Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Heck, Bill O'Reilly (one of the FOX News guys) just recently tried to say 
> that nobody understands how tides work, and that's proof that God exists.

  It seems that "nobody knows how this works" and "science has no explanation
for" are pretty common claims among young-earth creationists and conspiracy
theorists. What makes them rather egregious is that there most often *is*
a pretty good explanation for those things, but the person making the claim
has either been duped by someone that there isn't (and he lacks even the
most basic of independent critical thinking), he deliberately refuses to
accept the explanation (no matter how simple and understandable it might be)
or he is outright lying (which, I suspect, is a very common case).

  The sad thing is that this kind of claims will be believed by many who
already have a basic bias to accepting such claims. You can claim almost
anything to person holding a belief, and the person will accept the claim
completely uncritically if it supports his belief, without ever even
bothering to try to find out if it's actually true.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:10:35 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Heck, Bill O'Reilly (one of the FOX News guys) just recently tried to
>> say that nobody understands how tides work, and that's proof that God
>> exists.
> 
>   It seems that "nobody knows how this works" and "science has no
>   explanation
> for" are pretty common claims among young-earth creationists and
> conspiracy theorists. 

Indeed that does seem to be the case.

> What makes them rather egregious is that there
> most often *is* a pretty good explanation for those things, but the
> person making the claim has either been duped by someone that there
> isn't (and he lacks even the most basic of independent critical
> thinking), he deliberately refuses to accept the explanation (no matter
> how simple and understandable it might be) or he is outright lying
> (which, I suspect, is a very common case).

I would tend to agree.  That's the problem with religious (or any 
superstitious, for that matter) belief.  Anything that flies in the face 
of that deeply held belief tends to be discarded (unless the person is 
perfectly willing to accept the dogma as being incorrect - and in 
fairness, some religions do seem to promote critical thinking - Judaism 
comes to mind).  Some people just can't accept that things don't work the 
way they think they work, even if they have absolutely no scientific 
background that would help them understand the actual science of how it 
works.

In O'Reilly's case, he seems to have flunked basic physics and/or 
geometry.  Take two spherical objects, rotate one around the other while 
spinning it, and see how the objects look in relation to each other.  
OMG, the sun goes up and down regularly because there's an actual 
physical explanation!  Who would have known that?

(Well, in Galileo's time, certainly, that was questionable - but it's 
frightening to think that someone living in the modern world has only the 
scientific understanding that was popular several hundred years ago).

>   The sad thing is that this kind of claims will be believed by many who
> already have a basic bias to accepting such claims. You can claim almost
> anything to person holding a belief, and the person will accept the
> claim completely uncritically if it supports his belief, without ever
> even bothering to try to find out if it's actually true.

Yes.  Belief presupposes proof, because with proof, one doesn't need 
belief.

But I accept that some people aren't content with there being things they 
don't know - so if they have to belief in a big guy in the sky in order 
to be content, that's fine with me, so long as they don't prevent the 
rest of us from sharing how things *actually* work with those who want to 
know how things actually work.  For example, pushing creationism as 
"science" in the classroom.  I'm sorry, but "God did it" isn't a 
scientific principle, and it doesn't belong in a science classroom.  You 
want to teach that in church, fine.  Go ahead.  Knock yourself out.  Oh, 
and give kids the choice to decide for themselves whether they want to 
bury their heads in the sand and just accept "God did it" as an 
explanation for everything or if they want to learn how it really works - 
even if *nobody* knows.  Hell, *especially* if nobody knows.

But keep it out of the public school classroom.

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> without also believing that some kind of god or other intelligence did it

Interestingly enough, all the "evidence" for ID is equally explained by 
evolved outer-space aliens doing genetic engineering on Earth. Even *if* you 
accept that evolution couldn't have produced the eye, or flagellum, or 
whatever, you *still* don't get to say it must have been God, unless you 
also rule out life anywhere else in the universe.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> And then, of course, there's Stephen Wolfram, who suggests that not just 
> matter but time itself is quantum, and that the universe is actually a 
> giant cellular automaton, and that the observed quanta are actually the 
> cells of the cellular grid. (They guy probably needs to put down the CA 
> simulator and go outside for a little while.)

He's far from the first person to come up with that idea. And I'm also 
pretty sure Wolfram thinks the network connections between cells are far 
smaller than an individual particle or quark or whatever.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> The fundamental difference between ST and ID, of course, is that ST has 
> a realistic possibility of becoming testable some day soon. ID does not.

