The Science of Intelligent Design
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4248679.stm

It's hardly science, though, is it? Surely this is covered in religious studies or something of a similar ilk.

Absolutely rediculous. Does freedom of speech not extend to freedom of what not to speak? On what basis could these science teachers be sued? I am truly amazed.

There are still people who believe that?! Probably because they all got taught creationism in their physics lessons :-/

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

The monkey trials: take 91.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Oh no.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Anyone want to help me build a Stark?

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

'ridiculous'

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Thanks...

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Just to play devil's advocate, how is Inteligent Design any less well proven?

you know there are some people that describe "the big bang" as the 'how' to the "Divine Creation" 'why'.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

There is no evidence for it at all.

That's a pretty good way for it to be less well proven.

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you're beginning to see it aren't you....

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Look into my eyes look into my eyes don't look around the eyes, the eyes the eyes, you're under.

When you wake up you will not, I repeat, not post ambiguous waffle on GD.

One, two, three, and you're back again.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Ambiguous waffle is his strong point. I'm glad I didn't attend school in America if this is going on.

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Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Hopefully the term 'Intelligent Design' is a good thing. It shows that the Creationists are trying to make their nonsense sould plausable by giving it a more scientific sounding name.' I hope everyone who encounters this is able to see through this make-over and the idea finally dies, at least until some actual evidence arises which actually gives it the slightest hint of credbility, which is unlikely. Religion attempting to hold science back has been around for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years. the earth is round, the universe revolves around the sun. there is no reason, apart from the decline in church power, in part thanks to the rise of science , that the church has become any more open-minded than it has to. So every discovery which is made is essentially (hopefully) another nail in the coffin of organised religion and it's dogma.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Budhism has always seemed pretty cool to me.

I have not studied it in any great depth so i am amiable to being instructed in how wrong i am.

Christianity/Islam/Judiasm i wouldn't mind see dying (or at least its effect on Government policty) tho.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Indeed, I have no problems with Budhism and have considered following it myself, but I can't really be bothered.

I was generally referring to Christianity/Islam/Judaism, but specifically Christianity as that is the religion I am more familiar with. As long as a religion doesn't try too be too preachy and tell you what to do, how to act, how to think etc I don't really have a problem with it. I believe personal faith can be a good thing, institutionalised faith is not.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

ok, for the record (these things always need spelling out don't they) I'm not christian, and I don't go for the creation story as entirely plausible, let alone proveable HOWEVER ....

Darwinism doesn't hold up terribly well either. For one thing it's WAY too quick in some areas and WAY too slow in others and if you're all as so terribly well read on the subject as you make out to be then you'll know this.

Also it would make me smile, if just for once a significantly proportioned group of people could all collectively appreciate the difference between a christian faith, and a christian religion. You may be pleasently suprised by the former, seeing as how by the sounds of it, we're all in agreement about how tiring and out dated the later is.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

1) back in the room again.

2) lollyroffle @ ambiguous waffle

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

I have a degree in Genetics.

What i was taught about evolution at Uni makes perfect sense.

FUNNILY ENOUGH THE THEORY HAS ADVANCED A LITTLE SINCE DARWIN FIRST "THOUGHT IT UP"!

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

But the thing is, science adapts and it' theories develop depending on the evidence. Darwinism may very possibly be incorrect but once a more practical theory that fits the evidence is put forward then that will take over Darwinism If science ever fails to do this then ithe institutions become stagnant and pointless, just like organised religion.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Either you're utterly misunderstanding how a random process works, or there's something you should go and tell the people I know at the university Genetics Department.

You see, they're of the opinion that Evolutionary Theory has such a body of evidence behind it that only a madman would consider it lacking in justification.

Yes, I said Evolutionary Theory. Because, believe it or not, straight "Darwinism" hasn't been the thang in that field for quite some time.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

When Mark and I agree NOTHING CAN STOP US!

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I disagree.

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on this principal then, disprove creationism and you have a valid reason to take it off a sylabus.


Mark, I'm sure that "knocking" darwinism is not going to be a popular move (and I'd like to point out that i don't have a degree in genetics infact I am not from a science back ground - I don't count social sciences as science) but oh well . Explain to me then how in terms of performance we have seen little improvement in say the milk production of a freesian cow (without using humans selectively breeding the cows). Because to me it would seem that if left to their own devices they'd rather strive towards a state of entropy. Such a "natural balance" is infact something central to a creationist arguement.

Anyway this conversation will probably start going over my head once all you bofins start using big words...

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i don't think you understand, we'd need a valid reason to put it on a syllabus.

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You can't disprove a negative.

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Creationism isn't a negative.

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Creationists believe God created the world 6,000 years ago. Show me proof for God and we have no problem. Or just some valid evidence in support of creationism.

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Fossil records and the construction of the known universe should really do against something with nothing going for it, evidence wise.

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Didn't God randomly disperse fossils around the world to throw us off the scent and make us question him so that only the truely righteous will enter the kingdom of heaven :confused:

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

forever and ever AYMEN!!!

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

the time one isn't the best arguement against "creationism" (I am going to put all terms in quotations seeing as how someone neg repped me for using 'darwinism' - grrrr) unless you assume that when it talks about for example the to become israelites wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years to literally mean 40 years (that isn't actually the case, throughout the bible periods of time are often explained in 40s, be that 40 days or 40 years and actually it's just a relative expression something which can be expanded to the 6 days notion, exactly what is 'a day' and don't say sun rise to sun rise as day one of that story doesn't have a sun in it!).

