[Winstonm]

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 05:47 PM, said:

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

There are different degrees of stupidity:

There are a bunch of uneducated yahoos who believe in Intelligent Design.
Then we have the truly delusional "Young Earth Creationists"

Its entirely possible that a Young Earth Creationist might migrate over to the Intelligent Design camp without recognizing that the entire "Creationist" construct is deeply flawed.

Of course, all this ignores the basic question:

The initial poll most certainly did not take place in some mythical city/state/country where there is no mention of God

[Winstonm]

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 09:47 AM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

I guess the influence of church "teaching" and home environment "teaching" are separate from this poll due to the exclusion clause. To me this poll simply reconfirms the power of fear - that when confronted with conflicting evidence fear of hellfire overcomes reason. Don't think fear is a cause....take another look at Pat Robertson's statement:

Quote

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Mr Robertson said on The 700 Club.

The message is clear: reject our beliefs and you will pay the consequences - when you torture the minds of children with these threats, is it any wonder they repeat anything they are told and close their minds to conflicting data?

[mike777]

NO

Back to the originial title question.
NO

If this is just another forum thread bashing God or those that think there is a higher power or religion is the basis for all evil in the world or stupid comments, ok.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 10:30 AM, said:

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 09:47 AM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

I guess the influence of church "teaching" and home environment "teaching" are separate from this poll due to the exclusion clause. To me this poll simply reconfirms the power of fear - that when confronted with conflicting evidence fear of hellfire overcomes reason. Don't think fear is a cause....take another look at Pat Robertson's statement:

it doesn't matter, winston... if ID was taught in public school do you expect that number (47%) to increase or decrease? i'd expect it to increase in all states and across all economic lines

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 06:52 PM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 10:30 AM, said:

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 09:47 AM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

I guess the influence of church "teaching" and home environment "teaching" are separate from this poll due to the exclusion clause. To me this poll simply reconfirms the power of fear - that when confronted with conflicting evidence fear of hellfire overcomes reason. Don't think fear is a cause....take another look at Pat Robertson's statement:

it doesn't matter, winston... if ID was taught in public school do you expect that number (47%) to increase or decrease? i'd expect it to increase in all states and across all economic lines

I believe that Intelligent Design is equivalent to Creationism, however, I don't think that it is the same as Young Earth Creationism.

I don't see any reason why a decision to teach ID would necessarily have a significant impact on belief in Young Earth Creationism.

[Winstonm]

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 10:52 AM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 10:30 AM, said:

luke warm, on Nov 22 2007, 09:47 AM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

You really should consider auditioning for Robert Murdoch - you're ability to spin half-truths into semi-logic is exceptional.

actually i thought he made a good case... if in any particular city, state, country, no mention of God or creationism is taught and where only evolution is taught as the origin of species, why would anyone think the number (47%) who believe God created everything about 6000 years ago drop if ID was taught?

I guess the influence of church "teaching" and home environment "teaching" are separate from this poll due to the exclusion clause. To me this poll simply reconfirms the power of fear - that when confronted with conflicting evidence fear of hellfire overcomes reason. Don't think fear is a cause....take another look at Pat Robertson's statement:

it doesn't matter, winston... if ID was taught in public school do you expect that number (47%) to increase or decrease? i'd expect it to increase in all states and across all economic lines

Jimmy, I don't think this is the way it was presented.

Quote

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

First, if people "only" learn evolution the poll would be 0% - the "world is only 6000 years old" part had to be learned somewhere.

To exclude this "outside of school" learning while comparing the poll results to "only in school" learning skews the results and is simply spinning the results to make an invlalid point - IMO.

[mike777]

I am a big fan of letting local school boards tell the schools what to teach, even if we know in advance that some nonsense will slip through.
We have enough checks and balances, the state or the courts, to keep the nonsense to a minimum level.


The alternatives are worse. When the alternative happens, people who can flee the public schools. See where Congress sends their kids despite huge amounts of money going to local public schools.

I went to Public school in Chicago in a working class area, where the Pullman car trains were made. I am told by friends back there that even in the few rich areas of Chicago, few send their kids to the "good" local schools.

[mycroft]

First: I believe in a God. I am a member of a recognized, mainline Christian Church in my country (which, by the way, if it even appears on Robertson's or van Impe's radar, causes them to foam at the mouth and go batbuggy. But I digress).

