Note: I am now at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a huge gathering of scientists, policy makers, teachers, and press, all here to talk science. I’ll be reporting from here as often as I can.
I just attended a session called "Teaching and Learning about Science: Challenges and Opportunities Concerning Evolution". It’s mostly about what teachers and scientists can do about the growing anti-science movement (I’ll be on a panel tomorrow about this as well). Most of the talks were boiler-plate kinds of things about fighting nonsense, so I won’t detail them here. But one man (whose name I missed, dagnappit) made an interesting analogy, one I hadn’t heard before. It may be an old idea, but it’s new to me.
He said that life itself is an analogue to science. Organisms reflect science: they are, in essence, hypotheses proposed by nature, and are continually tested by their environment. Those organisms that can handle the input from their environment survive, while those that cannot deal with it fail. Those that can adapt, even marginally, to outside influence are able to better cope with whatever comes next. Those that can’t, well, don’t. Even a well-adapted organism can become extinct if the environment changes too much.
This is a fantastic analogy! In science, we propose an idea to explain something, and then it gets tested. If it cannot explain the observations, it must either be adapted or discarded. A scientist who is too stiff, too resistant to change, will find themselves extinct if the evidence from observation becomes overwhelmingly against them.
Evolution is a fact, both in nature and in science. If more people realized this simple truth, and the beauty inherent in it, then a lot of nonsense would become extinct as well.
February 17th, 2006 at 11:17 am
I had a similar thought a while ago, during one of the recently flare-ups of ID nonsense.
My take on it was to compare evolution to certain techniques explored in the field of AI. In AI, one way to approach a problem is to use many simple (unintelligent) agents to explore a problem space and attempt to stumble across solution. Although they lack intelligence individually, by sharing information they should ultimately converge onto a reasonable solution. The agents themselves lack any problem solving ability or reasoning – they simply follow a predefined program with a random element to it, and with feedback to other agents to indicate their success or failure.
In doing so, they essentially demonstrate that a simple process relying purely on evolution actually winds up exhibiting something that might be mistake for “intelligence”.
February 17th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I like that analogy! May we add to it and say that anti-science is like sand (non-living)? It is constantly shifting, makes mountains out of molehills, unfortunately timeless, and little bits get into my shoes and irritate the h*** out of me.
February 17th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
“Those organisms that can handle the input from their environment survive, while those that cannot deal with it fail.”
So, technically, every organism is a failure, because everything ever born has died or will die.
Apologies to George Carlin.
If nature really knew what it was doing, we’d all be immortal.
And that’s why I dislike it when scientists anthropomorphize nature.
I was reading about that supposed HIV cure at Brigham Young this week, and someone was talking about how viruses “find counter solutions” to various treatments. Well, no, random mutation and (un)natural selection is doing that. Nothing is actively solving anything. I know it’s just a figure of speech, but, I dunno…
Supposedly the CSA45 compound works on the virus membrane, which doesn’t mutate, so the virus can’t marshal a genetic opposition. Oops, now I’m doing it.
Anyway, just a random, aimless Friday comment.
February 17th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I had thoughts along these lines, too, while watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos a little while ago. In one episode, he says something like the following:
If nothing in the world ever changed, there wouldn’t really be a point to doing science. There’d be nothing to discover. Contrariwise, if the world were in constant flux, with everything changing all the time, then we couldn’t really do science either, because there would be no way to extract a natural law from observations. But we do live in a Universe where we can do science, because things change in ways that have some order to them, an order we call physical law.
Don’t the same conditions, vaguely speaking, determine whether what we call “life” can exist or not? A box of randomness is not alive, and neither is a changeless crystal lattice. . . Life requires the ability to propagate information with both permanence and flexibility. I once heard Freeman Dyson give a talk where he defined “quality of life” as “amount of information processed”. (The context was whether a sentient being could live forever in an open Universe, if made out of the right stuff.)
