| The Avon Lady |
10-29-06 11:47 AM |
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Originally Posted by Gizzmoe
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Originally Posted by The Avon Lady
Now, if the initial "shock" of my opinion has worn off, would anyone care to address the article I linked to?
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Although Wimīs post (#31) hasnīt addressed that particular article, it fits IMO: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...2&postcount=31
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Let's analyze that:
I can't speak for other religious minded people here but I have no problem with the theory of evolution being taught in the US public school system. I do, however, have a problem with evolution being taught - ironically - as the gospel truth. Furthermore, I don't believe there are a significant number of FSM believers in the US school system to qualify teaching the subject. If there were, I would not object to a comparative analysis of common and uncommon points being highlighted by teachers.
The world isn't full of FSM believers - thank G-d! However, there are several highly followed and respected (that's very relevant) religions whose understandings of the origins of everything partially or wholey contradict Darwin.
Simple question to all the aetheists: explain the big bang? How do you get something out of nothing?
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Seriously, science has very strong claims to correctness.
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That's very vague but no problem there in general.
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The fact that various scientific theories have been proven wrong (or at least incomplete), and that many other theories will also require changes in the future doesn't indicate that science is wrong.
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No but the inverse is true, too. This is a 2 way street.
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In fact, the opposite is true: every theory that has to be changed is a victory for science, because such changes happen because new discoveries are made that improve our knowledge about how things work, and get rid of old misconceptions.
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I agree that this is true of "science" but not of all "scientists". There is often a lot of subjectivity involved, whether the scientist is religious, non-religious, financially involved, etc.
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Science adapts to new findings, asks that theories have supporting evidence, and rejects what can be disproven. So it's very different from a mere belief. Science cannot claim complete knowledge and correctness, but it does strive towards it, adapting to new evidence. And it works pretty well, if you consider its achievements.
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I wouldn't argue with this.
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But if schools teach science not as this process of refinement, but merely as a disconnected set of facts that the student has to learn, those students could be forgiven for not noticing a difference.
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Sounds nice to me.
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Intelligent Design advocates something that you could call "the God of the gaps". Basically, whenever there is a gap in our understanding of the world, that means God must have been involved.
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If there is a god and it is understood that G-d is the creator, then this is true.
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So, before people understood electricity, it was explained as God being angry and destroying something, throwing a hammer, etc...
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And this has been disproven. In fact, do you know of any religious people who believe this today? I don't. But it's not relevant to creationism. In fact, it's similar to science in the way that it was an assumed theory, proven incorrect and accepted by all.
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As science progressed, the number of gaps decreased, and with it the importance of this particular type of God.
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Lost me there. What does this mean?
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ID is just a bunch of people who feel the need to attack some domain of science to make people believe there are more gaps in our knowledge.
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This itself is a childish attack.
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Of course, you are right that science is not the answer for everything. It offers knowledge, but people also need motivations for their actions, and such motivations are rather subjective.
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OK. So?
To sum it up, I don't see anything exciting in the above post. Maybe that's because I don't feel it applies to me. Maybe.
It still does not deal with the article I previously linked to. Waiting for a scientific response. :roll:
Here's another article. I'll post it in full because I can only browse it in a cached webpage copy:
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Monkeys and atheists
Posted: May 28, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog") is said to have come up with the most famous defense of the atheist belief that life was created by chance, not God. In a debate at Oxford, he is reported to have stated that if enough monkeys randomly pressed typewriter keys for a long enough time, sooner or later Psalm 23 would emerge.
Not all atheists use this argument, but it accurately represents the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you'll get you, me and Bach's cello suites.
This belief has always struck me as implausible. The argument that infinitely complex intelligence came about by itself, unguided by any intelligence, can only be deemed convincing by those who have a vested interest (intellectual, emotional, psychological) in atheism.
I fully acknowledge the great challenge to theism the rampant and seemingly random unfairness built into human life. But no intellectually honest atheist should deny the great challenge to atheism the existence of design and intelligence. The belief that Bach's music randomly evolved from a paramecium should strike anyone as so fantastic as to be absurd, even more absurd than the belief that a monkey could monkey Shakespeare. The finite number of years in the universe's existence and the finite number of planets would not come close to producing a few sentences, let alone Psalm 23 or a Shakespeare play.
But a just reported English University experiment has convinced me that the number of monkeys and the amount of time are irrelevant. Psalm 23, let alone Hamlet, would never be written. Why? Because the monkeys probably wouldn't do any typing.
According to news reports, instructors at Plymouth University put six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys in a room with a computer and keyboards for four weeks. Though one of the monkeys frequently typed the letter "s", the other monkeys ignored the keyboard, preferring to play with one another and with the ropes and toys placed there. When they did pay attention to the keyboard, one smashed it with a stone and the others repeatedly urinated and defecated on it.
The instructors hastened to note the study was not scientific, given the short duration of time and the small number of monkeys, but some of us find this "study" to be a hilarious vindication of our view of the "enough monkeys for enough time" argument for random creation.
According to the science correspondent of Britain's Guardian newspaper, "assuming each monkey typed a steady 120 characters a minute (itself a preposterous assumption), mathematicians have calculated it would take 10 to the 813th power (10 followed by 813 zeros) monkeys about five years to knock out a decent version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 3"
To put 10 to the 813th power into perspective, remember that a billion is 10 to the ninth power.
There are many intellectually honest atheists, and there are many intellectually dishonest believers in God. Nevertheless, I believe that any objective person would have to conclude that the belief that everything came about by itself and that randomness is the creator is infinitely less intellectually sound than the belief in a Creator-Designer.
Sadly, many people come to doubt God's existence because so many intellectuals are atheists. But it was a major scientist, Professor Robert Jastrow, one of the greatest living astronomers, head of the Mount Wilson Observatory, formerly head of NASA's Goddard Space Center, and an agnostic, who best explained the atheism of many scientists.
In his book "God and the Astronomers," Jastrow tells of his surprise when so many fellow astronomers refused to accept the Big Bang hypothesis for the origins of the universe. In fact, Jastrow writes, many astronomers were actually unhappy about it. Why? Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject.
This led Jastrow to the sobering conclusion that many scientists have vested, non-scientific interests in some of their beliefs, especially the non-existence of God. For some psychological or emotional reasons, not intellectual ones, many scientists prefer to believe that given enough monkeys, one will type out a psalm.
But neither math nor science argues that all came about randomly, without a Creator. Only a keen desire to deny God explains such a belief, a belief that should be laid to rest beneath a large pile of monkey doo-doo at Plymouth University, England.
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