Poll: Controversial Topics

[Casual Shinji]

First I think we need to clear up the misunderstanding that just because someone is Christian they believe in Intelligent Design. They don't. This is almost completely exclusive to America.

Unfortunately this seems to be spreading here in Australia too, as Baptist denominations become more powerful. Not long ago I even saw a sign outside a big church here proclaiming "Creation is true, evolution is a lie". I was horrified.

It's scary when you see stuff like that.

I once saw on CNN this museum in Utah or something that depicted our cave dwelling ancestors living side by side with dinosaurs, under the motto "The Earth is only 6000 years old". *sigh*

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It is not. Its core tenet cannot be tested. Making it scientifically unverifiable.

First I think we need to clear up the misunderstanding that just because someone is Christian they believe in Intelligent Design. They don't. This is almost completely exclusive to America.

Unfortunately this seems to be spreading here in Australia too, as Baptist denominations become more powerful. Not long ago I even saw a sign outside a big church here proclaiming "Creation is true, evolution is a lie". I was horrified.

It's scary when you see stuff like that.

I once saw on CNN this museum in Utah or something that depicted our cave dwelling ancestors living side by side with dinosaurs, under the motto "The Earth is only 6000 years old". *sigh*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum
We have one in my state. I envy the secularism in other places. Sigh....

 

[ducis]

wouldn't a better poll be pantheism vs. panentheism vs. big bang determinism vs. big bang non-determinism?
because evolution is proven, and i think there are scarce few people who believe that humanity was created 5000 years ago a la genesis word for word.
the bigger question is what caused evolution is it not?

 

[AngloDoom]

That would imply evolution is completely random, which it is not, having only recently learned evolution, it was my understanding that a species evolved to suit it's environment, e.g. the finches on whatever island Darwin went to different finches in different areas had different beaks to be able to eat the kind of food in said area, so survival of the fittest.

The fundamental point you're missing, if you believe in evolution, is that evolution is random in terms of how it comes about, just not the result.

I may be mistaken, but your posts suggests that Darwin's finches went to different islands, got the different island, and then it's break evolved to cope with the change in environment. That is more intelligent design than evolution. The bird didn't change to suit it's environment - random mutations in the offspring happened to make some of said offspring more viable to live there. It didn't adapt to it's environment, it just happened to be born better suited for it.

I may have totally misinterpreted your post, however?

 

[SenseOfTumour]

My problem with debates, especially on TV, seems to be that they'll give a professor who's studied the subject in question for thirty years, equal merit to the whackjob who says cancer is caused by a wrathful god who's angry about gay marriage.

Now that may sound anti religion, but I mean they won't get a venerable priest, a man of the cloth of 50 years, just some loony with an extreme view and give him equal say to the man of science.

Or in less controversial terms, they'll get some guy from a gaming site, against three 'experts' who've 'heard something about a game that might be bad', and just shout down the gaming guy whenever he dares to use such unfair tactics as 'facts'. Note these are the tactics of, without naming any names, the most 'Fair and Balanced' news station.

However, I would say that I think it's rather lazy and cheap to use the child abuse stuff against Christianity, as firstly it was selected people, it's not exactly one of the ten commandments, and secondly, while it was covered up, it was the catholics church doing the hiding and protection of the pedos.

I just think we should rise up above cheap digs, even if they're factual, and use rational argument and reason instead.

EDIT: I've realised I've pretty much ignored the OP and answered a question no-one asked, I'm not quite sure where my head went during typing all that, for some reason I was replying to the idea of fair debate on controversial topics.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I once saw on CNN this museum in Utah or something that depicted our cave dwelling ancestors living side by side with dinosaurs, under the motto "The Earth is only 6000 years old". *sigh*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum
We have one in my state. I envy the secularism in other places. Sigh....

I always try to keep this in the back of my head when encountering Christian bash threads on this site: The majority of the users here is American, which means their subjugated to nonsense like this, making their dislike towards Christianity somewhat understandable.

Eventhough Creationism has as little to do with Christianity as the Rapture does with the Book of Revelation. Which is to say, nothing.

 

[Ranorak]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It's not, at all.
saying God guided Evolution is all nice and dandy.
But if you want it to hold up some scientific theory, you gotta show some proof.

There is none.
In fact, There are some steps in evolution that would discredit intelligent design.
Evolution doesn't go for the BEST option. it goes for survivable.

A Truly intelligent designer would have had another look at the Recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Why would a designer run that nerve from the neck do the thorax, and back up to the neck?

 

[Zarkov]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It is not. Its core tenet cannot be tested. Making it scientifically unverifiable.