One of the reasons I love Ghost in the Shell so much is that it gets into these speculations without skimping on the flying bullets, big explosions and judicious profanity.
Why the elite cyborg Public Security squad has one almost fully human member:
Wisdom from an emergent intelligence:
Ah, I’m off in Friday rambling, too. Sleep no more — the Web hath murdered sleep.
February 17th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
And if science is the evolution of ideas — don’t you even breathe the word meme! (grin) — then we should speak of “punctuated equilibrium” instead of “paradigm shifts”.
February 17th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Read an interesting article about a little film today that might be interesting to throw into the debate:
‘Dodos’ film pecks holes in evolution debate
http://tinyurl.com/7uvn4
February 17th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Without sanitation, undesirable life will flourish.
February 17th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Dodos looks interesting. The article makes a good point about ID proponents being better communicators. I think it’s ironic that they have to be or else they — or their arguments — wouldn’t have survived. I’m glad we have people like Phil. We need another Carl Sagan.
February 17th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
… of course to be fair the ID’ers can argue from ignorance much like the moon hoax twinkies. The real scientists have to give a science lesson. How can they compete?
February 17th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
I like the analogy a lot, because it shows clearly that evolution is almost a logical rule: That which is better adapted, survives.
February 17th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
The Galaxy Trio Says:
If nature really knew what it was doing, we’d all be immortal. And that’s why I dislike it when scientists anthropomorphize nature.
Here’s a thought, though: what if mortality exists because it confers benefits on species? Given that most organisms can reproduce fairly rapidly (in the scheme of things), if the older ones didn’t die off the group would overpopulate and overstretch its resources. This might give it a temporary advantage over other organisms, as it could spread a lot by numbers: but there would be a constant pressure on the group to expand or thin out. Or, if they had a slow birth rate to compensate, adaptation to new stimuli would become very difficult and slow.
February 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, I don’t buy the idea that immortality of a particular species is the ultimate goal of Nature. Who’s to say that life (as we know it) is anything but an abnormality in the grand scheme of things? Maybe the true purpose of Nature is to evolve more and more complex galaxies, or galaxy clusters, or dark matter configurations, and life on Earth is just a random byproduct.
I think these ideas are very difficult for religious people (or at least some religious people) to accept because they imply that humans exist because they are well adapted to the Universe, instead of the Universe existing in order to be a home for humans.
February 17th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
I think Leon and Supernova missed the Galaxy Trio’s point. The statement is meant to point out the absurdity of imagining that nature is in any way “striving for perfection” or “having a true purpose”.
The analogy that Phil related is flawed in the sense that it does imply that nature has some kind of self-reflexive purpose in producing life. But it’s still a good analogy: it’s just that, like any analogy, if you try to take it too far it will break down.
Analogies are, by their very nature, limited. They show general correspondence, not precise equalities. This one, despite its flaws, is particularly beautiful and inspiring, particularly when taken in context.
February 18th, 2006 at 6:16 am
You guys should know that this analogy was created long ago (AFAIK) by Stanislaw Lem (anybody knows who that is?:D ) in his “Summa Technologiae” book from the early 60′. He discussed living organisms as pseudocomputers doing calculations that will or will not grant them survival. That is pretty much the same as the analogy mentioned by dr. Plait
February 18th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Beche-la-mer Says:
I think Leon and Supernova missed the Galaxy Trio’s point.
That could well be. I was really just throwing out an idea more than anything.
Actually, I’m a little surprised…I thought someone might have come online by now to say it was a stupid one.
February 18th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Evolution and ID
It is interesting that macro-evolutionists find it appropriate to attack IDers. IDers have a valid contention, and it is NOT appropriate to make ad-hominem (emtional/personal) attacks. ID is a hypothesis, just as evolution is a hypothesis (philosophical approach to understanding nature). Niether of them are proven contentions, both are useful. It is appropriate that there be a rational debate. For some, the underlying purpose of evolution is to deny the existence of God, and for others the purpose of ID is to prove the existence of God. There are others that believe in evolution and God, and there could be others that believe in ID, but not God. This is not a bi-polar debate. It has at least three poles. It is just that two of the poles see a purpose to life beyond the moment. If there is a God, and an afterlife, then there is more purpose to life than “just do it”, hedonism, living in the moment. It would be best for all to avoid “nasty comments”, and dig and try to find out the TRUTH.
