I just can't let that by ... intelligent design is IMO even less valid than some flavors of creationism. It attempts to be scientific on the surface (mainly to pollute classrooms, it seems), but makes an innately non-provable claim, is started by crusaders against science, and furthermore is based off false premises, like the really stupid "irreducable complexity" thing and their mousetrap argument that was so easily turned against them.
If you want to believe that God helped evolution work, by all means believe it! ... just don't make up random unscientific crap to justify it, get no scholarly publications, then try to convince the school system to adopt your ideas as a valid enough to reach down to basic science high-school class-rooms.

... sorry for the tangential rant, but Ohio was attacked by these nuts recently ... I got excited.

Anyway, it's good to read religious debates here ... reminds me how intelligent and reasonable the crowd tends to be!

And yeah, the "free will" argument does suck. I've found the ceiling to be 100% of the time more interesting than that discussion ...
(then again, my ceiling is pretty. It's all white and stuff )

Math is realtive. Count the number of attoms in the universe, then tell me how belivable those mathmaticians are. There isn't even a name for that number Becides "really really really large". Trying to explain something based on math and odds makes no sense. Especially odds. The fact that you can give something 'odds' means its possible, no matter how unlikely, Its bound to happen.

Really? IMO nothing is impossible. But things can be Improbable.

Serriously, think about how long eternity is... Anything can happen given enough time.

Au contraire! Quantum mechanics is a model developed to fit observations and to predict observations that have since been confirmed. It is considered a very strong theory... at least as strong as Einsteinian physics because it predicts well grounded observations so well. If quantum mechanics "flies in the face of well grounded observations to the contrary", then the theory would have been shot down decades ago.

I agree.

I agree.

If I exist (yes ), and if the cat sitting in front of me is only 1 yr old, then surely I must have designed the cat. There's a difference between "I believe God designed life" and "Through logic and scientific observation, I can deduce/infer that God designed life." ID claims the latter. However when examining the logic and the evidence, ID's case is very weak. I think you're better off going with faith.

The argument in a nutshell is that the individual pieces of a mousetrap are useless; only when all the pieces are in place do you get a working design. Therefore this is evidence of ID, because how can evolution work if the individual pieces have no purpose and so no reason to be selected?. There are two interesting problems with this argument. One is that in the example given, the individual pieces of a mousetrap, like the spring or latch, are quite useful alone. Second is that there are tons of evidence of isolated biological pieces being quite useful without needing other pieces, and would of course be naturally selected due to there usefulness. Just because we so far can't determine the purpose of every little piece that also existed millions/billions of years ago doesn't mean no useful purpose existed then or even now.

I'll also mention an interesting article in the most recent issue of scientific amercan. It describes an experiment, similar to genetic algorithms, where a model was developed to mimic natural selection in trying to create certain types of electrical circuits. As a test of fitness, one can choose something like how well the circuit acts as a band-pass filter of two particular frequencies. Some interesting properties emerged: (1) It was able to recreate, without human interference, human, patented, solutions to a variety of circuit designs. (2) It was able to find designs of certain types of circuits superior to the best human designed ones (in the sense of how well the circuit works as intended). (3) Even "superior" designs showed particular attributes similar to biology... like totally useless portions of the circuit that has no apparent advantage.

[edit] I'll add that the authors of the sci-am article made no claim about how such an experiment is a big piece of evidence in favor of evolution. It was taken for granted that the evolution theory was strong enough.

[edit2] I forgot to comment about another quote:

You're not the only one to wonder... even physicists wonder! Quantum mechanics is a theory about small things like atoms. Many technologies were conceived of and developed using this theory, like electron microscopes. Einsteinian physics works great for the macroscopic world. Where these two giant theories collide and how they work together is a big conundrum. When you hear about "Grand Unification" theories, it is this problem physicists are trying to solve.

right on! only it's the reverse there are some rules about the randomness but otherwise it isn't all that weird.

the universe expands because of generation of dark matter. what the scientist have seen is that the expansion is not slowing down in a way as much as one would expect.

earlier, there was also doubt that the universe would stop expanding. this goes beyond normal intuition of mathematics with evil cauchy sequences in non-newtonian space but it says with simple words "it's not gonna stop expand in time"

I understand that Quantum mechanics can also accurately model things we can observe in nature, but I don't agree that it is an accurate picture of the the forces at work. I don't believe that it is possible to have a predictable system composed of random parts. I believe than when you resort to probability, you are compensating for a lack of knowledge. I believe that there is more to know, and that these probabalistic methods will give way to deterministic methods given more time and research.

