I went when I was really young. I think I mainly visited resorts and amusement parks.
The Origin of Species
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covering the same topics over and over again.
So did I.
It’s called brainwashing…. :P … at least, for me. :wink:
But hey, don’t take my word for it. You believe what you wish. I have no problems with the beliefs of Christians. Where I do have a problem is when they try to pry their beliefs into my way of life. That doesn’t happen too often but it is real annoying when it does.
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I view the “order” of the cosmos as the necessary influence from what could be called a creator. Only that this creator is not a self concious entity. its only the entire structure that resulted in the world and stars that becomes “my god” It does not intervene or require obediance. thats just my take on it.
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@stuka:
covering the same topics over and over again.
So did I.
It’s called brainwashing…. :P … at least, for me. :wink:
But hey, don’t take my word for it. You believe what you wish. I have no problems with the beliefs of Christians. Where I do have a problem is when they try to pry their beliefs into my way of life. That doesn’t happen too often but it is real annoying when it does.
I wouldn’t call it brainwashing because of the negative conotation. It was more like the way things are repeated in school.
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have also long been critical of public schools for not offering anything in terms of cultural studies including Anthro, Sociology
fyi: my school has anthro and soc, both of which i took."
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In smaller schools they have really poor course selection.
Maaan, no kidding. My itsy bitsy school was a joke. I learned more in the Marines. THE INFANTRY. :wink:
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First, on topic:
Yesterday i got my hand on the Nature of April 28th, and i think intelligent design is not scientific, as it relies on “gaps” and not on “proof”. And science is about closing these gaps (of course, if you just find a middlestone in a gap, you create two new gaps). If we had intelligent design from …say WWI on … we would not know how the sun works, for example. I think it should not be put into science.I’m skeptical of the whole intelligent design side b/c I think it is an attempt to undermine Evolutionary teaching.
That as well. I wouldn’t say that everyoneone who believes in ID wants this, but it surely is used politically this way.
Now … OT …
@theSexualHarrassmentPanda:… As soon as CC or Falk read about how anybody actually believes in intelligent design or whatever they will show up to riducule you …
CC believes in intelligent design.
Its funny how Falk can blatently insult me in German and get away with it, and yet he still calls himself civilized.
I dare you: quote where i did that. It is not all about you.
Quote me here but you will never hear Falk apologize for anything.
I quote myself from the “will democrats…” thread:
"i am sorry if my sentence was misunderstood by you. "
“I appreciate you warning me of falling into these traps”
“I pull back that you implied that”
" If it was unlcear that i did so, i apologize. "@SHP:
All you proven to me with such stupid statements like this is that you don’t like to read.
Now, that just had to be quoted as well.
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Well maybe you shouldn’t have gone to high school in a bar in Oakland. :D
Just teasin’
:lol: Good point!
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@SHP:
As soon as you get the better of him he will insult you
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I’m skeptical of the whole intelligent design side b/c I think it is an attempt to undermine Evolutionary teaching. However at the same time I don’t think these Christian types who are pushing it do so b/c it is their main cause but b/c they seek to achieve a greater role for their cultural traditions in schooling. I think in someways they are right public schooling in terms of christianity is way too pc. Even at my school our Euro History course that covered the middle ageds barely refered to the Church. Imagine my surprise to be so unprepared when I got to WCiv in college and found that discussion of the church, its poltics and teachings were integral to an understanding of feudal and early modern europe.
It’s not an attempt to undermine anything. It’s simply a competing theory. The conditions at the start of the universe could have been anything. By either a fantastic coincidence, or intelligent design, the constants of the universe just happened to fall right into place to allow beings like us to exist. Don’t take my word for it. It’s a very popular argument in cosmology. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_hannam/fta.html
Oh, and I’m not a “Christian type” ;)
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You might want to address the actual argument instead of bemoaning its lack of funding. Besides, it’s not the type of thing that gets funded, as it is primarily a philosophical question. And the science behind the argument (Were the physical constants at the moment of creation fixed, or could they have been anything other than what they are? Is there going to be a Big Crunch? Are there infinite parallel universes?) IS being funded.
