FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

[philip_taylor]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Babath raises an important point no interference from religions, simply researching the facts with all possibilities open.

Can anyone interpret scientific facts without being influenced by their own preconceptions? Someone who believes in God will interpret the evidence to include their Christian beliefs. Someone who is an atheist will interpret the evidence with their own religious belief.

Darwin looked at the commonality of life and said we have a common ancestor. A Christian will look at the same evidence and say we have the same creator.

Someone who believes in Darwins gradualism will find a human skeleton with no skin or hair or other soft tissue and draw skin and hair to make the person look like a monkey.

We must be aware of the religious beliefs of those interpreting scientific facts.

[ewan]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Ill just step in fir the first time now in suggesting that your comment Philip that an Atheist will intepret evidence with their own religious belief is somewhat contradictory. Being an Atheist by definition means you are not religious. Because a scientist may be an Atheist doesnt mean that they have any reason to show bias in scientific areas, contrary to what you could say for someone with strong religious beliefs.

An Atheistic scientist will stand against movements such as Intelligent Design and religion moving into science as it has the potential to cause such damage to the scientific community, or in some eyes, to the world. An unbiased scientist is simply defending and standing by the facts.



Anyway guys, Ill close the first poll on Friday, let the debate run on a little and then open another poll to reach a conclusion. Feel free to get anyone who is in the rare breed of ID-Supporters to come along, would be good to balance out the sides.

For those that are being left behind a little by this debate, Ill stick up a definitive guide to Intelligent Design and Natural Selection theories on Friday.

[tough_as_nails]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Looking at timothys post, I doubt it was intelligent design.

[pcbore]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

As far as Im concerned, God and the Big Bang are the same theory dressed in different clothes.

The God theory boils down to a supreme being who was kinda hanging around in the void, and decided to make the Universe one day. Maybe he was bored or something.

The Big Bang theory is basically that there was this thing hanging around in the void, how it got there nobody knows, and it went bang one day, creating the Universe.

Short story shorter I think theyre both rot.

[psychostorm]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Intelligent Design? Intelligent design? Intelligent design created our species? Get out of town! Whatever created our species must have one sandwich short of picnic.

As a species, Weve run down the planet, cut all the trees, killed all the animals and are arguing amonst ourselves. If we are created in Gods image, hes got a lot to answer for! Mind you he sounds that way, Arrogant, impatient and bad tempered.

Mind you, this int an argument on God.

Should Intelligent Design be taught as science? In my opinion, No. It cannot be proven, therefore isnt science. Darwinism, as obsessive as some people get, can proven to a small scale [ As accepted by the Discovery Institution behind ID.] Therefore should be allowed to be taught.

Personally, As much as Id like to think the entire planet is a sequence of unfortunate accidents, I really couldnt give a flying fart how life began or how the universe began. Id much rather we, as a species, spent the energy getting our heads together to work our way out of the holes weve dug into already! Like, I dont know, the culling of animals? the holes in the Ozone layer? Weve got bigger problems than what happened in the beginning and if we dont act soon well know exactly what happened in the beginning of the end...

[babeth]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

On interference from preconceptions, environments or our education:
I have this quote which became one of my favourites when I studied at the Free University of Brussels and was a member of Study-group Henri Poincar, a students organisation devoted to science and Freethinking (which happens to be one of the principles on which the Free University of Brussels was founded). The quote is from Henri Poincar:

Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.

It is extremely difficult for any scientist not to be influenced by any of the above, but one should endeavour to do so anyway. The problem Freethinkers face is that of dogma: if they adhere to Freethinking principles then they are adhering to a dogma and thus negating their ideals.
Somebody who says she is a Freethinker is not.
Someone who says she tries to be a Freethinker might be.
An observation from my part, derived from Poincars own writings, that my fellow students in the Study-group didnt want to accept and some even hated me for it. Because I shattered their lovely illusion that they were doing better than non-members.
I cannot claim Im free from these influences, and really the worst of them is pride, but one can always try to do better.

The problem that religious people have with Darwin was that he did not allude to a Higher Being in his works. But he did not deny the existence of such either ! He was very careful on that part. But he tried to stick to the facts and he was not trusting the Bible.
If you want to advocate Intelligent Design you should do so in Theology. Not in Biology or History, although in the latter references to religions can be made since religion is a significant part of humankinds history.
Parents who want to have their children reared with the Intelligent Design-theory should not forget that school is not the only institution which rears their children. They forget that they -as parents- have a far greater influence on their children than a school can have, and have a greater responsabillity in rearing their children than a school should have.

Funny though, if parents would instruct their children to accept ID even though teacher says evolution happened without Divine influence you might say that history has come full circle. You see: in the Middle Ages the Church was all-powerful and could dictate what science is and what not. Scholars and scientists who discovered facts that contradicted accepted dogma had to use a system we might nowadays call doublethink. They would teach the students that facts where thus and so, and at the end of the lecture say that Church teaches otherwise and this and that the students had to accept the Church dogma as real, while knowing it is different. The Church did not only allow this, they actually forced people to do this because they very well knew that dogma couldnt account for everything.
Parents who teach ID to their children today are doing exactly the same thing, but in reverse.

