Canadians divided over creation and evolution

[DogOnPorch]

Doonesbury hit ID right on the head some time ago.

[myata]

The scientific point of view is bogus because bare factuality coincides with radical voluntarism.

Does it mean that you should stick on those unlimited imaginary wings, rather than bothering with bare factual car? Why not?

[benny]

Does it mean that you should stick on those unlimited imaginary wings, rather than bothering with bare factual car? Why not?

Avoiding dangers is an intention that biologists cannot avoid to illegitimately project unto life forms.

[Wilber]

Doonesbury hit ID right on the head some time ago.

Yes it did.

Edited April 16, 2009 by Wilber

[benny]

To be teleological or not to be.

[Molly]

Two camps intensely at one another? That sounds like delusions of credibility to me.

Religion masquerading as science convinces no one but the religious, and only those among the religious community who wouldn't know science from football.

In the end they effect the science community only as an annoyance-- after all, they are as persistent as they are preposterous.

While we can all think of religionists devoting all their energy in attacking science (Behe, for instance) I can think of no scientist who devotes more than a heavy sigh and a roll of the eyes to the creationists, swatting away those falsehoods when they are presented, but not, by any means, seeking them out. They have better things to do, more interesting things to deal with.

The real enemy/opposite number of the ID folk are the ones like me, who will never be convinced, and find the attempt as intrusive and offensive as finding another brand of unwelcome religionists knocking at my door. They are courting backlash. (This is some of it.)

[benny]

Biology (but not Physics) has a naïve conception of the relationship between theories (symbolic systems) and facts (the "emptiness" of matter). By sticking to the letters written in the Genesis (another symbolic system), Christians only find a coping mechanism to this unbearable naivety.

[betsy]

Religion masquerading as science convinces no one but the religious, and only those among the religious community who wouldn't know science from football.

In the end they effect the science community only as an annoyance-- after all, they are as persistent as they are preposterous.

While we can all think of religionists devoting all their energy in attacking science (Behe, for instance) I can think of no scientist who devotes more than a heavy sigh and a roll of the eyes to the creationists, swatting away those falsehoods when they are presented, but not, by any means, seeking them out. They have better things to do, more interesting things to deal with.

Scientist to Molly: "Hey, I had a heavy sigh the other day. The others rolled their eyes again at another creationist."

Are you a science groupie?

The real enemy/opposite number of the ID folk are the ones like me, who will never be convinced, and find the attempt as intrusive and offensive as finding another brand of unwelcome religionists knocking at my door. They are courting backlash. (This is some of it.)

ooo-OOO! Scaaaarr-EEE!

Btw, how many scientists do you know? no, no....David Suzuki doesn't count.

Edited April 17, 2009 by betsy

[benny]

It would be so cute if only humans were simple, complete and objective products of natural mechanisms, humans would not need to learn to deal then with a situation as dreadful as their own immortality.

http://books.google.com/books?id=je702bo2P...=4#PRA1-PA98,M1

Edited April 17, 2009 by benny

[betsy]

And speaking of rolling eyes,

One of the dilemmas of science, since they cannot find credence in the pre-biotic soup theory because of the indisputable theory of bio-genesis...so they turned to the theory of panspermia. Of course that doesn't explain how the life from outer space arose in the first place.

Just imagine the collective rolling of eyes heavenward in churches across the land!

[scorpio]

Btw, how many scientists do you know? no, no....David Suzuki doesn't count.

Why, he is a scientist. Look up the word.

[scorpio]

Why can't they prove a simple question: Where did it all begin?

Not in the Garden of Eden

[tango]

We should try to forgive betsy.

She gets insulting when she loses.

[benny]

Biologists don't have any problem explaining bullying; they have a problem with the fuzziness of reality itself (i.e. Gödel's completeness theorem and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).

[scorpio]

We should try to forgive betsy.

She gets insulting when she loses.

She's entitled to her opinion. But I think she may have a problem distinguishing opinion from fact.

[benny]

She's entitled to her opinion. But I think she may have a problem distinguishing opinion from fact.

An opinion is a fact for psychologists.

[tango]

She's entitled to her opinion. But I think she may have a problem distinguishing opinion from fact.

yup!

So then she attacks personally.

[benny]

yup!

So then she attacks personally.

Gossip about Molly now.

[tango]

Gossip about Molly now.

Your turn!

[cybercoma]

Over centuries numerous attempts to de-bunk Creation were made. Attempts are still being made.

Science had greatly advanced to the point that its powers are god-like....and yet up to now, it remains completely stumped as it was all the way to the very distant past.

Why can't they prove a simple question: Where did it all begin?

Actually, science hasn't attempted to debunk creation. Instead, scientists do something those of religious conviction are incapable of doing; scientists say, "we don't know."

[cybercoma]

For you perhaps. But I'm talking about scientists!

Those who managed to discover and create all sorts of things....those who even managed to bring a few dead people back to life! Those who can even create new life!

It's not as if this simple question came up only yesterday. It's been asked for eons of ages ago!

Over time, finding the answer became even more complex for these folks. They don't even agree with one another anymore! They bring to mind the mythological gods on Mt Olympus.

You're aware that modern science has only been around for a couple hundred years, right?

And even then, science has been pretty busy curing disease and finding ways to feed the hungry.

Edited April 17, 2009 by cybercoma

[cybercoma]

And speaking of rolling eyes,

One of the dilemmas of science, since they cannot find credence in the pre-biotic soup theory because of the indisputable theory of bio-genesis...so they turned to the theory of panspermia. Of course that doesn't explain how the life from outer space arose in the first place.

