Intelligent Design struck down in Federal Court

[FanOfFridays]

Quote from roberk:

The 'scientific' picture of the world is the belief that the universe began with big bang, that the stars and planets all happened to come together; and that a few billion years ago, on this planet, some chemicals mixed together to form amino acids.

These then happened to mix together and form DNA, which then, by chance and circumstance formed a bacteria. These chance events happened again and again until bacteria were common and then, by chance, small seaborn creatures developed. Not long after that we had bigger animals evolving until in a very short time humans arrived. No creator God, no other forces needed.

What was before the big bang? Well basically nothing - it came out of nowhere..

Well... that is the Big Bang version of things, yes. However, your last statement is not quite right according to Big Bang theory. It includes the phrase 'out of nowhere', but that has no meaning in Big Bang theory; you are asking 'What was there before the Big Bang?' To understand this, you have to consider the nature of space-time. The answer is somewhat difficult for us to comprehend, but it is that space and time began with the singularity. There is no meaning to the question 'What was there before the Big Bang'. The Big Bang was the beginning of what we now call 'space and time', and even this description is misleading, since space and time are terms which describe different aspects of the same thing. Remember, though, that they synchronized two atomic clocks and then flew one around in circles and left another on the ground and after a while, they weren't synchronized anymore. Time had passed more slowly aboard the airplane!! I hope you can admit that this fact is just as weird as the idea that space and time didn't exist before the Big Bang! If you can intuitively grasp this idea, you are much, much smarter than I.

Space is the same as time. Do you get that? I sure as hell don't, except on a theoretical level. But if you are staring at the proof, there is not much to do but shake your head and wander off, thinking about it.

This is the thing that bothers a lot of theists, I am sure. Their categorizing minds can't accept something as difficult to grasp as this. I assure you, though, that accelerator experiments have produced results so bizarre, so counter-intuitive, that even the scientists themselves could not accept the results. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words

http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/cern/others/PHO/photo-ex/11465.jpeg

Remember.... you smash a blender and a razor together and get.....a working Volkswagen.

What???? But that's impossible!! That doesn't make any sense!!

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine"

Haldane

Also, There are other theories regarding the origin of the universe, for example the steady state theory.

 

[kjkent1]

Quote from roberk:

The 'scientific' picture of the world is the belief that the universe began with big bang, that the stars and planets all happened to come together; and that a few billion years ago, on this planet, some chemicals mixed together to form amino acids.

These then happened to mix together and form DNA, which then, by chance and circumstance formed a bacteria. These chance events happened again and again until bacteria were common and then, by chance, small seaborn creatures developed. Not long after that we had bigger animalas evolving until in a very short time humans arrived. No creator God, no other forces needed.

What was before the big bang? Well basically nothing - it came out of nowhere..

First, you are assuming that the universe came from nothing. There's no proof that it did or didn't. Second, for the moment, ignoring the what came before the universe question, once you have the big bang, you have matter and energy, and the consequences that follow are that certain reactions and actions are predictable and measurable, and that given certain environmental conditions, base organic molecules form and they mutate and change and replicate. Add all of that together and what you have is what we have called "life."

There is a HUGE difference between this gradual development over time, and the introduction of a supernatural force that generates a new complex biological species of life instantaneously.

The fundamentalist theists does not demand that a science class promote the idea that God set evolution in motion and that evolution produced humanity. The fundamentalist, demands that evolution be regarded as false, regardless of the facts, and in its place we should teach that God made all of the life forms on this planet, and especially humans, appear instantaneously by application of, as Z so elegantly states, "pure potentiality."

Evolution does not require the introduction of a magical component, or the local suspension of physical reality in order to accomplish the diversity of life on Earth. Evolution requires only time, energy, and matter, just like every other physical action in the universe.

ID, on the other hand, as proposed by fundamentalist theists, requires the complete suspension of all natural scientific principles in order to accomplish what could otherwise not be accomplished.

In short, ID requires the introduction of magic as the primary force by which all life is created. That, is the difference -- and it's a very big difference.

 

[marketsurfer]

Quote from kjkent1:



There is a HUGE difference between this gradual development over time, and the introduction of a supernatural force that generates a new complex biological species of life instantaneously.

The fundamentalist theists does not demand that a science class promote the idea that God set evolution in motion and that evolution produced humanity. The fundamentalist, demands that evolution be regarded as false, regardless of the facts, and in its place we should teach that God made all of the life forms on this planet, and especially humans, appear instantaneously by application of, as Z so elegantly states, "pure potentiality."

let us speculate for a moment:

if this was not the case, would you still have an issue with the mentioning of ID in the classroom?

thank you

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

"There is a HUGE difference between this gradual development over time, and the introduction of a supernatural force that generates a new complex biological species of life instantaneously."

When exactly did I suggest this process of design happens "instantaneously by a supernatural force?"

