"More and more scientists are starting to believe in intelligent design."

[Gibsons]

Ah, so you are ok with not thinking for yourself as long as the right people are doing the thinking for you.

That'a boy...

Agreeing with someone isn't necessarily not thinking for yourself.

Do you agree that DNA is the basis heredity in animals? If so, did you think of that yourself, or did someone tell you to begin with?

 

[witeken]

There is no difference in simply parroting information no matter the source. This is why I question public understanding of science, not acceptance.

There is a difference in simply repeating "we're survival machines" and explaining why you accept that. If you cannot articulate your beliefs in your own words, that means you probably don't understand what you believe.

In that sense, you're no better than your religious counterparts.

If you think that I believe Richard Dawkins because of his credentials, you are clearly wrong. I have no problem with changing my opinion when someone proves me wrong. Dawkins has a compelling argument and explanation that I agree with. I decide however to keep my posts mostly short and simple; if you want more information you can ask.

 

[Retro Rob]

Agreeing with someone isn't necessarily not thinking for yourself.

Do you agree that DNA is the basis heredity in animals? If so, did you think of that yourself, or did someone tell you to begin with?

Perhaps I should give you some context behind my remark about that...most of witeken's replies on this subject are links to atheist youtube vids and quotes from atheists authors (as if quotes and youtube vids are evidence), so I have no reason to believe he has an original though.

 

[alzan]

There is no difference in simply parroting information no matter the source. This is why I question public understanding of science, not acceptance.

There is a difference in simply repeating "we're survival machines" and explaining why you accept that. If you cannot articulate your beliefs in your own words, that means you probably don't understand what you believe.

In that sense, you're no better than your religious counterparts.

We parrot information in order to better communicate with others when our own words fail to articulate, i.e. my own understanding of the Big Bang is woefully inadequate to effectively inform someone else so I would use the words of Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins or Cerpin Taxt, e.g. in an attempt to inform.

 

[Gibsons]

Perhaps I should give you some context behind my remark about that...most of witeken's replies on this subject are links to atheist youtube vids and quotes from atheists authors (as if quotes and youtube vids are evidence), so I have no reason to believe he has an original though.

Fair enough, but when the assertions are PRATTs (Points Refuted a Thousand Times), well, it saves some typing at least.

 

[mnewsham]

Ok, I actually applaud your honesty.

Wasn't being honest, I was simply saying if I were to just throw my hands up and believe something without actually doing some thinking of my own, I'd go with the guy who appears to be trying to disprove himself and constantly willing to adapt their point of view to fit given evidence.

 

[Fritzo]

I love "More and more X are starting to Y..." statements. Diet supplement pill pushers like to use the same line. There are never any statistics to back these claims up, and even if there were, who knows what the numbers mean.

"50% more scientists now believe in intelligent design! The number jumped from 10 to 15! (out of 3 million)"

 

[Retro Rob]

We parrot information in order to better communicate with others when our own words fail to articulate, i.e. my own understanding of the Big Bang is woefully inadequate to effectively inform someone else so I would use the words of Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins or Cerpin Taxt, e.g. in an attempt to inform.

Well, shucks, go get a better understanding of it. How can you accept somethng as fact, while having a "woefully inadequate" understanding of it yourself?

 

[witeken]

Perhaps I should give you some context behind my remark about that...most of witeken's replies on this subject are links to atheist youtube vids and quotes from atheists authors (as if quotes and youtube vids are evidence), so I have no reason to believe he has an original though.

What has atheism to do with this? Whether or not animals were created is a scientific question that is nicely explained by Richard Dawkins, a scientist who is authorized to make claims about the evolution of life on earth. It are people like him who I learn from and get my knowledge from. I think that isn't a bad thing to do. I could also use Wikipedia or other Youtube videos, like the one from Minutephysics is posted earlier. I could also quote another biologist. I'm not an expert in biology, so if you can't explain it better yourself, why bother to post you own thoughts if another person's thoughts and explanations are better?

