ACLU Vs Creationism

[Catholic2003]

gilliam:

The scientific theory can be applied as much to evolution as it can to intellegent design. I am sorry you don’t believe in an intellegent creator, but that is irrelavent.

I don’t see the point in deliberately misstating both the scientific method and my beliefs.

So what scientifically-testable predictions does intelligent design make?

 

[gilliam]

Catholic2003:

I don’t see the point in deliberately misstating both the scientific method and my beliefs.

So what scientifically-testable predictions does intelligent design make?

That some complex organisms cannot possibly be formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications alone. Is one, as you know there are others. Why even ask such a question?

 

[Catholic2003]

gilliam:

That some complex organisms cannot possibly be formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications alone. Is one, as you know there are others.

If you are trying to say that “intelligent design” is the statement that evolution is incorrect, you need to be more precise: “That some complex organisms cannot possibly be formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, each of which provides an evolutionary/reproductive advantage.”

But as I’ve already explained several times, merely saying that a scientific theory is wrong is not in itself another theory. Even if the above statement is true, it doesn’t contradict universal common descent. Do I take it that you’re okay with all life on Earth having descended from a single, common anscestor, so long as “survival of the fittest” wasn’t the mechanism that guided the selection process?

gilliam:

Why even ask such a question?

For the same reason that the American Association for the Advancement of Science did. No one has ever been able to pin down advocates of intelligent design on this question.

 

[gilliam]

Catholic2003:

If you are trying to say that “intelligent design” is the statement that evolution is incorrect, you need to be more precise: “That some complex organisms cannot possibly be formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, each of which provides an evolutionary/reproductive advantage.”

But as I’ve already explained several times, merely saying that a scientific theory is wrong is not in itself another theory. Even if the above statement is true, it doesn’t contradict universal common descent. Do I take it that you’re okay with all life on Earth having descended from a single, common anscestor, so long as “survival of the fittest” wasn’t the mechanism that guided the selection process?

The theory is that something else must be acting upon the design and that thing is intellegent in nature. You can test that if there is a patter in the creation (which has already been shown by some scientists).

For the same reason that the American Association for the Advancement of Science did. No one has ever been able to pin down advocates of intelligent design on this question.

theology again, you mean someone didn’t explain it to their judgemental satisfaction. It is sad that Evolution has turned into dogma. It belittles science.

 

[Catholic2003]

gilliam:

The theory is that something else must be acting upon the design and that thing is intellegent in nature. You can test that if there is a patter in the creation (which has already been shown by some scientists).

Making the jump from “non-random” to “intelligent” is a huge leap (of faith?), worthy of the theology label you keep trying to pin on the AAAS.

Atoms in a carbon crystal (i.e., a diamond) show quite an intricate, non-random pattern, which can be explained by atomic forces. Does this make the atomic forces intelligent?

gilliam:

theology again, you mean someone didn’t explain it to their judgemental satisfaction. It is sad that Evolution has turned into dogma. It belittles science.

I guess this is my turn to comment on the sad state of science education, and how it belittles the important teaching of the Church on faith and morals.

 

[gilliam]

Catholic2003:

Making the jump from “non-random” to “intelligent” is a huge leap (of faith?), worthy of the theology label you keep trying to pin on the AAAS…

I may have, but intellegent design doesn’t, and you know that.

I guess I am out of my league scientifically here. Maybe someone else can point you in the right direction here?

Why are you so afraid of intellegent design? You are a Catholic are you not? You do believe in God do you not? Couldn’t God cause a design? Definately a theological possibility. Until evolution is proven as a Law and not simply a theory, it needs to be taught as a theory amoungst a number of theories, not as a law. Personally, I don’t fear evolution, but I don’t fear intellegent design either.

I can see atheists fearing intellegent design, but I really don’t understand someone who says they are a Catholic fearing it.

 

[Brad]

jlw:

Pardon the interruption, but this is fun to watch. I’m out of my league here, so I’m just trying to digest your back-n-forth.

Anybody have any popcorn??

Caramel or regular?

 

[Brad]

caroljm36:

Now, fundies will have a problem with it…but as Catholics we should not. But as part of catechesis, we should point out that discovery of things like the big bang raise more questions than they answer, and that such a universe as ours couldn’t spring from nothing. I think it’s expecting too much for public schools to get into first-causes and reasons why etc. A Catholic school should be able to combine both discussions. It’s more practical and prudent to make our case separately from the public schools IMHO.

Catholics have every right to disagree with large portions of evolutionary theory based on science and their faith.

Selling all parts of evolution to kids even with the “God started evolution” disclaimer is a somewhat lazy way to accept the arguments of atheist scientists.