Second: I happen to believe, as opposed to my Church's official dogma (but given the doubts of some of our Moderators in past years, I don't think it's not an excommunicable opposition), in a version of ID - however, again, one that would cause Robertson and his ilk stress-related coronaries. You see, I believe in God the Scientist, or God the Experimenter.

I believe that God set up a bunch of rules and said "let's see what happens." And one of the ways I can serve my God is to try to work out those rules.

BUT MY BELIEFS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE, and I am also a scientist. As exactly one person in this thread has stated explicitly, Science works by creating tools that predict "future" behaviour (when discussing the science of the past, The Future Is Now, of course). I can't prove my beliefs (not that I am not willing or able to - they are by their nature unprovable), nor can I use those beliefs to predict anything at all about the universe or what happens when I do X. Therefore, for the purpose of Science, they are irrelevant. Whether they are right or wrong is also irrelevant - literally, Not Science. I'm comfortable with that - I don't use Screwdrivers to pound Nails, and my solution to all problems is not "get a bigger Hammer".

Those who say "if you can't test it with Science, it is by definition Wrong" have turned Science into their own religion. Those who do it who do not have a grounding in advanced Mathematics - those who can not understand, or have never heard of, Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems - are particularly susceptible.

Beliefs, unless they are testable and/or allow for testable, useful predictions, are all fine and good, but scientifically useless. If one is willing to teach ID as a not provably false theory, and show, by its improvability, what is actually Science, go for it. Our young'uns may learn Science, rather than "they said it in my classes, therefore it must be true" which, with s/classes/church/, is immediately recognizable as Religion.

Fantasy is not science, nor is a large part of Science Fiction. Nor are a lot of other, vital and pleasant, things in this world. That doesn't make those things wrong or useless, just not Science.

Michael.

[mikeh]

mycroft, on Nov 22 2007, 11:52 AM, said:

You see, I believe in God the Scientist, or God the Experimenter.

I believe that God set up a bunch of rules and said "let's see what happens." And one of the ways I can serve my God is to try to work out those rules.

I respect your point of view, and it is, again, a pleasure to read something from a more moderate religious p.o.v. than those how espouse the form if ID that certain elements of fundamentalist christianity are trying to impose on us.

But I am puzzled as to how you reconicle your take on God as the experimenter and your beliefs as a Christian. I am to a large degree functionally illerate as a Christian.. I went to Sunday School and Mass (in Latin) and have since read parts of the bible (and even read part of the Koran), but I have never attempted to study theology, viewing it as by definition a waste of time (which says more about me, perhaps, than about theology).

But if you accept that there is or was some external agent that set the universe in motion via the Big Bang (as I infer you to say), then why would/did that experimenter decide to interfere 2000 years ago (less than the blink of a cosmic eye) in the tiny society of Palestine on a small planet orbiting a modest-sized sun in an ordinary galaxy? Why did your experimenter engage in miracles in contravention of the basic parameters (and intent) of his experiment?

You refer to Godel. I refer to Heisenberg. Even your god presumably can't observe the experiment without affecting the outcome. And if your answer is that, as the god who established those physical rules, he can step outside them, then you still have to explain why your experimenter would want to, in effect, cheat at solitaire. He wants to 'find out what happens' and then alters the process? That is how I interprete the idea of being both a christian and a believer in the experimenter God.... I suspect I am missing something.

And of course, all recourse to a god whose nature and intentions need never be understood is the ultimate intellectual surrender. It may be, as I posited in an earlier thread, that our brains are not equipped, as a matter of physics, to understand the concepts behind or witin the creation of the universe, or it may be that Hannie's ideas are more accurate. Either way, it seems to me that it is not a real answer to posit the unexplainable and say: this explains everything and obviates the purpose of further thought.

Please don't take this post as an attack on your post or beliefs: I repeat the repect I have for and the pleasure I derived frm reading your post, but these points did occur to me... my apologies if my framing of them offends you (or anyone else)

[jonottawa]

"L'homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines." - Michel de Montaigne

"Translation: Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen."

http://en.wikiquote....el_de_Montaigne

I used to be an 'Uncle Tom' atheist. But current events have amply demonstrated just how dangerous preposterous supernatural/superstitious beliefs can be.

Join the 21st Century, folks.

[helene_t]

Thanks for your nice post, mycroft.

Just one question: those who equate non-testable with wrong ... are there people who really say that, or are you somehow inferring that sentiment? I would say it would be a very stupid thing to say. The bulk of a human's knowledge (give or take some semantic issues on how to define "knowledge") comes from intuition, gossip etc, only a small part from rigorous scientific scrutiny.

