One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

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Monkey1976 said:
IDvolution makes a very specific claim as to the designer:If it is a science, then it needs to show empirical proof for God. Otherwise, it is making a claim and providing no support.

Evolution is a theory which explains the diversity of life, not the origin of life itself. Darwin’s book is indeed correctly titled, because it explains where the species we see today came from - earlier species. The “requirement” that evolution must “play nice” with abiogenesis is something pushed on it by those who have a theological or philosophical axe to grind. If we look at organisms which exist without DNA (RNA-only viruses are the only example of this so far), evolutionary theory is still valid for them as they are still subject to mutation regulated by selection. DNA is not necessary for evolution. The Scopes trial was in 1925. DNA wasn’t recognized as the carrier of genetic information until 1943, and the experiment which determined that wasn’t confirmed until 1952. We can’t even say for certain that DNA is necessary for complex life (as in, anything above a virus) until we find an example of it that that’s extraterrestrial in origin. At the moment, it’s a coin toss - we’re working with a sample size of one when we claim complex life requires DNA.
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IDvolution is philosophy. It is supported by modern science.

Once again.

ID the science

IDvolution the philosophy. The next step beyond ID the science.
 
It is important to note that scientists draw conclusions from the data. Some reasonable and some outrageous.

In the area of philosophy, is it not supported by evidence? By observation? Not just religious claims of whatever variety?

The problem here with ID is that many scientists say no. With the implication being that since that is the case, we’re done. While Information Science, such as that found in the book, Programming of Life by Donald E. Johnson, we discover limits, reasonable limits, about what blind, unguided chance can and cannot do. Ignoring those limits means ‘evolution can do anything,’ almost literally. With all due respect, another way of looking at it is: 'well, this appears related to that or this process must have led to the following result."

Example:

"The biological species concept defines a species as members of populations that actually or potentially interbreed in nature, not according to similarity of appearance. Although appearance is helpful in identifying species, it does not define species.

"Appearance isn’t everything
Code: 
"Organisms may appear to be alike and be different species. For example, Western meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta) and Eastern meadowlarks (Sturnella magna) look almost identical to one another, yet do not interbreed with each other—thus, they are separate species according to this definition."
Peace,
Ed
 
In the encyclical Humani Generis (1950) Pius XII wrote just a short passage on the evolution of species, but it is worth reading even today. There is substantial evidence for evolution in many different sciences, but a few years ago I went through some books on biology to see what the latest theories and facts were on how one species emerges from another (including changes in the number of chromosomes), and I found discussions of under what conditions a species emerges but not how the number of chromosomes changes,
 
macroom2 said:
In the encyclical Humani Generis (1950) Pius XII wrote just a short passage on the evolution of species, but it is worth reading even today. There is substantial evidence for evolution in many different sciences, but a few years ago I went through some books on biology to see what the latest theories and facts were on how one species emerges from another (including changes in the number of chromosomes), and I found discussions of under what conditions a species emerges but not how the number of chromosomes changes,
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Information cannot be handled randomly. Take writing computer code. If you miss a few letters or symbols, your program does not run as intended or at all.

Peace,
Ed
 
God created the world out of nothing. Particles and energy were sent in all directions. God is the uncaused cause, the remote cause, of the laws of nature. In miracles He intervenes in nature by temporarily suspending the laws. The natural sciences deal with proximate causes. When an earthquake occcurs, it is explained in terms of tectonic plates, fault lines, or other proximate causes, but God is the remote cause. I believe that God is the remote cause of the origins of species. Theories (plural!) of evolution deal with the proximate causes.

The first chapters of Genesis are a profound theological reflection on the relationships between and among God, nature and humans.
 
macroom2 said:
God created the world out of nothing. Particles and energy were sent in all directions. God is the uncaused cause, the remote cause, of the laws of nature. In miracles He intervenes in nature by temporarily suspending the laws. The natural sciences deal with proximate causes. When an earthquake occcurs, it is explained in terms of tectonic plates, fault lines, or other proximate causes, but God is the remote cause. I believe that God is the remote cause of the origins of species. Theories (plural!) of evolution deal with the proximate causes.