We also have to discount, at minimum:

The idea that humans came from some other species - this opens the door for the undermining of everything in the faith dealing with the moral code - the key to salvation and eternal life. This part of evolution (which isn’t really what even Darwin concluded) is what most kids come away with understanding, as they don’t go into great detail of the science - young minds wouldn’t be ready for it.
They cannot and should not come away with this understanding - it flies in the face of God - and that is why the ACLU wants it - and nothing else - taught.

The fundamentalists - although much of their Biblical scholarship is in error - understand the reasons for defending certain truths (such as we are made in the image and likeness of God) and that is why they are so vigorous in their defense.

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

I’m going back and reading through the thread more closely, and I have a question about this. I don’t really understand why intelligent design would be falsified by life on other planets. After all, the intelligent design of American automobiles is not falsified by the discovery that there are automobiles in Japan, albeit with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

Uh oh - double-checking - I hope I’m not becoming part of an experiment.

Life on other planets wouldn’t necessarily falsify intelligent design but it could, depending on how different the conditions are on the other planet. We know scientifically, that the conditions for life are extraordinarily specific. If, it can be proven, that life exists, or existed on other planets or solar systems with much different conditions, it would much better make the case for life being produced as a random event. The faithful would still disagree with this but it would be a great panacea for many scientists and non-believers.

 

[Brad]

Bobby Jim:

Either way the answer would be pretty irrelevant as to this question of “intelligent design”, although it would help answer the question as to whether the way life exists here on earth is the only possible solution to the problem. Which I think is an implicit assumption when people calculate the astronomical odds for life arising spontaneously (although I think that approach has other sublte flaws as well).

I think it would be very relevant to the question of ID. Randomness (life popping up elsewhere with different parameters) implies the opposite of ID. Of course, the life would have to be something fairly similar to humans to make the case - but we know how many scientis don’t see that much difference between, say, rats and humans.

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

When it comes to science, I think the discussion should be limited to what can be tested by the scientific method, with the understanding that there are many, many important things which cannot be ascertained in this manner.

Could it be that the discipline of science itself needs to be looked at to see how it should be taught? If evolutionary theory is flawed but it has been taught as gospel for a long time, it would discredit science to a large degree - isn’t this reason enough for all in science to hang onto this theory as a holy grail?

At some point however, we may need an overall of our methods and disciplines if they aren’t getting us much more than politics.

 

[Trelow]

i don’t think different life within different parameters would contradict ID.

Polar bears don’t live in the jungle and lizards don’t live in the arctic because it wouldn’t make any sense to put them there.

Likewise we don’t know if there is life elsewhere, but if there is I believe it would be safe to say that it’s there because God wants it there for reasons that are independent of us.

Nothing says that we are his only children.

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

Maybe God “rounded” billions of years into six days as well. I personally don’t see that whether creation took six days or billions of years really matters in regard to my faith and my salvation.

You may not see how it matters - and it doesn’t to a large degree. However, many use this “fact” to discount large sections of the Bible as actually occuring - leading to them discounting the moral and doctrinal teachings of that section of the Bible.

Take for example, homosexuals that want to say Leviticus either isn’t real or it is irrelevant.

This “not taking the Bible literally” argument has given theologians, scientists, femminists etc all kinds of wiggle-room to escape plain historical facts and moral teachings such as the resurrection, the teachings on hell, who wrote the gospels etc.
Not too coincidentally, it always leads a moral subjectivity framework in which anything goes - God loves you anyways.
Sorry - not what Jesus taught. Portions of the Bible are to be taken literally - most especially - the Gospels - which Vatican II Dei Verbum clearly states.

Catholic2003:

The last straw for me was when I heard for the fourth time how the “Eye of the Needle” was a rock structure where you had to remove all the packs from your camel before the camel could fit through it. Get a grip - Jesus was engaging in a bit of hyperbole!

Jesus was engaging in hyperbole either way, we hope. But He may not have been. Wouldn’t He use real-life analogies to make his point so people could understand? I mean “the eye of a needle” is not the first hyperbolic comparison that I would have chosen.

 

[Brad]

Trelow:

i don’t think different life within different parameters would contradict ID.

Polar bears don’t live in the jungle and lizards don’t live in the arctic because it wouldn’t make any sense to put them there.

Likewise we don’t know if there is life elsewhere, but if there is I believe it would be safe to say that it’s there because God wants it there for reasons that are independent of us.

Nothing says that we are his only children.

You don’t think that because you have faith.

Believe me, the search for life on other planets is being used by secularists today to discount ID.

“Look: A human can pop up anywhere - it’s not a big deal - it’s just random - but we can make it less random - we can control the process of human creation now that we understand fully the genetic code - this shows that us humans are the real ones in power and have been all along - are you fit enought to survive the power struggle?”