February 18th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Not stupid per se, just very very twisted.
nice.
February 18th, 2006 at 10:46 am
DrJPHauck,
No nasty comments, just one simple fact: A theory that rules out further investigation into a central assumption (in this case the “designer”) is not a scientific theory.
Read the comments to previous postings in this blog, and you will discover that most evolutionists do not derive any claims about the existence of a God on the basis of the evolution hypothesis.
February 18th, 2006 at 11:10 am
There’s a whole area of research in philosophy called “evolutionary epistemology” which in some of its modes looks like what is being discussed here.
February 18th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
DrJPHauck,
I have seen as many ad hominem attacks by pro-ID folks upon evolutionists as I have seen the other way around. Just go to one of the Pro-ID or Creationist blogs or websites if you don’t believe this. Maybe we mostly are preaching to our own choir (excuse the slightly religious conotation of this). The principal arguments against ID are the various examples of faulty science and math used to support its contentions. For discussion purposes, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about whether they are really trying to insert a disguised version of religious creationism into school curricula . They most likely really believe they have a profound scientific revelation to present to the world.
February 18th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
DrJPHauck Says:
It is interesting that macro-evolutionists find it appropriate to attack IDers. IDers have a valid contention, and it is NOT appropriate to make ad-hominem (emtional/personal) attacks. ID is a hypothesis, just as evolution is a hypothesis (philosophical approach to understanding nature). Niether of them are proven contentions, both are useful. It is appropriate that there be a rational debate.
You’re right, ad-hominem attacks are not appropriate. But I think you’ve missed the core of the issue, which is that evolution and ID aren’t equally valid alternatives; they’re very different sorts of animals.
Evolution is a scientific theory: that means it’s been thoroughly reviewed against the available evidence, and tested scientifically again and again. It has consistently passed those tests, which is how it became the established explanation for how life works. Only after it had passed those tests and held up to scientific scrutiny was it introduced into the public school system.
ID, on the other hand, is not a scientific theory. It uses scientific-sounding language, but is neither scientific nor a theory in the same sense as evolution. In day-to-day use, we say theory to mean an idea or speculation, usually one we don’t have much evidence for. In science, a theory is a hypothesis that’s been thoroughly tested and consistently passes those tests. Remember, evolution didn’t start out as a theory; it took years to achieve that status. A scientific theory is as close to proven as you can get in science. (What science calls a “fact” is, again, a little different from how we use the word day to day.)
ID is not scientific because it goes outside the limits of the physical world. By definition, science can only test things in the natural world; saying that a deity did something is a metaphysical statement, and so is not scientific. Not necessarily wrong, just outside the bounds of what science can investigate.
There is nothing about evolution that says God doesn’t exist. There are literally thousands of scientists worldwide who have no problem believing in both evolution and God. Even the Catholic Church accepts that evolution is how God has unveiled his Creation.
Bear in mind that ID is not the idea that there’s a God behind everything. ID is the specific idea that God bypassed evolution at various points.
It is appropriate that we have a rational discussion of the issue. The problem is that much of the discussion has been irrational on the part of the ID crowd. They call ID a scientific theory yet make no effort to test the idea or publish articles in peer-reviewed journals, which is the process that all hypotheses have to go through in the scientific community. Rather, they go straight for the schools and the courts, and they appeal to people on emotional and religious grounds, not rational ones.
February 19th, 2006 at 2:51 am
Dr JPHauck said:
>”Evolution and ID
It is interesting that macro-evolutionists find it appropriate to attack IDers.”
