Thank you, thank you very much.
I am signing off.
where, in this thread, has it been stated that ‘creationists’ must believe in a 6000 year old earth? thats yet another strawman of your own. THere certainly is a set of creationists that believe that - but its not ‘all’ of them.
Now - lets get specific - what is the one thing that ID provides that evolution does not? Where is the ‘evidence’ leading us?
You do not appear to be aware that it is the proponents of a theory who are responsible for providing the method of falsification. I agree that ID has not been subjected to being falsified–because its proponents know that it is not science and that they could not provide such.
And whoosh!
Oh! The persecution!
Well, I’m sure that the trial transcript is available somewhere online. Maybe you can provide an example of this? I’m sure no ID proponent would ever quote a scientist out of context.
As I mentioned previously, I did hear Kenneth Miller talk about the case. One anecdote he related did have to do with making Behe look a little foolish on the stand.
As related by Miller, Behe is a short man. When he was testifying, the plaintiffs’ lawyer kept stacking piles of scientific papers supporting evolution in front of Behe while he was in the witness box and asking him if he was familiar with all the evidence for evolution. Soon Behe had to pop his head up over the mountains of papers in front of him to be seen when he was answering and it made him seem overwhelmed by the proof in front of him.
Miller made the comment that this theatrical tactic gave him an appreciation of some good lawyering.
Miller also related how this case was what the ID proponents said they had been asking for. Here was the chance to present their case in a neutral forum. But yet only Behe actually showed up.
No such study was done because a perfectly valid explanation exists. We already know why the giraffe’s nerve curves the way it does. The answer is there, the evidence is overwhelming, and there’s no need to look for an alternative. That answer: the giraffe evolved over time, from other mammals with considerably shorter necks. In the entire phylogeny, it’s typical for the laryngeal nerve to loop around the neck, and this wasn’t a huge detour for most, as they had shorter necks. As the giraffe was naturally selected for longer and longer necks, the nerve grew with the necks. Here’s a source to start you off. This makes perfect sense in the light of evolution, and no sense in any intelligent design model.
Well, it’s worth noting that there was actually a high-profile court case which tried to validate intelligent design. The result? ID was routed by a conservative Christian judge. PBS has a documentary which is quite telling. Hell, the biggest name behind ID at the time refused to go on the stand and claim, under oath, that intelligent design fulfilled the criteria of a scientific theory. It was judged that intelligent design is not science - in fact, in the case of the textbook presented in Dover, the textbook was literally copied from a creationist textbook with each example of “creation” replaced electronically with “intelligent design”. If new evidence arrived since then, then anyone could easily take it to court and try to get the verdict overturned. Unfortunately, there haven’t been any advances in Intelligent Design. Because what can you do with it? Intelligent Design has no predictive or explanatory power. Evolution, on the other hand, has both in spades.
There is no denial of academic freedom. Oh, someone advocating ID may have trouble finding a job in a university, or having their research published, but so would someone who rejects germ theory. It’s embarrassing for a university to have them on their roster, and their papers are frequently extremely bad. I welcome you to provide a single case where an intelligent design advocate was censured or denied academic freedom without good reason.
So… How 'bout some evidence? What are you talking about?
The first real case of academic discrimination cited is climategate. Yeah, no. That site is full of shit. I’m sorry, climategate was in no way evidence of academic discrimination - they’re referring to the type of “discrimination” where a small group of scientists decide, privately, to not publish in or cite a scientific magazine that published a study that was bad. How bad? Well, half the board of editors retired in protest. That’s not academic discrimination. Even if the journal had done nothing wrong, it wouldn’t be academic discrimination - it’s a small group privately deciding not to associate themselves with a journal. The way they go on to claim “Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal”… No, I’m sorry, that’s bullshit. ID is not unscientific because it has never been published. ID is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable and has no predictive or explanatory power. Again, this is something Behe refused to testify against.
Whoever told you this is lying to you. They do not understand why the drawings are in the textbooks to begin with.
Nobody is censuring ID. We aren’t presenting it in schools, as it’s unscientific and in essence creationism, but nobody is silencing dissenting views.
What, you mean like irreducible complexity, which was refuted again, and again, and again? Or fallacious arguments regarding the “probability”?
