James, read again. The article makes no claims about what these new adaptions do:

That's not my point. By calling them "adaptions" there is the implication that they have come about by some form of natural selection.

My studies do not agree
Scientifically speaking evolution is just a lucky mutation.

The body can mutate (this has been demonstrated by science), for a number of reasons, during DNA replication, often the changes are so small they aren't noticed, more often the mutation will bring to the death of the being, rarely the mutation is good and encreases the being's fitness (and chances to reproduce), thus transforming into evolution

BEGIN LONG POST

Ah. When I posted that comic, I had interpreted it as meaning that if you must mention Intelligent Design in schools, then there's no limit to the psuedo-science you're introducing...

Every year, flu season comes around, and this year will be no exception. When people want to be protected from it, they use a vaccine. Researchers need to develop a new set of vaccines every year, because there are always new mutations, new strains of the virus. The vaccines work by introducing a weakened form the new strain, which the immune system can then adapt to. When the immune system is faced with the real virus, it will then be able to defeat it easily.

When you want to protect someone against an argument, you use a similar vaccination. You introduce a weakened version of your opponent's argument, one that has important points missing, or is slightly misrepresented, or even just given a negative spin. You can also insert your own opinions, or logical inconsistencies but be careful! The argument has to look like the real thing, and it has to be superficially valid. Now when the person encounters the real, original argument, he'll be safe.

This works amazingly well because 1) argument vaccinations tend to be shorter than the real thing, and 2) people hate to think for long periods of time, and will tend to ignore the real argument if it's long or complicated anyways.

I have yet to see a real, unbiased debate on any complicated subject that didn't occur under very controlled conditions. This is because people don't tend to want to learn anything from you, they want to convince you that they're right. (ie not interested in determining the truth, but interested in spreading their version of it)

David's Rule of Argument:
A person who is interested in changing your views will tend to use argument immunization, especially if they're not aware of it, or even of why they're arguing in the first place.

INTERMISSION
At this point, I invite you to take some time out to critically evaluate my second paragraph. Was it written because I was interested in learning something, or interested in convincing/persuading? Does the motivation behind an argument impact it's validity? (ie by causing the poster to use argument immunization techniques) Is this always unavoidable?

As a rule of thumb, anyone who sounds certain of anything other than the simplest real-world issues is wrong. It's only a matter of determining how, and why. This includes politicians, religious figures, people who claim to be scientists, etc.

THE CONCLUSION, AND POINT OF THIS POST:
23yrold: It's good for people to reason and think for themselves, but they will find it almost impossible to have an informed opinion if they're exposed to immunizations and not the 'real' arguments. (I'm not talking about the kids in school, I'm talking about you and me here). The debate over whether kids should learn by exploring and if kids should learn by being told what's right is an entirely different issue, IMO.

The problem with evolution is that everyone thinks they can have an informed opinion on the subject. You don't ask random people in the street what they think about quantum physics, do you? Why would their opinion on evolution be any better?

Anyway, I'll reiterate my point.
There's no question of wether or not there are mutations and modifications.
There's no debate on wether or not selection based on certain properties leads to new races and new species (and I refer again to ring species).
There is no reasonable way to doubt that natural selection works in principle.
Where there may be room for discussion is in wether natural selection is sufficient. Proponents of intelligent design claim that it is not and invoke divine intervention to explain what they feel natural selection lacks.

There are two steps here. The first is that natural selection is insufficient. The second is that this implies intelligent design.

One can find fault and argue over either of these two points. I assert that the first is false but I won't try to guess what points are raised against it and try to debunk them.

I will put forth a counter argument for the second assumption, that of intelligent design. One often cited example (at least historically) of `intelligent design' is that of the eye. Considering the many obvious flaws in the design of the eye (nerves running over the retina, to name but one) one can hardly call the design `intelligent'. To top it off, there are different types of eye in the animal kingdom. Why? Because the designer figured that he would design different eyes, each with their own mistakes and shortcomings? Why wouldn't an intelligent designer have designed one good eye and reused it in all creatures? Why wouldn't he have improved his design?
To me, this seems enough to refute the hypothesis of intelligent design where the eye is concerned. I see no reason the same line of reasoning couldn't be adapted to any other biological system one cares to mention, if it is studied and understood thoroughly enough.

EDIT: hehe... @Karadoc: couldn't have said it better myself.

There is something which appears to be missed here. Evolutionists will argue that all life springs forth from a single original organisms. (How that organism got there is a matter of debate.) The straw-man creationist will assert that all species were created as they are by God in the beginning. Probably, there are some poeple who will assert this but those in the ID camp do not. Rather, they would say that the "Intelligent Designer" created a variety of creatures which would "evolve" into several similiar creatures.

