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

Post a reply to this message

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

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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...

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

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.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

In article <473df64c@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > You were talking about evolution, to start with, tho. We know there are
 
> > theories that aren't complete. We know there are unanswered questions i
n 
> > every scientific theory. But most stuff tends to be refinements of what
 
> > we already know in realms we couldn't measure before. Even quantum and
 
> > relativity didn't overthrow newtonian physics - we still use that to 
> > shoot space probes.
> 
>   The problem is that while most knowledgeable people are not claiming
> that the theory of relativity is the absolute truth, many are nevertheles
s
> saying that the theory of evolution is the absolute truth. Granted, in
> many cases it's the laymen who know little about the actual physics who
> throw claims like "the theory of evolution has been proven to be true",
> especially in heated discussions against creationists, but you can see
> claims along those lines from more knowledgeable people too.
> 
Really? I must congregate at better places then, because the closest 
*anyone* comes to saying that is saying, "It is generally true.", which 
isn't much different than saying, "Newtonian physics is 'generally 
true'." Sure, they may sound more assertive than that, but only in the 
face of people that refuse to accept that "any" if it is true.

>   For example Phil Plait is a professional astronomer, and you can
> constantly find that kind of attitude in his blog. He doesn't believe
> that evolution is true, he *knows* that evolution is true. It's a fact.
> When reading his blog on this subject it quickly becomes clear that to
> him evolution is exactly the same type of fact as gravity or the existenc
e
> of the Sun. It's quite clear that to him it's not a theory at all, but a
> proven law of nature.
> 
Umm. We have "professional engineers" and the like, who babble a lot 
about how evolution isn't possible too. The consensus we have come up 
with is that there a several fields whose members you should ***never*** 
ask for an opinion on Evolution, they are Engineering, and Astrophysics, 
and Computer Science in that order. The reason is that the later isn't 
first on the list is that "some" computer science people deal with 
genetic algorithms, so have a fracking clue what they are talking about 
(though we had one a while back that used them for military development 
who I am sure isn't any more, since *someone* seems to have made them 
work, but he claimed they didn't, never mind that nearly every advanced 
multi-target tracking system in use now has them...) Seriously though, 
the things all of these people have in common is that they general deal 
with *hard* equations, clear cause and effect and precise measures. 
Biology is imprecise, the rules are only known in a general sense, so 
things don't always happen as expected all the time, there are no 
crystal clear equations to explain things you don't know the function of 
yet and even precise measures are munged up by the fact that you can 
often use 5-6 different DNA patterns to produce the same protein. This 
unhinges people in those fields and they tend to either figure that it 
works, so it must work like **their** field, or worse, they learn 
something about it, figure out that it doesn't, and start babbling about 
how it *can't* work.

The inability of most people in non-bio fields to get it bothers 
everyone that does understand any of it, or come up with the right 
answer for the right reasons (let alone the right answer at all). So, 
you are in good company for being "bothered" by it. However, I would be 
way more impressed if you could point to someone in a relevant field 
that made such a claim, and wasn't someone *known* for being unhinged by 
their peers.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

In article <473dd9a2@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > and atheists aren't anti-christian, they're anti-theist. :-)
> 
>   In my experience the majority of self-proclaimed atheists vehemently
> oppose christianity, usually much more than any other religions. Usually
> they have a more or less indifferent attitude towards other religions,
> while loudly opposing anything related to christianity.
> 
When you run into one that is living under the thumb of some *other* 
religion, let me know. lol Seriously, you fight what you know, not the 
boogyman in someone else's back yard. It does no good at all, in a 
nation filled with Christians, to complain that the biggest problems in 
the world are caused by Taoists who believe in animal spirits. We are 
not indifferent to them, save in as much that they ***do not effect us 
as directly, so by definition are of less relevance***.

>   (I have even witnessed extreme cases, where devoted atheists have had
> a *positive* attitude towards other religions, up to the point where they
> frown upon criticising them, while still loudly criticising christianity.
)
> 
Umm. Yeah, and even Christianity has "some" positive things in it, once 
you get past all the goofy shit on the surface. **some** have a lot less 
goofy BS to start with. Hinduism, in some forms, is about as close to 
atheist as you can get and still be religious. Buddhism is much the 
same, in its original form. While it contains a lot of unprovable woo, 
it *does* emphasize one principle that is common to science, "One should 
not believe anything simply because someone else *told you* it is true, 
not even me. You should figure out if its true yourself." - Buddha. And 
again, 90% of the people running the government, businesses, the local 
school board, etc. are **neither** Hindu or Buddhist, so we don't 
exactly see a lot of what ever true stupidity might arise from them. I 
am pretty sure that most atheist in the ME **probably** spend most of 
their time ranting about Islam too, does that also make no sense to you? 
Oh, and the real joke is that the Jewish faith actually has "Atheist 
Jews" in it, so even if the orthodox branch is as nuts as the Christian 
fundamentalists, they are *also* less of the problem.

To be frank, I tend to suspect that if it wasn't politically incorrect 
and harder, there would be "Christian atheists" too. I have heard people 
describe themselves as "following the word", but also stating that they 
don't believe most of the NT, and are unsure, or even certain, that 
Jesus wasn't who the Bible claims. The problem is, Christian ideals are 
so generic now, that unless you are a literalist or Evangelical, its 
**literally** impossible to be Christian and give up belief in its God 
or prophet. Jews still have a lot of OT rules about proper behavior, 
proper food preparation, proper this, proper that, etc. which are part 
of their traditions, and which are not generally shared by everyone else 
on the planet, who "don't" happen follow their beliefs. A "Christian 
atheist" isn't a whole lot different than a plane atheist, and that is a 
real serious problem if you want to call yourself the former. lol

Its not that your perception is wrong, you are looking at thing on the 
wrong scale.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message