I could explain evolution to you, but a video like this (or this one) should be good enough.

 

[alzan]

Well, shucks, go get a better understanding of it. How can you accept somethng as fact, while having a "woefully inadequate" understanding of it yourself?

I never said I accept it as fact, I accept that it's the best current explanation based on the data we've discovered. I understand it as a scientific theory, not as the detailed specifics of all the processes involved.

 

[witeken]

Well, shucks, go get a better understanding of it. How can you accept somethng as fact, while having a "woefully inadequate" understanding of it yourself?

But how do you get a better understanding of it when you criticize my use of links to people who are qualified to explain it? You wouldn't like it when Richard Dawkins was your teacher?

 

[Retro Rob]

I never said I accept it as fact, I accept that it's the best current explanation based on the data we've discovered. I understand it as a scientific theory, not as the detailed specifics of all the processes involved.

Understood, sir.

 

[Retro Rob]

But how do you get a better understanding of it when you criticize my use of links to people who are qualified to explain it? You wouldn't like it when Richard Dawkins was your teacher?

Because, I know Dawkins etc understand it, but I want to know if YOU do. Secondly, I'm not speaking with those guys...I'm talking with you, so therefore, I'm only interested in your level of understanding.

If you don't understand it and I'm talking to you, then how can you expect me to believe anything you have to say?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Because if it didn't, life wouldn't exist.

But that simply isn't true. That's like saying there must be a smallest integer, because if there weren't the number 3 wouldn't exist.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Our best understanding is that at t=0, there were no molecules, not even atoms.

The big bang is a mathematical model, not necessarily a feature of reality. The entire idea that there is a t = 0 is based on a cosmological horizon that is as much a consequence of the ineptitude of our observations as it is any kind of limit on the reaches of the universe.

In other words, talking about the Big Bang as though there were a t = 0 is fundamentally the same as speaking as though the earth were flat, and ships fell off the edge when they reached the horizon.

Thus, there was no life form that life as we know it (carbon based, molecule based, whatever), at least, could have descended from. So, it must have originated at some point after that.

I'll respond a little bit for you if you don't mind: "Life as we know it" is rather myopic, given the size and age of the universe. Life doesn't necessarily have to be based on carbon, or even molecules, it's just what we know of. I'm sure you've got more.

This is an incredibly important point that is almost always overlooked when this discussion develops. We're actually not real sure what "life" is, exactly. All we have is "life as we know it." It is important to challenge ALL our assumptions about what "life" is so that we don't find ourselves creating our own blind spots.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I love "More and more X are starting to Y..." statements. Diet supplement pill pushers like to use the same line. There are never any statistics to back these claims up, and even if there were, who knows what the numbers mean.

"50% more scientists now believe in intelligent design! The number jumped from 10 to 15! (out of 3 million)"

Yeah, you never see them talk about proportions.

If the proportions stayed constant among subsets, but the overall population was growing, the phrase "More and more X are starting to Y" would be true for every subset.

 

[SP33Demon]

SP33Demon, take a step back and understand that you are presenting an obviously religious chemical scientist who is in no way involved in the study and dissection of the theory of evolution. He is simply taking a principled stand because evolution can't be explained at the molecular level yet.

Imagine a parallel universe where God told us Newtonian gravity didn't exist, instead there was intelligent gravity. Imagine a deeply religious and extremely talented quantum physicist issue a similar ultimatum. Explain to me how gravity works at the most basic levels, if you can't then intelligent gravity must be the answer. Well we can't explain how gravity works at a basic level therefore intelligent gravity is the answer?

There is an incredible wealth of information out there supporting macro evolution, more evidence turns up every day. The eye was a popular subject, we have both fossil records and live specimens now showing almost every stage of the eye development from flat photo sensitive cells to recessed sockets to enclosed sockets. The amount of evidence piling up for all matter of systems, including parallel development of complex systems continues to grow.

