly complexity - all the way down!" (alternatively "we don't understand it - all the way down")

28.53 - continued presentation of irreducibly complex systems as fact

Kenyon section - can't speak to that, no personal knowledge. note dubious motivations of Kenyon referred to above. everything in this video is presented so as to carefully conceal the otherwise naked religious motivations of the interviewees.

45. poor analogy. no mention of low probability over long timescale = reasonable probability

45.42 - poor reasoning. assuming "life" instantly went from existing to not existing then shooting it down. gradual progression not even mentioned.

use of design-positive language throughout. "mechanism" "machine" "engineered" "manufacture". (i.e. this video is biased, which is surprising)

50. long presentation, the purpose of which is to overwhelm you into thinking "wow that's so complicated and i don't understand it, it must be designed"

51. paul nelson - consider all possible explanations. that's what scientists do Paul. AND THEN THEY DISCARD THE WRONG ONES.

52. boo hoo, discrimination against design. it's not discrimination to discard ideas that are wrong or unscientific.

52.33 heiroglyphs. incredibly irrelevant

54. dembski - improbable event, recognisable pattern. small prob/specification. not relevant to biological systems.

55. mt rushmore. irrelevant

57. no mention of god yet

1.00 myers - no natural process produces information. nonsense.

1.01.19 - comprehensive scientific case. wrong.

1.01.48 - id provides new tool of explanation. no it doesn't. Behe has admitted this in court (though obviously not in this thinly-disguised propoganda).

1.02 - behe "see motor, you know somebody made it. same goes for biological systems." no it doesn't. "the reasoning is the same for biological machines" no it doesn't. "id is scientific" no. "religious implications, but no religious premises" the fact that ID proponents are all serious religious types with naked religious motivation is just a coincidence.

1.03 minnich "can't explain by natural law" YET

1.03.54 doubt nelson credential "if all chaotic assemblage then no reason to expect order out there" ie "science becomes wonderful if product of a mind" what a load. this man is a joke.

1.04.24 "evolution faces a formidable challenge". no it doesn't.

1.05 dna can only be explained by design. not so.

The arguments at the end of this video are disgraceful. I'm not going to repeat them here, but they are junk. Every single person in this video is hiding their true motivations, which are unmistakably religious. They are ideologically opposed to evolution because it contradicts their religious beliefs, and so they grab onto any piece of pseudo-scientific flotsam (irreducible complexity) that comes their way in order to achieve this anti-scientific goal.

There is no clearer example of this than the editing of the "Of Pandas and People" to replace each occurrence of "creationism" with "intelligent design". ID is not new science, it's just creationism with a new name. "Creationism" was going down in flames, and a new strategy was needed. ID is it.

---

The central thesis of irreducible complexity goes like this:

"We don't have an explanation for this thing. So we'll just say it was designed. If you want to say that the designer was God, well that's your preference, because we have no inclination towards such thinking at all."

There are two problems here.

1. A false dichotomy is assumed. We don't have one explanation, so the other one is true. They could both be wrong. Note that every single ID discussion goes like this - "evolution can't explain ABC. So intelligent design must be true". You can see how this does not follow. These are not the only two options, which leads me onto point 2.

2. The first sentence should read

"We don't have an explanation for this thing YET."

Because that's what scientists do. They work out answers to things people don't understand yet. Whereas ID advocates sit back and say "yep, too complex. God's work. No need to do any more research here." This is just one reason why ID is not scientific. It produces no useful results, because it effectively makes scientific enquiry redundant.

100 years ago people didn't understand what heated the Sun. And yet scientists did not suggest that it was God rubbing his hands together. That's essentially what the ID people are arguing today.

Looking through the credits this film was clearly made by ID types for ID followers (as if that wasn't already blatantly obvious). The producers do have to be congratulated for never once saying "God" and doing everything they could to minimise their entanglement with religious motivation.

Just for interest, the firm which distributes this video, Illustra Media, also disseminates titles like "The Case for a Creator". Clearly they are not a serious scientific outfit.

This was a very long post, but I just spent more than an hour of my life watching that worthless video and I'm not going to just let that experience go without writing about it.

