ID vs. Evolution

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the bible is a story up for interpretation by different individuals and is itself an interpretation of an interpretation of a story that was written thousands of years ago. we only have greek and latin texts for the most part that were interpretations of aremaic(sp?) so it's impossible to say for sure that the greek interpretations were correct to begin with.


citing the bible alone is an extremely weak case for intellegent design and has one major flaw: it isn't science. science requires much debate, studying, and testing of theories and then scrutinizing and checking the methods of testing those theories. it isn't just based off of a religious text.....if so, then who's to say that the koran's origins story isn't true or the buddhist origins or hindu origins. that's just religious supremacy at work and nothing more.

from my own personal experience with the ID "scientists", most of the time they either lie outright about information or are ignorant in the latest developments of evolutionary science and geology or just plain don't care to say anything other than that their ID is a science which is the biggest tipoff that it's just religious supremacists who want their religion taught in school and that's it. sadly these people combined with a mass of ignorant parents have lead to stickers in books saying that evolution is a disputed theory and that it should be considered critically as if it has no legitimacy....when really, evolution is the most accepted theory and most updated and current theory of origins and intellegent design is the fringe that only is popular because of the religious sects who push it as science when it isn't.

Apparentely I've come off as a 'bible beater' when I am not. FYI, I study both, the bible AND science, and try to see how the two fit together if they can in certain issues.

from my own experience, the bible has little to do with science but is a great historical refernce for not only perspective on things that were happening around jesus' time but also for sociological reasons analyzing how the bible has changed through the years and which books were left out of the bible and which were included and why gnostic gospels might have been left out.


i'd dare to say that the bible isn't good for much other than sociological and limited historical studies (obviously the creation story isn't good for much other than showing how the power of oral tradition can help a story survive till it is eventually written down).

A great historical reference?? Real historians would vehemently disagree. The bible is near useless for historical reference because so much of it is contradictory, obviously mythical, poorly written, nonsensical etc. Jesus probably did not even exist. There are various books available that examine the very real possibility that Jesus is nothing but a fictional character. It is pretty damn obvious that the story of creation in genesis is fictional. Again it is pretty damn obvious that the story of Noah's Ark is fictional. Similarly, the story of Jesus is... just that, a story. A fictional character. There is NO real evidence to say he ever existed.

The "same worlds" model of religion and science is inherently problematic beacuse the two use entirely different methodologies. Ultimately the two end up poluting each other.

I don't take that to be unfair, but do note that the ideal form of science proposed in its methodology is to a greater or lesser extent mythological (and can occasionally to be treated as a religious dogma). Fighting for funds, political and social acceptance, bodies of opinion (orthodox, schismatic and heretical!) are all to be found sullying the purity of the concept.

Certain parallels with religion after all...

Science changes as new discoveries are made. Whereas in religion, it is heresy to say any aspect of it is wrong.

The science bibles are constantly changing and being updated with new information, new discoveries, new knowledge. Whereas the christian bible does not change (unless there is a schism / break off faction).

On this basis alone, even if every other issue was excluded, we can reasonably conclude that religion is absurd.

Science is about discovering the truth of the nature of the universe. Religion is about dogmatically and stubbornly believing whatever you want, and refuting everything else regardless of common sense, rationality, and mountains of evidence.

There are a million reasons why religion is utterly ridiculous, but they all require the person to be rational, which is why they fail to convince so many people: Religious people are usually irrational.

Where is religion's peer review process?? When has christianity ever said the bible is wrong??

Science makes PROVISIONAL statements about the DEGREE OF LIKELYHOOD that something is true. Everything that is scientific "fact" is constantly under the scrutiny of the peer review process. Everthing science belives can be disproven tomorrow given sufficient evidence.

Religion makes statements of ABSOLUTE truth with little or no evidence to back them up and no peer review. Thus we can't disprove what they say (isn't that how brain washing works??)

Tell me, I know for a fact that many of the world's religions have some story about a character who dies and saves someone else. That has to be one of the most common and wide-spread themes throughout literature. If all of humanity (or a very large majority of humanity, anyways) has that aspect in common, wouldn't it be possible to conclude that something along those lines did happen?

If all religions were mythical and made up, but they all had common aspects (which they do), wouldn't it point to the fact that there is actually a religion?

Also, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "Entropy increases over time", making the processes more spontaneous. I don't want to go into the chemical equations for this (I can if you guys really want me to!), but you have the laws of thermo backwards and mixed up.

The reason for this is that the various religions copied each other, or split into different factions, etc. For example, Christianity is a combination of mostly Judaism plus some Paganism thrown in. Hence why Jews and Christians both have the same Old Testament. The Christians just copied their BS from older sources.

Science & Creationism: A view from the National Academy of Sciences.

The irony is, if ID was practiced in a scientific fashion, then legally all religions become within scientific purview and hence grounds for automatic rejection rather then pseuedo-intellectual gymnastics. It's too bad most of ID's enemies don't use this aspect of ID and use this double edged sword against the religious ID'ers. Speaking from someone who's studied history, it seems both paley and darwin were not exactly stupid. Things evolved, but if paley and darwin would see the insides of modern organisms I have no doubt they might entertain notions of advanced molecular/nano-technological machinery. To put it another way, ID is the theory that life is the result of applied science. Evolution is the theory that life is not the result of applied science.

I get what the ID people are saying, and ID might have a chance once they find some evidence beyond life itself. i.e. if they found ruins of labs from millions of years ago or the technology needed to design life. Something capable of designing life must also have been capable of leaving better historical records then what most religions amount to, you'd expect monoliths or sattelites full of hitsorical records of their meddling if such design took place. Not books loaded with symbolism and superstitions.

This still does'nt change the fact that ID is based on a CONSTRUCT. The notion that god or a higher power created the universe, philosophicaly lies outside the boundaries of science. We can never test this statement to verify or reject it. Therefore it is'nt science regardless of what you call it.

Well, we cannot go back to the beginning of time and see how the world came into existance how we know it today, so nothing can be completely proven. Creation cannot be proven by the scientific method (experiments must be both measurable and repeatable) and neither can macroevolution.

Also, if we can't go back and repeat the experiments, then we'll just have to rely on known scientific evidence and come to a conclusion from there.

It might be a good idea for this debate if someone could define exactly what is meant by evolution. Microevolution (red apples to green apples) by breeding and genetics has been repeated throughout the times, but macroevolution (from pears to apples) hasn't.

One major component of a scientific theory is to have a mechanism or explination as to mhy something is happening.

Example: Evolution
1) Organisms have offspring
2)some offspring have random mutaions in thier genes. If these are benificial there is a greater chance to reproduce and those genes spread to the nest generation.

To disprove Evolution you would have to disprove its mechanism.

ID, however, has no mechanism. It simply states that an intellegnt designer created organisms but doesn't say how. Without a mechanism ID cannot be tested and thus is not a scientific theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

go to this link to see some of the problems with ID

http://darwiniana.org/abiogenesis.htm

How the Scum of the Earth Led to Advanced Life

Understand how life emerges from cosmic and planetary precursors

The Beginnings of Life on Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life