Conservatives against ID

[.Shane.]

ID just hypothesizes that perhaps there was a designer of some of the biological mechanisms.

Sorry, but this is just so much semantical mularkey.

And, just who would that designer be? Ralph Lauren? Edith Head? Gucci?

 

[Neomega]

Sorry, but this is just so much semantical mularkey.

And, just who would that designer be? Ralph Lauren? Edith Head? Gucci?

Who knows. The God who hates homosexuals and tells us to give 10% to the church?

More than likely no.

Beings from unknown dimensions?

more than likley no.

Aliens?

More than likely no.

It is, however, a possibility that life was designed, and Earth was seeded by a designer.

Life on Earth, started by random chance, is almost as unlikely as it being designed by aliens.

 

[Neomega]

Yes, but they also insist that the designer was the Christian God.

yes, those who are pushing for ID are mostly Christians who would like to then act as if Intelligent design says their God created the world. It is an attempt to open the door to creationism, which i am 100% against being taught in schools other than religious studies or philosophy type classes.

 

[carlosMM]

ID just hypothesizes that perhaps there was a designer of some of the biological mechanisms.

what ID?

if we go to the roots, then it's Michael Behe's ID. And then you are wrong: he cliams ther must be.

Also, he admitted, under oath, in court, that ID is a religious based speculation with no explanatory power whatsoever. A belief.

Game, set and match: Mayr et al.

 

[El_Machinae]

ID only suggests that our universe might have been made by someone who chose the universal constants.

It doesn't say anything, meaning, there's no way to prove it wrong. It's not inheritely wrong, just not useful.

I believe both Erik and Eran actually believe that God made the universe on purpose, knowing what He was doing.

 

[Neomega]

In my opinion, the Universe is in a constant state, and never was "created", big bang or otherwise, it just has always existed.

But life, I think, it is possible, that life was actually designed. Loooking at the DNA double helix has got to make you wonder.

I still believe 95% in evolution, but I will keep an open mind if more evidence were to come to light.

I KNOW I will never see evidence indicating that the God defined by evangelicals created the universe, or life for that matter.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I believe both Erik and Eran actually believe that God made the universe on purpose, knowing what He was doing.

Did you ever read "In the Beginning was the Command Line", by Neal Stephenson? It's available online. Here's an excerpt:

Spoiler Wall o' Text :

THE RIGHT PINKY OF GOD


In his book The Life of the Cosmos, which everyone should read, Lee Smolin gives the best description I've ever read of how our universe emerged from an uncannily precise balancing of different fundamental constants. The mass of the proton, the strength of gravity, the range of the weak nuclear force, and a few dozen other fundamental constants completely determine what sort of universe will emerge from a Big Bang. If these values had been even slightly different, the universe would have been a vast ocean of tepid gas or a hot knot of plasma or some other basically uninteresting thing--a dud, in other words. The only way to get a universe that's not a dud--that has stars, heavy elements, planets, and life--is to get the basic numbers just right. If there were some machine, somewhere, that could spit out universes with randomly chosen values for their fundamental constants, then for every universe like ours it would produce 10^229 duds.

Though I haven't sat down and run the numbers on it, to me this seems comparable to the probability of making a Unix computer do something useful by logging into a tty and typing in command lines when you have forgotten all of the little options and keywords. Every time your right pinky slams that ENTER key, you are making another try. In some cases the operating system does nothing. In other cases it wipes out all of your files. In most cases it just gives you an error message. In other words, you get many duds. But sometimes, if you have it all just right, the computer grinds away for a while and then produces something like emacs. It actually generates complexity, which is Smolin's criterion for interestingness.

Not only that, but it's beginning to look as if, once you get below a certain size--way below the level of quarks, down into the realm of string theory--the universe can't be described very well by physics as it has been practiced since the days of Newton. If you look at a small enough scale, you see processes that look almost computational in nature.

I think that the message is very clear here: somewhere outside of and beyond our universe is an operating system, coded up over incalculable spans of time by some kind of hacker-demiurge. The cosmic operating system uses a command-line interface. It runs on something like a teletype, with lots of noise and heat; punched-out bits flutter down into its hopper like drifting stars. The demiurge sits at his teletype, pounding out one command line after another, specifying the values of fundamental constants of physics:

> universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass 1.673e-27....

and when he's finished typing out the command line, his right pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two, wondering what's going to happen; then down it comes--and the WHACK you hear is another Big Bang.

I think you will find the book interesting, because the author is IMO brilliant. Not all of it is about this, though.

 

[Babbler]

Interesting site. Reminds me of this article.

I thought this issue was burning itself out with the recent court decision in Pennsylvania.

It's down, but not out. The creationists are going to find a new way of forcing the Genesis myth into the classroom, if not by Intelligent Design, but some new Trojan horse.

My dirty little secret is that even though I am not on the right, there are way too many leftists/counter-culture types I can't stand...

EDIT: and what is t.o.?

I have too argee. Insanity is insanity. And some of these new agers support some kind of ID (not the kind the Discovery Institute likes). After you bastardize one science for own ideological (and monetary) gains, the rest becomes easy.

