Even on forums, you can clearly see the emotions fly in this kind of debate.

whew, this debates getting heated. just a reminder to stay civil, everyone.



effective, is it? you know, making something taboo makes it more desirable, so outlawing gay sex should lead more men to desire it.

also, who says gays don't promote reproduction? i've read an evolutionary anthopologist's point of view on the issue, and he thinks gay genes are beneficial to human procreation. he observed that 1) gays are not persecuted in most societies and more often enjoy positions of prestige, and 2) in all socities he's observed, gay men are better at communicating with women than are straight men, and often serve as marriage councilors. he concluded that it's possible gays pass on their genes by improving their brothers' chances at reproducing. from an evolutionary perspective, every time a gay guy helps his brother (or sister's mate) get laid when he wouldn't have, the gay guy is still passing on about 25% of his own genes. and if you're talking about survival of a group, you don't even need to consider siblings alone.

so while i can see why a group of people might erronously outlaw gay sex to encourage more procreation, i disagree that it's an effective means to that end.

Darn! and here I was thinking that women like gay guys, and having gay guys babies, just because they are easier to control and give up the moolah for less effort; and anyone that has more prestige (aka money) would be the obvious target of the "be gay, it's ok" campaign sponsored by "witches" worldwide. WoW, was I WronG or WhaT? Too much watching lab rats plotting to take over the world has obviously ruined my intellectual perspective.

For the transitions along the hypothetical evolutionary tree to happen.



Randomly, not very likely. With a programmer, very likely.



The receivers are the various parts of the body that are affected by the genes. AFAIK there is no requirement that the receiver be a conscious entity for it to be called "information." Although I have heard that debated occasionally.





Interesting that you decide to use that word. This really confirms what Christians have been saying all along: What is commonly called "evolution" is based upon randomness and chance. Sure, there are some non-chance mechanisms such as natural selection, but when you boil it down to its roots, it really is a random process.



Well, that would require a statistical analysis. Just saying "if you think about it" doesn't provide me with the information necessary to come to a conclusion.



Your wild guess is wrong. I avoid those terms also, for the same reason: They're still vague.



Interesting - did I really make such a claim? As I've said, I try to avoid the word "evolution" because it is vague - and because, frankly, it has multiple implied meanings.



I'm just saying that I don't see the strawman you accuse me of creating.



Okay, bad example. I asked for something that crossed the evolutionary tree horizontally when I should've asked for something vertical.

How about this:

From this diagram (or any other evolutionary tree diagram):
http://www.dhushara.com/book/evol/trevol.jpg

I'd like to see a scientist take, in a lab, something closer to one of the "roots" on the diagram and over successive generations create something closer to the "leaves" on the diagram. Supposedly, that's what happened - or at least that's what textbooks teach.



No, you won't save me the trouble. It is my dream to become a computer scientist, and if I am to become one I should be knowledgeable in that field of study. Computers rely heavily on information theory, especially when talking about compression and encryption. So I still have plans to pursue the subject further.



And in some ways, I suppose I would indeed distinguish it from other sciences. Interestingly enough, we tend to group them together when there are indeed different styles of science.



Well, usually creationists aren't just concerned about the creation event - they often explore other events, like Noah's flood, and claim they have the models to show they are feasible.



Some people believe other theories have survived testing as well.



Strangely enough, many creationists have borrowed the idea of ice ages - some believe that there was an ice ace immediately after the flood, causing much lowered water levels. Other people think that human activity may be to blame (ie, as humans expanded they may have bought animals with them). Other people believe that accelerated plate tectonics happened during the flood. There are actually several hypothesis about how this may have been accomplished.



This is a valid question. Unfortunately, the issue is a lot more complex - while mobility may be a factor, it would certainly not be the only factor. Such a catastrophe would certainly throw things around a lot.



I haven't seen any data concerning the distribution of fossils, so I am unable to investigate the question.



I am unfamiliar with the distribution and types of fossils along the continental shelves, so I can't answer the question.

I'm also unfamiliar with the asteroid and supernova hypotheses about the flood. Usually I hear about the "canopy" hypothesis or the "fountains of the deep" hypothesis.



Actually, many creationists believe that dragon stories may have originated from dinosaurs - in other words, they believe they became extinct soon after the flood rather than during the flood. In addition, many believed that severe weather changes after the flood may have been to blame. Another hypothesis is that human activity such as hunting may have been to blame.



A possible valid question, although it may simply be based upon extrapolation assuming millions of years in the first place - usually the explanation of "missing links" points out (correctly) that most animals aren't fossilized when they die, so usually the number of animals is estimated based on the assumption that there are many more animals in Earth's history than fossils. If the number of animals is based on this assumption, then the estimated number of animals may be vastly different than what young earth creationists may estimate.



I'm not sure what you're asking here - or how it's relevant.



Hmm, sounds like a good question to me. Can't say I have an answer, though.