At least scientists don’t routinely lie and deliberately misprepresent the other side’s position. And, incidentally, the label “macro-evolutionist” was coined by the creationist movement. To an evolutionary scientist, the difference between so-called micro-evolution and macro-evolution is simply one of scale (i.e. there is no real difference). These terms do not enter the lexicon in scientific discussions. The creationists seem to accept micro-evolution (it has, after all, been demonstrated many times), but they object to macro-evolution despite having proposed no mechanism by which the one could be prevented from accumulating into the other.
>”IDers have a valid contention,”
Not in science, they don’t.
>”… and it is NOT appropriate to make ad-hominem (emtional/personal) attacks.”
Ad-hominem is personal, but one can argue emotionally without getting personal. ID proponents provoke an emotional response because they attack the scientific method, will not listen to counter-arguments (well, they never change their tune when their arguments are shown to be fallacious) and they do not refrain from ad hominem attacks.
>”ID is a hypothesis,”
No, it is speculation. It is neither sufficiently detailed nor sufficiently precise to be called a hypothesis.
>”… just as evolution is a hypothesis (philosophical approach to understanding nature).”
Depends what you mean. Evolution is a fact, in that life on Earth has changed over time and continues to do so. Evolutionary theory explains this observation. It is more than a mere hypothesis, because it is the only theory that can explain so much of what we see. It has survived 150 years of challenges, being modified in the light of new evidence as science progressed. This is what science does – if your theory does not fit reality, you must either dump it for a better one or modify it.
>”Niether of them are proven contentions,”
ID can never be proven. In fact, ID proponents have never actually specified how one would unequivocally recognise ID as opposed to design through natural selection etc. They merely spout the same tired argument from personal incredulity, which is a logical fallacy. Evolutionary theory is supported by the preponderance of evidence. In fact, to my mind, evolutionary theory has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. If you disagree, it could be that (a) you cling to preconceived notions and refuse to modify aspects of your belief; (b) you have not understood the theory of evolution; (c) you have not understood the evidence; or (d) that I, and hundreds of thousands of other scientists, have got it all wrong.
>”… both are useful.”
Au contraire. Evolutionary theory has proven itself to be useful in many applications. ID has yet to do so, and I believe it never will.
>”It is appropriate that there be a rational debate.”
Oh, yes, certainly. However, when one side approaches the debate without any trace of rational thought – arguing from logical fallacies, misrepresenting the opposing position, refusing to accept the refutation of their own arguments, demonstrating repeatedly that they do not understand the topic they seek to challenge – a rational debate is unlikely to ensue.
>”For some, the underlying purpose of evolution is to deny the existence of God,”
Perhaps. However, evolutionary theory itself makes no reference to a god or gods, so how is this relevant?
>”… and for others the purpose of ID is to prove the existence of God.”
Which is a non-starter. The basis of a person’s relationship with god is faith. Faith is, by definition, belief in the absence of evidence. Therefore, discovering proof of the existence of god would deny faith, and would actually weaken the theistic position.
>”There are others that believe in evolution and God,”
Agreed.
“… and there could be others that believe in ID, but not God.”
Yes, there could be, but they have yet to emerge from the woodwork if they exist. The Discovery Institute (that is most active in promoting ID) is funded by religious groups and individuals.
>”This is not a bi-polar debate. It has at least three poles.”
If you could call it a debate. The ID proponents insist on creating conflict where none need exist. By ignoring rational rebuttals of their arguments, they degrade the concept of “debate” that they claim to desire.
>”It is just that two of the poles see a purpose to life beyond the moment.”
Which two? Be more specific. In my view, life has a purpose beyond the moment in any of the proposed scenarios.
>”If there is a God, and an afterlife, then there is more purpose to life than “just do itâ€,”
Perhaps, but the same can be said if there is not a god.
>”… hedonism, living in the moment.”