Anyway I'm in danger of being torn to shreads for putting forward an alternative particularly seeing as how I don't agree with it. I don't see creationism as having a place in "science" lesson if you take science to mean only physics biology or chemistry and associated schools of thought. However in terms of presenting all the options for how we are where we are now "science" (in the afor mentioned definition) doesn't explain say conciousness particularly well or what happens to that particular form of mass / energy / whatever else you wish to use to describe a human thought construct, whereas say budism offers another approach which happily keeps in with the idea of a none diminishing "energy pool" (the nitrogen cycle misses out there wouldn't you say?).

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

*cough*

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Quite a lot of the body is designed pretty crappily, to be honest.

Oh, and if the person talking about Creationism wasn't talking about Young Earth Creationism, then the challenge was utterly meaningless. You can't disprove something which doesn't put forward any hypotheses; indeed, you can't prove that something didn't or can't happen, by the nature of empiricism. However, to even suggest that things may be true, you have to put forward evidence. The burden of proof is all skewed.

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The appendix is the organ required for prayer to work. It's a sign of our growing distance from god that the appendix is now considered pointless and a sad reflection on the state of religion in the western world.

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Of all the people I've met who didn't believe in evolutionary theory (and sadly there have been quite a lot) not one of those pepole actually understood evolutionary theory at all.

That could be a coincidence though.

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Fresians evolved to produce the correct amount of milk required to sustain their offspring, producing more would be inefficient and thus incompatible with evolutionary goals.

Efficiency is likely to be central to any theory regarding "the origin of species" (as Darwin phrased it).

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Birds not becoming more powerful as to fly faster / beat the other bird to the worm? (saves getting up early)

And to Toccata and Fugue, I should probably put something like "fundamentalist christians are just silly" along with "if dinosaurs and man were not around at the same time how do you expect man to write about them" (seeing as how the bible was not constructed in the same way as say the koran was. But then Bill Hicks wrote that and Bill hicks actually WAS a god, so i was too busy laughing)

Anyway now i;m just posting for the sake of it so i'll stop :)

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Well done, you found the best (i.e. funniest) argument for anything ever.

I hope someone eventually uses that in a serious context.

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We're going back to the old "Is the Bible literal or not" argument.
The only way I see christianity as even slightly credible is if it's not.
As it is I'd prefer to make my own religion based on my personal knowledge and experience than rely on the rules that someone wrote down in a language I don't understand many many years before I was born.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

It's the premise of all the best* threads.











* worst

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Not sure if you're having a pop or what. I have stopped being serious about this topic now.

grrr you're going to make me type it, see i;m ashamed at myself for this now but.....

"god made animals on day 5 and man on day 6". Now, if you take that to mean like 1 actual day then you may as well just toss out genisis and indeed the whole lot as poppycock. But then given the bible is a collection of interpretations of events not actual accounts of events (although in some cases it's pretty darned accurate when compared to other documents written around the same time) then you've got to give it some leeway. I mean how exactly are you supposed to messure the time lag between "day 5 and day 6".

But you're right, lets really NOT have this discussion it's old, especially seeing as how in reality we probably both near as damnit agree anyway.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Shhhhhh.

I didn't actually mean that you should continue the point.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Oxygen consumption in birds is inversely proportional to the speed of flight. For a bird to fly faster, increased lung capacity is one of the first requirements. Birds already have large complex lung systems (the lungs basically take up all unused space in the body) and to increase the volume they would have to become bigger and therefore need larger pectoral muscles, wingspan, etc. This increase in size and energy usage would necessitate a much higher caloric intake and therefore larger prey become more efficient so disposing of the reason for getting faster in the first place (i.e. you are now competing for a completely different food resource). Welcome to the reason why hawks don't eat worms.

As for why birds don't simply evolve a more efficient mechanism of gas exchange in order to keep the lung size down, the answer is simple; they already have.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Either "in before edit", or "quoi?".

Whichever applies.

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it is just that the quran is basically the bible with add-ons




generaly speaking ...

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Entropy... it rolls off the tongue well doesn't it?

Gayle for the record if anyone actually asked me what camp I'd be in it would look something like "all creatures strive to achieve balance with themselves and their environment" (except maybe a lot of humans in some respects but that's a WHOLE different issue).

it's just that the thread started talks not about modern day theories but about Darwin's theory of evolution (possibly because its authors skipped school that day) which by the way is a bitten thumb in dace's direction!

Anyway I have clilnical supervision to write up and this isn't helping.

You're all right and that article is terrible. There that's what you wanted to hear isn't it?

(Discussions are more fun than soap box rants though - especially if the other side appears to cave ;) )

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

entropy doesn't apply to 'everything' in socio-technical way.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

Then presumably that camp is one held over the summer, for people who wish to develop their powers of observation.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

"Inversely proportional" is correct, don't ask me why. My biology education stopped at A level so I didn't get that far into avian physiology. At a guess I'd say that requirement goes up but consumption goes down to to the way their gas exchange mechanism works. This would lead to lactic acidosis after a while hence stopping birds flying too fast for too long.

Re: The Science of Intelligent Design
 

I suppose something as mundane as "they generate lift more efficiently at high speed" could also be a factor.