State Legislators Seek Bills to Allow Questioning of Evolution Theory in Schools

In other words - let the elite tell you what is true and keep your hands to yourself you damn dirty ape.


I accept there are things beyond my comprehension, some beyond those of even the Hawkings of the world...and it doesn't even have to get into science to find such things.

However, that makes it no less elitest for someone to tell me to shut up about things THEY assume I'm not worthy to speak to.

You must be *this* credentialed to participate in the discussion. Please keep all your hands and belongings inside the vehicle for the duration of the ride, thank you.

That isn't faith. Faith is "belief that is not based on proof". But the scientific process IS based on proof.

You're misusing that quote. Clarke meant to indicate that appearances are deceiving, and there is NO such thing as the supernatural. Don't forget that Clarke wasn't just an atheist, he was an antitheist on the same level as Hitchens and Dawkins.

That's a highly simplistic view of the subject. Most likely, the asexual to sexual evolutionary path was one carried out by highly simplistic creatures. When you have simplistic creatures, evolution can occur more rapidly (See: Bacteria). And there is actually very little difference biologically between how male and female sets of reproductive organs develop. If you have one half-sphere formation in a blastula, you will be female. If two, male.

Consider that it is often the shape of proteins, and when certain DNA is encoded to turn on or off, that drives the development of an animal. With that in mind, it's easy to see how a protein, shaped differently or started at a different point, can alter a creature in such a fundamental way. ALtering one's sex is a relatively simple biological procedure, related mostly to hormones. See, for instance, certain species of frogs that can alter their sex from male to female or female to male.

Suffice it to say, the highly unlikely situation you postulated is VERY likely indeed, since it probably began amongst small, simplistic organisms that
A) Can evolve rapidly, and
B) LIve in gigantic clusters of creatures (THink: Plankton, ants, bacteria again).

Shep, one doesn't have to be a scientist to have been educated in science. Enough to understand and appreciate the scientific method. To be able to tell the difference between opinion, belief, and research that has undergone rigorous peer review.

Unfortunately much of science is politicized. But the kernel of knowledge and understanding is there under the bullshit.

Not so much faith as education.

No. Faith is the choice to consider someone or something as worthy of confidence. Whether or not that choice is based on proof, convincing evidence, a general impression, a hunch, a superstition, or whatever, is totally irrelevant.

You have faith in the power of equivocation. "Faith" is a word used to refer to many different concepts related to belief. Religious faith is not the same faith as faith that researchers undergoing peer review are generally honest and that dishonest and incompetent researchers are pretty much always caught in the end. Science is evolutionary in nature, and bad and mistaken ideas do creep in, but what makes it work is that the scientific process is designed to weed those ideas out. That doesn't always happen instantaneously, and it doesn't happen with 100% reliability, but it happens vastly more than often enough for an understanding of the scientific method to fully support a tentative belief--faith, if you will--in any matter of scientific consensus.

Forgive me for plucking this one line out of your post but the two faiths mentioned are not altogether dissimilar.

Other than that they both relate to belief, as already conceded, not really. A firm belief entirely without evidence (religious faith) is not the same as a tentative belief that a thousand-to-one longshot, with those or longer odds very strongly supported by evidence, didn't come home (faith that a matter that's been through rigorous research and scientific review and adopted as scientific consensus, while it may be subject to revision, isn't fundamentally wrong).

Let's say they might not be dissimilar. A scientific faith might be based on an unsubstantiated claim that someone assumed was correct without verifying it, or a religious faith might be based on a very sound examination of the evidence, but is also possible for them to be of a completely different nature. Despite the claims of those who don't understand what they are talking about, religious faith does not have to be based merely on the "desire to believe," but they are not altogether incorrect in that that is often what religious faith is. And although that is sometimes what scientific faith is based on, if scientists are really doing their best to be intellectually honest, that shouldn't often be the case.

So the most reasonable scientific faith, and the most reasonable religious faith, are indeed of the same nature: a conclusion based on an analysis of the data, leading to a choice to consider certain facts as worthy of confidence. But not all faith is reasonable, especially in the religious realm. Much religious faith (even the faith of those whose general beliefs are similar to mine, I conceed) is not based on a sound examination of the evidence, but mere tradition. It's like someone who believes the world is round because he saw it on television: The content of the belief is correct, but the nature of the belief is still unsound.

