leejo

Yeah I guess you're right.

Damn!

TheFeniX

I don't know. The Judeo Christian God seems to have the whole "worse" part down by himself. I mean we are talking about a God who destroyed the entire world (flood), killed innocent children (Egypt), and destroyed the life of one of his most loyal followers to prove the Satan wrong.

But he loves me, right? Unless I'm gay... or Muslim.

Christian Gods tend to make a more active approach. He probably would have smote that baby. That's what he does.

Actually, no. I'm not mad at my god for anything. He's a pretty decent guy. I wouldn't worship a God I feared: My irrational belief system is based upon this idea.

Judaism doesn't teach love, it teaches vengeance. Then Jesus came along and told God "maybe we shouldn't kill everyone dad." Then God killed him.

Creationists like to paint it that way. It makes them feel justified ("Well, you're just like us, just another side to a coin."). It's a carefully manfactured idea by those who can't even begin to discredit evolution with science, so they lower themselves to using politics to do it.

PS: I'll leave it up to the reader to determine where I am joking. And if you can't take a joke about religion, then we're all Dooooomed™.

Edit: fixed my Jesus quote.

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leejo

Hmm. I am a Christian and that's not my understanding of God, his relationship with Jesus, or his penchant for vengance.

Your statement about how creationists like to paint evolution as a culture makes my point precisely. The debate about evolution is never scientific on either side. Either you accept evolution as fact or you're a Jesus-freak. Either the people making such outrageous statements dont have a lot of supporting evidence or they are just as ignorant of the supporting evidence as their Jesus-freak counterparts.

Unfortunately there are plenty of Jesus-freaks who are sick of having their God, their religion, their intelligence, and their motivations slandered and they pick a poor fight. The scientists quietly poke along doing science, meanwhile the culture war proceeds in the school boardrooms, the courts, and the peanut galleries.

tau_neutrino

Another thing I'd like to add. The concept of Darwinian evolution is a bit outdated. Darwin did not know about genes or the mechanisms of genetics. Evolution that is being taught in universities today is based upon the foundations of Darwin's theory that species change according to the dictates of natural selection. We now know that natural selection, while perhaps the most powerful selective force, is not the only force at work. There is also the probabilty of random mutations and genetic sampling.

What most laypeople think of as evolution is actually what we biologists call speciation - the rise of new species from a particular set of species given certain environmental conditions. Remember that evolution is change in frequency of alleles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleles) within a population over time.

A few basic misconceptions about evolutionary theories:
- we are not descended from chimps or gorillas; genetic evidence suggests that we share a recent common ancestor (as do all species)
- THE ORIGIN OF LIFE IS BEYOND THE DOMAIN OF STUDY OF EVOLUTION. The study of the origin of life is called abiogenesis. Evolution is concerned with how life changes in response to various biotic and abiotic environmental factors.
- Evolution is just a theory. So is the theory of gravity. Both have immeasurable amounts of data backing them up. It's just simpler to look at and understand the data supporting gravity.
- Natural selection is not "survival of the fittest" - in biology, fitness is the ability of organisms to have offspring. Obviously survival is a prerequisite of reproduction.
- Evolution is not useless. Evolution is used to predict how some diseases will mutate so researchers can develop drugs and treatments to counter them. Evolution is the basis of modern biology at both micro and macro levels.
- Evolution is NOT a matter of belief. Like all sciences, one must interpret the data and decide whether to accept the explanation. Science is not a matter of "faith". I accept evolution as the most plausible explanation for the diversity of life today due to the huge amounts of data supporting its claims (and understanding a good part of it).

CingularDuality

FYI:

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tau_neutrino

Here is a good source of some of concepts of evolution: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~bramblet/ant301/four.html

A few more:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology/index.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org

The definition of evolution that I used is found in most biology textbooks.

leejo

Sure it is a matter of faith. Didn't we just cover that? When new evidence comes along that causes scientists to question evolution they will develop a new model and a new theory to believe in.

You mentioned that evolution is a theory just like the theory of gravity. Which theory of gravity? I can think of six off the top of my head.

