Moved back to top since there is a raging debate that needs to be resolved — J.C.D.
The Wedge Strategy – Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture — Nova just ran an excellent special on the attempt in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago to introduce Creationism as Science in the public schools. Of course they cloaked it under the moniker “Intelligent Design.”
What cropped up in the piece was the “Wedge Document” which was a blueprint to roll back scientific advances in the USA to the tenth century and essentially push for a USA theocracy. I tracked this thing down on the net. The link is above. Below is an excerpt.
This game plan was developed by the shadowy Discovery Institute up near Seattle. This is that group that George Gilder is associated with.
Phase III. Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula. The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready. With an added emphasis to the social sciences and humanities, we will begin to address the specific social consequences of materialism and the Darwinist theory that supports it in the sciences.
GOALSGoverning Goals
* To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
* To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
related links
Discovery Institute’s response to the appearance of the secret Wedge Document in 2006
#88
> 82 Thomas. If you re-read, your second part is exactly what
> I said. But, please, don’t make me go looking for the
> Hawking, etc. reference.
If that is what you meant to say, your response was horribly worded. Saying “most reputable scientists, including Stephen Hawking …know that our planet is at the center of the universe” to really mean that *all* points in universe might be at the center of universe in a discussion about creationism and the scientific method is incredibly misleading. It makes it sound like Hawking endorses the idea as it was believed 600 years ago and that is obviously ridiculous.
> 83. But not also regardless of
> the evidence of how the event occurred.
Absolutely, it works regardless of the evidence because the very premise of using probability to dispute physical evidence is itself logically flawed. Thus, if we are going to throw logic out the window, we can use it for almost anything. You give me an event and I can rephrase it as to sound so improbable that “it could not possibly have occurred” (even if it has). It is this same logic that Behe used to claim that things were “too complicated” to have occurred naturally.
> Re Leprachauns: Could we put it to a test to to see which theory results in the most predictable, repeatable real-life benefit, such as the building of hospitals?
Certainly! Here is how we do it: we setup an empty area out in the desert somewhere and quarantine the area from any human entering the area for whatever time period you wish. Then we sit back and see how many hospitals are built by your deity du jour and how many are built by leprechauns. My hypothesis is that under controlled conditions, leprechauns and your deity of choice will build exactly the same number of hospitals.
Thus, I find your deity theory and your theories about the creation of the universe to have no more validity than that of Santa Claus, leprechauns or the FSM.
#89
Why does your deity have to “reveal” himself to one person at a time? Why doesn’t your deity come out for all to see and be evaluated by scientists out in the open? Why the cloak-and-dagger approach of going through crazy priests and bad writing?
The only reason to get into these arguments is to to scream into the abyss of ignorance and hope something answers. Which usually it doesn’t, people just turn blue and fall in.
People who “believe” without proof “believe” regardless of fact or fiction. They have deluded themselves into accepting a vision of the universe because it frightens them for it to be unguided and effectively random in scope. When they are called out for their delusion, they become fully defensive, since you are calling out their fundamental belief in themselves. All religions work this way — they attempt to redefine your definition of yourself to their mold, in order to propagate their belief system (a parasitic expansion of an organism.) You accept it into yourself and thus continue its replication (usually imperfectly.)
As for those that “believe” WITH proof — they accept the proof of others verbatim, usually without examining the proof themselves and accepting its premises. An example would be “believing” in the acceleration of gravity on earth is a constant. If you run a completely scientific test of the true acceleration of gravity in many locations and situations, you normally get a range of points around the line, never an exact match. Which would imply that the acceleration is not smooth or the same for any two given points on the earth and thus that the true acceleration is different for any single point.
But when you do the physics experiments in a lab, you see the general line (which is fine) that shows the result you are expecting, and you ignore the remainder of the results to get your grade. If you try to call out the instructor for accepting a belief that it is exactly 32 ft/s^2 you probably won’t get an A (or Q or whatever grades are these days.)