I have no problems with this position.

This is what every physicist believed 100 years ago, that everything is deterministic. Yet since then, more research was done, and now most physicists believe that everything is not fundamentally deterministic. No deterministic theory has yet to adequately explain the diffraction observation above, for example. Believe me, many smart people have since tried.

I'll give you an example: the atomic clock. We'll use the common one based on cesium. The atomic clock works by measuring how often the cesium atom oscillates between two quantum mechanical states. (Note that quantum mechanics describe distinct states with nothing in between... no particle can occupy "in between" these states. And we have never observed any in-between states. A deterministic theory breaks down if it can't have infinite number of in-between states) Now which state the atom resides in is determined by probability. Yet when we measure this oscillation after exposing the atoms to a certain EM radiation, we find that the frequency of oscillation is incredibly predictable. So predictable that we have defined one second as 9,192,631,770 cesium quantum state oscillations per second.

How about another example: Statistical thermodynamics uses statistics to accurate describe and predict macroscopic things like temperature and pressure.

There are three basic conclusions one can make when there is no evidence of a deeper layer of understanding that would support a deterministic model. (1) There is no deeper layer that would support a deterministic layer, or (2) there is one, but we lack the technical ability to observe this evidence, or (3) I have faith that there is such a layer despite the lack of evidence, even if we never ever find any. I'll assume you subscribe the option 2.

However, I think that there is a problem with option 2. I have yet to hear of a logical deterministic hypothesis that is still able to explain the observations we do have and yet not contradict itself. For example one can argue that we see a diffraction pattern because the electron actually does split in two and then merge back together. Except this contradicts conservation of mass, a deterministic theory.

Also note how these three options are the same options with the question about the existence of God.

Careful here. You're starting to use meta-physical or philosophical arguments. Anyone can say the same thing about Newtonian physics, for example, or any other theory, deterministic or not. E.g. what is gravity? Is newtonian physics just a way to quantify a force that we observe but don't understand why it is present? Is it just a band-aid?

Anyways the observation of these quantum states is not beyond our perception. They can be directly measured. We can observe particles occupying state A and state B, but we don't see any particles occuping a state in between, but we know we are capable of such an observation because we can see state A and B.

There are three stages of development for individuals and society.
Theology -> Metaphysics -> Science
It is not stupid to be a theologist, if you don't know any better. Just as you are not stupid to think metaphysically (Oil contains the ESSENCE of fire, so it burns), unless you know any better. Scientific thinking, though, is the ultimate truth. All others will fail in any attempt at success. Success is merely luck when you trust God to do it, because, damn it, he didn't do jack.

Well, that's my 2 cents anyways

How do you see how many people posted on a specific thread? -- I'm wondering if this is any where near the amount of people who posted on the game in 20 lines of code thread..... (I think this one still has less not sure) anyways I told "sinbad" that I wasn't going to argue with him anymore -- While praying about it, I realized that if there are giraffe on the moon (and there arn't ) it has nothing to do with an argument for or aginst christianity and was just a silly thing to argue about, it was only addressed to christians to make us look stupid (worked on me )

Oh ok -- I didn't look there, I was just clicking on the hyper links that allegro.cc sends to my email.... thats all I do when I'm not that bored, and I didn't know carm.org had forums.....

Must evidence always be "scientific" to be evidence?

They should, but they never do.

Here's a question; not a challenge, just something I'm curious about. What does genetics have to say about inherited knowledge? Y'know, like a spider spinning a perfect web first try, or bees understanding that dance they do (some guy needed 20 years to decipher it). If anyone here knows of such things.