Teacher informs students of evolution lies in textbooks

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You don't have any facts proving that I'm not the sole surviving son of Krypton. Therefore, I must be!

I can easily accept that until atheists or agnostics working as scientists in whatever field begin declaring intelligent design a scientifically-provable falsehood.


I am not the fool you seem to want to believe I am!

Intelligent design is simply irrelevant to science. We (scientists) can't disprove it no more than we can disprove that Zeus isn't responsible for producing lightning. However, the facts don't imply there are any guiding influences beyond those of the natural laws of physics for either evolution or lightning strikes. Thus scientists dismiss both intelligent design and Zeus for causing lightning strikes. There is absolutely no physical evidence for either (intelligent design / Zeus) and a ton of evidence that evolution and lightning strikes are both simply natural phenomena following known physical principles.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

I hear what you are saying and I can easily respect the scientist who sets all of that aside, and yet this answer was given as to why our eyes are as they are:

"Because further improvement is not required for the survival of this species."

So no matter how pure one's science might be, it is still not possible to rule out "any guiding influences beyond those of the natural laws" if even evolution is to actually work. If that could be done, then even the idea of "natural laws" would have to be abandoned.

This was in response to your post that implied the complexity of the eye could only be attributed to a higher being. My response was the likely reason that eyes are not better than they are.



Natural law is just that: law. In science, there is a very big distinction between scientific theory and scientific law. You mat want to research the difference.

We may not have discovered everything about natural laws, but to say that we must abandon natural laws because you feel that there must be an influence beyond them makes no sense to me.

Eyes have evolved over millions of years and have evolved differently in different species. The eyes of each have evolved to best match their environment. From the giant eyes of the giant squid (the size of a football) so they can more easily spot predators deep in the sea, to those creatures that got trapped in caves systems thousands of years ago and are now losing their eyes. In the dark eyes serve no purpose and in fact are detrimental in that they take energy to operate, especially within the brain to process the visual information. Those offspring that are born with eyes better adapted to their environment will out compete those with eyes less suited - even if it means gradually losing eye sight! At our point in evolution, humans have the most appropriate eyes for our needs as they are now. If we had "better" eyes there is always a price to pay - so for example if we could see in the infra-red that might provide some benefits regarding seeing in the dark, but the price would be less room for the rods/cones in the retina that detect red/green/blue, so there would be a diminution in normal daytime eyesight, plus there would be an extra overhead in energy requirements for processing the visual information in the brain. For every evolutionary advantage there is a price to pay. If the price proves to be worth paying in regards to the survival and reproductive ability of the organism then the new adaptation will be passed down the generations.

At some stage in our evolution, humans shifted to being bipedal and standing upright. That has given us advantages in our environment, but there is a price to pay, the evolution is not yet fully optimised for standing upright and humans suffer from lots of back problems. In a few more millions of years humans may have evolved to have less back problems as our joints evolve to cope better with being upright.

I had said nothing about feelings, and neither did I suggest natural laws must be abandoned. I am simply saying there is no proof of any kind of order ever emerging from chaos and that whatever "influence" there might or might not be or have been and "natural law" are essentially the same even though the scientist might distinguish between the two in order to avoid any discussion of anything that cannot be proved through replication.

On a different note...

My oldest grandchild once asked me why fire is hot, and I have yet to answer him. The scientist can explain *how* fire is hot, but the "Why?" of that matter is outside the scope of science and is something I am still pondering.

In this country, there is absolutely NO state religion. So it hardly matters if a school was started by Christians or Muslims in a particular community. No religion should be given preferential treatment over another. And that's reason enough why religion should not be taught or promoted in public schools.

You are incorrect. This is a fascinating field. The first glimmer of this being observed was in Russia, around 50 years ago as I recall. A Russian scientist had accidentally discovered that a mixture of two certain chemicals, if simply left to its own devices, spontaneously organised itself into a new molecular arrangement. It turned out the resulting chemical was coloured. After some time the mix spontaneously rearranged itself again into another state that was not coloured, and thus the chemicals oscillated between different ordered states from the initial mixed, chaotic state. The scientist reported his findings to his superiors but they were dismissed as experimental error. It wasn't until many decades later after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the experiment became known in the west and is now simply one of many examples of the ways in which chaotic matter is found to spontaneously organise itself into more complex structures. There is nothing supernatural about this... unfortunately the maths is quite complex but essentially involves nothing more than positive feedback.

This is becoming quite a big and interesting field, the way chaotic matter spontaneously organises itself into more complex structures. Each molecule is simply following the principles of chemistry / physics, but the overall outcome is quite spectacular. We see it in the arrangement of the beautiful shapes of snowflakes and crystals and in plants too where leaves form regular patters (e.g. fern leaves) following principles of fractals. A small repeating principle creating complex large structures. Similar principles have been found at work in the organisation of proteins from simple molecular chains and similarly the organisation of proteins into complex organs such as the liver and brain.

The spontaneous arrangement of disordered matter into complex structures is a fascinating and relatively new field. So you are totally incorrect when you say "there is no proof of any kind of order ever emerging from chaos". On the contrary, it looks very much like this principle is the very basis of the origin of life and the driving force in evolution.

double post

Last edited by Janissy on 28 Feb 2014, 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To me, this and other imperfections are a good argument against intelligent design. If we were perfectly suited for our enviroment, our bodies would be perfect "out of the box" and only subject to whatever damage time and our chosen lifestyle inflicted.

Theologians over time have tackled that issue by saying the design flaws were done on purpose, that they are a consequence of being kicked out of Eden. For example, childbirth for women is a real kluge. Walking upright requires narrow hips but giving birth painlessly requires very wide hips- so wide they would be incompatible with human walking. The Eden story gives a good narrative to explain this and all the other physical and psychological pains of being human. But when you step away from the religious narrative, it is more clearly a kluge and not the result of intelligent planning.

This book goes into that nicely. And also explains why I chose the word "kluge".
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/listing/2 ... 9118597978

Our eyes are perfectly designed. Except for the part where they see everything upside down and our brain has to compensate for that in real-time. And the countless people who need corrective lenses to even see properly. And the fact that geese and a number of other birds have way better eyesight than we do.

I doubt the kind of thing you have mentioned will ever grow or expand to the complexity of a functioning eyeball within a living being of whatever kind, but I can accept your report on the matter of at least something taking place there as long as you can acknowledge the fact of there having been some intelligent action preceding it!

Exactly. You only have to look at the human genome, or the genome of any other animal. Our DNA is riddled with bits of DNA from other organisms, especially viruses. Viruses have been copying and pasting bits of DNA between species for millions of years. It is now thought that viruses are a major cause of the mutations to DNA that give rise to evolutionary changes. There is strong evidence to support it. A recent discovery from analysis of DNA is that mammals (humans included!) owe our ability to have a placenta in which to grow a baby to a sequence of DNA derived from a virus! Without that snippet of DNA mammals can no longer fix an embryo inside the womb. Try explaining that with intelligent design!

DNA contains not only the DNA of what we look like today but lots of scraps of disused DNA from our evolutionary past. Again, a difficult one for intelligent design to respond to; yet is perfectly understandable with natural forces being responsible for evolution. Our genome is one huge messy hack of bits of "crossed out" and redundant DNA and bits pasted in from other organisms by viruses; some of which is just garbage and some of which has become essential to our very existence as humans.

How does the matter of how intelligent any alleged or denied "God" either might or might not be enter into any kind of discussion of science?