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

What now?

Spoiler: It's testable too.

The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

 

[varulfic]

Intelligent design vs Evolution isn't a controversial issue. Intelligent design is just a cheap tactic for trying to pass off religion as science, and nobody with any credibility takes it seriously.

I'm so glad I live in Sweden whenever this discussion comes up. Even the most devout christian here distance themselves from this silliness.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

That would imply evolution is completely random, which it is not, having only recently learned evolution, it was my understanding that a species evolved to suit it's environment, e.g. the finches on whatever island Darwin went to different finches in different areas had different beaks to be able to eat the kind of food in said area, so survival of the fittest.

The fundamental point you're missing, if you believe in evolution, is that evolution is random in terms of how it comes about, just not the result.

I may be mistaken, but your posts suggests that Darwin's finches went to different islands, got the different island, and then it's break evolved to cope with the change in environment. That is more intelligent design than evolution. The bird didn't change to suit it's environment - random mutations in the offspring happened to make some of said offspring more viable to live there. It didn't adapt to it's environment, it just happened to be born better suited for it.

I may have totally misinterpreted your post, however?

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." -Richard Dawkins
Yes, you have it right. But evolution is still far from being random.

snip

And I try to keep that in mind in my posts. I even use it against fundies. "You know that even other Christians consider you crazy, right?" I was shocked to find out that a literal interpretation of the Bible wasn't the norm.

 

[Zarkov]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It's not, at all.
saying God guided Evolution is all nice and dandy.
But if you want it to hold up some scientific theory, you gotta show some proof.

There is none.
In fact, There are some steps in evolution that would discredit intelligent design.
Evolution doesn't go for the BEST option. it goes for survivable.

A Truly intelligent designer would have had another look at the Recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Why would a designer run that nerve from the neck do the thorax, and back up to the neck?

Intelligent design doesn't explain; it only accounts for such things.

Such as irreducible forms of life that can't be covered by Evolution.

I'm all for evolution, but I guarantee that evolution isn't the last theory we're going to come up with and intelligent design only speeds up this process. They don't ever necessarily say that it's "GOD" who designed it, but they say that some type of way must have been used other than pure chance on some of the irreducible parts of nature.

Seriously... know what you're bashing before you bash it, lest you look like an idiot in doing so. Just because Richard Dawkins' bashed it doesn't mean it should be bashed. Richard's a great guy, but he doesn't know everything.

I'm an atheist and I agree with evolution. Intelligent design doesn't even discredit evolution; it only points out the areas where the theory of evolution falls apart; and mind you, they don't input their own explanation other than "there must be something else" or "it was designed".

Spoiler: Take a look

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

 

[Raven_Operative]

Creationism (IE Intelligent Design) is not a theory.

1)It is taught from religious texts, and is expected by those who teach it to be taken as irrefutable, infallible Word of God.

2)It's not testable, which is one of the main requirements of a theory. There is no possible to test whether or not a sentient deity-being can an entire planet's worth of life, as we have no sentient deity-beings to bribe into being test subjects.

And anyway, religious beliefs of any sort have no place in public education. None. teach your religion at home or in your chosen place of worship. Everyone in this country has the right to believe how they will...Teaching religious beliefs as facts violates that right and threatens our already pathetic public education system even more.

and yet...

Evolution is taught from the "infallible Word of Science"

Evolution isn't testable.

Evolution, in itself is a religion. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion

If you say you cant teach "Intelligent Design" because it's a religion, then we shouldn't teach evolution either. It seems the simplest solution is to either teach about all views, but with no focus on a specific one (although people are biased by nature so that probably wouldn't work) or to teach no views and leave the whole concept of evolution out of school. I see no reason why an untested theory should have a place in school. Science has been wrong about many things in the past, so why is it impossible to consider that the same thing can occur today.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It is not. Its core tenet cannot be tested. Making it scientifically unverifiable.

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

What now?

That doesn't address my point. How do you prove that something is designed? How do you observe it? Answer: you can't. And funny that you bring up irreducible complexity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
It has never been found in anything that ID proponents claim have something that is irreducibly complex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
ID is just creation repackaged to try to challenge evolution.

 

[AngloDoom]

-Snip-

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." -Richard Dawkins
Yes, you have it right. But evolution is still far from being random.

I hope you don't mind me asking you to enlighten me on the subject? It's not that I'm throwing doubt on what you said (you haven't given me anything to doubt) but I'm unaware of any evidence to suggest evolution isn't entirely random. It'd be nice to expand a little on the topic.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

-Snip-

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." -Richard Dawkins
Yes, you have it right. But evolution is still far from being random.