Remember, paradigm shifts often move with glacial speed. How long did it take germ theory to become established? How long before scientists gave up on spontaneous generation? Why was homosexuality considered a mental disorder all the way up to the 1970’s?
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It’s not an attempt to undermine anything. It’s simply a competing theory.
I don’t think it is a theory. It can not be used to predict any behavior.
The conditions at the start of the universe could have been anything.
That is true. We can’t say what was there … at least not yet. So, i would
again not call it a theory, but speculation.
Just because we are -at the moment- unknowing, does that mean that the former believe of the sun being town across the sky by a chariot was a theory?It’s a very popular argument in cosmology.
It is not :)
To the link …
“To use the lottery fallacy against the fine tuning argument we must postulate a suitably large array of universes for which we have no other evidence at all. This isn’t a fatal problem because we are also postulating a Creator but persuading an atheist that he is standing on the same metaphysical ground as his theistic opponent can be rather hard.”I don’t think so. It is just that the Creator argument (like the many worlds argument) can not be checked yet. Either you have to build a sound scientific theory of how to check the existance, or leave it as metaphysics/religion.
It also says:
"An example of the former (fallacy) is when we are asked why we are not amazed by the incredible odds that we were born given the number of eggs and sperm produced by our parents. Is it not amazing that I am not someone else? This is fallacious " … with regard to the existance of life.On the terms, the same lines can be used against the creationist argument on the natural constants.
“As we are investigating why the laws of physics are as they are, the answer ‘because they are’ does not seem to take us very far forward and indeed, begs the question.”This is effectively using the same argument once to defend creationism and once discarding it as a fallacy.
The author then says “but like all arguments for God, this one does not seem to convince anyone who does not want to be convinced” but i doubt that he considers the vice versa case which is as true. No scientist (i know of) wants to mix science into religion. On the other hand, we have people who want to mix religion into science (mainly believing/faithful religious people, who find it difficult to keep their religious believe while learning their science with critical thinking and constants doubts. It may be hard for a religious person to stay faithful when there is “no hard evidence”, intelligent design is a nice way out of that.)
All in all the article is putting up a huge straw man.
“We cannot know that our particular set of physical laws and constants are the only ones that will produce a viable universe.”
Agreed, yet
"One thing a design argument must not do is look for a ‘God in the Gaps.’ "
which is exactly what she is doing. We have insufficient knowledge, and probably never a way to gain more. Thus we need a creator.
That is not science, and exactly looking for a “god in the gaps”.He in lengths argues about the existance of universes or not, then…
"Victor Stenger… has tried to demonstrate that many different constants produce viable universes …
First, it assumes exactly the same laws of physics that we have but with different numbers. Most fine tuners would say that the laws themselves have been finely tuned and so cannot be taken as read.That is a “God in the Gaps” ….
(1) See we don’t know wether other universes could bear life. The universe as we see it must have been created the way it is (with its natural constants).
(2) Look, here are some “life bearing” universes, with different constants.
(3) The universe as we see it must have been created with laws the way it is.I do appreciate that science is pushed by these questions. I yet don’t see them as being science themselves.
“The problems with the multiple universe theory are manifold but the most important is that we have no evidence for them whatsoever.”
We have no scientific evidence for god.
“there is no theory that predicts they might exist.”
Wheelers interpretation of the quantum mechanical measurement process lives on spawning more and more universes from the current one. There has been a ST:TNG show where Worf skips between these universes that is based on that idea."Also, for the multiple universe theory to help the atheist at all, the universes must all have different physical laws "
No, SOME must differ, not all.“Finally, the vast number of universes required seems to insult every principal of scientific elegance from Ockham’s razor onwards”
Is it better to introduce someting totally new, like a creator, or to add more of what is know already ?“The atheist should realise that hypothesising multiple universe is metaphysics and not science.”
We do. Unfortunately the “designers” don’t see that adding a creator is as much metaphysics. Both are not holding under scientific examination.I agree with:
“It is not a scientific theory because it cannot be experimentally verified or falsified… Indeed it is a metaphysical statement itself–as it lies behind science, it cannot be examined scientifically”
Until i see an experiment that shows the signature of a creator, i doubt one exists. I wonder why it is not applied to the creation arguement by the author.“So would the discovery of life on other planets with the same or a very similar genetic architecture to our own (be evidence for a creator), as this would suggest that different pathways to life are not common.”
