@ 2PM EST NASA will announce alien life has been discovered

[FireStorm_]

And what about chainsaw guitars?
She's dead, so no longer a musician, but I'm sure the intented use of such tool is to stab people.

Perhaps it was a bad analogy but I think there are more guitars when one gets broken, and I'm not sure the same goes for science.

To much funny stuff. Gonna take a walk to clear my head and run some errants. Then i should be able to handle more.

[SinbadEV]

I'm pretty sure darwin would've punched you in the eye for bringing god back into the equation... religion is a product of human egotism and denial. watching religions deform and contort to encompass all the discoveries which clearly disprove them is depressing

I'm sorry, I think you may have misinterpreted my statements but I guess I shouldn't have brought him into the picture... my point was that Darwin did not believe that a belief in God and a belief in Evolution were mutually exclusive*...

* Charles_Darwin's_religious_views#Agnosticism

[KingRaptor]

If you want to break things down like this... All the intelligent design people are saying is that it couldn't have happened randomly and all of the creationists/anti-evolutionists are saying is that nothing can evolve into a different "kind" of animal... so humans didn't evolve from apes, lizards didn't evolve from fish, birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs, and all live didn't erupt over the course of billions of years from single-celled organisms that erupted by random chance.

Every time someone describes evolution using the terms "random" and/or "chance", God kills a theologian.

[KaiserJ]

[SinbadEV]

If you want to break things down like this... All the intelligent design people are saying is that it couldn't have happened randomly and all of the creationists/anti-evolutionists are saying is that nothing can evolve into a different "kind" of animal... so humans didn't evolve from apes, lizards didn't evolve from fish, birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs, and all live didn't erupt over the course of billions of years from single-celled organisms that erupted by random chance.

Every time someone describes evolution using the terms "random" and/or "chance", God kills a theologian.

Good point... Are you claiming that "Evolutionists" would say that some aspect of the underlying nature of the continuum that our universe (or all universes (or possible universes)) exist in means that the laws of physics are such that the spontaneous eruption of "life" from base elements is possible? Cause I'm pretty sure this is a point on the "Intelligent Design" side of the argument.

OK, I suppose the good Evolutionists would point out the whole "the universe (and mutli-verse-ish mish-mash of everything) is big enough that if something like a certain group of 6 elements being in the right place at the right time to spontaneously form together in a way that DNA was formed in a specific set of circumstances that meant that it would be self-sustaining and propagating" is not random so much as statistically inevitable" and that "valuable mutations" are self supporting thanks to the help of Natural Selection the eventual development of more complex organisms is inevitable... or whatever.... mean that the terms "random" and "chance" are less accurate than "statically unlikely"... or whatever... even Theologians are uncomfortable with "luck".

In my mind the real problem is that some people believe that God doesn't exist and are using this assumption as part of their interpretation of empirical evidence... and then Some people believe that God does exist and are using this assumption as part of their interpretation of empirical evidence... Ideally we could come up with some middle ground were we interpret empirical evidence entirely on other empirical evidence and that anything that is based on assumptions be treated as "theories that have not yet been dis-proven" and teach them as such.

So, teach natural selection as hard science but teach big-bang as theory. Ideally we could also mention "Intelligent Design" as a historical foot-note because even Newton and Leibniz and most of the rest of the 17th century Natural Philosophers believed this and spent so much time trying to fit all the awesome new science they were discovering into the context of dogmatic fairy tales*.

It is rather inconvenient to know that God exists and then have to work on the assumption that His existence cannot be taken as fact, but given the gross "misinterpretations" that Christians (and all religions really) have made over the years of their OWN religious texts it's probably a good idea to separate "Theology" from "Science"

* Earth being flat, angels pushing celestial bodies around the aether, "humours" determining peoples personalities, there being a physical "seat" in the human body for a "soul" etc.

[Neddie]

Hard science is composed of theories and axioms. Disciplines change over time as new - ideally more comprehensive - theories and axioms are adopted.