So, in the Ring Specis Gull example, both Darwinists and IDers would agree that all of those gulls descended from one species, but have drifted apart genetically since that time. The difference is whether the Gull originally came from other species, or whether it was intelligently designed at its start.

Now, at this point it would be silly to try and assert that new species do not "evolve." We've seen it happen. The question is whether these relativly minor changes neccesairly extend to more major changes. I.E. we can evolve new specis, but can we evolve a new genus? The best way to prove this either way would be to give it enough time and observe organisms to see if it happens. The problem is that neccesairly takes a long time.

So, we have a few ways of trying to get around the problem.
1. We can argue about whether or not a certain structure could evolve. This is what the argument about irreducible complexity falls under. However, arguing over the abstract possibility of something happening only goes so far.

2. We can investigate the fossil record and such things to try and determine what happened from the evidence it left behind. The problem here is that its almost always possible to construct multiple explanations of any evidence.

If you find a bucket full of water outside, you might conclude that it was left there and the rained filled it in. However, its just as possible that somebody filled it up with a hose for some purpose and intends to return and use it. Unless you either find a time machine or the person who filled there is no sure way of determing what actually happened.

Creationists do not assert that all species were created by God but rather that all "kinds" were created by God to reproduce after their kind. Different species within a kind arose over time through natural selection. The above quote is a common misconception about creationism. Creationists believe God included all sorts of information in the genetic code to allow for variety and that over time much information has been lost. Here is a video where a creationist pops the information question to a well-known evolutionist.

Huh? According to Google's definition:

• Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

• Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See synonyms at belief, trust.

• Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.

• The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.

</li>
The more evidence or proof you have for something, the less faith there is in believing of that something.

This has a problem though. Intelligent design proponents typically don't want to become properly informed. They have their book that says God created everything, and that's how it is. Sure, they might go looking for points against their arguments, but they're only going to worry about ones they can counter (and make up a bunch more).

I remember having fights with my parents over the family computer (back around '95) because they said the computer was slowing down, and it must've been a virus. A virus I supposedly got by using a Doom map editor (DETH; Doom Editor for Total Headcases, a 32-bit GCC port of DEU). Never mind the fact that hundreds of other people used the same exact program and it never showed up under virus scans, but they didn't want to hear that. The program was called DETH and they "knew" it was a virus the computer got a virus because of me, and I was subsequently punished for it.

Actually, it does. You need some evidence for a scientific theory. You have to demonstrate that a given hypothesis can be correct (showing and/or getting evidence in the process) before it can become a theory.

This is very true, but the knife cuts both ways. We don't actually have solid evidence either way to suggest that evolution can or can't produce great things because we haven't been around long enough to tell.

Look a this:
ajdsloanbsoidnaskdhnfajsdhrkawergailsm

Okay, we can probably safely assume that's random and typed by me hitting random keys on the keyboard.

int main(int argc, char ** argv) 
{ 
    printf("Hello Darwin!");
}

Here, the assumption is that I designed that.

The question is, what's different between the two? To borrow from Richard Dawkins in "The Blind Watchmaker." One is simple and the other is complex. My random letters are simple because any random jumbling together of letters wouldn't produce anything much different from that. However, my program is "complex" because while there are many possible valid C++ programs, the possiblity of randomly arriving at one is very small. Now, if extend this to cover both C++ and Pascal, then we've approximatedly doubled both the amount of possible programs and the amount of valid programs. But taken as a percentage of the whole, the amount of valid programs has actually decreased.

So, to go back and use your tile analogy, yes a bunch of random tiles strewn around is probably just a broken one. However, to run across a bunch of tiles arranged into the words "Hello World" is a far different thing.

It renders it a hypothesis rather then a theory.

The problem with saying we can accept it as long as we don't take the bible to litterally is basically suggesting that God misled you back in the begginning by saying that he did in six days when in fact it did in six ages. It's just as valid for me to suggest that God designed to world to look like it evolved in order to fool everybody. Both statements would undermine the belief in God.

Thats the point of difference. Does religion or science determine the "what." On the religous point of view, Yahweh came down communicated with us, and died to save us. He told us that he made the world in six days. Now he told us rather little about how he made the world. Under this view, science's purpose is essentially to study how it was done.

On the other hand, the Scientific viewpoint says that it decides what happend and how it happened. That is the conflict.

Yup. Evidence only goes so far, and faith makes up the difference. But if you have no evidence at all, how can you have faith?

Scholar Bob would be killed instantly for messing with the Torah like that. But in the ancient Hebrew, I believe the word for "day" and "age" are roughly equivalent. Of course, the writer knowing this, he specified "And there was evening, and there was morning—the * day." So, who knows, eh?

blah blah blah blah

Live and let live.

If you are not happy about what's happening, do something about it instead of complaining behind the computer screen.