I hope you don't mind me asking you to enlighten me on the subject? It's not that I'm throwing doubt on what you said (you haven't given me anything to doubt) but I'm unaware of any evidence to suggest evolution isn't entirely random. It'd be nice to expand a little on the topic.

I'm no expert, but I'll try. Evolution is very deliberate. It occurs at a genetic level. Say a mutation of a gene arises that is great for allowing its survival machine to survive better (like better camouflage in an animal). That gene will be passed on to the next generation in increasing numbers and will populate the gene pool. It arose by chance, but the fact that it survived is not chance at all. Does that help? Honestly, this book is great in explaining it.
http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152

 

[rogue_salty]

I see no reason why the two beliefs should be mutually exclusive. Speaking as a Christian, I believe that God created life via evolution. The Bible was meant to teach a series of rules and morals to follow, and anyone that regards it as a completely factual science book has missed the point entirely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Kdc0LLSW8&feature=related
(Youtube won't let me embed)

i agree,as a Muslim i believe god created all living beings and gave them the means to survive(evolution is one of them).but to say that mankind evolved from apes thats absurd, theres no proof of that,now what i dont get is atheists,i mean how do they think the universe started,sure thers the big bang theory,and its dumb as hell,there must be something that caused the bang,or something that made the thing that caused the bang,albert einstein once said that this universe cannot be a Coincidence,and what created it cant be fathomed by the human mind.
in Islam we believe that god is in no place(yes no,place what i mean by that is god cant be in a place god created because god existed before creation),and god has no shape,god is simply beyond our comprehension

 

[AngloDoom]

-Snip-

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." -Richard Dawkins
Yes, you have it right. But evolution is still far from being random.

I hope you don't mind me asking you to enlighten me on the subject? It's not that I'm throwing doubt on what you said (you haven't given me anything to doubt) but I'm unaware of any evidence to suggest evolution isn't entirely random. It'd be nice to expand a little on the topic.

I'm no expert, but I'll try. Evolution is very deliberate. It occurs at a genetic level. Say a mutation of a gene arises that is great for allowing its survival machine to survive better (like better camouflage in an animal). That gene will be passed on to the next generation in increasing numbers and will populate the gene pool. It arose by chance, but the fact that it survived is not chance at all. Does that help? Honestly, this book is great in explaining it.
http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152

Oh! Sorry, I totally misinterpreted what you said. I thought you meant there was factual evidence to suggest the genetic mutations themselves were not random.

I understand the idea of the survivability not being random, but the initial mutation is. Thanks for the book suggestion anyway, I'll probably check it out.

 

[Ranorak]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It is not. Its core tenet cannot be tested. Making it scientifically unverifiable.

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

What now?

How does one proof, or even show design was intelligent, or even design at all?

Not to mentioned adding a Intelligent Designer is just absurd if this Designer (god or not) isn't even provable to begin with.

Not to mention, as a biochemist and geneticist those examples you gave have nothing to do with intelligence what so ever.

 

[Ranorak]

I see no reason why the two beliefs should be mutually exclusive. Speaking as a Christian, I believe that God created life via evolution. The Bible was meant to teach a series of rules and morals to follow, and anyone that regards it as a completely factual science book has missed the point entirely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Kdc0LLSW8&feature=related
(Youtube won't let me embed)

i agree,as a Muslim i believe god created all living beings and gave them the means to survive(evolution is one of them).but to say that mankind evolved from apes thats absurd, theres no proof of that,

How about the fact that we're still apes, RIGHT NOW!?

Biologically we're classed as apes.
We share a huge part of our genome with apes.
Mutations that are found soley in ape ancestors are also found in our DNA.
We have a utterly huge fossil record showing the transition from our common ancestor to what we are now.

 

[Zarkov]

Intelligent design isn't religious; it's actually scientific. They want to address (although rashly) the parts in a cell and the spots in time were there aren't any simpler or reducible forms of life.

Not religious though. Religious creationism is completely different than intelligent design.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

I agree more with Evolution and I actually think there's a different answer to irreducible forms of life, but intelligent design in and of itself shouldn't be discredited.

Now you know. So you don't have to bash intelligent design everytime you hear its name.
It is in fact scientific.

It is not. Its core tenet cannot be tested. Making it scientifically unverifiable.

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

What now?

How does one proof, or even show design was intelligent, or even design at all?

Not to mentioned adding a Intelligent Designer is just absurd if this Designer (god or not) isn't even provable to begin with.

Not to mention, as a biochemist and geneticist those examples you gave have nothing to do with intelligence what so ever.

You're mistaken; this is not my own work. http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php