Just imagine the collective rolling of eyes heavenward in churches across the land!

When's the last time religion threw away ideas when new information arose? I like my scientists to continue to seek the truth, rather than having faith in what scientists 2000 years ago said.

[cybercoma]

She's entitled to her opinion. But I think she may have a problem distinguishing opinion from fact.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, sure. Most people, however, back up their opinions, unless they want to look like raving lunatics.

[WIP]

Has anyone mentioned yet that the origin of life and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Science has yet to explain with any probabilistic certainty how life started. I'm not saying that there was a creator, but asking someone whether they believe people were created or evolved is a false dichotomy fallacy.

The theory of evolution is used to explain how life has diversified from its beginnings about 3.8 billion years ago. Evolution begins with living organisms, so it can not be used to explain how organic chemistry put together the building blocks the first living organisms. That is a whole different field of research called abiogenesis. Up till now, researchers have tried to guess what the conditions on earth were like that made it possible for organic molecules to become full-fledged self-replicating organisms. But there hasn't been much progress on that front since the Miller-Urey experiments almost 50 years ago.

Since no one knows exactly what it was like on earth over 3.5 billion years ago, a new strategy is being used to solve the riddle- create new life in a laboratory:

Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time. David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been saying that scientists would create synthetic life in "five or 10 years" for three decades, but finally he might actually be right. "The momentum is building," he says. "We're knocking at the door."

At the time, Rasmussen hoped success might be only a few years away. Today he's more cautious. "No life yet," he reports. "But we're getting closer... we're inching our way." Rasmussen, now at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and his team, are steadily working through a checklist of intermediate goals. For example, they have persuaded their minimal DNA genome to direct the production of fatty acids, allowing the oil droplet to grow - a key step in their bug's rudimentary biochemistry. They are now trying to prove that the genome can replicate while attached to the droplet, and that the droplet can be made to grow and divide in sync with the genome.

Meanwhile, another group has leaped ahead by developing an information-carrying molecule that can help make copies of itself. This is one of the biggest obstacles to synthetic life. Most experts assume that a self-replicating molecule - most likely RNA - must have played a role in the origin of life on Earth, but no one has been able to build one.

Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, tried a slightly different tack. Instead of a single RNA molecule, they made two, each able to construct a copy of the other by stitching together two half-molecules supplied by the researchers.

Some think the earliest life forms may have replicated in a similar chunk-by-chunk way, with evolution gradually reducing the size of the chunks until it arrived at the DNA letter-by-letter replication we see today. If so, Lincoln and Joyce's cross-replicators would be the closest anyone has got to recreating the origin of life. Indeed, the molecules worked so well that their population began to grow exponentially (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1167856). "That's the first time that's happened, except in biology," says Joyce.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2012....html?full=true

In the coming years, someone or some group of biochemists are likely to make the breakthrough to explain the jump from organic chemistry to simple one celled life forms. The problem with shelving the origin of life as a supernatural event is the same as using "intelligent design" to explain large scale evolutionary changes -- it is another god-of-the-gaps explanation, where every unanswered question is goddidit.

The biggest problem with believing an intelligent creator made that first bacteria is that simple one celled organisms were the only life forms on earth for the first 2.5 to 3 billion years - a mighty long time before planetary conditions were finally right for the development of more complex multicellular organisms. So, it seems that the first life started very, very early - even back during the time when the earth was being bombarded by meteors, asteroids and other debris, some of the oldest rocks discovered have fossilized remains of ancient bacteria -- and yet, it took so long to progress to the next stage of making multicellular plants and animals! It just doesn't add up as some sort of intelligent design. It seems more plausible that certain, yet unknown conditions back then were just right for creating the first living organisms.

[Molly]

How many scientists do I know, Betsy?

Quite a few, actually. Father-in-law had a design role and a working place in the control rooms during the Apollo missions, for one. There's a couple of upper atmospheric phsyicists I count as friends, a bunch of geologists and a whack of paleontologists... a handful who are into nuclear energy. I know a whole collection of soil scientists (my brother being one) , and plant geneticists.... a few chemists.... an increasing number of environmental researchers: son-in-law was engaged in fisheries research until recently for example, and daughter took part in an ecological survey of the Grand Canyon a few years ago... so yeah, I know quite a few scientists.

But no, I have never met David Suzuki-- though just like you, I know OF him.

Now that I've answered the question, why is it of interest? Any fool who is at all interested in the world is AWARE of the work of any number of scientists, none of whose lifes work even faintly addresses the ID 'camp', or responds to it at all unless they are directly asked- maybe not even then.

The people who actively oppose ID are those who are particularly interested in education and or politics (rather than specifically science) , and don't want our system hijacked (and trashed) by religious zealots, trying to replace evidence-based critical thinking with ignorant, fanciful guesses and resolute faith in myth.

Can you show an example of scientists who make a career of debunking ID, to play foil to the likes of Behe?

.....................

Science seeks truth, so intelligent critique is not just welcome, but sought out. It is as much a victory to discover that a premise is incorrect as to have it confirmed! That's the very nature of the beast-- to question everything, to happily abandon that which is disproved, and in peeling away that which is false, hopefully to find those things that are true.

In many ways that IS antithetical to religion, which presumes to know everything in advance of the question. You address science as though it is founded in the same principles as religion, but the two are a universe apart. Science bears scrutiny, and thus is meaningful to all. Religion cannot bear scrutiny, and thus is meaningful only to those who practice it.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Molly