[TradeMark]

God this god that... does it really matter is there a god or not? -_-

[Wombat]

does it really matter is there a god or not? -_-

RELEASE THE RAGE

[SwiftSpear]

Personally I grant that there is a CHANCE that God's method of creating humans was to induce a big-bang which lead to the eruption of our universe and life which eventually evolved into humans and all other species on earth... and I'm pretty sure Darwin would have agreed with me.

I'm pretty sure darwin would've punched you in the eye for bringing god back into the equation... religion is a product of human egotism and denial. watching religions deform and contort to encompass all the discoveries which clearly disprove them is depressing

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Your argument would extend to science. Science thinks some theory is correct, and then new evidence comes out, and therefore we must TOTALLY THROW AWAY ALL OF SCIENCE!

I don't believe anything about region has ever been substantially disproved, our understanding of religious mythology and history simply becomes more complete as we unveil new aspects of it. Why should religion follow different standards that science should?

[SwiftSpear]

does it really matter is there a god or not? -_-

RELEASE THE RAGE

Why should anyone rage at that?

Microscopically (looking at things in small self contained frames of reference), no, doesn't matter at all.
Macroscopically (looking at the objective big picture), ya, there probably isn't a more important axiom of understanding at that level.

Either way, all our reference points are microscopic, even when we really try the best we can do is zoom out our little view to big and wide. The minds eye can theorize macroscope states of being, but not actually witness any of them.

If you're willing to admit there are frames of reference that are objective, then you have to have a theory for God. Either pro or con.

Certainly, if God exists, he cannot be proven, an all powerful, omnipotent, and super-intelligent God could only possibly be seen if he was willing to be seen.

[smoth]

what if god does exist but the very nature of this reality which we live in cannot handle something like him, there is no form of input beyond becoming part of it. Like a human being and wow character, you cannot exist in wow but you can extend an avatar...

sorta like jesus.

so if god were to extend a presence in this reality since this reality and all things in it are flawed god simply could not directly exist here?

[zwzsg]

If a WoW NPC was sentient, he probably could find out about the existence of human players outside the wow world. He would notice some odd event in the WoW world, stuff like logging out, or avatar changing soul when they get played by other players, or I don't know what. He'll make diverse theory to explain that, think about what testable consequence they'll have, and go check that.

Or maybe the WoW NPC could just directly speak to players.

Anyway, as long as the human players interact with the wow world, a sentient NPC in the wow world could prove their existence even if he could never join them, in same way we can know about the stars without having been there.

If you had zero interaction between the real world and WoW, or zero interaction between God and our universe, then it just mean God doesn't belong to our universe, or, more simply said, that God doesn't exist.

[PicassoCT]

I think wikileaks is just a symptom, the real probleme is that a hitech army, searching and hiring nerds, finds suprise, suprise, that those highly trained Networkadministrators have really some moral codex they cling to, even faceing severe punishments. So wikileaks is dead, wow, that changes everything, from now on, a whistleblower is on his own, like he is right now, even with wikileaks.

If you want authorian grunts, hire authorian grunts, and you can do all the dirty work in the world, and they will - out of some moronic "the leader is always right" thinking - keep quite. If you want hitectoys, you get with them the glasses boys, who wont shut up. Deal with it, bridges.

His name is Brad Manning.



In deep respect, for someone, who did not stay silent, when this would have been easier.

[AF]

0_o

Sinbad, what you have said shows that you do not even know what evolution IS. How can you say it is wrong if you do not evne know what it is that your saying is wrong. Its like going round in Secondary school and asking people "are you a heterosexual" and they all say no because they dont want to be seen as gay.

So, I shall take your post and explain to you, why your post shows how truly ignorant of what evolution and creationism actually are:

It merely says that things change over time.

You are confusing the issue in a typically Evolutionist way by bundling guesswork with scientific fact... thereby setting up creationists as strawmen who refuse to believe things that have been scientifically proven because they are counter to their beliefs.

I reply to this by pointing out that this defies the very meaning of the word evolve.

A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.

We have hard evidence that regardless of where humans have come from, this is happening, and we as a species are evolving right now, the difference is that the common perception of evolution completely ignores numerous effects that we take for granted.