ID is 100% natural, and the process of design is very systematic. God is not supernatural in my opinion, God is fully natural. As a member of a primitive tribe in the Amazon could look at modern day man with all of his inventions as some supernatural being by analysis and comparison of their condition versus modern man's condition, so too the scientific man ignorantly looks at the concept of God as supernatural, rather than simply Godly and advanced beyond man's capacity. The mystery is in the beholding eye of man, not in the vision of God.

So is creation of ID a spontaneous process? If God thought about creation for 1 to the power of trillions of years as a planning stage, then began the actual work of creation, what is instantaneous about that? If God planned and designed all the forces and laws of nature first before creating them, what is spontaneous about that?

In most creation stories, do they speak of spontaneous processes, or is there a plan and a passage of time from the beginning of the creation process to the development of creation?

It strikes me as so odd that scientists could believe in a big bang (which of course was supposed to be a spontaneous process of creation of the universe) but can reject so similarly the idea of ID in which there is a period of planning and design before a creative act of bringing the universe into existence. If the big bang was a planned event by God, does that mean that the universe is necessarily random?

The issues is one of planned existence, rather than existence as a consequence of no planning and design.

As there is no way to confirm that either design or non design precedes the birth of existence, there is no logical reason to push non design over design.


p.s. I am not a fundamentalist theist suggesting that fundamentalist theism be taught in schools, rather my suggestion is that the logical possibility of design, intelligent design, be taught as a theory.

The ID that I am "pushing" does not require magic be taught, or magic to be believed in. Quite the opposite, it requires that a logical process of induction and inference be applied to our observation of the nature of life.

Quote from kjkent1:

First, you are assuming that the universe came from nothing. There's no proof that it did or didn't. Second, for the moment, ignoring the what came before the universe question, once you have the big bang, you have matter and energy, and the consequences that follow are that certain reactions and actions are predictable and measurable, and that given certain environmental conditions, base organic molecules form and they mutate and change and replicate. Add all of that together and what you have is what we have called "life."

There is a HUGE difference between this gradual development over time, and the introduction of a supernatural force that generates a new complex biological species of life instantaneously.

The fundamentalist theists does not demand that a science class promote the idea that God set evolution in motion and that evolution produced humanity. The fundamentalist, demands that evolution be regarded as false, regardless of the facts, and in its place we should teach that God made all of the life forms on this planet, and especially humans, appear instantaneously by application of, as Z so elegantly states, "pure potentiality."

Evolution does not require the introduction of a magical component, or the local suspension of physical reality in order to accomplish the diversity of life on Earth. Evolution requires only time, energy, and matter, just like every other physical action in the universe.

ID, on the other hand, as proposed by fundamentalist theists, requires the complete suspension of all natural scientific principles in order to accomplish what could otherwise not be accomplished.

In short, ID requires the introduction of magic as the primary force by which all life is created. That, is the difference -- and it's a very big difference.

 

[energytraderus]

This thread's most excited and persistent postors have taken the thread off the topic: this thread's topic is a federal court's decision on ID's use in a school's curriculum. This thread's foci are:
why we're even discussing this topic (i.e. why has the media given so much coverage to such an obscure and peripheral issue); the primary actors' intentions (i.e. federal judge, plaintiff); which groups or factions benefitted from both the action and the judgement; among others.

Albert Einstein, when asked about his passion for physics, replied that he wanted "to know the mind of God". Einstein, when attempting to find a unifying theory, also has said that "God does not play dice". Einstein evidently believed with ID proponents that God's divine intelligence is revealed to man in immutable physical laws. In any case, it's laughable that any postor could believe he could prove or disprove whether a divine intelligence is revealed by physical laws.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from energytraderus:

This thread's most excited and persistent postors have taken the thread off the topic: this thread's topic is a federal court's decision on ID's use in a school's curriculum. This thread's foci are:
why we're even discussing this topic (i.e. why has the media given so much coverage to such an obscure and peripheral issue); the primary actors' intentions (i.e. federal judge, plaintiff); which groups or factions benefitted from both the action and the judgement; among others.

Albert Einstein, when asked about his passion for physics, replied that he wanted "to know the mind of God". Einstein, when attempting to find a unifying theory, also has said that "God does not play dice". Einstein evidently believed with ID proponents that God's divine intelligence is revealed to man in immutable physical laws. In any case, it's laughable that any postor could believe he could prove or disprove whether a divine intelligence is revealed by physical laws.

albert einstein was probably a deist. the didnt believe in the christian god of today.

http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/religion3.html

Einstein in 1934 at a Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of ScienceThis quote from Einstein appears in "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium",published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to theDemocratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941. In it he says:

The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted [italics his], in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task...

 

[kjkent1]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

"There is a HUGE difference between this gradual development over time, and the introduction of a supernatural force that generates a new complex biological species of life instantaneously."