Yeah, and I'm sure I could find creationists who could come up with similar lists (why do some planets spin backwards? etc). All this really tells me is that there are tough questions for both sides.



I don't think I ever claimed that I can logically prove all of my beliefs. All I'm trying to say is that neither can the naturalists.



I think I'm trying to make the point that, as long as we have incomplete data, it's not inconsistent for several theories to fit the same data.



I don't think we set out to describe the universe - this issue just crops up for reasons of maintaining internal consistency with our religion.



Which is nice - except I'm not Catholic, and disagree with them on many things.



I dunno if you've followed previous religious discussions I've made in other threads, but I don't quite agree with the hell that is shown in popular culture.



And my point - which apparently left orbit a long time ago and sailed off into space - is that the use of science and technology isn't inconsistent with religion, and that viewing them as mutually exclusive is a false dilemma.



Apparently no better than people who have nothing better to do than to tell God that we know how the universe runs better than he does.

In any case, I don't pretend to tell God how he runs his universe. It is humans I am disagreeing with, not God.



Because it's a broken argument. It's not infeasible or even unlikely for several explanations to exist for the same set of evidence. Indeed, I'd like you to find two scientists who agree on absolutely everything.



I know some young earthers that agree with those statements.



Depends on your definition of "evolution." If you mean simply "change," then I know some young earthers that would agree.



You assume millions of years, so naturally you predict millions of years. It's pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy.



Netonian physics and Einsteinian physics often produce similar results when below revalistic velocities - so much that they are indistinguishable considering the error levels of standard instruments.

Therefore, it is often possible to have similar data.

Einsteinian physics has more terms than Newtonian physics, so if we have such a data set, parsimony would conclude that Newtonian physics is more likely.

However, once we started adding more data to the set, especially at relativistic velocities, we have found that Einsteinian physics actually fits the expanded data set better.

Therefore, with the smaller data set, parsimony has failed to predict the larger data set that would better fit the data.

Therefore, I deny parsimony as a logical principle, and prefer to use it as a guide.

Frankly, if I have more than one explanation for the data, I usually withhold my judgment until I have more data. "I don't know" is a valid answer when given incomplete data.

And I think what I've discussed so far answers the other stuff you write about. If you think something needs to be addressed that hasn't been addressed, feel free to discuss it.

not from what i recall. IIRC, DNA splits into RNA, which small pieces of the cell read and use to synthesize proteins and amino acids, which are themselves the substances affecting the various parts of the body.

i guess the "program" metaphor holds to a certain degree, but the type of computer on which the program runs is unlike anything we've built, and i think DNA works more like a BIOS: the "machines" of our body are programmed to build themselves from a single nacent cell.

there was an episode of Star Trek: TNG where Ginan was making some kind of special drink; IIRC, when the proportions were mixed perfectly it resulted in a chemical reaction resembling a sunset--but only if the mixture was just right. otherwise it just looked funky. would you say that, because this specific chemical reaction only occurs under very specific circumstances, that the drink itself contains some kind of information? i wouldn't. the 'sunset effect' is an inherent property of a very specific mixture of chemicals. that consciousness is a property of very specific mixtures of organic chemicals doesn't convince me that they must have been assembled by an intelligent creator (otherworldly or not).



yes, and? there's no conscious direction behind it, certainly not. natural selection itself is random to an extent (that is, what specific environmental factors are influencing the emergence or atrophe of various traits).

over the course of millions of years, a few of the lucky chances survive, thrive, and reproduce. if you really want science's "best" speculative timeline for how long these thing took, wikipedia's is fairly accurate based on what i can remember (link follows). notice how the emergence of the earliest "new traits" takes hundreds of millions of years (as best as our scientists can currently tell).

Timeline of Human Evolution



here here, Cobra. and good choice of words, i might add. i good deal of scientific knowledge is hypotheoretical or speculative. i personally don't see anything wrong with this, as long as i make crystal clear for myself what is speculation, what is hypothesis, and what is tested theory. scientists fill in gaps of understanding with speculation in the same way that 'superstitious' people throughout history have searched their hearts and minds for answers that made sense to them. and even though Europeans like to historicize themselves in a way that makes science seem like a wholley new development, learning, invention and discovery -often enough achieved through very scientific methods- have been a legacy of human history that far predates the European enlightenment.

yet religion, as well as art, seem to be two of the other oldest patterns of human behavior. if evidence of ceremonial burial dating back 350,000 years is accurate, some sort of 'sense for the supernatural' has been with us for a very long time and through very drastic turns in our history. i don't think that's about to change just because the modern science has adopted an industrialist approach to the production of knowledge (which is simply to say, an approach characterized by division of labor, explicit formal procedure, and replacable/reproducable parts, roles and methods).

as for the future of science and religion, well, i have no idea what it holds. but i imagine we can safely anticipate a lot proliferation in variety of lifestyles as people try to find ways to reconcile their Very Big Questions with available answers.

i'm curious, what in particular depresses you about that? scientific knowledge is also (hu)man-made.