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

But do you agree with Maureen Callister on the Dover school board that the alternative theory that pi = 3 should be presented in mathematics class when students start discussing the circumference of the circle in geometry?

This is an extreme example - you can’t go to far with this.

The problem in education today is not that we are teaching things literally that may have been written “rounded”. The problem is we throw the entire Bible out of our education when it is the inspired Word of God - who is knowledge Himself.

The Bible as the inspired Word of God has an extraordinarily greater amount of evidence (although not all obtained as scientific evidence) than what is taught as evolution today in schools has as a theory.

The Bible’s moral teachings need to be taught in schools as fundmental underpinnings of education from day one. I’m not asking the Bible to be taught as science but secularlists(some scientists) are demanding the Bible be discarded or modified as a form of education. This really isn’t much different than what Galileo did - the Church stopped him and suffers much criticism even today for doing so - but the fact is that Galileo insisted on discrediting portions of the Bible, rather than just leaving science to science and religion to religion.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

gilliam:

Until evolution is proven as a Law and not simply a theory, it needs to be taught as a theory amoungst a number of theories, not as a law.

So until Einstein’s theory of relativity is proven as a Law and not simply a theory, maybe we should just stick to teaching Newton’s Laws of motion. Einstein’s theory can be discussed near the end as one amongst all those other theories like Ricardo Carezani’s theory of autodynamics.

And if the Ideal Gas Law was a proven as a law back in the 18th century, then why do people persist in teaching all of this Van der Waals theory and theory of corresponding states and statistical mechanical theory in thermodynamics?

Or maybe the conventional designation of “Law” vs. “theory” has a strong historical component to it, and so it’s not always so useful to talk about what’s a “Law” and what’s just a “theory”.

 

[Brad]

The Hidden Life:

Isn’t the basic problem with most science as taught today that it presupposes there are only natural/material causes to things?

YES - that is exactly the problem. Naturalism is pre-supposed in most academic institutions and science, as a result, dominates all disciplines.

It’s not just that we can’t discuss theology that contradicts naturalism in the classroom - we cannot discuss philosophy, science, literature, or any other discipline that contradicts this naturalistic worldview. Further, any professor can throw in his naturalism worldview to the students - even if he/she is teaching something as irrelevant as computer science.

It is this same naturalism that has gotten into our law system and created judges that have to make law to conform to immoral codes - completely against logic. You have to do a lot of yoga-like contortions sometimes to justify a subjective-morals existence but, when it allows you to do what you did without guilt, there are many up to the challenge.

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

If you stop to examine how non-scientific theories can be compared and contrasted with scientifically-testable theories, then you’ve pretty much turned the class into a philosophy class. What about the theory that says that everything you perceive is really a dream, and there is no actual universe at all? There’s no way to disprove this, but what more can you say about it.

Peace.

Great point. This is why good philosophy should be given at least equal weight as science. Right now we say - this is science - believe it - you will be tested on it. And we ignore philosphy becuase, at the early stages of youth, this would essentially be religion. (Can’t study Aristotle in 2nd grade).

We have to stop throwing religon and God out of our schools.

If this weren’t happening then scientists wouldn’t have to worry as much about ID being taught as science.

The problem lies with the secularlists, not the faithful.

 

[Brad]

gilliam:

That statement is a theological one, not a scientific one.

To state a scientific theory and to show some evidence for it, is science. To say not to categorize something as a theory because of some believe system is theology, not science.

Good point.

This shows what I have always been suspecting. Religion always has been in schools - it’s just that now it is paganism instead of Christianity.

 

[Brad]

Catholic2003:

This is exactly why good science teaching is so important.

The determination of what constitutes a scientific theory is based solely on whether or not the scientific method can be applied. That is, does the theory make testable predictions that can be verified or falsified experimentally. If the theory makes such predictions, it is a scientific theory. If the theory makes no such testable predictions, it is not within the realm of science.

Newton’s theory of gravity is a scientific theory, as is Einstein’s. Aristotle’s claim that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects is also a scientific theory, albeit one that has been falsified by Galileo’s experimentation.

Evolution makes significant and widespread predictions that are put to the test every day. (The Talk.Origins link has pages and pages of them.) Intelligent design makes no such testable predictions. To quote the AAAS, “the ID movement has not proposed a scientific means of testing its claims.”

Determining whether something lies within the realm of science involves no theology, only an evaluation with respect to the requirements of the scientific method.

So what you are saying is that something that has been taught as science for 1,000+ years (Aristotle example) can be proven wrong one day.

So, tell me again - why should the 4,000+ years of moral teachings from the Bible which never change (and which can be proven scientifically to lead to a much healthier (phsically and mentally) - if followed - be trumped by the teachings of science, which may say all their stuff is way wrong in 1,000 years or so?