Ah, so now you’re using an ID tactic : religious view = moral, science = immoral. Your use of the word “hedonism” has strong connotations of a negative morality. This is an ad hominem. I thought you said earlier that you disagreed with this tactic. Hypocrite. (And, yes, that is an ad hominem, but you have just proven it to be true in your own words).
>” It would be best for all to avoid “nasty commentsâ€, and dig and try to find out the TRUTH.”
No, it would be best for all to accept rational argument, to seek an understanding of the science that is being attacked, and to accept that ID is based on logical fallacies, and is a political tactic motivated by evangelical Chriatian ideals. There is no place in science for the supernatural. Science deals with what can be observed, measured and / or tested by experiment. It deals with detailed explanations of how the world works and why it is the way it is. Science uses very precise language to avoid ambiguity. ID does not meet these very basic criteria. ID is not science. There is no debate about this. The two viewpoints do not have equal status.
Finally, despite many people’s misconceptions, science does not discover “truth” per se. Science proposes theories that model reality, and tests those models against reality. As scientific theories become more and more accurate, we can say that they come closer to the truth. However, we can never claim that we have found the ultimate truth. If you like, the truth is an asymptote, and scientific theories tends towards it. We have no way of knowing if we have reached it.
Incidentally, what kind of doctorate do you have (my own is in biochemistry)?
February 19th, 2006 at 4:16 am
Nigel Depledge, If my daughter (or son for that matter, I’m open minded) brought you home, I’d give her my consent to marry you on the spot (doctors in biochemistry are rich as well as smart too, right?).
Now I just need a daugther (or a son).
February 19th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Thomas, that’s the best offer I’ve had all day.
February 19th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
DrJPHauck Says:
“ID is a hypothesis, just as evolution is a hypothesis (philosophical approach to understanding nature).”
Are you confusing philosophical materialism with evolution theory? Philosophical materialism incorporates evolution theory, not the other way around.
February 19th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
BA wrote:
A scientist who is too stiff, too resistant to change, will find themselves extinct if the evidence from observation becomes overwhelmingly against them.
Taking your evolution analogy and applying it directly to the evolution/ID “debate,” I’d say that one relevant element we need to consider is the fact that sometimes HOW genes (ideas) are expressed can make the difference between whether an organism (or, in this case, the theory of evolution) can survive in a changing environment. While the rigid religionists will almost never understand nor accept evolution, a broad range of more moderate but scientifically uneducated people can if we explain it in a way they understand. If we fail to do that while the religious nuts succeed in explaining their ideas, evolution has a major problem… and could in theory “go extinct” in this environment.
February 20th, 2006 at 10:03 am
I just want to point out some problems I see with Phil’s analogy.
“Those organisms that can handle the input from their environment survive, while those that cannot deal with it fail. Those that can adapt, even marginally, to outside influence are able to better cope with whatever comes next…..
“A scientist who is too stiff, too resistant to change, will find themselves extinct if the evidence from observation becomes overwhelmingly against them.
“Evolution is a fact, both in nature and in science. If more people realized this simple truth, and the beauty inherent in it, then a lot of nonsense would become extinct as well.”
Phil is talking about adapting to an environment of ideas. This seems correct; as a layperson not studying evolution myself, the theory of evolution is not a thing that comes to me apart from the ideas of others; it reaches me not as a material fact, but as an idea from the environment of ideas.
But Phil slips into talking about how people should realize that evolution is a fact in nature as well as in science: how we should adapt to the input of nature itself as well as to the input of scientists. All this is true, of course; but the way it’s put is problematic. It’s the environment of ideas that we’re adapting to. People adapt to the ideas that are prevalent in their culture. If I’m religious and I see friendly ideas out there, and other unfriendly ones out there, I live among the friendlies and fight, or take flight from, the unfriendlies. That’s how our adaption looks: it’s not so much a rational focus on mere material facts in intellectual theories; what we’re interested in is whether everything we care about (including nature, or science, or God, or family, or material facts and intellectual theories) can find a friendly environment in which to grow.
