How come its only legitimate for atheists to spread their faith via hijacking science?
To the degree that they promote a philosophy of atheism, they are outside of science. However, since science is non-supernatural, they are not hijacking it in any sense. The analogy you should be looking at is if these individuals tried to get their atheistic views taught in Sunday School. The political issue currently in the USA is whether or not a particular religious view of origins, for which science has no evidence for, and plenty against, can be taught in public schools AS SCIENCE. It certainly can be taught in classes on religion or philosophy. If the state does promote, as science, the particular views of a particular segment of Christians, why not promote the Hindu view of origins as well, and call that science?
It was largely developed by post-reformation Christians - no philosophical materialists were in science till Darwin.
I know. But their outstanding contribution was a gradual ditching of theological explanations, in favor of observation and experiment. They laid the foundations of philosophical materialism, even if they were unaware of what it would become. ID is the reverse.
First time I've heard that argument. Usually they use "purpose" where you've used "truth".
When I use a scope to measure the timing of a signal, I'm not looking for "Truth" in the measurement at all. I'm looking for a certain level of accuracy. That’s all that science ever does. Its a progression of explanations that provide ever better accuracy in describing the phenomena of the material universe.
But it is not required to deny that non-naturalistic causes of natural things may or may not be true.
Fine but irrelevant. Non-materialistic things aren't science. That’s the point. Since science has so far never found any means of dealing with supernatural claims, so that remains the domain or religion.
Yes, his laws were about the material world, but he didn't have to assume the physical world is all there was in order to practice science.
Its totally irrelevant what the philosophical views of the originator is or were. His laws are completely materialistic, and have nothing supernatural in them. Many modern scientists invoke religious metaphors to describe the beauty they find in their work. People have private views on that and most other people have no problem with such diversity of opinion. What remains is that those views don't alter the way such individuals do science, at least not if they are good scientists.
How different does the molecular machinery have to be? Every living species has something unique about its DNA. Are you thinking of some form of life that doesn't have a double helix or something?
There are several levels that occur to me that could do this:
1) Find some life based on non-DNA as you mentioned. However, this does not affect the evolutionary theory for the common descent of DNA based life. It would just show that some additional life was distinct.
2) The fundamental hurdle that Darwin’s theory faced recently, and could well have flunked, was genetics. Darwin knew nothing of this machinery when he postulated his ideas. What he did have was a reasonable understanding of the classification of living things. There appeared to be relative order between living things, which suggested the idea of common descent, with gradual modification. Darwin's genius was to conceive that the same mechanism which makes two breeds of dogs develop, might also unify all living things despite very significant difference. The whole theory could have imploded, if genetics didn't bare this out. Darwin had no knowledge that some mechanism would be found which could be used independently from physical form, or morphology, they would also point to common descent. It is hugely powerful because of the astronomical numbers involved for the combinations available if common descent were not the root. There is literally no wiggle room for alternate explanations, other than the creationist catch all, "Well God just made it that way".
Only a very few genomes have been sequenced, so it still remains a possibility that some life will be found on earth, which we will conclude is not descended from a common ancestor with us. If so, there will be Nobels handed out on that account. BTW, Darwin was not sure about a single ancestor, he speculated that it was only a few. Finding such life would of course not effect the validity of evolution as a theory explaining the rest of living things.
What would have been fatal for evolution was if genetics had not shown any related patterns that tracked the already established phylogeny, and only a few decades ago, we didn't know the answer to that. It was a prediction of evolution that they should. The power of independent means confirming the same theory is the issue.
The coelacanth predates the dinosaurs, but lives today - thus is a modern species. I'm not sure this proves anything about anything though.
The one living today is not identical to the fossils. There are many species that lived a 100 Mya, which look close to some modern species, but are quite distinct to any trained scientist. What has NEVER been found is ANY fossil of that age IDENTICAL to a modern species. The conclusion: ALL species which lived then are different from the species which live now. The corollary to that is that evolution MUST occur, or else modern species arose independently from all the species which lived then.
they're always frauds" Be careful - there have been some big frauds in the field of evolution - Haeckel's embryo drawings and Piltdown man for example.
I agree there have been some very well know ones! Haeckel was not one of them. He is the intellectual father of the modern field of evo-devo, one of the hottest areas of biology. If anything, he stands as an example of how people who bash evolution, don't keep up with the times. You could view his relationship to evo-devo in much the same way that Copernicus launched modern cosmology. Both had their problems, but both made major contributions. Haeckel did suffer from allowing bias to enter his drawings, and he had an incorrect philosophy, which was the root of his bias. But his fundamental contribution, that embryo development was of evolutionary importance was correct. It stands today as one of the pillars of support for common descent.
I would have thought so till I did some reading in the field. It just isn't true.
