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();
}

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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();
}

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In article <473df6c9@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > Hence, the 
> > mocking obviously had some use here, getting some of the more religious
 
> > people trying to defend their beliefs in some small way.
> 
>   I haven't seen any defending of religious views in this thread. Perhaps
> I missed it.
> 
And maybe they "agree" with us, and that they don't feel they "need" to 
defend themselves against an attack that they recognize is not against 
them, but only against a subset of self proclaimed Christians that 
**they** dislike too? Nah, that can't be it.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 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 

OK, you're right.  I know the textbook was "Of Pandas and People" but I 
had been thinking that the textbook was borrowing language from another 
originally-creationist paper.  That paper, you're right, is none other 
than an early draft of "Pandas" as subpoena'ed by the plaintiffs' side 
of the case.


> 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.

You are correct again.  That's why I put a disclaimer in parenthesis "or 
something like that".

Charles

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 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 doubt
>>> 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. 
More precisely they think that 'theory' in a scientific context means 
the same 'theory' as used in everyday practice. Possibly even more 
precise, they think that 'theory' means what they choose it to mean, 
neither more nor less.

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Warp wrote:
> 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 in 
>> 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 nevertheless
> 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.
> 
>   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 existence
> of the Sun. It's quite clear that to him it's not a theory at all, but a
> proven law of nature.
> 
>   It's this kind of "I know" attitude that bothers me.
> 
What bothers me is that there are people out there that still claim that 
"the theory of evolution has *not* proven to be true". It does of course 
depends very much on what the person making this claim thinks the theory 
is about. And there are of course interpretations thinkable that have 
certain aspects in it that are not proven yet or are proven wrong. 
However, it sends the wrong message to the less educated people i.e. 
that every aspect of evolution is under debate. For instance there is 
the basic concept that if you have a reproducing system that in the 
copying process can make mistakes then inevitably this system is going 
to change over time. This is not debated and has indeed a status like a 
law of nature even outside biology. What might be debatable is what 
primate was or wasn't an ancestor of man. Then again that man is mammal, 
more specific a monkey, more specific an ape, that is not debated.
As you know I am doing research on heart diseases and the development of 
the heart. To understand what goes on we also use animal models. Denying 
that man is part of the evolutionary tree of life would make any 
understanding derived from observations on the development of the chick 
embryo useless. In fact, I think you'll be amazed how much of current 
biological and medical research would become meaningless if you don't 
believe in macro-evolution. I know there are doctors in this world that 
would claim that they "don't believe in evolution". Let's hope they 
never find out how their medical knowledge was acquired in the first place.

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Denying 
> that man is part of the evolutionary tree of life would make any 
> understanding derived from observations on the development of the chick 
> embryo useless.

  That just doesn't make any sense. You don't have to accept the entire
evolution theory as true in order to accept the similarities between the
hearts and take advantage of that.

  "See, the hearts are similar, and you admit it, so consequently you
must admit that the entire theory of evolution is true" is not valid
reasoning. Neither is "you don't believe the evolution theory is true,
thus you can't take advantage of similarities between animal and human
physiology."

> In fact, I think you'll be amazed how much of current 
> biological and medical research would become meaningless if you don't 
> believe in macro-evolution.

  I would be amazed indeed. I don't understand the relation between
believing in macro-evolution and being able to take advantage of similarities
in the physiology of different species.

  Similar physiology between animals and humans doesn't prove evolution.
It only proves that there's similar physiology between animals and humans.
(*Evidence* is different from *proof*.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Denying 
>> that man is part of the evolutionary tree of life would make any 
>> understanding derived from observations on the development of the chick 
>> embryo useless.
> 
>   That just doesn't make any sense. You don't have to accept the entire
> evolution theory as true in order to accept the similarities between the
> hearts and take advantage of that.

Tell me, what part of what is in your perception "the entire evolution 
theory" can you reject and still place human and chick in the same tree?

 From reading this thread and others before this, I know that you have a 
rather different idea of what evolution theory comprises than what is 
common in my surroundings. I really like to understand your point of view.

> 
>   "See, the hearts are similar, and you admit it, so consequently you
> must admit that the entire theory of evolution is true" is not valid
> reasoning. Neither is "you don't believe the evolution theory is true,
> thus you can't take advantage of similarities between animal and human
> physiology."
If we are studying the role of, say, TBX3 *)  in the development of the 
mouse heart what does that say about humans? If we assume that both 
mouse and human derive from a common ancestor we may have similar 
responses. If we assume that both have no common roots, nothing can be 
concluded from it. True, they may *look* similar, but that is possibly 
totally accidental. Even the fact that changes in comparable genes in 
both species lead to the same disorders may still be just coincidence.
> 
>> In fact, I think you'll be amazed how much of current 
>> biological and medical research would become meaningless if you don't 
>> believe in macro-evolution.
> 
>   I would be amazed indeed. I don't understand the relation between
> believing in macro-evolution and being able to take advantage of similarities
> in the physiology of different species.
> 
>   Similar physiology between animals and humans doesn't prove evolution.
> It only proves that there's similar physiology between animals and humans.
> (*Evidence* is different from *proof*.)
> 
The physiology is so mind boggling similar that the only explanation is 
a common descent. You can not *disprove* that at some point in time both 
species were independently created. But why would the creator copy 
everything from one design to another, including all the bugs, patches 
and obsolete code? Again, there is no way to disprove such a lack of 
creativity, but why would you replace a perfectly acceptable explanation 
by a rabbit out of a hat?

*) a gene that is a.o. responsible for modifying the expression of 
various other genes so that the cell develops into an atrial or a 
ventricular type of muscle cell. In other organs may do completely 
different things.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 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.

Well, he was right in the sense that if you doubt the theory is true 
without any reason to do so, then you're behaving irrationally. Not 
necessarily a bad thing, but not exactly scientific.

> 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.

I think if they asserted their views and actually had a willingness to 
change their mind based on reality, people wouldn't ridicule nearly as 
much. It isn't the creationism being ridiculed. It's the pigheaded 
refusal to evaluate whether it might be wrong, even in the middle of a 
scientific debate.

I honestly think creationists would get far less ridicule if they just 
said "our opinions differ, and I can't convince you, and you can't 
convince me, so let's just each do our own thing." But they often try to 
argue you into believing it for some reason.

> Imho, if it wasn't given absurd levels of respect, 

Only some of it. Try taking off every thursday from work on the grounds 
that you need to go worship Thor, and see how much slack you get from 
your boss.

And apparently Australia now has more write-in Jedi Knights on the 
census than many of the other religions. Yet, oddly enough, Australia is 
reluctant to recognise it as an official religion. Wonder why....

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

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Warp wrote:
>   The sub-thread I started was related to the mocking of other people
> because of their beliefs, not to whether creationists are right or wrong.

Actually, looking back, nobody was much mocking Ken Ham. The original 
author mocked the museum, and creationism, even while admiring the 
execution of the concept.

While mocking people is indeed rude (even tho I don't rule it out), how 
do you feel about mocking ideas?

>   I have never said that's my opinion. The only thing I have said is
> that someone having that opinion is not reason enough to ridicule him.

As I said, it's not just having the opinion, but rather having the 
opinion, trying to convince other people you're "scientifically" 
correct, yet not actually doing any science. Basically, the blatant 
hypocrisy, and the attempts to get you to fall for it. Like a little kid 
saying aliens came and ate all the cookies, which is cute in a 
3-year-old and ridiculous in a grown adult.

If he's really just preying on gullible people without believing it 
himself, I'm not sure how I feel about that. A combination of respect 
and disgust towards him, I suppose. :-)

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

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