Science has an advantage over some other disciplines in that it tends to deal with the nuts and bolts of things and therefore can provide concrete evidence to support its assertions. I can't create a scientific experiment that proves that Miles Davis was a better jazz musician than Kenny G. I can't use a love-o-meter to show that I love my daughter this much today or that much tomorrow for you to graph. I can easily show my weight and my height because those are physical properties.

But there are plenty of things in life that aren't physical (unless and until Wulfyn can show me the process that happens in my brain that I call "love" or "good jazz"). It's a mistake to dismiss the unscientific.

I am curious to know what predictions Evolution makes that you use practically to predict how some diseases will mutate so researchers can develop drugs and treatments to counter them. Can you give an example? I wasn't aware that Evolution had such practical applications.

CingularDuality

And to get back to the original subject, someone asked if "intelligent design" could be a secular concept. Well, the idea of secular bible study in public schools is gaining momentum. I've got mixed feelings about it. If it's truly secular, then I don't see why not include the textbook in other studies, but I don't see the need for an entire course on the Bible in public schools...

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TheFeniX

Hence why there are 1e10 different sub-sect of Christianity.

No way. Nothing should ever be accepted a full-blown fact. Evolution is a theory that fits best with the knowledge we currently have on the subject.

Ex: I accept the fact that humanity exceeding the speed of light is impossible, since no object with mass can attain light-speed. That doesn't mean I know it will never happen. I accept evolution because the facts fit with the theory, not because I believe in evolution. Theories aren't based of beliefs (at least not in the same sense that religion is). There's no faith.

A scientist may believe that X + Y = Z. But if while trying to prove that he determines: X+Y= 42, then he reforms his hypothesis.

Faith means you take X + Y and twist the facts whichever way you can to make the = Z.

This black and white view is the product of the politics that were created by the debate itself. Life is rarely black and white, but it's easy to argue false dilemas.

Christianity is the majority in America. The days of Christians being presecuted are long gone. They just perceive the government stopping them from ramming their irrational ideaologies "down people's throats" as persecution. They can't accept the fact that there are people out there who don't care about Jesus, and they fight "tooth and nail" against it.

Politics.

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CingularDuality

This is true, but I'll add that they're also frustrated with seeing islam on equal footing with christianity in this country. Such a shame...

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TheFeniX

Why? In the scope of things, I'd put them all on the same level as the guy who puts "Jedi" down as his religion.

Equality has it's price.

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Steeler

My father was an AP English teacher for 30 years. He taught the King James Bible as a literary text and used comparisons with more recent translations to highlight variations in language and composition. It is, after all, one of the fundamental texts of Western history. He is not, however, a religious person and did not teach it as a history or moral base. He taught it as literature.

Also, I'd just like to point out that the straw man population of this thread is ridiculously high.

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tau_neutrino

What Fenix said.

The one that is accepted by the physics community and taught to college students. Physics has the benefit that it is able to be explained by concrete mathematics. Unfortunately it is harder for biology where we must use statistics. Biology is an abstraction of chemistry, which is an abstraction of physics, which can be considered to be an abstraction of mathematics.

Right now we don't have the knowledge, means, or methods for that. Who knows what the future may hold. That is a subjective judgment. Science cannot evaluate hypotheses that cannot be tested with experimental/empirical data.

It's also a mistake to dismiss the scientific. IIRC emotions correspond to nerve activity in certain parts of the brain. Neurobio is not my field of study so I'm not sure of the specifics.

http://ecoevo.bio.uci.edu/Faculty/Fi...edity20001.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/547318.stm

I found a lot of other sources on pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed) but they are quite technical

leejo

Naw man that's what makes for good sandboxin'! Why are you trying to ruin our thread?

leejo

What Fenix said left me unmoved. What do you say?


OK that narrows it down. I can think of four of those. Relativity, quantuum, string, push. None of them have a clue how gravity works (other than predicting that gravitons, undiscovered massless particles, exist), just how it behaves.

THANK YOU. In your FACE Wulfyn!!!

Good point. I can't wait to tell my wife that she's causing nerve activity in certain parts of my brain.

I don't dismiss the scientific. I love the scientific. But it's a tool that helps us live, not a reason for living.

Oh yeah, the flu. Forgot about that. Thanks for the info. I'll read up.