That being said, most of what science tells us is verifiable fact and not conjecture. Attacking science with facts in your hand works, since other scientists will verify and then accept the facts or disprove them. Religion doesn’t work this way, instead you attack with your beliefs, which is inherently unverifiable.
My point? If I have to have one, I’d say it’s that belief is something humans do to each other in order to further their aims at the expense of others. My “belief” is that the universe just IS, and just DOES, and that there is no purpose or reason to it. We should be taking our lives, enjoying them, and building our knowledge and others’ — with verification, not BELIEF.
90 LTG, 91 Thomas. I suspect God inspires many people a little bit more than your average Bohr.
91. Thomas. If you travel or look in any direction you want for as far as you want – even in theory – and the distances are identical, might you think you are in the center of the universe? Well, that’s the way it is. (Regardless of the fact that that is true for all other points.)
Beyond that, you’ve added your own wishful thinking as to what or what not scientists believe or support. If I’ve mis-stated something, point out exactly what that was without any extra interpretation.
Read again: “But *NOT* also regardless of the evidence of how the event occurred…” Once fact is added, your probabilities are irrelevant. The dice is no longer fair, it is loaded for a result. Thus a die with 6s on all sides will always land a six. A qualified man who builds a computer will always result in a built computer. The uncertainty is now gone. It is no longer relevant to ask “what is the probability that a computer might assemble itself? We know the probability is 1 or close to it and why. And not some fantastic number associated with randomness. Randomness has little to do with it.
But can you show, likewise, why of 10^22 stars, life can be only found on one? You can’t. That’s the difference.
The star probability scenario is no different than an analysis of the probabilities involved in a DNA test after it has been taken.
RBG
#77, Uncle Ben,
Science will never prove or disprove the existance of God because God, but its very nature, undefinable. How can you prove or disprove something you cannot define? And if you can’t prove or disprove something, it has no place in science.
Wrong. It is up to those suggesting an existence to prove that existence. It is not up to the other side to disprove it. If you can’t define it then you don’t know what you are claiming.
When I tell my wife that my effen car keys are NOT in the fruit bowl and she says they are, then it is up to her to prove they ARE there. Why? Because I looked and they weren’t there. (Of course the kid will already be in the car with the keys, but that is another story)
If I look for evidence of “god” and don’t see any, that is fine. I’m not convinced “god” exists anyway. So it will be up to those making the claim to show me where “god” really is. My expectation of proof will be the same as that of anyone proposing any other theory. Any verification would need to be objective, testable, and repeatable. And that pretty well rules out the “bible” as verification.
But if my wife can walk up to the fruit bowl and pull my car keys out, I’ll be convinced.
#94
From post #79
Those are your exact words. I never said that scientists think that the Earth is at the center of the universe. Rather, I suggested that *at best*, *maybe* they *might* have been suggesting that *all* points are at the “center” of the universe including the Earth. In a discussion such as this, it is very easy to read your statement as implying that Hawking believed that the Earth is the one and only object at the center of the universe ala the thinking circa 1000 CE and that is clearly wrong.
RE: Probability
Exactly correct. Once observable, measurable fact is added to the mix, the probability that it could have happened is irrelevant. This is very much the evolutionist argument against creationism. That evolution happens is a fact. It is observable and measurable (see Dogs or bacteria). The “odds” that it could have occurred are moot since it has and is already occurring.
> But can you show, likewise, why of
> 10^22 stars, life can be only found
> on one? You can’t. That’s the difference.
We cannot know whether there is only life on this planet because we do not yet possess the technology to investigate every other celestial body in the universe. We do however have a good idea of the conditions required for life on this planet and although it is a rare combination of events and conditions it is not so rare in the vastness of the universe to believe that it could not occur again. It is possible that bodies as close as Europa posses microbes or bacteria. We will not know for sure until we are able to investigate thoroughly.