And so creationists and scientists take flight from, or fight, each other, while attaching themselves to friendlies. And both sides regard their opponents as not really paying attention to facts (or at least not to the important facts).
Anyway that’s how our adaption to the environment works. We adapt to cultures. We also adapt to material facts, but those tend to be facts about our present material condition, not about whether the earth existed 10,000 years ago. Cultural evolution does not favor necessarily those who have the correct theory about the past. It favors those who can find friendlies, avoid or defeat unfriendlies, adopt life-enhancing ideas (a lot of people, myself included, find religion to be life-enhancing), and influence others.
I’m certain that Phil’s analogy will strike a too-broad range of religionists as unfriendly. Religionists are, after all, essentially metaphysicists (like all of us, in a sense, since we all care about much more than intellectual theories concerning material facts). An analogy likes this tells them essentially that they’re maladapted creatures. I fully accept evolution, and regard both creationism and ID as wrong, so I’m not particularly vexed by all this; I happen to love Phil’s work against bad thinking. But even I feel as if I’m appearing in this analogy like a maladapted creature, just for being someone who thinks that we’re responsible for adapting to much more than the theory of evolution.
Like all of us, I care about things other than intellectual theories about material matter; and like creationists, I care about God and about whether my religion has friendlies or unfriendlies. I care about things other than theories about material matter, which is, for me, a problem with an analogy in which the primary thing that makes us well-adapted and destined for prosperity is not anything metaphysical (and certainly not our belief in God), but our adherence to intellectual theories about matter, as brought to us by scientists. Those theories may be correct (and evolution certainly is), but as a non-scientist dealing with much more than matter, my prosperity rests on much more than these theories; and it certainly does not rest on what these scientists have to say about God and all the rest.
If it were the case that adapting to intellectual theories about matter were the most important factor in our prosperity, scientists should have a privileged place; and what they say about anything metaphysical should trump what any non-scientists has to say. I doubt that Phil, for one, believes this; but I see his analogy as having this consequence. A different analogy, in which we’re all adapting to cultures and fighting for the things we care about, puts us all on a more equal plane; and it does not suggest that we have to listen to scientists or materialists when it comes to God or religion. That is the great fear of creationists — that evolution (besides being wrong in their view, because they follow the Bible literally) will be used to promote a worldview in which everything they care about will be marked with labels such as “irrational,” “maladapted,” “headed for extinction.”
A little more attention should go to the cultural war, and into models explaining how we take flight from it, or fight in it; or seek a truce. It seems to me that long lifespan can be expected for all of us if we find a way not just to avoid war (flight) or win it (fight), but to defuse it.
February 20th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
I think you’re taking the analogy too far. It’s just an analogy.
If I were permitted to push it a bit farther, I’d say that you are commenting on a local environment (adhering to a particular religion in an environment friendly to that particular religion), but there is a larger community out there as well. Being a devout Jew in a come countries where other religions dominate, for example, would be a more pertinent example.
February 20th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Well, Phil, when I read your analogy this morning, I may have gotten defensive about my faith; and I do think that a devout Jew in the example you offered has more reason than a Christian in this country to feel defensive.
It’s just that, while I’m used to hearing about bad ideas crumbling away in the marketplace of ideas, and I’m used to hearing about animals going extinct because their genes limit their adaptive qualities, I’m not used to hearing about humans going extinct because of their bad ideas. Your example was a scientist who goes extinct when their ideas are overwhelmed by evidence.
I just wasn’t sure what that meant. I knew, of course, that you weren’t speaking about biological extinction. You were talking about the extinction of the nonsense — and that would have been clear even if you had not said so explicitly.
But if we’re just talking about the extinction of ideas, then what’s the use for a new analogy? What does it actually mean? If it means the extinction of something more than the idea, but something less than the living person, then what is the “organism” that is being tested for hardiness in the environment? Is it, perhaps, a way of life? A philosophy, worldview, or emotional attitude? Is it fundamentalism? I too would like to see that pass away. Is it theism, or religiosity? I wasn’t sure.
