nemesis wrote:
> The article is indeed all about mockery and too over-the-top itself.  But he
> does not take jabs at Christians, only at this whole Intelligent Design,
> Creationism propaganda trying to pass off as Science.  It's not Science because
> Science is (or should be) all about trying to break down old theories of how
> things work, while ID is all about reassuring the Word of God as written in the
> Bible.

Science isn't about either specifically breaking down or proving old 
theories; it's about both, or neither, depending on the evidence.  If 
evidence shows that an old theory is *mostly* correct, you don't 
completely discard the old theory; you just modify it so it also 
incorporates the new data.

Also: what are you supposed to call it if you believe something (we'll 
call it "God") created everything and the rules by which everything 
works, and at least has the capacity to directly interfere, whether or 
not it does such, and things like evolution and physics are a result of 
those rules?  Since "Intelligent Design" has been co-opted..

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Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

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Vincent Le Chevalier wrote:

>>> You're not going to change the mind of the religious person.
>>
>> So let's make things even worse and make him hate you?

He already hates me. He thinks I deserve an eternity of damnation.

> If I have to be hated by one fool to prevent a hundred people following
> him blindly because no-one wanted to sound confrontational, well so be
> it. It does not make things worst overall.

Precisely. Warp, your mileage may vary. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
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     being export-restricted?

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Wow, this thread is moving fast.  I just noticed it.

The public-broadcasting program NOVA aired a 2 hour episode...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

...this week on the Dover Colorado court case involving topics of:

separation of church and state,

definition of science and scientific theory,

whether intelligent design is a scientific theory,

whether the school board's action to require science teachers to read a 
4 paragraph statement saying basically that the theory of evolution is a 
mere theory and not 'fact' and making students aware of ID as an 
alternative had the primary intent and/or effect of introducing religion 
into the science classroom.

and a lot of actual arguments for and against both evolution and 
intelligent design: e.g. the concept of irreducible complexity (examples 
given were refuted by the scientists) and some tested examples of 
predictions made by evolution.



The claim by the defendants in the case (the school board) was that 
intelligent design is not religious and it is not creationism.  The 
plaintiffs got very lucking in finding one very interesting piece of 
evidence:  the 'missing link between creationism and intelligent 
design', namely the word "cintelligent designism" (or something like 
that). There was a 1980's paper which had been updated to replace all 
instances of "creationism" to "intelligent design" after a different 
court case, but had not been edited very carefully.  There was a strong 
connection between this paper and an intelligent-design textbook donated 
to the Dover school district, which made it more difficult for the 
plaintiffs to insist that there was no religious intent involved.

Anyway it was very interesting and worth seeing.

Charles

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In article <473dd775@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> > No not really, feel free to doubt it. if you do then you must have a 
 
> > reason to do so, which implies you have another theory
> 
>   Once again, that is completely flawed logic.
> 
>   There's no law in science which says that you must have an alternative
> theory in order to reasonably doubt an existing theory.
> 
Quite true. He got that much wrong. However, these people are not 
saying, "I doubt its true.", and leaving it at that, they are giving a 
theory that can't be tested, basically, "The magic invisible something 
somehow, in some way we can't describe, or possibly know, may have 
twiddled with things instead, to get the results we see." Well, at least 
the dishonest ones. The honest ones say, "We doubt your version because 
it conflicts with what 5% of the Christians in the world think is 
literal history, instead of badly written metaphors, and therefor we are 
right." The only difference between the two seems to be how much you 
have to push them before they blow a fuse and start telling you, "God 
did it and that's the only answer you need!"

Its also dead wrong. No, I will use the phrase someone else did, its 
"Not even wrong." To be wrong you have to first have a theory, which is 
supported by something, and have it turn out not to work. All these 
people have is an endless laundry list of things they don't think are 
adequately explained (even when those complaints have been debunked 
50,000 times) and the declaration, "If any of this is true, the only 
answer is our answer." There is no theory, no suggestion of how to test 
anything vaguely similar to a theory and an impervious lack of 
comprehension when confronted with *anything* that suggests they are 
wrong.