If you want to break things down like this... All the intelligent design people are saying is that it couldn't have happened randomly and all of the creationists/anti-evolutionists are saying is that nothing can evolve into a different "kind" of animal... so humans didn't evolve from apes, lizards didn't evolve from fish, birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs,

There are hundreds of thousands of cases documented of this kind of thing happening on a bacterial level, and numerous cases of it happening at much higher levels.

We have South American butterflies that are undergoing speciation into 2 distinct species, we have records showing species arising that were not there centuries earlier that are just starting to differentiate, we have genetic proof that species that are totally different were once related.

We have even done it deliberatly ourselves. Whatever happened to the bannana? Why is it this tiny small plant now comes in hundreds of mutually distinct varieties? Or the hundreds of breeds of dogs? This is evolution directed by selective pressures exerted by human will. And we've been doing this for millenia.

and all live didn't erupt over the course of billions of years from single-celled organisms that erupted by random chance.

And here is the crux of the problem. Creationists attack Evolution because it threatens the start of life. Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with how life began. Evolution says nothing about how life began.

It could have been a divine act of god. It could have be aliens dropping a test tube out the window. It could have been a visitor from another universe that didnt sterilise its suit properly and left behind stuff. It couldve been lightnign on a rock or a string of events that assembled basic machinary. Evolution does not care, because that is the field of Ambiogenesis, not evolution.

Intelligent design is a theory of Ambiogenesis, Evolution is a theory of continuing speciation. The two are not the same. Evolution acts on what is there, it does not dictate how it got there, or in what form. Afterall why could the giraffes and birds not evolve once God put them there? Whats stopping them doing it today?

Personally I grant that there is a CHANCE that God's method of creating humans was to induce a big-bang which lead to the eruption of our universe and life which eventually evolved into humans and all other species on earth... and I'm pretty sure Darwin would have agreed with me.

As I said, Evolution has nothing to do with how the world was created. It has nothing to do with how life began.

The theories of how life began are called Ambiogenesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

In natural science, abiogenesis (pronounced /╦îe╔¬ba╔¬.╔Á╦êd╩Æ╔øn╔¿s╔¬s/, AY-bye-oh-JEN-╔Ö-siss) or biopoesis is the study of how life arises from inanimate matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose.

Of which one theory is Creationism.

What you likely oppose is not Evolution at all, but the various "Primordial Soup" theories.

[AF]

If you want to break things down like this... All the intelligent design people are saying is that it couldn't have happened randomly and all of the creationists/anti-evolutionists are saying is that nothing can evolve into a different "kind" of animal... so humans didn't evolve from apes, lizards didn't evolve from fish, birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs, and all live didn't erupt over the course of billions of years from single-celled organisms that erupted by random chance.

Every time someone describes evolution using the terms "random" and/or "chance", God kills a theologian.

Good point... Are you claiming that "Evolutionists" would say that some aspect of the underlying nature of the continuum that our universe (or all universes (or possible universes)) exist in means that the laws of physics are such that the spontaneous eruption of "life" from base elements is possible? Cause I'm pretty sure this is a point on the "Intelligent Design" side of the argument.

Again this is not what evolution is, that is ambiogenesis. What'smore, not even the current theories of ambiogenesis say this. The only theory that says 'it spontaneously assembled' is Creationism, via the hand of God.

The Ambiogenesis theories are vague and make no real hard claims, they are speculative, and ground themselves heavily in chemical experiments in order to rule out incorrect any hypothesis.

OK, I suppose the good Evolutionists would point out the whole "the universe (and mutli-verse-ish mish-mash of everything) is big enough that if something like a certain group of 6 elements being in the right place at the right time to spontaneously form together in a way that DNA was formed in a specific set of circumstances that meant that it would be self-sustaining and propagating" is not random so much as statistically inevitable" and that "valuable mutations" are self supporting thanks to the help of Natural Selection the eventual development of more complex organisms is inevitable... or whatever.... mean that the terms "random" and "chance" are less accurate than "statically unlikely"... or whatever... even Theologians are uncomfortable with "luck".