i think you missed my point. i agree with you that it seems religions are a product of human invention, but i don't find that depressing. in fact, i find it quite amazing. however inaccurate religion might be, i don't think you can call it simple. all the religions i've looked at are quite complex.

and my point about science also being man-made isn't that it's imperfect, but rather that knowledge of a thing and the thing itself are not the same. the "laws of nature" aren't in nature itself, they're in our heads. it is (probably) true that no natural phenomenon can "violate" the law of general relativity, but that doesn't mean you'll see "E=Mc^2" etched into the side of subatomic particles if you were only to build a strong enough microscope. i don't sell crack because it's against the law in the U.S., but there's nothing about my physical makeup to reflect that law whatsoever. all laws are man-made and exist only in the minds of people. the only difference between poltical laws and natural/physical laws is in what happens is the law is broken - in the former, jail; in the latter, development of a new law.

i'm not saying our man-made natural/phsyical laws are inaccurate. they're accurate preceicely because they're the result of a long history of observation and deduction about the universe - because they've been changed again and again. laws are only words people remember because they're useful to remember: they help us avoid danger, predict the future, achieve things we otherwise couldn't, or not kill each other. but anyway, i guess that's not a totally relevant understanding unless you're interested in the cultural meaning of science and knowledge in general.

point taken; but if a phenomenon violates a law of nature/physics, the same might hold true in this parallel metaphor: we'll only change our laws of nature if we actually notice the violations. it's still a simplification, but i think the point is clear enough.

fair enough, and i don't disagree. we can be pretty self-important much of the time.

perhaps, but perhaps not. if evidence shows the theory to be incomplete or innacture, it will be changed to fit what the evidence shows. that's why it's a theory and not a fact. whether or not such evidence will be found is another question. it is possible that E=Mc^2 does indeed describe an aspect of the universe perfectly, but as a man-made label we can't even positively know if it's 100% accurate, since we can't test its validity in every possible case. it's possible that our theory is limited by what we can observe. as Blake said, "How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

i don't want anyone to misunderstand my point. i'm definately not saying that the theory of general relativity is wrong - but its apperant incompatibility with quantum theory should suggest that our understanding of something is incomplete. science involves a good deal of imagination. at one point all the subatomic particles we now take for granted as certain were merely theory, and even remaining within the standard model, Higgs bosons still haven't been empirically verified (not to mention the long list of hypothetical particles).

anyway, i don't mean to detract from your original point. it depresses me to see people blindly follow religious dogma, but not because of how fancifull parts of religion can be. it depresses me because of the blind part, not the religion part. i like to think i've surveyed a great many ideas looking for my answers. though i've found few of those answers, and they're tenuous at best, i still feel like a strong and better person for searching. it depresses me to see others who simply accept the answers that're repeated to them frequently, because i feel like those people could have so much more openness to their minds. but who am i to say what's better or worse for others? maybe some people would whither and die without their security blankets. but someone who just blindly espouses Today's Best Science isn't a whole lot better. in fact, such a person might be worse, because the tentative nature of scientific knowledge is an inherent part of the scientific method. so i guess what i'm saying is that for me, i find it depressing to encounter people who blindly preach any belief they don't understand very well themselves.

also, dibs on the 420th reply, woo!

I get the repeated part but its not nothing. To me its says he can see that even science can become religious, weather or not he will say that himself.




Mm I think the first part should read,

Dogmatic Science is pure and undeniable,
Dogmatic Religion is pure and undeniable,
all we need is to understand that both Religion,
and Science are both deniable,
so we should just break away from Dogma,
and understand that nothing is pure nor undeniable.

are you smoking crack, or have you just missed the larger half of the cute little discussion you've got going here? i've been arguing in favor of evolution from the beginning.

general relativity is obviously incomplete, and IIRC Einstein himself knew it, but not for why it later became obvious: the development of quantum field theory. the two sets of theory can't be fully reconciled, not yet at least (and most of the hypothetical attempts so far lack parsimony). what that means in simple terms is that E=Mc^2 doesn't capture the whole picture. it fails to accurately predict the behavior of very small objects (subatomic particles). and likewise, quatum theory doesn't predict what happens on very large scales. (again, this is all off memory, so i may have some of the details wrong, and if there's an expert -or at least someone with formal training- who'd kindly correct me, i'd welcome it). you can't just connect the two theories it ignore this fact; it means there are more fundamental laws than general relativity and quantum field theory that determine the way everything behaves. that's part of the scientific premeses that lead to these radically new and powerful theories.



if something i say isn't clear to you, i need you to specify what. i'm not trying to be unclear by any means.

frankly, for someone who "believes in science," you seem more preachy and mystical than anyone else here. you write in these decadently breif paragraphs as if you don't need to explain yourself, and then you accuse me of lacking clarity.

...you "believe" in science, do you? do you have any formal higher education, because if that's the case you hide it very well. ever heard of the reification fallacy? do you even know what reductionism is, or what role it played in the history of science?