Spill-over thread on Intelligent Design

[richyoung]

The mathematical calculation is a flawed argument because it is based on a wrong premise - it tacitly assumes that mutation rates are constant. In fact, there is plenty of evidence, even in the modern world, e.g. antibiotic resistances, that show that mutation rates widely vary.

This is true - but over long periods of time, there wil still be an AVERAGE rate.  Even over short periods of time, there will still be a MAXIMUM rate.  Thus, if the age of the Earth multiplied by the AVERAGE rate doesn't get us there, that is in itself evidence. Perhaps it will be found that even the MAXIMUM rate times the planet's age isn;t enough.  We won;t know until we look.  ID is the science of looking - thats all.

Further, there are biochemical mechanisms that greatly increase the mutation rates when the organism is under increased environmental pressure. Experimental evidence is mostly limited to bacterial organisms for practical (and legal!!) reasons, but the fundamental concepts hold because even something as evolved as we are still use some of the basic biochemical apparatus of bacteria.

..and HOW MANY new species of bacteria have we evolved int he lab?  I beleive that number is...ZERO?  We get new STRAINS of existing species, but not new species.  Might have somthing to do with the fact that almost all mutations are deleterious.

Also, for those that still believe evolution has not been demonstrated in modern times, just dig around a bit and you will find relevant scientific papers.

I have - haven't found anything convincing.  Other than an arguable case - ( is a diploid gene plant a new species?) nothing convincing.

 Part of the problem is the conservatism of many biologists themselves, who blindly parrot the dogma they learnt in highschool 50 years ago that mutation is too slow to allow modern observation of evolution. To get references even more easily, just check out the work of Bob Austin at Princeton - take a few of his more recent papers on bacteria and pull out the references he quotes.

Finally, for those who say life just springs out of nowhere and suddenly. Please consider what timescales you really are talking about. Even the famous "extinction" K-T boundary encompasses millions of years. Even for a long-lived organism as ours, that is easily HALF A MILLION GENERATIONS!!

Ah so - evolution defense numbah two - throw a lot of time at the problem.  But don't examine the probability - that's ID...

The extremely unlikely does NOT necessarily happen because a long time has gone by.

[mike]

Since time is relative how do we know what the time frame is for a higher being (God, whatever) is?

It could be 1 sec = ! million of our years or some other value.

Also, who can prove or disprove that we or our universe are not setting in a giant petri dish?

[CAnnoneer]

Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler were not followers of any monotheistic religion.  They wanted a humanistic, areligious, scientific organization of society.

Hmm, no.

The nazis ripped down Christian ideas and were resurrecting pagan ideas in their place, much akin to druidics. They worshipped the "blood" or "lineage", which is a form of ancentral worship. Primitive? Yes. A religion? Certainly. They had the mythology part covered as well - the ideas of ancient aryan homeland producing all the wisdom in a sea of subhuman barbarians. They even had a "bible" that they printed on cattle hides, bound in steel, and entombed in a concrete sarcophagus to be opened after 1000 years. They had their Pontifex Maximus (Hitler) to preside over holy rituals. They had clerics and monks (propagandists, SS-men), warrior-monks (Waffen-SS), even a form of templar (SS-MDs) to protect their holy grail (pure aryan blood) from corruption (propagation of the defective, misalliance with the untermenschen) by purges (castration of "idiots" and deathcamps for the untermensch). They had their religious rallies - torch marches - druidic in symbolics and certainly mystic in intent, meaning, and effect - a form of group communion with their deity ("the pure blood"). They even had their own version of the Second Coming - the production of Nietzschean supermen - which they were striving to foment by selective breeding to purify the contaminated aryan blood. Finally, they were highly motivated in their atrocities exactly by that religious faith, rather than by "scientific" ideas.

Similar things can be found with commies as well. Their worship was one of the Big Communist Kumbaya, which is essentially a collectivist perverted humanism. They had their highpriest (GenSec), temples (Party Houses), preachers (PolitRuk), bibles (Das Kapital, gensec writings) and enforcers (Commisars, NKVD/KGB) as well as the religious zeal and intolerance of true believers. As far as science goes, they really stuck their heels with genetics because it was inconsistent with their Marxist dogma that environment and not lineage determines properties. If they were "scientifically motivated", they would not have rejected such a major advance as genetics.

Taking into account that the first thing Pol Pot did was slaughter doctors, scientists, teachers, essentially anybody with highschool education or above, your claim above cannot be taken seriously.

Interpreting evidence to fit the theory because of an unshakeable belief the theory itself must be true, rather than re-questioning the theory as new evidence presents itself is worship of the theory.

Provide objective evidence against current scientific understanding, and we will gladly consider it.

There are a lot of people who cling religiously to "scientific" ideas because they can't face uncertainty either.  They accept anything someone with a doctorate tells them as ardently as a 10th Century peasant trusted his priest. 

If they cannot face uncertainty, they would not like what their PhD tells them, which is natural laws (certain) plus probability (inherently uncertain, a toss of the dice). In fact, I would argue that religion is far more "rigid/certain" than science exactly because of it. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc...

[Ron]

Also, who can prove or disprove that we or our universe are not setting in a giant petri dish? shocked

If it can't be measured and quantified it doesn't exist to the materialist, unless it suits their pleasure.

[mike]

"unless it suits their pleasure"

LOL

[Perd Hapley]

I've avoided this thread until tonight, and now that I read through it, I understand why.  It's because those disparaging intelligent design show such utter ignorance of it (or creationism).  It seems most of you on that side have read a few critical reviews of the movement (the kind that cast it as a creationist plot perpetrated by Haliburton and the Bilderbergers) and then flail away at the phantom ID you've been fed.  If I displayed such ignorance about evolutionary theory, you'd load me down with scorn, and rightfully so. 

Sheesh, you're like evolutionist Kent Hovinds.