I’m glad to learn, though, whenever I have felt unduly threatened.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Phil broke his own analogy. He swapped from discussing the ideas (the theories) to talking about the scientists who hold those ideas.
We can talk about ideas being the organisms, becoming hypotheses that get tested by their environment, and die out if they can’t adapt.
We can talk about scientists who academically become less relevant as they fail to adapt their understanding to match the reality of the data.
But mingling the two analogies just confuses the matter.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:12 pm
DrJPHauck Said:
>It is interesting that macro-evolutionists find it appropriate to attack IDers.
It is interesting that you choose (1) to single out “macro-evolutionists” rather than both sides of the debate, and (2) to use the term “macro-evolutionists”.
>IDers have a valid contention,
Exactly what contention is that? That Irreducible Complexity proves Intelligent Design? Funny, IC has been scrutinized and shown to be based upon faulty premises, misrepresentations of Evolution, bad logic, and omission of results of studying the supposedly irreducibly complex pathways. Or perhaps you mean Specified Complexity proves ID? Except Specified Complexity is even more meaningless and faulty than IC. Or do you just mean that there must be an Intelligent Designer for the Universe outside the Universe because that’s what God is? Except that’s not what ID really says, and many find Evolution compatible with belief in God, so there’s really no point to ID.
>and it is NOT appropriate to make ad-hominem (emtional/personal) attacks.
Which ad-hominem attacks are those?
>ID is a hypothesis, just as evolution is a hypothesis (philosophical approach to understanding nature). Niether of them are proven contentions, both are useful.
That’s just malarkey. ID is the proposal that design as a process guided by an intelligence (the only rational meaning behind the word “design”) is recognizable and identifiable in the observable universe, especially in biology. This proposal is based upon a flawed or misrepresented view of what Evolution says. Furthermore, it currently has two proposed mechanisms for recognizing this design – IC and SC. Both are faulty, based upon poor reasoning and bad logic, and neither is supported by the experts in the respective disciplines (microbiology and information theory). Evolution is an explanation that is the cummulative effort to explain a recognizable and obvious condition of life – the diversity and spread of life forms across the Earth, and the variations within each life form that occur. Change in life forms occurs – that is not debatable and well-recognized by everyone but the most stubborn YEC’s. Evolutionary Theory is the integrated results of 200+ years of scientific inquiry into the nature of how life forms change and evolve over time. It combines paleontology and fossils with the ecological appreciation for how organisms react to their environments, merged with the results of genetics and the understanding of DNA. Furthermore, Evolutionary Theory is consistent with and integrated with numerous other sciences, from geology and the geologic record to astronomy and how planets develop, to radioactivity and radio-isotope dating methods compared with biological markers of grownt such as tree-rings and corals. That is also tied in with non-biological seasonal measures of time, such as ice-cores from the poles. To equate a random speculation based on fautly interpretations and a lack of data with a well-organized and well-integrated theory shaped and formed by direct comparison to centuries of data is ludicrous beyond belief.
>This is not a bi-polar debate. It has at least three poles. It is just that two of the poles see a purpose to life beyond the moment. If there is a God, and an afterlife, then there is more purpose to life than “just do itâ€, hedonism, living in the moment.
That’s a very selfish and negative stereotype to represent your opponents as hedonists only living in the moment. It is also irrelevant to the science.
>It would be best for all to avoid “nasty commentsâ€,
Like calling your opponents hedonists and only concerned with the moment?
>and dig and try to find out the TRUTH.
The TRUTH won’t be found by quoting scientists out of context to make it sound like they support your position when they don’t, or find flaws where they don’t. The TRUTH won’t be found by skipping the research and testing phases of evaluating hypotheses and jumping straight to the “popularize to the public, press in the media, and push through grass-roots political campaigns to get implemented” method. If you want ID to be science, then ID should conform to the methods and means of science, not bypass those means and use the methods and means of political ideology.