ID is testable. It just failed the tests. But it's certainly testable.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> As for people who oppose genetic engineering, they will argue that 
> bananas are OK, because the gene alteration happened "naturally".

I always giggle at the food store proclaiming "Seedless Grapes! No GMO!"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> Personally, I would make the separation that "Euclidean geometry" is a 
> mathematical theory, while "the real world conforms to Euclidean 
> geometry" is a scientific theory.

Exactly this. There are all kinds of geometries that are *not* useful 
outside mathematics, *because* they don't conform closely enough to the real 
world.

Which is more scientific: Newton's equations, or Einstein's equations?

It's just that mathematical theories that can't be related to something 
useful predicting how the world works get talked about only in very abstruse 
and rare situations. Hence, all the "math" that most people know is math 
that's somehow equatable to some subset of reality, making it seem like math 
is about reality.

Generate random text strings until one compiles. What good is that program? 
It almost certainly doesn't do anything useful. But it's just as valid a 
program as one you've carefully crafted from a detailed specification.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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John VanSickle wrote:
> Actually, it does.  It predicts, among other things, that the genetic 
> code for organisms may have features of no present use, but which may be 
> of use by descendant creatures. 

Then the proponents should be able to point out a whole bunch of genes that 
were present in older species that turned on in newer species without any 
mutation when the environment changed.

Which gene would that be, then?

> Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the 
> public dime, because it is a matter of public debate,

No it's not.

I guess we shouldn't teach about the holocaust either, or whether the USA 
won the civil war, or whether Hawaii is really a state of the USA?

> and is therefore 
> incompatible with the principles that underlie a free society.  What 
> invariably happens, when the government is allowed this power, is that 
> the people who are in the wrong will go running to the government to 
> have their view imposed by fiat, and all conflicting views suppressed to 
> one degree or another. 

Nobody is suppressing your ability to teach ID outside of science classes or 
in your own schools. The problem is that the issue was looked at, in detail, 
by those responsible for deciding what gets taught in public schools, and 
those looking at it decided it isn't science, after a long and public debate.

 > At the present moment a person who is skeptical
> that natural selection is sufficient to explain the entirety of 
> observable living systems is subject to exclusion from participating in 
> scientific and educational endeavors, even when the topic has no bearing 
> on the origin of life.

I think there are plenty of educators who teach math or social studies or 
english and believe God created man. In what way are they being excluded?

> "But we're not ignorant like they were then."  Actually, it's because of 
> a shift in political connections.

Um, no. It's the scientific method.

> As a practical matter, I of course oppose the teaching of views I 
> disagree with, but I also oppose the forced teaching of views that I 
> agree with, because that breeds resentment--especially if someone gets 
> drunk with power and exceeds his authority--and I don't want my views 
> getting blamed for some idiot's power trip.

So you support teaching only 100% non-controversial subjects? So you'd skip, 
say, the holocaust as part of history class?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> You seriously expect me to believe 

That's a terrible argument.  "I couldn't imagine how something as complex as 
predicting the future that way could have happened" is just as bad an 
argument as "I couldn't imagine how hemoglobin came about."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> Actually I think you'll find it's that all tetrapods are descendants of 
> a single fish ancestor, which just happened to have 5 digits. By now it 
> would be far too difficult to change it.

Sure. But we grew lungs, and new digestive systems, and homeostasis, scales 
and skin and fur and feathers, wings and hooves and talons, but we still all 
have five fingers, including the animals whose fingers are in a stiff and 
unbending mitten of cartilage. Look at the vast range of shapes out there, 
and tell me that it makes sense that none of them got rid of the pinky 
finger, or put on another bone somewhere.

> In short, I suspect that tetrapods all have 5 digits because there are 
> now highly complex, well-developed and extensively inter-dependent 
> systems of gene regulation for building 5 digits. You'd have to change a 
> hell of a lot of stuff to make it, say, 6.

No, that's the point. From what I read, you'd only have to change one gene. 
Except it's a gene in the middle of *another* sequence as well, which 
regulates development of the reproductive system.

> If you look at things that aren't tetrapods, you find that 5 isn't so 
> special.

You may be missing my point. Not that 5 is special, but the *persistence* of 
5 fingers when all else is changing is unusual.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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