Dr. Tour's is blinded by what he was taught as a child on Sundays. He frankly is a bit disgusting for sitting on a high horse of proclaiming how hard molecules are to build therefore..... God. People pour immense amounts of effort into the pursuit of these various fields and to have someone who is so focused on a different subject cast disparagement on the entire theory because he doesn't know how it works is retarded. If God told us intelligent chemistry was the answer and a religious quantum physicist shit all over Dr. Tour's work unless Dr. Tour could tie chemical interactions in with a universal quantum model I think he would come around on his issue with evolution.

Bolded = the entire summation of the argument. Since it cannot be explained at a molecular level, then why do you believe in it? That is just as preposterous as believing in a pink unicorn or spaghetti monster.

What I'm more interested in is the lack of Pre-Cambrian evidence from the fossil record, i.e. anything that can give a reasonable explanation with evidence for the Cambrian explosion. There simply isn't enough evidence to explain the Cambrian explosion of fauna that suddenly manifested.

From this thread's beloved Wiki:

The long-running puzzlement about the appearance of the Cambrian fauna, seemingly abruptly and from nowhere, centers on three key points: whether there really was a mass diversification of complex organisms over a relatively short period of time during the early Cambrian; what might have caused such rapid change; and what it would imply about the origin of animal life. Interpretation is difficult due to a limited supply of evidence, based mainly on an incomplete fossil record and chemical signatures remaining in Cambrian rocks.

Additionally, your eye theory holds no weight for the Cambrian explosion:

Nevertheless, many scientists doubt that vision could have caused the explosion. Eyes may well have evolved long before the start of the Cambrian.[115] It is also difficult to understand why the evolution of eyesight would have caused an explosion, since other senses, such as smell and pressure detection, can detect things at a greater distance in the sea than sight can; but the appearance of these other senses apparently did not cause an evolutionary explosion.[35]

From another article that summed up the problem nicely:

Reviewing the evidence in 1991, Berkeley paleontologist James Valentine and his colleagues noted: "During the past 40 years, rocks older than what had now been considered to be the base of the Cambrian have indeed yielded fossils that now permit much more detailed assessments of early metazoan [i.e., multicellular animal] evolution" (Excerpt B, p. 280). Valentine and his colleagues found that "it has not proven possible to trace transitions" between the phyla, and the evidence points to a Cambrian "explosion" that "was even more abrupt and extensive than previously envisioned" (Excerpt B, pp. 281, 294). The authors concluded that "the metazoan explosion is real; it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record" (Excerpt B, p. 318).

Some scientists have suggested that fossil ancestors for the animal phyla are missing not because the rocks have been deformed or eroded, but because animals before the Cambrian lacked hard parts, and thus never fossilized in the first place. According to this hypothesis, the Cambrian explosion merely represents the sudden appearance of shells and skeletons in animal that had evolved long before. The fossil evidence, however, does not support this hypothesis. First, as Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris have pointed out, the majority of Cambrian explosion fossils are soft-bodied (Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life [New York: Norton, 1989]; Simon Conway Morris, The Crucible of Creation [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Second, the fossil evidence points to the appearance of many new body plans in the Cambrian, not just the acquisition of hard parts by existing phyla. According to Berkeley paleontologist James Valentine, the Cambrian explosion "involved far more major animal groups than just the durably skeletonized living phyla." It was "new kinds of organisms, and not old lineages newly donning skeleton-armor, that appeared" (Excerpt C, p. 533). Valentine concluded: "the record that we have is not very supportive of models that posit a long period of the
evolution of metazoan phyla" before the Cambrian (Excerpt C, p. 547).