The first chapters of Genesis are a profound theological reflection on the relationships between and among God, nature and humans.
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The problem with imposing this model as a restriction on what God can and cannot do or as attempting to bolster confidence in views about what he actually did do is to forget that none of this actually does constrain God.

To claim God is a “remote cause” does not actually prevent him from parting waters, baking manna in the desert or walking in sandals. By the same token, it doesn’t constrain him from using nucleotide sugars as a means to express all of life’s forms into intelligible code so that humans are tasked with trying to decipher it to understand their own origins. If he can change water into wine, he can just as easily change inorganic material into a collection of functional proteins.

A scientist who wishes to claim water cannot under any circumstances become wine would be left clueless in terms of explaining the origin of the cup of wine in his hand. The option NOT open to him is to DENY that the wine IS really wine simply because he can’t explain how it came to be wine. Likewise, if there is no possible way for material causes to adequately explain the origin of life, the scientist would likewise have to admit ignorance, but going into denial is not an option there, either.

Theistic evolutionists might be correct that God has the means at his disposal to front-load all the creative possibilities inherent in matter. However, that does not mean God actually did so. He could have chosen, as a free act of will, to front-load genetic code with the proximate means to create all life, if HE so chose.

Neither does that entail it is beyond the possibility of science to grasp the mechanisms or determine beyond doubt that some form of intelligence was, indeed, required somewhere.

To claim, as IDvolution does, that genetic code can be shown to require intelligence by design does not entail some limitation on God. The fact that he did so does not mean he was restricted to that as the only means at his disposal, just as leading the Israelites out of Egypt COULD have been accomplished by traveling some other, perhaps more direct, route.

To say God is “remote” or the “Uncaused Cause” actually opens the field to what is possible for him, since anything - except, as Lewis points out, meaningless nonsense - is open to him. Being a remote cause “rules in” intelligent design as much as it “rules in” cosmic fine tuning. It “rules out,” neither.
 
GangGreen said:
Just thought I’d throw this out there. Not sure if it’s already been said:
Originally Posted by Fr. George Coyne, Vatican’s chief astronomer – 18 November 2005
Intelligent design isn’t science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science.
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This is one scientist’s opinion based upon the current state of “knowledge” in 2005. Things have changed a great deal since then.

It appears that Pope Benedict contradicted Fr. Coyne and, indeed, “dismissed” him over his views on evolution in 2006. Not that the Daily Mail is a completely reliable source, but it shows Fr. Coyne’s views were problematic.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401950/Pope-sacks-astronomer-evolution-debate.html

insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/08/new_vatican_ast.html
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Intelligent design cannot be proved, but neither can evolution by pure chance. If I found on a street three small rocks of approximately the same size placed in a straight line with the distance between the first and second and the distance between the second and the third to be approximately the same, I might assume that someone placed them there, but in the history of that street it is possible that the three rocks appeared in those positions once by pure chance.
 
macroom2 said:
Intelligent design cannot be proved, but neither can evolution by pure chance. If I found on a street three small rocks of approximately the same size placed in a straight line with the distance between the first and second and the distance between the second and the third to be approximately the same, I might assume that someone placed them there, but in the history of that street it is possible that the three rocks appeared in those positions once by pure chance.
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Yes, but your example is nothing like the probability required to produce functional proteins using chains of amino acids that are “randomly” assembled.

We are not speaking of three rocks in a row. More like hundreds of rocks spelling out in Braille or morse code what is a functional and meaningful ‘plan’ that can be decoded, read and used to build intricate machines.

You need to, at least, consider what precisely is the feature at play before dismissing it with “three rocks in a row.”

