Does Evolution and Science draw people away from God?

[Philip]

Storyteller wrote:
are you RickD as in Deem? You're the site owner? Was it you that compiled the main site?



No, Rick is not Rich, he is just our resident clown

Careful, careful, klowns have feelings, too!

Welcome, Annette!

[bippy123]

Still making my mind up on all of this having recently come to God. I had always gone with evolution, now I'm not so sure.
Is ID Independent Design? As in God, the creator?
How do Neanderthal Man fit in? Dinosaurs?
When (and who) were Adam and Eve?

My take on it all is that these are all details. All we need is faith. I'm sure, when we meet God, it will all become clear. Like bippy says I don't see it as being important to salvation.

Amen Annette , as Rick not deem D said ( ) these are nit salvatiin issues .Also if you want to learn more about intelligent design, the best lace to go is their main blog at uncommon descent
http://www.uncommondescent.com

And here for more information on it and Frequently raised but weak arguments against Intelligent Design
http://www.uncommondescent.com/faq/

And their resources section here


http://www.uncommondescent.com/resources/

Their put a sock in it section
http://www.uncommondescent.com/comment- ... ock-in-it/

ID defined
http://www.uncommondescent.com/id-defined/


Hope this helps Annette
God bless

[Storyteller]

Will go through it all soon, thanks bips!

There is so much I need to process at the moment, having got to page 32 on the shroud yhread and i've been reading jacs thread discussing non belief and how God is existence.
I want all of what ive learned to sink in and ned to make sure I fully grasp what it al means. Mind blowing stuff, incredible and the explanations given on here make some very dep subjects understandable to me.

And I thought I couldnt hear God...

Annette

ps hi philip

[Audie]

It looks to me that its more that religion pushes people away from science than the other way around.

It wont improve my popularity to say that, I say so only because regardless of my nationality I care about the future of the west.

I agree with you Audie, maybe it is religion, not the pure form but man's religiousness and the need for a legalistic life style.

Who cares about popularity, my views have never been popular. A friend once said to me "Daniel your views could be classed as heretical" I said "Heretical to who? What the institutional Church" we both had a good laugh.

My views on science and religion are pretty much mainstream for China. The contortions people go thru to try to get out of
facing the reality of deep time and evolution are generally viewed with amused contempt. If any attention at all is paid to
the eccentricities of a minority religious group's uneducated ideas.

I see things from having feet on both shores and knowing both cultures..what I see in the USA scares me. The anti intellectual
demands of the fundamentalist churches are a danger to the whole nation. I cant prove it, its their country to do as they like,
but I think the atrociously poor scores of US students in science are due in no small part to the number..what is it, 46 percent?
who think deep time / evolution are false and the devil's work.

I see people here just treating it as something to pick,like a new dress or a menu item. Putting their personal reading of scripture ahead of all the research in the world. Or searching out any pseudo-site to confirm whatever they choose on the menu of beliefs.

It just makes me sad for the future, anti intellectualism and passing it to the children is a very dangerous indulgence in an ever
increasingly competitive world.

I'm being a bit incoherent, too many interruptions.
Gotta go now.

That should suffice for any residual popularity I might have had anyway.

[Danieltwotwenty]

Storyteller wrote:
are you RickD as in Deem? You're the site owner? Was it you that compiled the main site?



No, Rick is not Rich, he is just our resident clown

Careful, careful, klowns have feelings, too!

Welcome, Annette!

Yes those painted on smiles can be very deceptive.

[Morny]

Apropos to this discussion is Carl Sagan's response to the 14th Dalai Lama's claim about reincarnation being hard to disprove:

"Plainly the Dalai Lama is right. Religious doctrine that is insulated from disproof has little reason to worry about the advance of science. The grand idea, common to many faiths, of a Creator of the Universe is one such doctrine - difficult alike to demonstrate or to dismiss."

The problem here morny is that Sagan is using this within the context of methodological naturalism which means that if it can't be analyzed within this paradigm , that it can't be falsified .

Science sees that as a good thing, not a problem.

When you have something better than methodological naturalism for making discoveries about the real world, please let someone know. Oh, and they'll want a corresponding discovery.

[Morny]

The problem morny is that what evolutionist biologist represent to the public isn't what the fact say..... Exactly .

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/05 ... signs.html

The nested hierarchy doesn't have to be perfect. For example, hybridization is just one known mechanism that causes deviation from the simple model. But common descent is still our best hypothesis for the observed nested hierarchy of biological traits.

The often-given analogy is that planetary orbits about the sun don't have to be perfect ellipses for gravity to still be our best explanation. (Inter-planetary interactions is just one cause for perturbations from perfect elliptical orbits.)

[bippy123]

It looks to me that its more that religion pushes people away from science than the other way around.

It wont improve my popularity to say that, I say so only because regardless of my nationality I care about the future of the west.

I agree with you Audie, maybe it is religion, not the pure form but man's religiousness and the need for a legalistic life style.