96.Thomas. You’re doing good. I’ll even help you with the rest: “As is every point in the universe.” Quite a different thing than you were directly attibuting. As compared to my comment on the circa 1000 CE thinking. Where is that one again? I usually keep it right next to my Hitler inferences. Sly, Thomas.
In fact, because you’ve been so good about all this, I’ll let you in on the admission that I was originally trying to make a small joke, though based on truth. Originally in my post, in between paragraphs, that is just before “As is every point…”, I actually had the words “(beat)” as in “pause for effect.” But I used the type of brackets that is apparently reserved for HTML, a “less than” and a “greater than” symbol. Those just made my “pause” disappear into the ether. Tell me you believe in the ether…
RBG
Agh..you both beat me to Hitler!!
#19 Mark we can say the same as you. You see the obvious and immediately think it MUST b true. I saw therefore it IS.
This goes into misguided inteliigence:
Sun revolves around the Earth
Newts are born of fire
Earth is the center of the universe
Canals on Mars
The list goes on and on. Born of faith and poor analisation of facts.
Even today we have myths that pop up due to poor logic, propaganda and psuedo-patriotism.
Everyone has their gods. For athiests it is themselves as they cannot believe someone could fall for an invisible thing.
Hmmm no one beleived in oxygen for a long time until it was isolated. No one believed in molecules until proven. No one believed in atoms or sub-atomic structures until proven.
Before the PROVE humanity just discounted it all as faith or illusion.
Again until there is emprical data I cannot prove or disprove a god. Nor new particles we haven’t yet isolated, life on other planets, forces of nature that might only be found in or near black holes, confirmation of WHAT dark matter is, etc. etc. etc.
Just because we cannot quantify it does not mean it is not there. Nor does it mean it IS there.
Science is not a means to eliminate possibility simply because you can’t see the O2 in front of your face! That goes right back to the same thought processes the zealots use.
No data, no proof either for or against.
Science is for realists.
Cursor_
95. Mr. Fusion It is up to those suggesting an existence to prove that existence. It is not up to the other side to disprove it. If you can’t define it then you don’t know what you are claiming.
I think we mostly agree on this point, but are splitting hairs. You are correct that if there is no way to prove to you that God exists (and there isn’t) there is no reason for you to believe that God exists. My point was more that if something cannot be defined and tested, it has no place in science, therefor, unless some compelling new evidence comes to light, there is no reason why science should ever factor in any notion of God.
Where we might start to disagree is whether or not we should discount any knowledge that cannot be scientifically evaluated. Personally, I reckon science will probably one day provide most or all the answers to our questions one day. Until then I am going to rely on science where I can, and ‘hunches’ where I cannot.
#93, Jim;
Uh, that’s a bad example Jim. The acceleration of gravity on Earth is not a constant, it’s an average. Any good physics teacher/professor will tell you that. In fact, I’ve never been told it was a constant; I always knew that in the real world, the acceleration of gravity will vary depending upon elevation and friction (namely, air resistance). 9.8m/s2 is a value that’s used because it’s “close enough for government work.”
I suggest you change your example. As written, at a minimum you have shown a lack of understanding of physics, and at maximum, you have cast doubt upon your overall grasp of how science works.
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_gravity
Re: #101;
Oh man, DU doesn’t support superscript tags.
I meant to say “9.8m/s^2”.
Here is the *real reason* why people will NOT believe in Creationism. It is simple as this:
If there is a God that created this world, then the Bible is true. If the Bible is true, then unless you have asked Him to save you, you are on your way to hell.
People commonly use evolution as a way to avoid the whole God issue. Its as simple as that. It doesn’t matter if creationist will disprove multiple key evolutionary facts. They (evolutionist) willfully choose to ignore creationism because it deals with their own personal sin, and the fact that a holy and righteous God will someday judge them for that sin.
Evolution is simply a cop out!