That holds nothing.
If a way to create life is the most probable, and happened on two different planets, doesn’t mean at all that a creator created this “most likely” (or maybe even only possible) way.
The personal need for a creator speaks out of the whole article. I respect this personal need, but strongly object to bring it into science and mix metaphysics into science.Remember, paradigm shifts often move with glacial speed. How long did it take germ theory to become established? How long before scientists gave up on spontaneous generation? Why was homosexuality considered a mental disorder all the way up to the 1970’s?
Yes … so we are slowly moving away from the need of a creator, and just see the last defenses of the ones that follow the old paradigm?
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I still believe in God because one thing that can never be explained is why forces work the way the do. Why is their gravity? Why do Newton’s laws exist? However, in my view God leaves things alone, watching how things turn out and since we (humans) have shown intelligence in being able to comprehend the idea of God he has communicated with us through the biblical prophets and loves us.
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I still believe in God because one thing that can never be explained is why forces work the way the do. Why is their gravity? Why do Newton’s laws exist?
I think we know quite a bit about forces. With General Relativity we had the first model of how gravity works. Quantum Mechanics lead to the understand of the other force (electromagnetic, weak and strong force can be unified). We still work on the GUT (Grand Unifying Theory).
However, in my view God leaves things alone, watching how things turn out and since we (humans) have shown intelligence in being able to comprehend the idea of God he has communicated with us through the biblical prophets and loves us.
… Hmmm …
(1) how can you leave things alone if you communicate with them? The act of communication requires interference.
(2) the question is: did god plan ahead? did he create the universe such that life would come into existance and this life would develop into humans who the god could communicate with? short: is there a plan behind evolution? (i think that is one part of what Intelligent Design boils down to) -
I don’t think it was planned, but when humans appeared and had enough intelligence I think he decided to communicate.
So one day god was looking at the stuff he set into motion and noticed there was something intelligent. He then said, “Hi!” scared the creatures and thought, aww, they seem cute until they started killing each other.
As for my questions about the laws of physics you missed the point. It’s not how things work, it’s why it works that way.
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Hi,
I’m the one creationist vote (so far). Before you dismiss my opinion as that of a religious fanatic, let me explain my position a bit.
First, I grew up as a Christian that believes in evolution wholeheartedly. Until I started college, in fact, science was always my favorite school subject and I was particularly interested in biology, and thus evolutionary biology was deeply fixed in my mind. It was not until I got to the university that I began to even question that, because to date I have never heard anyone speak out against evolution nor been taught ID or Creationism in any classes - I went to public schools my whole life, a secular university (Carnegie Mellon University), got degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science along with taking the standard intro courses in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and the church I had attended most of my life growing up never once spoke out against evolution to my recollection.
However as I was pursuing my degree in Mathematics (with a concentration in Logic) and began to wonder what to do in my life, I became intensely interested in the philosophy of science, mathematics, and reasoning. I came to thoughts through that period of questioning and reading that allowed me to have in my opinion, a much more informed and historical approach to understanding the logical processes of deductive reasoning, the applicability of the scientific method, and the epistemology we all accept. From my logic background, I began to see how the metaphysical assumptions people hold filters the way they accept or reject theories, and how the scientific method is used especially. So I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to accept belief in God, creationism, etc, or even atheistic evolution as it applies to origins (note: not current evolution, I mean merely of the extension of evolutionary ideas to the origins of each species alive today), I would have to do so more as a foundational element of my thought rather than as something that has been “proved”, because all of the above things are on the same level in that way. As long as the belief seemed to be consistent with reality as I knew it, I knew that I could hold it with as much justification as not. Yet I still believed in evolution because I saw no reason why I should abandon it at the time.