What significance does the Cambrian explosion have for evaluating Darwin's theory that all animals are modified descendants of a common ancestor? As we have seen, Darwin himself considered it a serious problem (Excerpt A). Although Darwin's theory predicts that animal evolution should proceed from the "bottom up," with the largest differences emerging last, James Valentine and his colleagues wrote in 1991 that the pattern of the Cambrian explosion "creates the impression that metazoan evolution
has by and large proceeded from the 'top down' " (Excerpt B, p. 294). Harry Whittington, an expert on the Cambrian fossils from the Burgess shale, wrote in 1985: "It may well be that metazoan animals arose independently in different areas. I look skeptically upon diagrams that show the branching diversity of animal life through time, and come down at the base to a single kind of animal" (Excerpt F, p. 131). Evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Levinton, though convinced of the common ancestry of animals, acknowledged in 1992 that the Cambrian explosion -- "life's big bang," as he called it -- remains "evolutionary biology's deepest paradox" (Excerpt G, p. 84). Although "the body plans that evolved in the Cambrian by and large served as the blueprints for those seen today," Levinton saw
"no reason to think that the rate of evolution was ever slower or faster than it is now. Yet that conclusion still leaves unanswered the paradox posed by the Cambrian explosion and the mysterious persistence of those ancient body plans" (Excerpt G, pp. 84, 90). In 1999, University of California biologist Malcolm Gordon wrote: "Recent research results make it seem improbable that there could have been single basal forms for many of the highest categories of evolutionary differentiation (kingdoms, phyla, classes)" (Excerpt H, p. 331). Gordon concluded: "The traditional version of the theory of common descent apparently does not apply to kingdoms [i.e., plants, animals, fungi, bacteria] as presently recognized. It probably does not apply to many, if not all, phyla, and possibly also not to many classes within the phyla" (Excerpt H, p. 335).

(B) James W. Valentine et al., "The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary," Evolutionary Biology 25 (1991): 279-356.
(C) James W. Valentine, "The Macroevolution of Phyla," pp. 525-553 in Jere H. Lipps & Philip W. Signor (editors), Origin
(D) Samuel A. Bowring et al., "Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian
Evolution," Science 261 (1993): 1293-1298.
(E) James W. Valentine, David Jablonski & Douglas H. Erwin, "Fossils,
molecules and embryos: new perspectives on the Cambrian explosion,"
Development 126 (1999): 851-859.
(F) Harry B. Whittington, The Burgess Shale (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1985).
(G) Jeffrey S. Levinton, "The Big Bang of Animal Evolution," Scientific
American 267 (November, 1992): 84-91.
(H) Malcolm S. Gordon, "The Concept of Monophyly: A Speculative Essay,"
Biology and Philosophy 14 (1999): 331-348.

Intelligent Design arguments will not go away until a detailed explanation/evidence (i.e. more than 'but oxygen or ozone levels increased!') for the Cambrian Explosion exists. The end.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Let's assume intelligent design actually happened.....so tell me, how in the world this "intelligent design" create SO many idiots/stupid people?

Hmmmm

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Bolded = the entire summation of the argument. Since it cannot be explained at a molecular level, then why do you believe in it? That is just as preposterous as believing in a pink unicorn or spaghetti monster.

No, it isn't, and I've already covered this.

What I'm more interested in is the lack of Pre-Cambrian evidence from the fossil record, i.e. anything that can give a reasonable explanation with evidence for the Cambrian explosion. There simply isn't enough evidence to explain the Cambrian explosion of fauna that suddenly manifested.

Fossils that old are hard to come by. So what? We should just throw our hands up in the air and say "Must've been magic!"?

Intelligent Design arguments will not go away until a detailed explanation/evidence (i.e. more than 'but oxygen or ozone levels increased!') for the Cambrian Explosion exists. The end.

This has to be one of the stupidest things said in the thread so far -- and that's saying something.

A scarcity of pre-cambrian fossils is not an argument *for* intelligent design. And even if the fossils were plentiful, ID would not be falsified, so the "arguments" wouldn't go away in any case. You've demonstrated an astounding degree of ignorance of the content and quality of ID proposals.

 

[Ruptga]

Are you seriously asking that question? Just in case you are I'll give you a serious answer.

Because everyone thinks they are right and want to impose their thoughts on others.

Just like it sounds as if you don't want to discuss this any more, and want others to stop because of it. You're welcome to leave the discussion whenever you like, and return as well.