Man! Stop this! You don’t get it? Neither of those theories are true! I have nightmares about I was responsible of the human kind! No! You are so wrong…
And the fossils, well, they are just decoration! Man, you believe I can’t make a new species from the ground up? Of curse I can! But, in this case, it was no me, sorry folks.
Ok, it was me, but I didn’t want it, I was just wandering around the void when I drop my coffee, I try to catch it and… PUFF! The Universe. Sometimes I forget how powerful I am…
Sorry Man, this was just an accident, you’re an accident. It’s hard to know the truth like this, but man, it’s the truth.
#103 And magic pixies come and sprinkle jesus powder on your member and POP out comes an impractical conception.
Do me a favor – if you believe in the Bible so much then stop using the nations health care resources, after all you should just be able to drop a mega dime with old Oral Roberts and then god will cure you.
Religion is the tool of the fool, fool.
#97
I’m not sure what “slyness” you are attributing to me but it appears you decided to clock out on this discussion. If the parsing of your response lost some critical pauses, then perhaps that explains confusion. However, I’m not sure that you can clarify your original statement about the center of the universe no matter how many pauses you inject.
#98
Yes, John. The blog is slipping. It took almost a 100 responses before someone mentioned Hitler and not a single remark about Bush. I’m surprised no one claimed that the Bush administration concocted the whole concept in the first place.
#106, Thomas;
…and not a single remark about Bush. I’m surprised no one claimed that the Bush administration concocted the whole concept in the first place.
It’s an assumed…theory…at this point! 😀
Ignoring creationism the biggest problem with intelligent design is that there is no theory there. All intelligent design has is a collection of “flaws,” most of which have been addressed or are misunderstandings. Even if all of those flaws are real and evolution is totally wrong, what is the argument for some creator? What is the evidence that one exists? Proving that a theory is wrong is not a theory.
Thomas, don’t play coy, of course you know the slyness of which I write. You deliberately and fantastically made leaps in your connections first to what was supposed to be my distortion of Hawking’s take on the center of the universe and then another somehow linking me to thinking of 1000 AD.
You did that “ala” the distortions of McCarthyism and thus the First Red Scare (1917-1920). See how cheap & easy it is?
You also deliberately parsed my response to read the opposite of the obvious message. I can do that too and I’ll quote your last message directly: “I’m not sure”
There were no missing critical pauses for the statements to be true, only to help you get it. On a surface that is boundless, every point is the centre, including the Earth in my above example. Let me know if you need further explanation to understand how that works.
RBG
Wow, 109 comments so far. This is a hot one. I’ll add that the Evolution Model (doesn’t qualify as a “theory” under the scientific method) is based on the early taxonomy system of classifying plants and animals, for cataloging species. Which was arbitrarily arrived at. And after it gain acceptance, Darwin “evolved” it into his conscept of natural selection. But Darwin couldn’t explain the evolution of the “eyeball”, from a useless mutated organ, to one that actually works. Thus NeoDarwineans have been patching up his assumptions for decades. If religions had to be so patched and “fixed” over time. They’d be labeled as frauds. But science gets away with it.
BTW, long before Darwin’s brainstorm there was another exalted notion called the “Great Chain of Being”. see the Wiki entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being
Makes “evolutionary theory” sound like a johnny come lately knockoff. Do we really trust scientists to get our origins right? And should we chuck our moral codes to comply with their assertions? After all, if no God, why obey any laws? And exactly how did a moral belief evolve without a God? Natural selection generally favors the opportunists, not those bound by morals. Yet morals persist against all odds. Something doesn’t last on its own, unless something greater is behind it. QED. Also entropy is suppose to increase, and stuff wears out and breaks down. And yet life “evolves to more complexity” in opposition to entropy, according to Darwin. So evolution contradicts basic physical laws. If there’s any validity to evolution, that is. Trust a hack biologist not to know squat about physics.
Trust a superstitious moran to not know Jack Shit about science – but to be insane enough to think himself smarter than millions of bioscientists, each and every one of which knows far more about the incontrovertable fact of evolution than he could ever begin to grasp.