Again Ambiogensis not Evolution, and even scientists in that field arent naive enough to think DNA assembled randomly and life began. Any geneticist will tell you that DNA on its own isn't enough on its own for life, or that DNA is necessary for life.

In my mind the real problem is that some people believe that God doesn't exist and are using this assumption as part of their interpretation of empirical evidence... and then Some people believe that God does exist and are using this assumption as part of their interpretation of empirical evidence... Ideally we could come up with some middle ground were we interpret empirical evidence entirely on other empirical evidence and that anything that is based on assumptions be treated as "theories that have not yet been dis-proven" and teach them as such.

Some people who do not believe in God use Evolution as their justification Correct


What you said: Some people who believe in Evolution use a lack of God as their justification. Incorrect.

Any poor soul who really does use a lack of god as their proof for Evolution is in a poor minority of dimwits indeed. Sadly so far only religious leaders have made this claim in the media to my knowledge, showing their very real ignorance of what exactly it is they are attacking.

So, teach natural selection as hard science but teach big-bang as theory. Ideally we could also mention "Intelligent Design" as a historical foot-note because even Newton and Leibniz and most of the rest of the 17th century Natural Philosophers believed this and spent so much time trying to fit all the awesome new science they were discovering into the context of dogmatic fairy tales*.

Natural selection isnt hard science, its hard fact. So much so that it isn't an idea or theory, it has real practical applications across numerous fields. How do you think the AI behind your racing games singleplayer mode was developed? There's a good chance it used algorithms before release that fit into the field of evolution.

What about AAIs learning? Or the meat on your living room table, was that Gods work? No, it was a bad tasting cattle herd that was bred to taste nicer, make bigger cuts, and grow faster by humans over centuries, and is still ongoing today.

It is rather inconvenient to know that God exists and then have to work on the assumption that His existence cannot be taken as fact, but given the gross "misinterpretations" that Christians (and all religions really) have made over the years of their OWN religious texts it's probably a good idea to separate "Theology" from "Science"

* Earth being flat, angels pushing celestial bodies around the aether, "humours" determining peoples personalities, there being a physical "seat" in the human body for a "soul" etc.

Its a very good idea to separate theology and science. Science deals with what we know. It deals with what is known to fit experiment and empirical fact. Objectivity reigns, and existing theories are cleared out when more correct, more fitting theories are devised that fit observations of real events more accurately.

Theology does not deal with facts, demonstrating that X is actually true, disproving things, or finding new better theories. It deals with the understanding of ideas, whose origins are claimed to be of a supernatural divine nature, from various sources depending on your religious orientation.

God as a theory is one that we cannot prove or disprove because the theory states that he is immaterial by definition. There is no way to prove he exists, and no reason to believe he exists, nor any reasonable means to disprove it, just as we cannot disprove the existence of Unicorns, after all just because you havent found any yet doesn't mean they don't exist!

God is a theory that requires you have faith and trust in it. It provides more questions than it answers, and asks that you daren't question its authenticity, while providing no confirmation of it. Believing this theory is up to you, but if you wish to disprove a theory, at least learn what it is before you attempt it.



So what happens when your church leaders behold a divine revelation? Do you attempt to test their theory to see if it is divine truth, or if it's a selfish church leader manipulating his flock?

[SinbadEV]

@AF:

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here... I am arguing against big E Evolutionists who DO claim things that are not provable... evolution as defined by the following wiktionary definition

2. (biology) The change in the genetic composition of a population over successive generations.

I am perfectly comfortable with. What (I define as) "big E Evolutionists" claim is that the "general" definition

1. (general) gradual directional change especially one leading to a more advanced or complex form; growth; development

applies to the "biological" one... namely, not that speciation and other effects of natural selection occur, but that this process, over time, can lead to more "complex" species... which, again, I don't claim to have evidence "against".