[caladanbrood]

I was a year too late, it's all just University of Manchester now:( - they still try and pretend to be UMIST though. Write it on the hoodies;)

Ah, you see, there you're getting into the mis-use of religion as a control device, which is something I really have no knowledge of beyond the obvious, and care about even less. Thats nothing to do with god, thats to do with rather over-intelligent power-mongers fooling everyone else into doing what they want. All very discussion worthy, but not a topic have any interest in.

[Cold Iron]

caladanbrood said:

God has no place in science, and science has no place in religion - as everyone seems to keep harping on about - one is falsifyable, the other isn't. So you can't go around judging them on the same basis. They're not the same thing.

You can and they are if you make science another religion. Which is basically what people who say "religion is false because science has all the answers" are doing. There is no more validity to that statement than "christianity is false because islam has all the answers".

[D Man]

Brood, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about using the scientific method, or agreeing with its findings, then when you come to a stumbling block saying 'I dunno what this is, lets say God did it'.

The same is true in any other way: accepting science to a point then overruling it with the supernatural. Its fundamentally inconsistent: if you think that the scientific method works for this reality then how can you stop using it all of a sudden and say 'This is God'? Its a bit like writing 'Here be Dragons', and it very much is saying that reality is a natural and physical thing until you dont feel like it is any more, then, if you can get away with it, using God.

You cant think that both gravity, the water cycle and fluid dynamics AND water sprites make a stream flow downhill.

Edit: DM, I didint watch the video (an hour of creationism at 2 am? no thanks) but I skimmed you post, and I cant comment on contents but as a general approach in the destruction of creationism youre a man after my own heart, I'm impressed. Well done

[D Man]

Cold Iron;159223 said:

You can and they are if you make science another religion. Which is basically what people who say "religion is false because science has all the answers" are doing. There is no more validity to that statement than "christianity is false because islam has all the answers".

BULL

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/.../AppendixE.html

[Cold Iron]

*sigh* D Man, let me repeat myself. I'm not advocating creationism or claiming that at the end of the scientific method rainbow there is a pot of god.

I'm saying that science can not replace religion unless you make it a religion, which, if you believe that science fully explains the existance of life or the universe, is what you are doing. The point of the scientific method is that faith is not necessary because all assertions are proved.

[caladanbrood]

D Man;159224 said:

Brood, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about using the scientific method, or agreeing with its findings, then when you come to a stumbling block saying 'I dunno what this is, lets say God did it'.

The same is true in any other way: accepting science to a point then overruling it with the supernatural. Its fundamentally inconsistent: if you think that the scientific method works for this reality then how can you stop using it all of a sudden and say 'This is God'? Its a bit like writing 'Here be Dragons', and it very much is saying that reality is a natural and physical thing until you dont feel like it is any more, then, if you can get away with it, using God.

Ok then.

See, now I think we definately don't agree. As I've said at least twice tonight, I think that religion has no place in science, and science has no place in religion. This rather precludes me from accepting "god did it" as a cop-out for a stumbling block

If you're interested, I'll tell you what I believe - god created a universe, in which certain inherant laws of nature where established. That is it. Thats where "god", for want of a better word, buggered off and had a holiday or something. Science is based completely on these laws - they are it's building blocks. Everything that happens in the universe happens because of and in accordance to these laws. (Including evolution, which seems to be a damn good theory from what I've read on the subject.)

According to that theory, the only single point at which the two interact in any sort of way is at those laws. But they don't effect (affect? I never know the difference) each other, because those laws don't change.


So yes, "god did it". But only in the idea that everything in the universe stems from those laws - thats not an explanation for anything. Thats a cop-out.


I don't make good discussion bait, I'm afraid, because I'm neither interested in changing other people's ideas, or changing my own. I'm quite happy with them:) As mal puts it so elegantly, I'm an irritating, apathetic, idiotic rat.







*squeak squeak*:fanderay:

[Cold Iron]

Quote

Science does not and can not produce absolute and unquestionable truth. Rather, science tests some aspect of the world and provides a precise, unequivocal framework to explain it.

Quote

the organized body of knowledge that is derived from such observations and that can be verified or tested by further investigation

Precisely what I've been saying.
When you start claiming that science explains everything, you sacrifice all scientific credibility. What exactly am I saying that is unclear? Science can NOT replace or rule out religion unless it is treated as one.