Y’gotta love idiots who trot out the same tired, long refuted bullshit “arguments”, been so ideologically blinded by fairytales as to never notice that those arguments went down the toilet of knowledge long ago.
But when you’ve got your book of fairytales, you don’t need to learn any facts…
Entropy has nothing to do with evolution by natural selection.
No invisible Big Da-Da In The Sky is needed to coerce intelligent people into doing the right thing, since treating others as one hopes to be treated is only common sense.
The evolution of the eye has long been understood. Only clowns like you don’t bother to find out if the shit you promote has been addressed or not. You might take a look at this for starters, Beauzeau.
When millions who know far more than you say one thing – and you, in your total absence of knowledge say they’re all wrong, and you’re right, then you are in serious need of psychiatric intervention.
Next you’ll be telling us that perpetual motion is possible and that the Earth is hollow.
You really shouldn’t’ve flushed your meds down the toilet, you know. Now they’re gonna hafta put you back in your backwards-jacket.
Glen E. The eyeball began as a benefit to the organism for survival and replication when a small patch of cells became light sensitive as the result of a helpful mutation. All other mutations that resulted in mostly deleterious changes caused the organism to die out.
You’re thinking Darwin’s Evolution by Natural Selection must all-at-once include all the supporting knowledge of Evolution from the last 100 years? That doesn’t sound very evolutionary.
OTOH, you want evolution and mutation? Try Jews becoming Christians (and branching to Islam which begat…). Then branching to Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic… to (Lutherernism, Anabaptists, Calvinism) Church of England to Puritans to Baptists to 7th Day Adventists, etc… All these religions mutated in such a way that allowed them to survive and replicate. The useless mutations (some oddball sects)died out. This religious evolutionary tree with its adapted (“fixed”) branches wouldn’t look unlike the biological evolutionary tree.
There is good evidence to show that when some types of organisms organize into societies and follow beneficial rules, they get to survive to breed. ie: humans. I would note that those rules evolved just as evolution and religion itself did.
Lets have this entropy discussion in 8 billion years when we are part of a dying sun that has consumed the Earth. In the short term, you can get energy from water that falls from a high place to a low place and use it to build complex things seemingly in contradiction to an entropy law.
RBG
Glenn E.
I am glad to see someone brave enough to use the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics argument against the theory of evolution. Surely the fact that entropy increases in a closed system is a slam dunk argument for Creationism. Now if there was only some sort of energy source in the sky constantly supplying the Earth with heat and light scientists would certainly be very interested to hear about it.
How about it, Glenn E?
Would you like to take a moment and share your brilliant insight with us, and explain how the eye didn’t evolve?
Of course not. When loonies like you are soundly refuted, you just run and hide and wait for the next opportunity to pop up and re-recite your idiotic caveman fantasies before a fresh audience.
• • • • • •
Folks, sorry to disappoint, but we won’t be hearing from Glenn E again on this thread. Look for him elsewhere, on some other topic altogether. That’s what passes for intelligent discussion among the superstitious sheeple. The Intertubes are made to order for crackpots in denial, as it permits them to never have to acknowledge that they’ve been proven wrong, wrong, wrong.
What a hoot. 😉
#109
Clearly, there is a misunderstanding here. I get that you were making a not all together successful attempt at clever locution that I misinterpreted. There was no intent to be “sly” but merely to be mater-of-fact by pointing out the exact aspect of your post that could be misconstrued.
#114 LTG. Just have at the ready evidence of all the billions upon trillions of failed or intermediary species remains.
RBG
My, my. How clever. Once again, those millions of professionals who know far more about such matters than you could learn in two lifetimes, once again, there you are, showing them all up as idiots, you being the only person smart enough to think of that. How marvelous.