I suggest you read the paper by Peter Williams I linked in Post 1984. Two examples on page 6 of that article more realistically specify the situation.
Alexander paints two scenarios to push home the point that one cannot sidestep this argument by noting that we would not exist to be surprised by fine-tuning if that tuning were not as fine as it is. T**he first story involves a kidnapped accountant told that unless he wins the national lottery for ten consecutive weeks he will be killed, who is surprised to survive (at odds of around 1 in 10^60), but who is told that “he should not be surprised that such an unlikely event happened for, had it not, he would not have been alive to observe **it.”[72] Clearly, the accountant is right to be surprised and to suspect that there must be an explanation for his survival. The second story concerns a gambler who will be killed unless he gets ten coins flips in a row to show heads: “the fact of the gambler still being alive does not explain why he got ten heads in a row-the probability of this unlikely event remains at one in 1,024. What requires explanation is not that the gambler is alive and therefore observing something but rather that he is not dead.”[73] Indeed, what requires explanation, in both stories, is the occurrence of unlikely (that is, complex) events that are specified as the necessary conditions of our observers not being killed. Likewise, in the case of the anthropic-teleological argument, what requires explanation is that “our finely tuned universe is not just any old ?something,’ but contains within it a planet full of people who postulate theories about cosmology and the meaning of the universe. . . .”[74] That is, an explanation of fine tuning, indeed an explanation in terms of design, is required not simply because the fine-tuning represents an unlikely(complex) set of constants, but because the particular unlikely constants that exist are specified as necessary preconditions for the existence of complex life:
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The data pointing to a series of remarkably finely tuned constants [complexity] which have promoted the emergence of conscious life [specification] sit more comfortably with the idea of a God with plans and purposes for the universe than they do with the atheistic presupposition that “it just happened.”[75]
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Peter_Plato said:
Yes, but your example is nothing like the probability required to produce functional proteins using chains of amino acids that are “randomly” assembled.

We are not speaking of three rocks in a row. More like hundreds of rocks spelling out in Braille or morse code what is a functional and meaningful ‘plan’ that can be decoded, read and used to build intricate machines.

You need to, at least, consider what precisely is the feature at play before dismissing it with “three rocks in a row.”

I suggest you read the paper by Peter Williams I linked in Post 1984. Two examples on page 6 of that article more realistically specify the situation.
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What is missed is that even though the chance of the specific combination of proteins which produces life is vanishingly small, so is any other combination of those same proteins. The examples you give don’t illustrate anything beyond the good luck of the kidnap victims. The reasoning in those examples is the same faulty reasoning that drives gamblers to bankruptcy when they think a hot streak is just around the corner because they’ve been losing so much: Probability has no memory. A series of 10 coin flips resulting in 10 heads is 1:1024. But the chance of the 10 flips being HHTHTTHHTH is also 1:1024. Same chance for the sequence being TTTTHHHHTH, HTHTHTHTHT, TTTTTTTTTT, or any of the other 1024 possible combinations. The fact that the resulting sequence matches the sequence specified by the kidnappers is simply chance. A sequence of all heads, all tails, or any other combination has no inherent importance and is no less likely than any other.
 
Monkey1976 said:
What is missed is that even though the chance of the specific combination of proteins which produces life is vanishingly small, so is any other combination of those same proteins. The examples you give don’t illustrate anything beyond the good luck of the kidnap victims. The reasoning in those examples is the same faulty reasoning that drives gamblers to bankruptcy when they think a hot streak is just around the corner because they’ve been losing so much: Probability has no memory. A series of 10 coin flips resulting in 10 heads is 1:1024. But the chance of the 10 flips being HHTHTTHHTH is also 1:1024. Same chance for the sequence being TTTTHHHHTH, HTHTHTHTHT, TTTTTTTTTT, or any of the other 1024 possible combinations. The fact that the resulting sequence matches the sequence specified by the kidnappers is simply chance. A sequence of all heads, all tails, or any other combination has no inherent importance and is no less likely than any other.
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I noticed you picked the example with the higher likelihood of success to pick on. At some point the probability becomes less a matter of chance and becomes virtually if not definitely impossible. That is what Dembski doing with UPB - attempting to screen out when chance could be a viable explanation and when it definitely is not. The first example of the two would be virtually impossible given 1 in 10^60 odds.
 
