LowellGuy

explain this, ID

Sweet. (4 hrs ago | post #4)

Will our way of life destroy our species?

You first. (4 hrs ago | post #7)

Theory of Intelligent Design

I see the educational system continues to jettison its flotsam at a record pace in the southern states. (4 hrs ago | post #2404)

Put them in a lighted fishtank and there will be no predation, and there will be artificially provided sources of food. There would be no benefit to sight in such an environment. Therefore, there would be very little chance that such a change would occur. Could it? Possibly. I could possibly find the declaration of independence in the tank of my toilet. Would it? Highly improbable. Just as improbable as a family of people who eats raw meat would, in a few short generations, have fully functioning appendices. (4 hrs ago | post #86)

Response: Intelligent design should not excluded from the study...

Yeah, but the whole moon landing thing WAS a hoax. (5 hrs ago | post #7)

No. Put them in a "normal" environment and they are quickly eliminated by predation and starvation. If I throw you in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with your wife, will you, in a few generations, be sea-living mammals adapted for life in the ocean? (5 hrs ago | post #82)

False dichotomy. Just because it isn't intelligent does not mean it must necessarily be chaos. The universe adheres to certain principles of physics at the cosmic and quantum levels, some of which we do not yet know or fully understand. Is water intelligent? Certainly not, but does it not behave in particular and predictable ways? If we impart intelligence to water because it behaves certain ways, what we are doing is not observing intelligence in the water, but instead projecting intelligence upon the water. At what level do chemistry/physics/ biology become "intelligence ?" When you no longer personally understand how they apply, or when we run into a phenomenon we do not fully understand yet? Did lightning stop being "intelligent " when we figured it out? (5 hrs ago | post #307)

What you're saying is, "until I know the real explanation, I'm assuming it's God." You can play semantics with "leaning " and whatnot, but that's what you're actually doing. You're assuming God until the real explanation is provided. When the real explanation appears, why isn't the God explanation just as valid as it was before? And, if it is no longer valid, why is it worthwhile in the first place? And, if it is still valid, then what other explanation for anything could ever be valid? And, in that same vein, how would you ever learn anything about how the world works? If God is a good enough explanation of everything for you, then what is the motivation to learn anything more about biology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, etc.? Do you consider that leaning AWAY from your God? (5 hrs ago | post #305)

It can't be disproven, therefore it's true. That's what you hang your hat on? You're a child molester. You can't prove it isn't true, therefore it's true. I'm calling the police. You wouldn't accept this method of fact-finding in any other aspect of your life, so why do you get all irrational and accept it when it has to do with the subject of god(s)? (5 hrs ago | post #304)

To speak on A's behalf, you're using different definitions of the same word to (consciously or not) play word games. Having faith in my spouse is based on evidence. Having faith in God is not based on evidence. Having faith in the scientific method is based on evidence. Having faith in the Bible is not based on evidence. One is based on evidence, the other is based on emotion and upbringing. Equating religious faith (zero evidence) with the faith one has in another person or a thing that is of this world (>zero evidence) is intellectually dishonest, whether you mean to be or not. I understand that religion gives you a warm fuzzy makes you feel like part of a community or cosmically significant or is part of your family's tradition or something along those lines, but if you're going to discuss science and religion's earnest desire to usurp science's explanatory power, you must take care to choose your words carefully, because you can easily fall into rhetorical tricks that some use in an effort to dishonestly turn fiction into fact and fact into fiction. Please, understand that if you throw around words like "faith," that you must be absolutely clear which version of the word you mean, because they are not all the same, and pretending they are is dishonest, just as pretending that all the versions of the word "right" are the same would be dishonest. (5 hrs ago | post #302)

Why is "we don't know yet, but we're working on it" an unacceptable answer, and "God did it" acceptable? Was "God did it" an accurate explanation of lightning before people discovered what actually causes it? Was it an accurate explanation of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, avalanches, droughts, floods, wildfires, eclipses, meteor showers, or disease? Does it make more sense to believe something incorrect until the correct explanation is found just so you can have an explanation in the meantime, or to seek the correct answer and wait until it's found before claiming belief in any particular explanation? Should juries just assume the defendant is guilty until the correct explanation is found? Just because it's intellectually easier doesn't mean it's right. (5 hrs ago | post #301)

And that, essentially, is the problem. God can be/do absolutely anything anybody claims. When the official definition is "whatever I say it is," it is not a real thing, but an idea. Ideas don't DO anything. They exist solely within the mind. They are concepts, figments, but not actual things outside the mind. (5 hrs ago | post #300)

Let's take for a fact that your claim of increased genetic disease affliction is true. How would that not be explained by the fact that human beings have figured out ways to reproduce despite being naturally unable to do so, and reproduce despite having horrible disabilities that are of a genetic origin, and have technological crutches to allow them to survive and reproduce when previously they would not have been able to do so? Do you disagree that if people with conditions that would prevent them from being attractive as reproductive mate material (or being able to reproduce at all) had nothing helping them survive and reproduce aside from food, clothing, and shelter, that they would still be able to pass along their defective genes? Do you disagree that what we are seeing is the principles of the evolutionary process being played out in a self-defeating way because we don't want anyone to miss out on being a parent despite nature's very clear message that it ought not happen? If they would have been selected against in nature, and we supercede nature, then shouldn't we be able to predict that such things will occur? Isn't that the scientific method? And, by applying the scientific method to the evolutionary theory in relation to human reproductive science and life-supporting technology/medicin e, do we not end up affirming the evolutionary theory? The answer is "yes." (5 hrs ago | post #77)

You're sorely mistaken. If you think that the Japanese are almost universally 4" shorter than the average European is due solely to diet and not genetics, then you're just completely dismissing DNA. And, if you think that mega-sized sloths, raptors, bears, lions, etc. were solely that size due to nutrition (it plays a part, but not the way you think it does), then according to your logic I should be able to feed any given child/puppy/kitten /etc. huge amounts of food and get a giant not just in girth, but in height. How many morbidly obese people are 7' tall? You're all over the place here. Evolution says that favorable traits will be passed along to the next generation, and will spread throughout a population. If the availability of food decreases, then slightly specimens of a mega-sized creature will fare better, because they require less food. They will be more apt to survive, reproduce, and pass their genes for slightly smaller size on to the next generation. As the slightly smaller versions succeed and the larger versions don't (remember, the food supply is becoming scarcer), the mutations that result in smaller and smaller sizes will continue to be prevalent, until their size becomes a hindrance (for instance, if they're too small to predate on suitable prey, they'll be naturally weeded out). A smaller version of a raptor is no less a raptor, and no less capable of dealing with the same stressors, assuming the stressors are proportionate. And, let's say that mega-ancestral versions are evidence of devolution. How, then, do you explain blue whales, which are a fairly recent addition to the seas, being the largest animals on the planet? And, how do you explain the red kangaroo, whose ancestor is a little rodent? And, how do you explain the ants and wasps and mosquitoes and ferns and terrapins and crocodilians and sharks, which have remained remarkably similar to their ancestors from millions of years ago? And, how robust is the blue whale on land? How robust is the kangaroo in the ocean? And, how robust is a turtle on a mountaintop? (6 hrs ago | post #76)