Your ego being what it is, it never even occurs to you that the reason the issues you mention are not addressed by bioscientists is because they are ridiculous, irrelevant oversimplifications that by their very nature, show clearly that you possess insufficient comprehension to be able to even formulate a valid objection.
Yes, RBG, once your question there spreads around the globe, scientist after scientist (in your fantasy world, at least) are going to slap themselves in the head and exclaim, “DAMN! How was he able to figure that out?? Why didn’t WE think of that?? We must’ve been barking up the wrong tree all this time! If only we had listened to RBG!!”
Oh, brother.
• • • • • • • •
1) “Failed” species. Oy vey. What a hoot.
You apparently don’t bother to think these things through, do you old boy?
Each and every “failed” species is represented, out of millions – or even billions – of individuals, by ONE INDIVIDUAL, whose particular mutation didn’t work out. What that means, for the logically-impeded, is that not only is it unlikely that we would ever find that one, single, doomed individual which didn’t pass it’s mutation on, it means it would be an absolute MIRACLE if we ever DID find one.
BZZT! Score: Science – 1, RBG & Co. – zero
2) “Intermediary” species? Another illuminating example of how your conceptions of evolution and its processes is all mangled.
EVERY species is intermediary – between the one that preceded it and the one that followed. You really don’t get how any of this works, do you? At this point, a rational, objective person says to himself, “Jeez, I think I oughta study these things a little more deeply before making a fool of myself imagining that I could actually discover something so basic that science had not already dealt with a long time ago and that requires no more knowledge than I have to answer.”
OTOH, a fool will, instead of researching the issue by seeking out the availoable literature and evaluating the arguments put forth, arrogantly persists in parroting erroneoous and inaccurate propaganda provided by scientifically illiterate ideologues.
So…..
BZZZZZT! Final score: Science – 2, RBG & Co. – zero.
But thanks for playing, and JCD has some nice parting gifts for you, including the DU Home Game… 😉
117 LTG. Please, don’t worship me until I’m finished.
1. No dead-end fossils, not even in a population of billions you say. Not even if the species was even partially successful you say. Such bad luck. They don’t mention this lack of evidence in schools, do they? Isn’t that illegal to do so? Maybe finding scientific evidence of God works the same way. It just is. Ya gotta believe. “We don’ need no stinkin’ evidence.”
2. I hate to be the one to break the news to you but my “all” is a very similar word to your “every.” Tell me this is not the basis of an ingenious rebuttal?
So then, show me this huge body of fossil evidence of the successful continuous mutations. Say, bone as it evolves: first 1 cm, then 1.1 cm, 1.2 cm. Every bone, every slight change capable of leaving a fossil record. As the organism structures evolve from one function to to something completely different… in a multitude of simultaneous sites throughout the body. Yes, surely the fossil record must be teeming with examples of all … every … whatever … intermediary/continuous species/organisms, each with numbers almost too high to comprehend and thus capable of leaving a nice tidy little record.
As a public service, let me also help you with some clues for some new material from the classics: “Jane you ignorant slut…”
RBG
#118
Actually, we have plenty of “dead-end” fossils. Would not a “dead-end” fossil simply be one of an animal that is part of a heredity tree but is extinct? Archeopteryx and Homo erectus come to mind. Obviously, getting *all* mutations is unrealistic. It would be expensive to get every possible variation of living dog. That does not mean we cannot conclude that they have evolved.
RE: Mutation.
Your argument is a bit of strawman. It is not necesssary to gather every possible variant in the evolutionary line to conclude that evolution has occurred.
Further, accumulating bones of such small variation even with living animals would be prohibitively expensive. Requiring that it be done with extinct animals is almost impossible because we have to first, find them and second, hope they are intact. However, we do have a fairly complete progress of many animals such as the horses including many of their mutations such as their progression from digits on their feet to hooves.
119. Your right. Let’s just keep it to an easy staggering excess amount of evidence. And also stick to every evolutionary change of only a few thousand organisms in the interest of both overwhelming evidence and underwhelming cost.
RBG