Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America' , page 7
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reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 02:16 AM by Bunken Drum
reply to post by John Matrix

By way of example of the probabilistically impossible odds of abiogenesis, consider the
May 31, 2007 paper published by Eugene V. Koonin of the National Center for
Biotechnology Information. Peer reviewed and published in Biology Today [2], Koonin
calculated the probability of the most simple life form arising by natural processes, with
the following conclusion:
...
the chance of life occurring by natural processes is 1 in 10 followed by 1018 zeros.
Koonin's intent was to show that short of postulating a multiverse of an infinite number of
universes, the chance of life occuring on earth is vanishingly small

From the 1st link from your 2nd: Origin of Life as Evidence of Intelligent Design
I say that attempting to determine statistical probabilities when we do not know the starting condition of the system under analysis is flawed science. However, taking Koonin @face value, or any of the other figures quoted by the article, the unlikelyhood of abiogenesis is evidence of nothing more than itself. It doesn't mean it didn't happen; it could mean we just dont know how it could yet; it could mean the earth was quite different then, or subject to external influences we have no way of determining; it could mean it didn't happen.
However, to jump to the conclusion it must mean there was a creator is unscientific, because there is no evidence of such, just speculation which cannot be tested by experiment or discovered by evidence. This is why religion should stay out of science: they are 2 completely different disciplines with no common methodology & precious little common language even.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 05:01 AM by Bunken Drum
reply to post by John Matrix
Well, I read most of it but with the mass of assumptions, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, just bad science & semantics, I got bored & skimmed towards the end. Those links provide no evidence for intelligent design, rather they raise questions about evolution theory. Some are out of date, some based on discredited ideas &/or oversimplified metaphors, & a lot of speculation unsupported by empirical data. Even where the referenced ideas bear scrutiny, that they provide evidence of ID would only be true if it were the case that an object which appears not to be an apple must be an orange.
That people believe this bunk tells me that what I hear about the quality of scientific education available to most in the USA probably is as bad as is often reported.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 07:07 AM by Arbitrageur
reply to post by blupblup

blupblup I'm not trying to disagree with you here, but Jim Scott DID post a reference source, so perhaps if you want to be critical of the assertion he made you could review his reference, which is an article written by:

Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D.

December 10, 2008

which says:

In a paper written by three astrophysicists from Oxford in 2008 evidence for the centrality of the Earth was the simplest explanation for the practical and mathematical understanding of the universe, far superior to the forced invention of “Dark Energy” to support the Copernican model. ScienceDaily put it in simple terms for the layman:


So actually 2008 seems to be like a fairly recent paper.

The fact is cosmologists have made observations they can't explain by any known theory so they invented the name "Dark Energy" as a code for "We don't know what the heck is going on with this data" which opens the door for people to write papers trying to explain the data.

Apparently the idea that we are at the center of the universe (The milky way galaxy is at the center is apparently what they really postulate) may be the topic of one such paper. It's fine if you want to dispute someone's ideas, but you may want to check out their source when you do that.

To the best of my knowledge, this resolution to the dark energy problem hasn't gained widespread acceptance through the scientific community yet, but it's an interesting hypothesis which they claim explains our strange observations about the increasing rate of expansion in the universe. I'll have to find that 2008 Oxford university paper and read it.

[edit on 14-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 07:22 AM by John Matrix
Originally posted by Bunken Drum
Ok I've had enough: creationism is not science.


By your definition one could say Evolutionism is not science either.

LOOK, there are scientists that believe in evolution and there are scientists that believe in creation. So we have scientific creationists and we have scientific evolutionists. Both have hypothesis, both study the evidence, both note phenomena, both make predictions based on the evidence. Both have peer reviews.

I agree neither side can prove their theory. All either side can do is explain how the evidence supports their hypothesis. Then the rest of us look at both explanations(for the same evidences) and decide which model, theory, hypothesis is more reasonable.


Creationism is a new thing.


There were scientists before evolutionary science. There were scientists that believed in creation, therefore creationism is not a new thing. What developed as a result of evolutionism was a greater need to demonstrate that intelligent design is the more reasonable explanation for all that exists.
Intelligent design is predicted by the evidence, supports the hypothesis and theory of creationist scientists, and is accepted in peer reviews, therefore it is a legitimate theory and based on scientific observations of existing evidence.


In fact the only prediction that creationism does make is that creationists will not accept evolution, regardless of evidence, because faith requires none, nor can it be disproven. Thats not science either.



In my paragraph above I mentioned that creationism predicts intelligent design in all of the evidence. Therefore, your statement is incorrect.

Evolutionism requires faith in natural processes working over hundreds of millions of years to generate mutations that result in higher orders of life and increasing complexity of life forms. This is not observable, nor has it ever been observed.

So, evolutionism is a faith based system...and therefore a religion, not a science.


[edit on 14/9/09 by John Matrix]


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 07:49 AM by John Matrix
reply to post by Bunken Drum


I'm going to use some of your own words and reasoning to demonstrate how it can apply to your religion too:

To jump to the conclusion the evidence proves evolution is unscientific, because there is no evidence of such, just speculation, which cannot be tested by experiment or discovered by evidence. This is why the evolutionist religion should stay out of science: they are 2 completely different disciplines with no common methodology & precious little common language even.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 08:00 AM by Mike_A
reply to post by John Matrix


Intelligent design … is accepted in peer reviews


Can you provide an example of a modern paper that supports the notion of intelligent design that has been submitted to and accepted by a peer reviewed scientific journal that is both reputable and not centred around proving Christian or any other religious belief?