You can ignore everything but genetics from now on IMO. There are millions of genes, and people are busy crunching the numbers on how the genes relate between species. If you handed DNA samples of life on earth to some intelligent agent who had not a clue what it was from, said agent would eventually tell you how they were related, without ever knowing that the DNA formed bodies with related morphology.
I've never heard of that anomaly approach, whatever it is.
Its the norm in "Creation Science"
Some examples:
1) Man tracks with Dyno tracks in Texas. In a fanciful way, it kind of looked like it. But even if they really really did appear genuine, it would be a great anomaly, and would still leave the statistical fact that dyno remains are fantastically segregated from humans.
2) Attacks on radiometric dating like the Kr/Ar ratios given by young volcanic rock. This one was an example of how creationists have contributed to good science in a way. They found this anomaly on young Hawaiian volcanic rock, which dated to millions of years old. They then tried to claim that this meant radiometric dating was totally unreliable. What the real scientists did was say "Um, something interesting is going on here, I wonder what is the cause". The later approach resulted in some new understanding, and advanced the science (i.e. the accuracy) of radiometric dating for certain boundary conditions. That tale is IMO the classic contrast of science vs. creationism, because it shows what the outcome of the two approaches is. Creationism tries to discredit and discard very useful methods, while science attempts to refine and enhance them. That’s exactly the approach of ID wrt to evolution.
Uh, you are definitely off here. Darwin himself repeatedly urged his readers to disregard fossil evidence because he knew it wasn't complete.
Its much more complete now. It is complete when correlated across the globe, and is essentially complete in several individual places. I am completely correct in stating that if any geological column of fossils were found which scrambled the VERY WELL established pattern we know it would turn evolutionary theory on its head. Nobel prizes would be handed out for who every explained it.
Things haven't gotten better. The Cambrian explosion hasn't been satisfactorily explained. All the major phyla suddenly showed up in a short period of time - why? It hasn't been a problem for evolution
The Cambrian explosion is being stretched all the time. New fossils keep pushing back the time of the earliest phyla. Genetics will have much to add to this BTW. Its exciting times for evolutionary theory because of this. For creationist, all this knowledge is just wasted, since they are content with "God made it that way". Why bother looking for why?
Provine says evolution is such and such and you say he's off base, well, in fact you're off base.
Many very smart people stray from their field from time to time. Roger Penrose, the English physicist wrote a book on AI a few decades ago, with the basic premise that their must be some new fundamental physical basis for intelligence. When you carry a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Just because you are a world expert physicist does not mean that some magical new physics is needed to explain how a brain works. He was badly off base (indeed one of his little examples on geometric patterns was solved a few years later by some bright chap) because he had not expertise in the area. So just because some evolutionary biologist says that his field has implications for some other field, does not make it so. Truth be told, I might agree with him, but so what?
<i Provine, Dennet, and Dawkins and their disciples have the seat of power in universities though.
If any of them tried to force their views to be taught in religious courses, I would also object. That is the asymmetry I'm not sure you grasp. ID should not be taught in science class. Biology should not be taught in religion class. You could make a religion based on biology, and teach it as such if anyone wanted to take the class. I don't have a problem with that either.
Well, that is clearly not the case. I am not in favor of teaching Genesis in science classrooms. Nor I'm sure is professor of biochemistry, Dr. Michael Behe. Or anyone else in the ID field. Some of them would probably like the argument from design (of which ID is a very small part) to be acknowledged by science. I don't care myself.
Its clear enough if you read Philip Johnson, the driving force of the whole thing. Read the Discovery Institutes output. Thats why I suggested you read the Wedge Document. They produced it themselves. If you can't bother to understand what they are about, how can I help you understand anything. Read what they say themselves.
No, it doesn't. Evolution is pretty irrelevant.
Only if you are ignorant. You might want to think bird flu and immune systems. Immunology is one field in which evolutionary theory is very important. In fact, your immune system is basically a fast evolver, that’s how it works. That’s why you get sick when a pathogen first invades. It takes awhile for you body to evolve an effective antigen. Once it has evolved an effective one, production takes off, and you get better. Thank God for evolution!
Science did fine before philosophical materialism became a dogma.
Science started doing well when scientists practiced philosophical materialism whether they realized it or not. It will continue to do well as long as we continue down that path. It will nosedive if we don't. Thats why I will not vote for McCain or any clown who advocates ID.
Genetics, medical research, etc. can all precede regardless of whether one holds the proper atheistic idea of origins.
Evolution has nothing to say about atheism. The bulk of Americans who accept evolution are Christian. Major American religions which accept evolution are: 1) Catholic, 2) most main stream Protestants, 3)many Jews, 4)Mormons(??). Most of these would be surprised to consider themselves atheist. It is fundamentalist Protestant groups (like Baptists) which are the creationist supporters.
People who believe God created the universe can explore it just as well as those opposed to the idea of a god.
We agree totally on that. |