I do, however, disagree with your statement:

There are hundreds of thousands of cases documented of this kind of thing happening on a bacterial level, and numerous cases of it happening at much higher levels.

and feel that perhaps this is due to a different "definition of terms"... so perhaps you could provide me a link to some academic papers written on the subject and I can work out my deistic response to the particulars of those cases... it is entirely possible that new evidence has arisen in the last 5 years since I ended my formal education and I will have to revise my perspective.

[SinbadEV]

God is a theory that requires you have faith and trust in it. It provides more questions than it answers, and asks that you daren't question its authenticity, while providing no confirmation of it. Believing this theory is up to you, but if you wish to disprove a theory, at least learn what it is before you attempt it.

To Christians (or maybe just me), just as to the chemically unbalanced individuals who see pink elephants hiding behind every corner are hard to convince that pink elephants don't exist or you are hard to convince that trees don't exist, God's existence IS fact. That said, I'll concur on pretty much everything else you said.

As to your discussion on the eruption of life being irrelevant to evolution, I think you are splitting hairs... but I'll grant you the point... Just saying one "kind" could theoretically evolve into a different "kind" doesn't say that it HAS happened, but regardless of the accuracy of the belief, when students are taught "Evolution" they are taught that humans descend from lesser primates, who in turn descended from lesser animals, leading back all the way to the eruption of life as microorganisms... At least this is what I was taught in my grade 9 science class.

[Teutooni]

I'm an engineer, and for me a theory's worth is judged by what applications it has. I don't mindlessly insist on "believing" in scientific theories, including evolution, just because I can. I don't give a damn if they have holes and don't explain everything as long as they have their uses and no better explanations are available.

If we insist on this silly comparison of religion vs science, religious explanations of the universe haven't produced a single car or microchip or wheat that gives greater harvest. ~~

I get annoyed every time someone tries to disprove or deny a standing theory, not because he/she has a better one (in terms of real world data and useful applications), but because the current one doesn't fit his/her personal view of the world.

[zwzsg]

wheat that gives greater harvest.

What about the manna Jews ate during exodus?

[zwzsg]

God as a theory is one that we cannot prove or disprove because the theory states that he is immaterial by definition. There is no way to prove he exists, and no reason to believe he exists, nor any reasonable means to disprove it, just as we cannot disprove the existence of Unicorns, after all just because you havent found any yet doesn't mean they don't exist!

I don't subscribe to that view. I know it's the standard reply of well educated people, as we're supposed to be tolerant and all, but, the God from all three main monotheist religion is, according to the claim of religious leader and practiser of these religion, actively meddling with our human world. God has effect on the world. Even if he is invisible and immaterial, we can prove or disprove god existence by testing his effects on the world. Just like magnetic field cannot be seen or touched, yet can be proven to exist. The only trouble would be to settle on definition for gods. Religious people disagree on the matter, and when pressed with question they would probably shift their definition to something vaguer and vaguer and less and less testable.

For instance, typically religion says that God listen to prayer. Or that God care to his people. Which a scientific study can easily demonstrate to be bullshit.

If you where to pretend God is an extra-dimensional being who maybe shaped the universe, then planted the seed of life, then stopped interacting with our universe, you are contradicting about every major religion.

just as we cannot disprove the existence of Unicorns, after all just because you havent found any yet doesn't mean they don't exist!

Actually, we can. Horse-sized animals aren't that easy to hide on earth. Remember that a specy needs more than a few individuals to survive. You can't hide them under himalayan snow or other poorly explored regions since they were supposed to live in middle-age western europe. It may need a little statistical calculus, but you can prove they would have been bumped upon if they existed.

If we loosen the definition of unicorn, we can even prove they do exist.

1. (general) gradual directional change especially one leading to a more advanced or complex form; growth; development

I do not subscribe to that. That isn't even the stance of any serious biologist. The text book picture of cells evolving to fish evolving to frogs evolving to lizard evolving to ape evolving to human is a lie, an all too common misconception in the general public. Frogs and apes haven't been replaced by human, they are still there. They were very evolved animals that disappeared. Simplisitc unicellular organism still vastly outperform anything else, in term of number, medium colonised, etc ....

In fact to believe there is sense to evolution, something that guides it toward more complexity, would be god-believers stance.