And by the way, if you believe creationism to be up there with evolution as a scientific hypothesis (not even theory) why were you so absent from the thread I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for someone to provide such a hypothesis? I’d love to hear the scientific case for creationism.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 08:23 AM by John Matrix
reply to post by Mike_A


If you, or anyone, really wanted to know about scientists who hold to the creationist model you would have done the search. But here, let me help you with a few links(there is much more available on the Internet).
Scientists for Creation:
www.christiananswers.net...
www.evolutionfairytale.com...
www.answersingenesis.org...
www.icr.org...
www.icr.org...

Remember, evolutionst scientists get grants and funding from the gov. If the gov. only proivided creation scientists with funding you would find far more creation scientists than evolution scientists. Follow the money......that's why there are more evolutionist scientists and science programs.......they are all hitching a ride on the money train.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 08:32 AM by Arbitrageur
Originally posted by Mike_A
And by the way, if you believe creationism to be up there with evolution as a scientific hypothesis (not even theory) why were you so absent from the thread I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for someone to provide such a hypothesis? I’d love to hear the scientific case for creationism.


I read his links that disprove evolution. And guess who the star witness is to disprove evolution? Charles Darwin, aka "the father of evolution"!

www.intelligent-design-evidence.com...

The fact is that the fossil evidence does not support Darwinian gradualism. It never has
and likely never will. Evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould were forced to propose
theories such as "punctuated equilibrium" to "save the phenomena," i.e., explain the
evidence in a coherent fashion." Stephen J. Gould refers to the rarity of transitional fossils
as the "'trade secret' of paleontologists". Gould states:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade
secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data
only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however
reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism
that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record: ". . . He who
rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my
whole theory." [7]


I think I have to agree Darwin didn't claim he had all the answers and he was brave enough to admit it.

But I think what we now have a better understanding of than in Darwin's day, is all the natural disasters the Earth is subjected to, from supervolcanoes like the one at Yellowstone, to Mt Everest sized asteroid impacts that wiped out a lot of life on the planet. Therefore we now have at least a mechanism whereby some periods of equilibrium can be interrupted, and opening the door for the type of adaptation Darwin proposed.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 09:00 AM by Mike_A
reply to post by John Matrix


No, no John, you said that creationists had their papers peer reviewed. Unless you are talking about publications that are openly biased towards creationism then that is not true is it.

You said;

Intelligent design is predicted by the evidence, supports the hypothesis and theory of creationist scientists, and is accepted in peer reviews, therefore it is a legitimate theory and based on scientific observations of existing evidence.


Can you provide an example of this or not?


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 09:37 AM by Mike_A
reply to post by Shadowflux


They both require a good amount of faith


No they don’t, the whole point of science is to remove the need for anything to be taken on faith. Anything that is held as true by science is supported by evidence; faith is belief without evidence.

And no, it doesn’t take any faith to buy into M-theory or string theory; both are built around mathematical models that make predictions that are either consistent with observation or not. Whether or not these theories are considered correct or not depends on this consistency, i.e. the evidence.

Do not confuse yet to be tested or confirmed predictions with items taken on faith. If a theory says that some new type of matter needs to exist, its existence is not a matter of faith. It’s existence is predicted and will be determined based on whether the observable evidence points towards this conclusion.

There is no need, or room for faith in science.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 09:38 AM by Shadowflux
reply to post by Sargon of Akkad


I guess it depends on what your concept of "God" is, you don't always have to follow established systems.


reply posted on 14-9-2009 @ 09:41 AM by Arbitrageur
Originally posted by Shadowflux
You guys do realize that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive and you can believe in one without denying the other?


That's a good viewpoint that some eminent scientists share. They see evolution as a tool God uses to perpetuate His creation, as others have posted in this thread.

They both require a good amount of faith and they both explain different things. Religion will never tell us how a virus works but science can't tell us where all of the universe came from and why it all works so well.


Religion certainly involves faith. I'm not sure that true science does. People have used the abiogenesis argument to show that science involves faith since science can't prove abiogenesis, but I see the scientific view as somewhat agnostic in this regard. No scientist has ever proven how life began so I think the claims that science has faith that abiogenesis is the mechanism for the creation of life is a bit of a stretch.

You can't tell me it doesn't take a lot of faith to buy into membrane or string theory.


I know of scientists who say they won't accept those theories until they make some useful predictions. As far as I know there's not any proof to support them. Therefore your insinuation that string theory could be viewed as a sort of "faith-based" religion is not inappropriate even though this theory is deeply embedded in academia:

www.slate.com...

The leading universities are dominated by hooded monks who speak in impenetrable mumbo-jumbo; insist on the existence of fantastic mystical forces, yet can produce no evidence of these forces; and enforce a rigid guild structure of beliefs in order to maintain their positions and status. The Middle Ages? No, the current situation in university physics departments. I just invented the part about the hoods.


The upper rungs of the particle-physics faculties at Princeton, Stanford, and elsewhere in the academy are today heavy with advocates of "string theory," a proposed explanation for the existence of the universe.


In contrast to string theory, which has no evidence to support it, evolution is a much better supported theory with evidence to support it. But as you so eloquently said, belief in evolution does not deny the existence of a creator as some people seem to be trying to imply. I wish more people could come to the insightful understanding that you have.
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