I don’t believe for a second that you understand the evidence of evolution. Throughout this thread, you have offered misinformation after misinformation, and not once, regardless of how many times people have pointed out that your sources are dishonest or that your arguments are flawed, have you sat down and thought, “Huh, maybe I should study what I’m talking about”. Case in point:
Tomndebb completely destroyed these arguments. Can we get a recall? Any admission that you’re wrong?
jstucker15, if you come back, here is a short list of things to do:
- Provide falsification criteria for intelligent design. This is a basic necessity for any scientific theory; a way to prove it wrong.
- Demonstrate that you understand the evidence for evolution in any reasonable way
- Provide real evidence that ID proponents have been shut out of journals for reasons other than “their arguments are wrong and potentially harmful”.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
I will fix your quote nesting errors, because I didn’t say what you say I said.
Evolution doesn’t address the question of how life began. You think it does, but since it doesn’t, you claim it is flawed? Straw man much?
Evolution is not abiogenesis. What can we say to make you understand that?
Only in your mind. Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t mean Goddit. Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t mean others can’t, and they have. This has been explained to you several times in this thread. There really is no point in you continuing to spout this ignorant statement. It doesn’t get any better from repetition.
Dude there is this little known (sarcasm) thing called Confirmation bias that you should be aware of.
Behe has written OpEds for the Times where he says he accepts most of evolution, and he definitely accepts an old earth. I’m sure he doesn’t bring this up when speaking to his creationist friends. He claims there is intervention in the development of life, but at least he doesn’t claim God poofed us into existence.
I suspect jstucker15 would not be pleased.
He doesn’t want to get in trouble with his homophobic compatriots 
I’ve a feeling that the term and concept of ‘falsification’ itself might be the problem. “not falsifiable” might sound like a plus point to some people, but of course it means the same as “not verifiable” to anyone in the know.
So, jstucker15. Falsification works like this: If I make a claim, part of that claim needs to be a test criterion of the type “If my claim is wrong, here’s how you’ll know it…” - that way, in advance of any argument about the truth of my claim, we can be sure the parameters of truth or falsity have been defined.
For example: I claim I can levitate vegetables with my mind. Someone tests me with an onion and I say “Oh, I can’t actually levitate onions. Try me with something else”; someone tests me with a potato and I say “Oh, but it’s Monday - I’ve never been able to levitate potatoes on a Monday - I thought you knew that!” - and so on. Because I have not provided falsification criteria, nothing can be nailed down.
So what are the falsification criteria for ID. If ID is wrong, how could this be tested and established?
Just for reference, before someone makes false claims about evolution, here are a few falsification criteria for parts of evolution:
- Fossils of species known to be fairly recent showing up in ancient strata
- Hybrids of extant, long-since-divergent species being found (something like the crocoduck - have I mentioned that Kirk Cameron is kind of stupid and dishonest?)
- An organism giving birth to another organism of a different species
…Just to name a few. Of course, of those, the last two are actually things many creationists seem to think evolution predicts. Which is more than a little bit silly.
No, he’s not stupid and they are not silly. They *actually are *very dishonest.
Really, jstucker15, you are being misled by some very evil people.
For your own sake put a bit of study in the subject.
Or another tact, just for giggles, imagine it is the ID camp that is lying. Just imagine, what would you expect to see?
Look , just ask yourself. Which is more likely?
-
All the thousands upon thousands of scientists, all over fucking the world, a lot of them religious at that, are all involved in a giant conspiracy to keep the truth from you.
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A handful of (admittedly very loud) Americans are lying, to keep the truth from you.
It is what God gave us.
Where do you think your logic comes from? You think that comes from humans too?
Argumentum ad populum
When the public school books take abiogenesis out of the evolution unit, you can make the claim that they are unrelated.
If so, you are misconstruing the argument.
The argument under question here isn’t whether or not something is true because most people believe it but whether or not the majority of the world’s scientists (including Christians) are engaged in a world spanning conspiracy to withhold the truth.
It’s closer to reductio ad absurdum since it is unlikely, to the point of ridicule, that such a massive and widespread conspiracy could exist, particularly for so long and across political divisions, religions (as most scientists who are Christian are also buying into it), and philosophies.
Which public school texts (particularly on biology)? All of them? Across all 50 states? That’s a strong claim, and one I’d like to see backed. It certainly wasn’t in the textbook I used in high school (admittedly a while back).