If they stopped with, "I don't know, lets find an answer.", no one would 
have a problem with them, at least with respect to their position on 
science.

There would still be some issues with the idea a) that religion is 
anything but a fancy story design to obscure basic civil laws and ideas, 
for the benefit of the clergy and those with power or b) you need it for 
anything. Imho, if it wasn't given absurd levels of respect, then it 
wouldn't be any more or less **important** than people becoming trekkies 
and pledging to live their lives by the standards of Starfleet. Some 
people would think they where damn wierd, other would sort of admire 
them, but you wouldn't have to parade around claiming that you believe 
Spock talks to you while meditating and told you to ban stem cells and 
gay marriage, just to get selected as a possible candidate for 
President. And I wouldn't have to listen to people that want me deported 
or sent to gitmo because I don't go to church tell me five minutes later 
than there is a vast and unimaginable conspiracy to undermine the near 
total control they have over everything in the country, and that the 
proof of this is that I sent them a Happy X-Mas card, instead of one 
with a guy stappled to a cross and the full name of the holiday on it.

But **that** is a separate issue from the science, which is merely a 
subset of the irritating BS we have to put up with (albeit probably the 
single most important one). I would love if they stopped pissing me off 
on other issues too. But when they attack science, usually by doing 
nothing but repeating claims of "gaps" and "problems", which have been 
addressed over and over and over and over and over again, I really kind 
of have two choices, laugh at their antics, or go postal. Which would 
you prefer. lol

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    call functional_code()
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}

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In article <473dde89$1@news.povray.org>, 
gal### [at] libertyALLsurfSPAMfr says...

> >   Take any unsolved question in science, which science has yet not an
> > answer to, and present the theory "it happens because invisible gnomes
> > do it from inside the Earth". Even if the scientist doesn't have any
> > alternative theory to that, it's still completely valid for him to doub
t
> > that presented theory.
> > 
> 
> The doubt in this case is for a completely valid reason. A key point 
> with any scientific theory is that you have to be able to challenge it.
 
> Your little gnomes are hard to test for empirically...
> 
> So the scientist still does not have a scientific theory, in that case.
> 
Yeah. The first problem seems to be that ID people think *theory* means 
"guess". It doesn't. A guess isn't based on evidence. Something isn't a 
theory until you can provide more than complaints about what you think 
is wrong with the other one (and prove that those are valid complaints 
in the first place), but also show how yours better explains things. You 
then have to provide some concept of what would disprove it. ID comes in 
basically two flavors - Panspera (or how ever its spelled), which posits 
life showing up from space in some way, for which there is currently no 
evidence, and which wouldn't do a damn thing to change evolution anyway, 
or the Disco Institutes version, which is the equivalent of if I said, 
"The oatmeal cookies I had on the table where stolen by pink unicorns, 
who then implanted false memories in my head, which made me think I ate 
them. My proof is that I ***say*** I didn't actually eat them!" Uh, 
huh...

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In article <473d776e$1@news.povray.org>, gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr 
says...

> 473d6557@news.povray.org...
> >  Finally they had to submit and admit that perhaps physics was not 
> > complete
> > and that there might be something else to it than what they thought.
> 
> There were only 20 years between Kelvin's claim of "There is nothing new 
to 
> be discovered in physics now" and Einstein's Nobel Prize. In fact, there
 
> were 15 years between the publication of Einstein's paper on matter/energ
y 
> equivalence and the Times's headline "Newtonian Ideas overthrown". Not to
o 
> bad for overturning a "Holy Truth" and one wishes regular people would be
 as 
> quick as scientists before accepting new ideas.
> 
> This phenomenon has been called a paradigm shift by Thomas Kuhn, who said
 
> that "successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution i
s 
> the usual developmental pattern of mature science". In other words, that'
s 
> the way science works, and if you've been around scientists, you can see
 