No matter how many times you state this, it is still a straw-man argument. By defining religious faith as faith entirely without evidence, you limit the term to a sub-set of the entire range of faith, and then try to draw a conclusion (that religious faith is never sound) that englobes the entire range. Such reasoning can never be sound. You should have enough grounding in logic to see that.

If you want to disprove the validity of a given religious dogma, you must do it by showing that dogma to be unsound, either as to its content or its nature (for the difference, see my previous post), not by making some unsubstantiated claim about all religious beliefs.

no: "Scientific faith" is a contradiction in terms.

That's not to say some scientists will not make a statement based on too little evidence (or none). They're only human. But that's where peer review comes into play.

Give an example of religious faith based on an analysis of data. Please.

I'm curious about where you got that definition from. No sarcasm.

My own. No one has ever been able to refute my reasons for believing in God. They have, at most, been able to say that they are not absolutely conclusive. But that is of the same nature as scientific belief: There is basically nothing in science that is "absolutely conclusive." It is merely belief held to because it best fits the available data.

It is my own, based on the way the word is used in the Bible ("faith" in Greek is "pistis"; see any good lexicon on common Greek usage in the centuries around the Christian era to ascertain that that is indeed the way the word was used), and based on an attempt to avoid begging the question by giving a definition that is too limitative, thus defining part of the answer in the way the question is phrased. Having been trained in science, mathematics, logic, semantics and epistemology, that is the approach I use as a general rule: If your statement of the problem already involves excluding some possible answers, you are not able to discover if your argument actually leads to truth or not.

There isn't even evidence the supernatural realm exists.

Yes he did. But even if we accept it as a truism that wouldn't make the technology any less than natural and no scientist would say otherwise (and neither did Clarke).

Really? Go tell a physicist light is supernatural and see how long it takes to get laughed out of a room.

Supernatural does not mean unexplained natural phenomena. It means unexplainable unnatural phenomena.

I posted the definition from the National Academy of Science but if you really want the dictionary, fine:

theory. noun. a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena

Ah, okay.

^ Nice clip of a much more complete statement.

Is that how your "faith" works, based on examining only that part of the data that suits you?

Or so you hope/believe/have faith.

Are you willing to assert everything that is reported to you in the name of science is proven?

As a counter-argument, let me just point to how many DECADES "Java man" was assumed to have been "proven."

What Clarke believed is entierly irrelevant to my point, but not a bad dodge to try to avoid the point.

Are you arguing that appearances cannot deceive US? Only the primitive?

I still don't see anything that suggests mutually compatible mutations are likely to occur in the proper setting and not only do so, but flourish. Keep in mind, it's not necessary for me to prove it CANNOT happen in order to question it.

Your answer is a PERFECT example of what I have been saying all along.

1. Evolution, by looking at the evidence, establishes that certain evolutionary changes DID happen.
>No one has a porblem with this<
2. Evolutionists look at situations like the ones I described, do not have evidence of what DID happen, but INFER from what they know what MIGHT have happened - what they HOPE happened if in fact Evolution is the "theory of everything" when it comes to the diversity of life...and then make the MISTAKE of defending the Inferance with the same fevor as the defend the established fact.

THIS is the part of evolution that folks have so much skepticism about. the True Believer like your self has no problem postulating that which is rank speculation as an explanation and believes in it because they have FAITH that evolution is capeable of accounting for the "gaps"....NOT because they have EVIDENCE that supports that conclusion.

Skeptics like myself need not doubt #1 - and don't - in order to say "Where is the proof for #2?"

And if such proof has not yet been found, then let both of us - the evolutionist and the theist - say "I don't know yet"

In so doing, evolutionists will have much more credibility when they do make a claim.

I completely agree with your description of affairs bolded above.

The place where faith comes in is deciding to believe that THIS point in the cycle is the point in which all the bad science, politics, and BS have been weeded out and the truth is in evidence.

Again, in 1960 henry would have had complete faith in the reality of Java man - but it would have been unfounded faith.

who among us knows what item of "scientific consensus" is out there right now which will be, a decade or more from now, found to be bullshit?

No, Shep, I would not. I recognise that scientific knowledge is provisional and always open to improvement, usually asymtotically.

If it interests me, I look at the source and arguments for and against and their sources. At some point I hit pay dirt, or decide evidence is lacking and remain skeptical.

My world view doesn't require I fill in the blanks with "there be god." A simple "we don't know" works for me.