What changed my mind was a number of theological rather than scientific ideas. As I mentioned, I had been a Christian my whole life, so I was already taking the existence of God as a given. Now that I believe in creationism, I find my ideas about origins and the Bible to be far more intellectually satisfying, and I find my interest in non-Discrete areas of science far renewed. Of course, I do not seek to prove either creationism or my beliefs in God; I accept this foundationally, because I think they are the best explanations for life, and this is why it was theological ideas that made me change my mind about evolution: I knew that if it was a consistent interpretation of reality, I could make that switch on a foundational level. So note that when I say I believe in creationism, I no more advocate teaching that (or ID) in a public school science class than anyone else here does. I just also would prefer that the origins aspect of evolutionary theory not be taught in public school science classes either, but if that’s what the majority of people believe should be, then so be it.
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I voted ID, but only because it BEST fits my beliefs. I really could have voted for any of these.
I beleive evolution happened (s), but I see no conflict with God directing evolution as fitting to him. If God did direct evolution how could science possibly detect this as the work of God? All science would know is that one animal changed over time - you couldn’t prove or disprove Gods work in this.
As far as creationism, I take this to mean the origin of life rather than the universe. Again, if God directed certain molecules to form a DNA strand, how would/could science detect this? Again, science would merely note that these molecules combined in a way that created DNA.
In other words, I don’t beleive there must be a conflict between evolution, creation, intelligent design, etc. Certainly God is capable of creating the current diversity of live through a process such as evolution.
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Evolution guided by intelligent design
Basically i’m an old-earth creationist. -
Excuse me if I am repeating something already said, I only skimmed the responses, however, who’s to say God didn’t use evolution to create life on this planet?
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It’s all about the “scientific method” with you isn’t it Falk. You keep looking at it through you’re scientific lense, and until you can crawl out of the empirical box you’ve made for yourself, you’ll never understand the concept of the creator. How many time must I say it: it’s not about proof, it’s about as Janus puts it, “a leap of faith.” That’s the wonder of the belief in a creator. When all the evidence seems to point you away from the existence of God, you still say “I believe”, which is a notion completely foreign, fallacious, and unsupportable to most hardcore science types, but is still a very powerful notion, and one that cannot be duplicated within the scientific worldview.
Oh, and to all, please don’t use what I’ve said here to stereotype or characterize me into any box. That really annoys the hel out of me. I like to retain my personal anonimity. Thanx :)
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@F_alk:
It’s not an attempt to undermine anything. It’s simply a competing theory.
I don’t think it is a theory. It can not be used to predict any behavior.
The conditions at the start of the universe could have been anything.
That is true. We can’t say what was there … at least not yet. So, i would
again not call it a theory, but speculation.
Just because we are -at the moment- unknowing, does that mean that the former believe of the sun being town across the sky by a chariot was a theory?It’s a very popular argument in cosmology.
It is not :)
To the link …
“To use the lottery fallacy against the fine tuning argument we must postulate a suitably large array of universes for which we have no other evidence at all. This isn’t a fatal problem because we are also postulating a Creator but persuading an atheist that he is standing on the same metaphysical ground as his theistic opponent can be rather hard.”I don’t think so. It is just that the Creator argument (like the many worlds argument) can not be checked yet. Either you have to build a sound scientific theory of how to check the existance, or leave it as metaphysics/religion.
It also says:
"An example of the former (fallacy) is when we are asked why we are not amazed by the incredible odds that we were born given the number of eggs and sperm produced by our parents. Is it not amazing that I am not someone else? This is fallacious " … with regard to the existance of life.On the terms, the same lines can be used against the creationist argument on the natural constants.
“As we are investigating why the laws of physics are as they are, the answer ‘because they are’ does not seem to take us very far forward and indeed, begs the question.”This is effectively using the same argument once to defend creationism and once discarding it as a fallacy.
The author then says “but like all arguments for God, this one does not seem to convince anyone who does not want to be convinced” but i doubt that he considers the vice versa case which is as true. No scientist (i know of) wants to mix science into religion. On the other hand, we have people who want to mix religion into science (mainly believing/faithful religious people, who find it difficult to keep their religious believe while learning their science with critical thinking and constants doubts. It may be hard for a religious person to stay faithful when there is “no hard evidence”, intelligent design is a nice way out of that.)
All in all the article is putting up a huge straw man.
“We cannot know that our particular set of physical laws and constants are the only ones that will produce a viable universe.”