[dogbot4000]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Also being a christian I can honestly say that Ive always hated God why, because I like The Devil.

[bex]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

So how does that make you a Christian? Hmm

[Mouldy]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Anti-Christ? At least what he said makes more sense then the Christians in my class at college who wear pentagram€™s? Go figure...

[philip_taylor]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Ewan, I am happy to call atheism a belief system instead of a religious belief if that is more acceptable to you. I stand by my point that a belief system will effect the way we interpret facts into theories.

An atheist would not look at the scientific fact of the common features of life and put forward a theory that all life came from one creator.

Babeth has addressed this well in her post above.

The proponents of ID are scientists so it does not make sense to say that they are not allowed to talk about science. The press inferred that these people were some sort of fringe dwelling minority of nutters.

I read some of the media reports at the time of the ID court case in the US. Some of the media would quote the proponents of ID and the person would be a professor with a string of qualifications after their name. There are people who dig up fossils and who use the fossil record to support their theory of ID. Why should scientists be locked out of scientific debate?

€œWell it doesnt say anything about dinosaurs in the bible and that means that God doesnt exist.€ Tim, if the bible does mention dinosaurs, would you decide that God does exist. The word dinosaur was only invented recently. The bible does talk about a large animal who makes the earth shake when it walks. The animal is described as having a tail like a cedar trunk.

Fossil records do not support Darwin€™s gradual evolution theory. Recently, in Australia, we discovered two stands of wollemi pines growing apart from one another. This species was said to have become extinct 400000000 years ago. The wollemi pines in both places are exactly the same as the fossil record. There was a fossil of a fish that I saw in a museum that was thought to be extinct for 65000000 years. It was discovered still living. How much had it evolved? Zero evolution.

The fossil record shows us time and time again that there is no gradual evolution from one species to another species. Please note the difference between evolution from one species to another is distinct from evolution within a species. That is why most scientists, who believe in evolution, have moved away from Darwin€™s original idea of gradualism and replaced it with the idea of punctuated equilibrium.

Let me ask again, is there anyone at all who thinks that the big bang theory is 100% probable? If you heard that an astronaut was floating in space and reported that there was an explosion in front of him and a 100 kg robot appeared in front of him with charged batteries and a full tank of CO2, would you say that is possible or the guy is crazy? Would you believe it if something even simpler came from an explosion of nothing? What if he said a M5 bolt came from an explosion of nothing?

What is the probability that goo sitting on a rock somewhere in space accidentally sorted some DNA into a sequence and at the exact same time became surrounded by a membrane and at the exact same time a mechanism to read that genetic sequence formed and at the exact same time became alive?

Darwin€™s gradualism is against the laws of conservation of energy an of entropy. The fossil record does not support it.

In Australia, we must learn three theories of evolution in school. The science teacher quipped that he was about to teach us something that was a minimum of two thirds wrong at the start of the subject. Why not teach ID as well as three theories of evolution and say that the subject is a minimum of three quarters wrong? The subject could deal only with scientifically proved facts and then deal with the theories that emerge from the facts. Is there anything wrong with teaching students to think critically about opposing viewpoints?

[geeza]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

There are more than just the big bang theory in physics, not going into detail as everyone will get very bored very quickly. But if the space and time is the universe so nothing can have existed before the big bang or however the universe came into being.

Philip, a 100kg robot appearing from nowhere is not impossible, just very unlikely, it would require a very large black hole, quantum mechanics and lots of maths!

[audrey_aka_leah]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

100kg robot? aint that the iron giant from outta space? *giggles*

and just what is Darwinism? is that like the darwin award, sorta unfortunate idiots? I cant be bothered to read all the posts, cos it got really nasty, bringing religon in, whats that about? tut...

[kodster]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

quote:

and just what is Darwinism?

Possibly some plot thing created by Frank :P. Eh, you never know nowadays...

[typhoon_driver]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

evolution is all about mutation though (or so I was led to believe). A member of a species is born or develops a mutation. A lot of the time these will be blips that will cause the individual to die off rather quickly however once every so often, the mutation makes the individual stronger than the rest of the species or better equiped and so through breeding (survival of the fittest) the mutation becomes the norm.

So if my understanding of it all is correct then we are all just mutants

[ewan]

FRA Debate - Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution

Essentially Gary, but evolution is spurred on by changes in environment, and is not just blindly random.

With regards to your post Philip, I suggest that some things may not mutate while others do due to their environmental conditions. If they remain the same for prolonged periods of time, any mutations will not become widespread within a population as the existing traits of the animal will be more advantageous given their existing background environment.

All will become clear on my next post.