So you reply on the topic of the meta-game while still playing it. I'm not sure how to take that, actually. In one way it's brilliant, but in another it's incredibly trite. In any case it's not going to work on me, I've seen Inception.

 

[zinfamous]

lol No.

lol no.

what they said

 

[HamburgerBoy]

But that simply isn't true. That's like saying there must be a smallest integer, because if there weren't the number 3 wouldn't exist.

Do integers reproduce?

The big bang is a mathematical model, not necessarily a feature of reality. The entire idea that there is a t = 0 is based on a cosmological horizon that is as much a consequence of the ineptitude of our observations as it is any kind of limit on the reaches of the universe.

In other words, talking about the Big Bang as though there were a t = 0 is fundamentally the same as speaking as though the earth were flat, and ships fell off the edge when they reached the horizon.

This is an incredibly important point that is almost always overlooked when this discussion develops. We're actually not real sure what "life" is, exactly. All we have is "life as we know it." It is important to challenge ALL our assumptions about what "life" is so that we don't find ourselves creating our own blind spots.

Life, as it exists on Earth, is reasonably well-defined. The point is that your preference of an abiogenesis-less panspermia (with no evidence whatsoever) bringing life to Earth over an origin of life theory centered around abiogenesis (whether on Earth or outside, both of which we know are capable of creating fundamental organic compounds) isn't justified by saying we don't know everything about the universe.

 

[Printer Bandit]

studies show that intelligent design is a highly likely.

 

[CLite]

Bolded = the entire summation of the argument. Since it cannot be explained at a molecular level, then why do you believe in it? That is just as preposterous as believing in a pink unicorn or spaghetti monster.

First of all I never said that photo-sensitivity led to the Cambrian Explosion, nor have I touted any Wikipedia research. It's also an immense diversion from my point.

We still don't have a solid working universal model. Does that mean all science must be halted because all work is as preposterous as believing in a spaghetti monster until everything is exactly detailed? Working hypotheses can be developed to explain observed phenomenon without knowing every nuance of how it works.

I ask that you simply realize the vast majority of scientists involved in the study of evolution are doing so out of a thirst for knowledge and better understanding of how we came to be. I think too many religious folks observe it as a direct attack and means for discrediting religion, where in fact it's simply the pursuit of knowledge. These scientists have developed an incredible and ever expanding catalog of how we and other species came to be. Of course there are still holes, especially at the smallest levels of detail. However this does not discredit observed phenomenon.

We see evolution occur every day, we see traces of it going back to very early periods. We take models that fit these observations and develop a theory that says this pattern continues to the very origins of life. That certain molecules developed the capability to self-replicate. You could see this in the simplest example of a self replicating protein, prions, which have no inherent code. You say that we can't exactly detail how RNA/DNA/etc. came about therefore... God. Scientists simply admit a lack of knowledge, point to the high evidence of evolution in later periods, and then do their best to continue working and understanding how things progressed at the beginning.

There is no need for animosity in this pursuit, but there is also no room for religion. Religion offers a succinct explanation for everything, however we can't design airplanes or predict how diseases will evolve to modern medicine by simply saying God created everything. Scientists can't make a statement that God did not create life, such a statement is absurd and impossible to prove. However, they should not stop the pursuit of knowledge or exploring further back into our origins because the bible tells them how everything formed.

Kids can learn about God in Sunday school. There is no reason for it in the class room because there is nothing to debate. You believe God created everything because you feel any abiogenesis is impossible. There is no way to ever prove the impossibility of abiogenesis therefore there is nothing to test. Therefore nothing to explore, discuss or debate. You can't just point to a lack of information as proof to the impossibility of abiogenesis.

 

[alkemyst]

It is an interesting issue, but at the same time you cannot prove or disprove intelligent design.

In science there is no concept of disprove.

Many scientists have believed this for a long time. Just as many religions are open to evolution.

Just the masses never knew this.