Agreed, yet
"One thing a design argument must not do is look for a ‘God in the Gaps.’ "
which is exactly what she is doing. We have insufficient knowledge, and probably never a way to gain more. Thus we need a creator.
That is not science, and exactly looking for a “god in the gaps”.He in lengths argues about the existance of universes or not, then…
"Victor Stenger… has tried to demonstrate that many different constants produce viable universes …
First, it assumes exactly the same laws of physics that we have but with different numbers. Most fine tuners would say that the laws themselves have been finely tuned and so cannot be taken as read.That is a “God in the Gaps” ….
(1) See we don’t know wether other universes could bear life. The universe as we see it must have been created the way it is (with its natural constants).
(2) Look, here are some “life bearing” universes, with different constants.
(3) The universe as we see it must have been created with laws the way it is.I do appreciate that science is pushed by these questions. I yet don’t see them as being science themselves.
“The problems with the multiple universe theory are manifold but the most important is that we have no evidence for them whatsoever.”
We have no scientific evidence for god.
“there is no theory that predicts they might exist.”
Wheelers interpretation of the quantum mechanical measurement process lives on spawning more and more universes from the current one. There has been a ST:TNG show where Worf skips between these universes that is based on that idea."Also, for the multiple universe theory to help the atheist at all, the universes must all have different physical laws "
No, SOME must differ, not all.“Finally, the vast number of universes required seems to insult every principal of scientific elegance from Ockham’s razor onwards”
Is it better to introduce someting totally new, like a creator, or to add more of what is know already ?“The atheist should realise that hypothesising multiple universe is metaphysics and not science.”
We do. Unfortunately the “designers” don’t see that adding a creator is as much metaphysics. Both are not holding under scientific examination.I agree with:
“It is not a scientific theory because it cannot be experimentally verified or falsified… Indeed it is a metaphysical statement itself–as it lies behind science, it cannot be examined scientifically”
Until i see an experiment that shows the signature of a creator, i doubt one exists. I wonder why it is not applied to the creation arguement by the author.“So would the discovery of life on other planets with the same or a very similar genetic architecture to our own (be evidence for a creator), as this would suggest that different pathways to life are not common.”
That holds nothing.
If a way to create life is the most probable, and happened on two different planets, doesn’t mean at all that a creator created this “most likely” (or maybe even only possible) way.
The personal need for a creator speaks out of the whole article. I respect this personal need, but strongly object to bring it into science and mix metaphysics into science.Remember, paradigm shifts often move with glacial speed. How long did it take germ theory to become established? How long before scientists gave up on spontaneous generation? Why was homosexuality considered a mental disorder all the way up to the 1970’s?
Yes … so we are slowly moving away from the need of a creator, and just see the last defenses of the ones that follow the old paradigm?
Just a couple points:
1. The argument uses science to offer an inductive reason to believe the universe was fine-tuned to support life. CURRENT science is that the physical constants could have been anything. Using relatavity, we can figure out what the universe would have been like if any of the constants had been different by even a millionth of a decimal point. In almost all cases, the universe is not life-supporting (only hydrogen atoms exist, stars can’t form, molecules can’t form, etc.). The conclusion is that we are either very lucky, or somebody rigged the universe. Here are your repsonses:
2. There could be an inifinite amount of universes. We just happen to be one of the lucky ones. True, this would be a defeater, but believing in infinite parallel universes at this point is a matter of faith. There certainly isn’t any evidence to hang your hat on.
3. Who’s to say life couldn’t arise in different conditions? To which I would reply that believing in a being made purely of hydrogen requires more faith than belief in God.
As for its popularity, it is certainly popular in philosophy, and I’ve never met any physicists who haven’t heard of it (granted, I’ve only talked to two ;) In the book “God and the philosophers” I read that half of cosmologists are theists, thanks in part to the fine-tuning argument. Take it for what it’s worth, but keep in mind that there wouldn’t be such an effort to disprove it if it wasn’t popular and didn’t have a certain appeal.
Here’s a better formulation of it: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/gpsu/old-conf/Review/The Fallacies of Fine-tuning.pdf#search=‘fine tuning argument AND cosmology’
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