> that at work even in lesser fields of science.
> 
But it isn't how it works. Einstein is only considered a *huge* leap to 
the layman. In scientific circles he did the equivalent of putting the 
pieces together, but most of the ideas existed "in some form", before he 
put them together. Some even came really close, but failed to get it 
right, so had their ideas quickly buried and forgotten. And that is how 
its all been. From the side of the fence that scientists sit its a slow 
plodding change. From the perspective of the outsider, one day they are 
in a horse and buggy, the next they are flying in a 747 to visit the 
Great Wall of China. Sudden leaps are ***rare*** and truthfully almost 
never happen, except in public perception, among those that don't know 
the difference between say what Newton said and what Einstein said 
differently, for example, but only that one superseded the other and a 
lot of people got real excited about it.

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In article <473deb18$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > The correct term "Species" means it cannot breed at all. 
> 
> So, two human women are obviously not the same species, because they 
> can't breed, right? :-)
> 
Hah, hah! And actually, that is only true in humans, since some species 
can change gender, and presumably that means the mechanisms may exist to 
allow it in a lot of others.

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In article <473def28@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > In article <473cde43@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> > > Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > > > Why the #@$@$@ is it flawed.
> > > 
> > >   You sound like a religious fanatic.
> > > 
> > Why? Because I got a bit annoyed and dared to ask a question?
> 
>   Because you used symbolized expletives where none was really needed,
> and your overall tone was quite strong. Fanatics tend to shout and use
> expletives when having a "discussion" with someone they disagree with.
> 
No, fanatics tend to post their stuff in comic sans, with multiple 
clashing colors, semi-random ALL caps OF WORDS, and usually AT least 5-6 
different font SIZES. You have obviously never **seen** an email or 
website from one of these people. lol But, ok, so I got a bit annoyed at 
you at the time.

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In article <473e5a14@news.povray.org>, Charles C <"nospam a nospam.com"> 
says...
> The claim by the defendants in the case (the school board) was that 
> intelligent design is not religious and it is not creationism.  The 
> plaintiffs got very lucking in finding one very interesting piece of 
> evidence:  the 'missing link between creationism and intelligent 
> design', namely the word "cintelligent designism" (or something like 
> that). There was a 1980's paper which had been updated to replace all 
> instances of "creationism" to "intelligent design" after a different 
> court case, but had not been edited very carefully.  There was a strong
 
> connection between this paper and an intelligent-design textbook donated
 
> to the Dover school district, which made it more difficult for the 
> plaintiffs to insist that there was no religious intent involved.
> 
Umm. No, it wasn't a paper, it was a book called "Of Pandas and People" 
and they where **trying** to get it used as a science text in the 
schools. Only, when they couldn't get it in on the grounds of its 
religious content, they edited it, removing all references to 
"creation" with "intelligent design", then tried again. In the original 
court case I am not sure they found the "cintelligent designism" part, 
but they *did* find an earlier copy of the book that differed in content 
*only* by the replacement of one word with its new alternate. Umm. Also 
not sure you got it right. The latest joke posts about, "proof of the 
evolution of creation", claim that the resulting word was, "cdesign 
proponentsists", and there has been some discussion of using that as the 
"name" for people from the Discovery Institute and others that support 
ID.

But yeah. If you are going to try to sneak something in the back door, 
it helps if it doesn't look like the same object, with a different paint 
job. lol

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In article <473df172@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > Do you doubt that the fundamentalists think you're crazy and deserve 
> > scorn if you don't believe what they do?
> 
>   Why should I care about what some fundamentalists think? I was not
> talking about fundamentalists. And if they think like that, why should
> I care about that either?
> 
Because if there are 40 million (the rough estimate of the number of 
evangelicals there are) fools following them, who decide that you 
**shouldn't** have the cure for some rare malignant form of cancer you 
got because its derived from the wrong animal and evolution is false, 
therefor the medicine is false, you might find yourself dealing with a 
clown like the one we have now in the presidency who will listen to 
those 40 million fools, rather than the 100 trained scientists, 2 of 
which are both angry and confrontational enough to call the 
fundigelicals fools and tell the president that he is an idiot for 
listening to them. Damn right I care what these people say.

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