 

[Sidhe]

String theory looks computational in nature because it's mans attempt to fit predictable mathematical constructs into quantum mechanics, I'm not sure I have much time for string theory, it is fairly uselss atm. And I'm not sure it will ever be of any use being that strings are too small to ever see and that the dimensions required to fit the facts are non visible to human perception. It's a rather clever theory that doesn't rely on experimentation nor may it ever. It's a tad too convenient. In short it's crazy but not crazy enough to be true

In M theory an extension of string theory all possible universes can exist given enough time, so sooner or later we have a monkeys with typewriters argument, rather like evolution, look into the small steps in enough detail and you have the universe existing given an infinity of time to exist in and evolution given enough attempts at a solution.

For universal existence we are unable to present a testable hypothesis atm, just a construct of our imagination.

For evolution read the blind watch maker, perhaps the ideas there are the same just on a different scale and time frame.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I have too argee. Insanity is insanity. And some of these new agers support some kind of ID (not the kind the Discovery Institute likes). After you bastardize one science for own ideological (and monetary) gains, the rest becomes easy.

Your last link reminds me of "Beginner's Guide to Astral Travel" and some companion volumes such as "Shapeshifting for Beginners". Funny books. I've considered buying them as props for my D&D group.

 

[Neomega]

I have too argee. Insanity is insanity. And some of these new agers support some kind of ID (not the kind the Discovery Institute likes). After you bastardize one science for own ideological (and monetary) gains, the rest becomes easy.

What type of ID does the discovery institute like?

I think you are close minded if you think that life could have only happened by random chance. There is as little evidence to support this as there is to support it was created by aliens.

In fact, no more popular theories are those of life being spread by space spores.. but that still does not answer the question of, how did the space spores get created, by random chance?

 

[Babbler]

What type of ID does the discovery institute like?

The Christian kind. But don't tell any one .

I think you are close minded if you think that life could have only happened by random chance. There is as little evidence to support this as there is to support it was created by aliens.

So who created the aliens? Attributing life's origins to aliens does not answer the question, only pushes it back.

In fact, no more popular theories are those of life being spread by space spores.. but that still does not answer the question of, how did the space spores get created, by random chance?

There not a whole lot of evidence for space spores. And abiogenesis is not dependant on chance, but on the laws of physics and chemistry.

 

[Neomega]

There not a whole lot of evidence for space spores. And abiogenesis is not dependant on chance, but on the laws of physics and chemistry.

And a whole series of the right situations, which have yet to be recreated in any lab.

hmm, aliens, or other dimensional beings, who created them? Haven't a clue. Maybe something they are unaaware of created them, or maybe it is just another one of those, "always has been things"

But you won't get me saying, "GOD created the Aliens, now give me 10% of your money and try to turn homos into straight people!"

There is no logical connection, whatsoever, between a higher power creating the blueprints for life, and that God being the God as defined by the King James Bible.

 

[croxis]

The problem is very little in the universe is random. The only true randomness in the universe is the quantum level. A coin flip is not true random. If we accounted for all the variables (initial position, force of the coin, air pressure, etc) we can predict exactly which face will land up. Life comming together isn't random, atoms and molicules are behaving exactly as they should.

As for why the constants are the way they are, well, if they were off we wouldn't exactly be here to think about it now would we

 

[YNCS]

Any theory that needs the statement "and then a miracle happened" is not science.

 

[Pyrite]

What exactly is gained by pushing the creation back another step (to a creator)? It still doesn't offer us anything useful scientifically, because where exactly did this creator come from? Stating that the creator is timeless and eternal (although it MIGHT indeed be true) doesn't help us one bit, because A) it has no relevance to a verifiable conclusion and B) It's a valuless hypothesis based on speculation. Go ahead and marvel at the intricacies of DNA and the slight changes in the laws of physics that would render this universe a "dud", you still aren't accomplishing anything. Indeed, life is complex, the universe is complex. But I still don't see how that justifies the postulation that a creator is beyond it all. A creator MIGHT have been behind it all, and started life, but there's nothing but your own incredulity supporting that. The probability for life occuring means absolutely nothing, all we know is that life DID occur, let's work on what we can actually study, rather then philosophically gazing into the stars and imagining the benevolent hand of a creator, because that's accomplishing absolutely nothing.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

I found this site today and think it deserves mention. Although almost everyone who is trying to get creationism taught in school these days comes from the Right, it is important to note that one can be a conservative and still accept science.

This is a petition urging those who are on the right side of the political spectrum who accept the theory of evolution along with the rest of science to sign. I encourage any CFCers who fit that description (like I do) to sign.

It's always encouraging to see people actually think and use the tools of science to analyze actual facts, knowledge and data to draw logical conclusions.

I can't sign in clear conscience though as I am not from the right (or the left either).

 

[Sims2789]

I found this site today and think it deserves mention. Although almost everyone who is trying to get creationism taught in school these days comes from the Right, it is important to note that one can be a conservative and still accept science.

This is a petition urging those who are on the right side of the political spectrum who accept the theory of evolution along with the rest of science to sign. I encourage any CFCers who fit that description (like I do) to sign.

I guess there's still a people who don't want an overbearing federal government that have remained in the Republican Party.

 

[BasketCase]

I'm a conservative on most issues, and also a strong evolutionist.

But then, I didn't vote in either of the last two U.S. Presidential elections, and I don't see any real urgency about signing this, either. The only thing that bugs me about religion is when its adherents try to convert me, and I don't see why I should be trying to convert anyone else.

 

[YNCS]

It's only a small, but very vocal minority who try to push creationism and its alter ego, ID. Most educated people, regardless of political persuasion, accept evolution.