When exactly did I suggest this process of design happens "instantaneously by a supernatural force?"

ID is 100% natural, and the process of design is very systematic. God is not supernatural in my opinion, God is fully natural. As a member of a primitive tribe in the Amazon could look at modern day man with all of his inventions as some supernatural being by analysis and comparison of their condition versus modern man's condition, so too the scientific man ignorantly looks at the concept of God as supernatural, rather than simply Godly and advanced beyond man's capacity. The mystery is in the beholding eye of man, not in the vision of God.

So is creation of ID a spontaneous process? If God thought about creation for 1 to the power of trillions of years as a planning stage, then began the actual work of creation, what is instantaneous about that? If God planned and designed all the forces and laws of nature first before creating them, what is spontaneous about that?

In most creation stories, do they speak of spontaneous processes, or is there a plan and a passage of time from the beginning of the creation process to the development of creation?

It strikes me as so odd that scientists could believe in a big bang (which of course was supposed to be a spontaneous process of creation of the universe) but can reject so similarly the idea of ID in which there is a period of planning and design before a creative act of bringing the universe into existence. If the big bang was a planned event by God, does that mean that the universe is necessarily random?

The issues is one of planned existence, rather than existence as a consequence of no planning and design.

As there is no way to confirm that either design or non design precedes the birth of existence, there is no logical reason to push non design over design.


p.s. I am not a fundamentalist theist suggesting that fundamentalist theism be taught in schools, rather my suggestion is that the logical possibility of design, intelligent design, be taught as a theory.

The ID that I am "pushing" does not require magic be taught, or magic to be believed in. Quite the opposite, it requires that a logical process of induction and inference be applied to our observation of the nature of life.

OK, if as you propose, God is natural, then ID (and God, as well) is scientifically measurable. So, you shouldn't require inductive reasoning to test your theory -- you should be able to propose a scentific test that will isolate that which is designed from that which is not.

If you can, you will win the Nobel Prize in Physics. And, if you can, then there isn't a scientist on the planet who won't immediately find ID to be a scientific theory and I can promise you that scientific research into the "nature" of ID and the designer will begin immediately.

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

The effects are measurable, sure.

Prior to the big bang, the nature of what existed before the big bang would not be measureable, as the tools of measurement would not exist to measure it.

Does it mean that since the present tools of measurement did not exist, that it was not in some way measurable or did not exist?

Are you suggesting that the big bang is unscientific, as we are not able to measure anything but the results of the big bang, and not its cause?

Yet physics accepts the big bang theory as a scientific theory precisely because of the logical guessing based on the observation of the effects, without any direct knowledge of, or ability to measure the cause.

No theory I have seen from a physicist suggests that a big bang was the product of any "supernatural" event.

The suggestion is that the big bang was entirely natural, even though unmeasurable before it happened, and a product of a cause unknown and/or unknowable via empiricism.

Quote from kjkent1:

OK, if as you propose, God is natural, then ID (and God, as well) is scientifically measurable. So, you shouldn't require inductive reasoning to test your theory -- you should be able to propose a scentific test that will isolate that which is designed from that which is not.

If you can, you will win the Nobel Prize in Physics. And, if you can, then there isn't a scientist on the planet who won't immediately find ID to be a scientific theory and I can promise you that scientific research into the "nature" of ID and the designer will begin immediately.

 

[kjkent1]

Quote from marketsurfer:

let us speculate for a moment:

if this was not the case, would you still have an issue with the mentioning of ID in the classroom?

thank you

If ID was provable by resort to natural causation, then it wouldn't be religion, it would be science, and I believe that scientists everywhere would rush in to conduct research on the subject matter, because that research would lead them directly to the discovery of the identity, location, means and methods of the designer.

Which, if the designer is actually a natural actor, could, of course, immediately lead to the extermination of everyone and everything on the planet, because by obtaining knowledge, previously only available to God almighty, humanity would be well on the way to threatening God's supposed supremacy in the universe.

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

Quote from kjkent1:

If ID was provable by resort to natural causation, then it wouldn't be religion, it would be science, and I believe that scientists everywhere would rush in to conduct research on the subject matter, because that research would lead them directly to the discovery of the identity, location, means and methods of the designer.

The big bang theory is not provable by natural causation, yet it is accepted as a valid theory and explanation.

No one has found the direct identity, location, and means of the cause of the big bang...yet it is still accepted.

Which, if the designer is actually a natural actor, could, of course, immediately lead to the extermination of everyone and everything on the planet, because by obtaining knowledge, previously only available to God almighty, humanity would be well on the way to threatening God's supposed supremacy in the universe.

If you get around to being able to create a universe similar to this one, perhaps God might have concern.

I personally don't think God would be concerned with the level of development and mental capacity of human beings presenting a challenge.....