I agree with this fully. A faith in God based simply on "explaining the unexplainable" is a very weak faith indeed. It's like believing in gremlins simply because you don't know what happened to your socks.







BTW, what did become of those socks I had?

Uh, are you really trying to argue here that god is just hyper-advanced technology?

Prove God, then we'll talk.

Until then it is only a form of complacency until we have finalized our theories on the origin and nature of life and species.

No, it's simply the most salient point in what you posted. No offense intended, but we can't just decide what we think a word means, and that use that definition as a defense of our own beliefs. No matter how you arrived at your own personal definition of faith, it is not the authoritatively recognized and universally agreed-upon definition of the word.

No. That's why so much of scientific knowledge is referred to as a theory, to allow for the possibility of human error.

Actually, what Clarke believed is very related to your point, because it indicates that you misunderstand what Clarke was saying. Appearances can deceive us, but nothing in this world is supernatural. If there is a God-like being, he is as natural as us, even if he redefines how we view the natural world.

Then you're purposely ignoring the science involved.

It isn't hope. You're mislabeling it. It's simply the only answer that currently makes sense or that we have any evidence for.

Yes, some great God-Like being could have nudged it along. But there's no evidence to suggest that happened. There is evidence to suggest that my above explanation happened. And until there is any evidence to the contrary, the explanation above will continue to be the commonly held explanation for how things happened, unless and until something else is discovered.

You say that you still don't see how the explanation I provided covers the gaping hole you see. But the only answer to that is: Look at the science. Research gene sequencing, research chromosome history, research neonatal development on a chromosomal level. I laid it out for you in the simplest terms I can, but if you still don't see it, there's nothing more I can really extrapolate on.

Why is it the skeptics are the only ones bringing up God here?

I haven't said anything at all about "God."

The freedom to point at some speculative assertion by evolutionists and saying it does not appear to be backed by evidence is hell-and-gone from saying "Proof of God!!"

Exactly my point.

The only difference is one of perception, how the primitive perceives the lighter, how we perceive, for instance, a ghost. (if indeed ghosts there be)

I'm purposely giving a speculative assertion the credit it deserves.

Here's something else I don't believe:

I don't believe that the Legion of Science Defenders who posts on message boards are themselves intimately familiar with the rigorous science they expect the skeptics to bury themselves in.

I do not believe, sir, with all due respect, that you yourself are well versed in gene sequencing, neonatea development, et al.

Nor is Ryan or henry or any of the other true believers.

you are, collectively, taking the word of people who ARE so versed as gospel because you don't know the subject any better than I. Telling me to "go research it" is simply a dodge. An elitist way to say "since you are not a credential scientist in the field you don't have the credibility to speak to the subject."

I don't believe that the average joe who does not work in the scientific research film EVER spends one moment of his spare time pouring over even the abstracts of the scientist's work, let alone the actual studies. A bare few MIGHT read the magazines (Science, Nature, etc) but doing that is no more than taking someone else's word for the findings.

I'm not about to go off and devote hours of my time trying to learn that high level shit - but I don't have to, because I've never debated the topic with anyone else who has.

Well at this point we have one of two choices.

Either things evolved, or God put them there, I've yet to hear any third option, so yes, it is about God.

^^
That's rather narrow minded of you.

Oh don't pretend its about anything other than the right to teach in schools that evolution might not be real and that it might have been God.

Fuck, leave the philosophy courses for college.

So what would satisfy you, then? Do I have to have a PhD in biology and my own lab, with only my own findings?

Do we start doubting every scientific finding just because we aren't experts in the field? Will you no longer acknowledge ANYONE'S findings, or just the ones that run counter to your religious beliefs?

You have done a masterful job of setting up a no-lose scenario for yourself. YOu can remain skeptical, and anyone who explains why you shouldn't be can gain no grounds because we have to get our information from journals, not from our own experiments.

If that's how you're gonna run things, then frankly I hope you stick to your often-broken vow not to get involved in these threads, because with an attitude like that, you will add nothing to the discussion.

Actually, I find it insulting that you're intimating I am woefully ignorant on the subject, when in fact I am not. Biology has always been a strong interest of mine, and I stay as abreast on the subject as I can, which I'd hoped my explanation of how sexes might have been able to evolve would have indicated.

So if all you're going to do is insult my intelligence and dismiss everything I say out of hand, this is my last reply to you.