Quote

ETA: Rusty, as much as I adore you, I feel I should point out: We three physics majors of various years vastly outnumber your one EE.
To be clearer, we three are likely more familiar with the tennants of our own field, than you are.

Oh please. I'm gunna pretend you didnt just say that.

[caladanbrood]

Cold Iron;159233 said:

Oh please. I'm gunna pretend you didnt just say that.

Fight the machine, Lucas! Fight it!!!

We all know, however, that experience is always right. Every time. Never happened any other way. Give up now while you're still alive, my friend.

[Cold Iron]

Quote

You're presuming that some sort of religious component to a human concept of life must always exist. That if we do away with theistic religions, we must replace them with non-theistic ones.

No. I'm not. I'm saying that the minute you start claiming that science explains how life got here, you are making of it a religion, because it doesn't do it, you just believe it does, or can. That's faith. Thus religion.

Quote

Anything 'beyond' the reality of the physical, natural world is inconsequential to my worldview.

If your worldview encompasses the belief that science explains how life and the universe got here then you are talking about things we can't "observe, feel, smell, taste, share with others, and test, test, test". If you think its irrelevent to talk about it, then why are you posting here?

You're at the end of an astronomy degree. You KNOW how tenuous our understanding of the early universe is. And yet people without even knowing what science does and does not prove, are quite comfortable to put on faith that it can explain everything. The same applies to genetics.

[Cold Iron]

potsherds;159243 said:

As Dolorous Menhir stated earlier in his synopsis of that craptastic video, anything which exists in the natural world and as yet lacks a satisfying explanation simply doesn't have one, YET. This isn't some leap of faith. It is required that scientists assume that natural answers exist for natural phenomena. It is a basic tennant of science.

Scientists cannot assume that answers to their questions lie outside the realm of science. To assume that an answer lies outside of science is self-defeating, not science, and frankly, a cop-out.

Your quote:

Quote

Despite popular impressions of science, it is not the goal of science to answer all questions.

Quote

On the contrary, we observe the CMB, evidence of the Big Bang. We tested it and indeed!, the average temperature of this radiation is exactly as predicted under the hot Big Bang model (not to mention its other characteristics supporting the hBB, like homogeneity and such).

Now, obviously, evolution is solid, so the other part I'm assuming is referring to how amino acids first became life? Well, I'm not a biologist, so I don’t know. I'm not sure they know. We don't know. YET.

It amazes me the way people can just ignore the insanely obvious question of what set off the big bang. Science ignores it because there is no way to answer it scientifically. Meaning we aren't waiting on an answer that will come with scientific advancement. If there was something present before the BB, it was destroyed, and if there was nothing, it begs the question of how did it happen? If you have done any reading on Brane cosmology or a similar pre-big bang theory you would know how pseudo-scientific the field is because it is completely hypothetical and untestable. This is an area where science simply fails and where philosophy or religion must take over.

Quote

On the contrary, while you were in an introductory class, I was researching for papers on galaxy super-cluster formation and dark matter. The stuff I was researching went as far back as a billion years after the Big Bang, and somewhat earlier (300,000 years after, iirc), tentatively. We understand quite a bit about the evolution of the Universe.

I was more talking about planks, seconds and minutes after the big bang, but thanks for expertly extending that to 300,000 years.

Also, this is the second time you have tried to flex educational superiority in this discussion. Firstly, it's irrelevent. Secondly, it's embarassing. If you need to appeal to your credentials to make a point, you appear threatened.

[rlfcl]

when religion takes over it runs into the same question of who created god. like dawkins says, the problems of what caused the big bang, or how evolution works (less complex things evolving into more complex things) pale in comparison to the problem in believing that an exremely complex, intelligent entity could be there right from the start. the fact is that when evolution and" how the universe became as it is now" becomes testable, science takes over as the most viable explanation. This lends it credence that religious or philosophically based explanations never have and never will have. basically, the unknowns in the theory of evolution are present because we haven't reached a level of technology yet to be able to provide empirical evidence for them. religion has never been able to prove any significant parts of it's hypotheses with actual evidence, it's entirely based on faith.

[Cold Iron]

When the truth is unattainable or irrelevent the choice of what to believe can then be based on the question "how will this belief effect my life"?