[Gerben42]

Quote

I'd be quite happy with that with a minor modification along the lines of, "a mechanism by which ID may have occured might have involved aliens placing species here ..."

Who designed the designer? About the "alien origin"... why not, except that Ockham's razor cuts off this story.

[gwnn]

Gerben42, on Nov 22 2007, 08:26 PM, said:

Quote

I'd be quite happy with that with a minor modification along the lines of, "a mechanism by which ID may have occured might have involved aliens placing species here ..."

Who designed the designer? About the "alien origin"... why not, except that Ockham's razor cuts off this story.

I think some of the aliens put DNA on earth proposers say something like "we're too dumb to understand how those aliens came into being". Of course, claimed inability to explain something is not exactly an explication (in fact, quite the opposite). But I think that's what they're saying. At least, the ones who have actually asked themselves the question.

[blackshoe]

mike777, on Nov 21 2007, 05:55 PM, said:

In any event it seems per this poll 47 % people who only learn evolution think the world is only 6000 years old....

Not possible. If they'd actually learned the theory of evolution they'd know the planet is older than that.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote, in From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Quote

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis.

He was right.

[Winstonm]

mike777, on Nov 19 2007, 01:21 AM, said:

you would think that theory or what a theory is or is not would be taught/discussed/debated but that would be basic science so why bother? You would think the goal of a theory, any theory, would be discussed but again it is not.

I would like to clarify a point here about definitions.

Quote

Lay people often misinterpret the language used by scientists. And for that reason, they sometimes draw the wrong conclusions as to what the scientific terms mean.

Three such terms that are often used interchangeably are "scientific law," "hypothesis," and "theory."

In layman’s terms, if something is said to be “just a theory,” it usually means that it is a mere guess, or is unproved. It might even lack credibility. But in scientific terms, a theory implies that something has been proven and is generally accepted as being true.

Here is what each of these terms means to a scientist:

Hypothesis: This is an educated guess based upon observation. It is a rational explanation of a single event or phenomenon based upon what is observed, but which has not been proved. Most hypotheses can be supported or refuted by experimentation or continued observation.

Theory: A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis

.

It seems plain to me by these simple definitions that ID is at best a hypothesis, whereas evolution is a tested and thus-far proven theory.

The object of science education one would think would be to teach the principles of scientific methodology - advancing a single hypothesis does not help teach this - showing the tested progression of evolutionary theory, however, does help teach this method of inguiry.

During the trial, Behe admitted that under his definition astrology would be considered a theory. Should we also teach astrology as a possible explanation?

[blackshoe]

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 03:35 PM, said:

During the trial, Behe admitted that under his definition atrology would be considered a theory.  Should we also teach astrology as a possible explanation?

Another quote From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

Quote

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”--find out how he feels about astrology.

Lazarus is a pretty smart cookie.

[Winstonm]

I would like to clarify some thing here - this thread was never intended as an anti-religion attack nor an attack on personally held religious beliefs. If anyone has been offended by this thread, I sincerely apologize.

Of course we all are biased, and to my personal bias this question of restricting science teaching in science class to scientific principles and methods is so overwhelmingly logical as to make ID or creationism a moot point - not to mention that the Rebublican, Bush-appointed judge came to the same conclusion and found for the plaintiffs.

What stunned me about the Nova broadcast and actually prompted the thread was again Pat Robertson's comments, which were rebroadcast in the telecast. It was such a shock to me to hear such spite from a "good guy" who supposedly represents the "moral majority" that it made me wonder where the basis for this reaction comes - what is there about the separation clause that drives the hardline religionists to villify it so and fight so hard for inclusion of dogma? Did they watch the same show I just watched? The case for the separation clause was set out so eloquently, politely, and completely that no other logical conclusion could be drawn. How can others deny the simple logic presented?

But my real hope was simply to direct attention to the show on Nova, which I found to be exceptional - hoping others might find it beneficial as well for understanding the debate.

[skjaeran]

blackshoe, on Nov 22 2007, 09:39 PM, said:

Winstonm, on Nov 22 2007, 03:35 PM, said:

During the trial, Behe admitted that under his definition atrology would be considered a theory.  Should we also teach astrology as a possible explanation?

Another quote From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

Quote

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”--find out how he feels about astrology.

Lazarus is a pretty smart cookie.

Well, you learn a few things during a 250+ years lifespan I guess.