Originally posted by: Trevelyan
Originally posted by: zinfamous
Originally posted by: Trevelyan
Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
Originally posted by: Fayd
when i was taught evolution at public schools, we took an hour talking about why teach ONLY evolution, the basic gist of evolution, and a few religious based theories. (intelligent design, creationism, and such) and basically that because there was no consensus on WHICH religious theory to teach, we were taught only evolution. that seems fine to me.
I donut think people should be shielded from alternate viewpoints, like evolutionism vs creationism, or intelligent design. the theory of evolution is just that, a theory. BUT... if you're going to attack some idea like creationism or intelligent design, shouldn't you have at the very least some idea as to what they stand for?
the hatred towards religion these days on this board really does scare me. I keep wondering when it's gonna turn from being vitriolic spew, to being violent.
You should know what they believe, but ID is exactly that, belief. It is not the realm of science and not appropriate for a science class. Teach about it, along with genesis, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God, Allah, miracles and the biblical stories of Sodom and Bethlehem in a religion class, where those beliefs belong.
ID is not science. It is not a theory and therefore it does not belong in a science classroom.
Wow. You really know nothing about what Intelligent Design actually says, do you?
Tell me, what does Intelligent Design say about the evolution of human beings?
I guess you buy into the BS about flagellar "design" as supported by the ID proponents?
It's simpler than that, really. At this point, I really don't buy into the BS that a bunch of non-living matter can organize itself into a minimally complex, self replicating life form. Not when it cannot be repeated, cannot be shown to be possible, and when there is no physical evidence that it has ever happened.
Nevermind the thousand other problems with evolution, including contradictory radio-isotope dates for rock layers with known ages, lack of an information creating mechanism for natural selection, the non-existent fossil record for the estimated billions of creatures that SHOULD have existed in the past, etc.
The fact is, we are surrounded by complex machinery that is simply light years ahead of all current man-made technology, and you would like me to believe that it all built itself?
Because that is what evolution says matter is capable of: creating information. And we have NEVER observed that. NEVER. Apparently, its all taken place in the distant past, unaccessible by us in the present. Convenient?
Don't get upset at me. ID is not a theory, it never will be. If you cannot understand that I highly recommend you read up on the scientific method and what constitutes a scientific theory. Things like relativity, gravity, evolution are all theories. Thus far they have proven to be 100% correct and therefore are our currently accepted ideas on the subject. There is no proof for ID, there never could be.
If you want to discredit evolution, at least try harder. Fossil records are incomplete because they are that - fossils. There wasn't any systematic process to archive the various species that roamed the earth millions of years ago, we're lucky to have the record we have today. Even if scientists discover one of these "intervening" species, many IDers would simply argue there are two gaps now, instead of one. Hell, you want intervening species? Look at the various stages of evolution man went through. We have a pretty extensive record of that. The most primitive men we've discovered, shockingly, look pretty similar to apes. As for your carbon-dating, I haven't seen anything that thus far accurately discredits evolution (and neither has any scientist in the world since Darwin proposed it).
I'll say that again. There is NO evidence that evolution is wrong.
Just as a side note: If evolution were to be wrong, why would ID suddenly be right? There is a real fallacy of logic there. Just because A is wrong, B is now immediately correct. That isn't true. ID would have to stand on its own two feet if evolution were to ever fall and, guess what, it can't.
What I think is misunderstood about evolution its relation to chance. Evolution isn't about chance. Flowers weren't 'lucky' to have evolved into such beautiful organisms, natural selection continually favored traits that made them more effective at reproducing which, in turn, produced the beautiful flowers we see. This process happened extremely slowly, in small fits and starts, but eventually produced the modern flower as we know it. The same can be said of us.
Evolution turned the world on its head. That's true. In all other thought we take a "top-down" approach. The spear maker creates the spear, the glassblower makes the glass. The more complex thing creates the simpler one. Yet, in evolution it is the opposite. The simple is a building block for the complex. The complex is simply a collection of the simply, sometimes applied to a different scenario.
Life coming into being out of the primordial earth would have been extremely improbable to say the least. Although science has found evidence of lipids forming primitive cell walls when induced with electric current and has speculated that RNA would have been the original genetic carrier, it still seems very unlikely that without some sort of intervention life would not have come to pass on Earth. Yet, life seems VERY improbable within our universe. We are the only known example of it. Hundreds of billions of planets are not suitable for life. Billions of planets may be suitable, but no life has evolved there. Billions more may have primitive life. And a few of those may have even evolved sophisticated life.
I see no reason to put God in this equation. He may have set up our universe (very unlikely, IMO, but possible), but I don't think he created us or any other form of life that exists in this universe.