macroom2 said:
Intelligent design cannot be proved, but neither can evolution by pure chance. If I found on a street three small rocks of approximately the same size placed in a straight line with the distance between the first and second and the distance between the second and the third to be approximately the same, I might assume that someone placed them there, but in the history of that street it is possible that the three rocks appeared in those positions once by pure chance.
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But if you see functional complex specified information then it points to design.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/...g6h2wTnhr4oeccr3vcKSI5Mi_NchSDujfJkqw2BV8YH7A
 
Monkey1976 said:
What is missed is that even though the chance of the specific combination of proteins which produces life is vanishingly small, so is any other combination of those same proteins. The examples you give don’t illustrate anything beyond the good luck of the kidnap victims. The reasoning in those examples is the same faulty reasoning that drives gamblers to bankruptcy when they think a hot streak is just around the corner because they’ve been losing so much: Probability has no memory. A series of 10 coin flips resulting in 10 heads is 1:1024. But the chance of the 10 flips being HHTHTTHHTH is also 1:1024. Same chance for the sequence being TTTTHHHHTH, HTHTHTHTHT, TTTTTTTTTT, or any of the other 1024 possible combinations. The fact that the resulting sequence matches the sequence specified by the kidnappers is simply chance. A sequence of all heads, all tails, or any other combination has no inherent importance and is no less likely than any other.
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Just because something is possible, does not mean it is plausible.
 
Peter_Plato said:
I noticed you picked the example with the higher likelihood of success to pick on. At some point the probability becomes less a matter of chance and becomes virtually if not definitely impossible. That is what Dembski doing with UPB - attempting to screen out when chance could be a viable explanation and when it definitely is not. The first example of the two would be virtually impossible given 1 in 10^60 odds.
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I picked that example because It’s easier to type out a sequence of 10 letters than 10 sequences of multiple numbers. It doesn’t change the fact that the odds of any specified combination or sequence are the same as the odds of any other combination or sequence, given the same starting group. If it was get heads 100,000 times in a row, the odds of that happening are the same as the odds of any other sequence of 100,000 flips.
 
buffalo said:
But if you see functional complex specified information then it points to design.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/...g6h2wTnhr4oeccr3vcKSI5Mi_NchSDujfJkqw2BV8YH7A
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Weak, just weak.
It’s just really complex pareidolia, you see something that you per-
ceive as incredible, then you try to dig deep to find a meaning in it.

“This DNA (I BELIEVE) could not possibly have formed naturally, THEREFORE IT’S DESIGNED!”

ID just isn’t scientific:
hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/nave-html/Faithpathh/myth9.html
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
Weak, just weak.
It’s just really complex pareidolia, you see something that you per-
ceive as incredible, then you try to dig deep to find a meaning in it.
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S.O.S. in the sand is merely “seeing” meaning in the letters when there is none there?

:rotfl:

Next time you see SOS messages written, you can safely ignore them despite the fact that someone’s life might be in jeopardy?

Let’s see if God accepts the excuse that you considered it “just really complex pareidolia” and ignored it as unlikely to have been written by an intelligent human in distress.

Honestly, common sense seems to have gone out the window merely to deny what is patently obvious and hold dogmatically onto a preconceived, but clearly absurd, notion.
 
Monkey1976 said:
I picked that example because It’s easier to type out a sequence of 10 letters than 10 sequences of multiple numbers.
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My point exactly.

It would, likewise, be easier to “hit” the exact sequence in terms of probability.

You didn’t bother to read the article, did you?
 
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