Who cares about popularity, my views have never been popular. A friend once said to me "Daniel your views could be classed as heretical" I said "Heretical to who? What the institutional Church" we both had a good laugh.

My views on science and religion are pretty much mainstream for China. The contortions people go thru to try to get out of
facing the reality of deep time and evolution are generally viewed with amused contempt. If any attention at all is paid to
the eccentricities of a minority religious group's uneducated ideas.

I see things from having feet on both shores and knowing both cultures..what I see in the USA scares me. The anti intellectual
demands of the fundamentalist churches are a danger to the whole nation. I cant prove it, its their country to do as they like,
but I think the atrociously poor scores of US students in science are due in no small part to the number..what is it, 46 percent?
who think deep time / evolution are false and the devil's work.

I see people here just treating it as something to pick,like a new dress or a menu item. Putting their personal reading of scripture ahead of all the research in the world. Or searching out any pseudo-site to confirm whatever they choose on the menu of beliefs.

It just makes me sad for the future, anti intellectualism and passing it to the children is a very dangerous indulgence in an ever
increasingly competitive world.

I'm being a bit incoherent, too many interruptions.
Gotta go now.

That should suffice for any residual popularity I might have had anyway.

Anti intellectual ?
Maybe these guys in Asian are crazy right ? This must be a figment of my imagination .
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/06/as ... 60691.html

But get this: While some Darwinists have worriedly taken note of spreading doubts about evolutionary theory in Europe, Asia has emerged as the hottest new frontier for the scientific critique of Darwinism.

In Korea, a mainstream publisher of popular and science texts, Book 21 Publishing Group, has brought out an edition of Explore Evolution, a textbook presenting both sides of the evolution debate. The translation was done by a pair of Korean academics, Seung Yup Lee and Eung Bin Kim, whose scientific specialties are respectively in biomimetics and environmental microbiology. Both teach at universities, Sogang and Yonsei, ranked in Korea's top ten.

Are these guys nuts mony? How date they teach both sides of the fence there ? Sounds like Korea is going down the tubes . I really think that Korea should take a page out of China's book and arrest any of those hoodlum rats that that dare to make bible studies in their own home .THE NERVE OF THOSE ANTIINTELLECTUALS !!! WHO the heck do they think they are ???

Anyways back at the barn .

Dr. Lee's research fuels his questions about macroevolution. His work on the amazing "natural design" of the South American Hercules beetle and its humidity-sensing shell was highlighted in Nature. In the Preface to the Korean Explore Evolution, Lee advocates investigating "alternative theories" to undirected Darwinian evolution.

Korea also has its own Research Association for Intelligent Design, with an impressive masthead of biologists, chemists and other scientists at top research institutions. Sogang University in Seoul hosts an Annual Symposium on Intelligent Design. The event has included presentations on William Dembski and Robert Marks's Law of Conservation of Information and on protein translation as evidence of intelligent design.

China, of course, is Asia's biggest market for ideas. Illustra Media has had considerable success distributing DVDs of prime ID-related titles there. If you've ever wondered what Stephen Meyer or Jonathan Wells would sound like if they spoke fluently in the Cantonese dialect, or Jay Richards or Guillermo Gonzalez in Japanese, you no longer have to wait to find out.

Producer and director Lad Allen had Unlocking the Mystery of Life and Privileged Planet dubbed into Cantonese and Mandarin, moving a hundred thousand copies into China via Hong Kong. He estimates that three or four times that many DVDs were illegally pirated and copied. "They're sold on the street for a buck," said Allen, who's not complaining. Non-existent copyright enforcement is a fact of life in China.

Illustra has completed a Japanese translation of The Privileged Planet, lip-synced by Japanese actors in Tokyo. But Unlocking the Mystery of Life is Illustra's most-translated film, with editions in Khmer (Cambodian), Thai, Sri Lankan, and Mongolian as well as a variety of European languages.

On the book-publishing side, Center for Science & Culture senior fellow Paul Chien has been largely responsible for introducing intelligent design to China. A biologist at the University of San Francisco, Chien has translated Phil Johnston's Darwin on Trial and Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box among other titles.

He recently finished work on Denyse O'Leary's By Design Or By Chance?, to be followed by Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell.

Publishing in China is tricky, not only because of copyright and related complications that mean you never really know how many copies of your books have been printed and sold. This is China, after all, where ideas can be dangerous things. Because publishing houses are all government-owned, Chien has found it prudent to work with publishers in the provinces some distance from Beijing.

Even so, one of his Chinese editors lost his job for editing a pro-ID book. Dr. Chien knows of two professors who were expelled from teaching because they criticized Darwin. Still, compared to the U.S., he regards the situation in Chinese academia as relatively open.

From informants in the country, Dr. Chien knows that ID "is doing really well in academic circles, among science professors, philosophy professors, and grad students. They use the material in their classes. This is the frontier of science."

2 professors losing their jobs for daring to critique Darwin? I think people like that should be hung from the middle of the town square .

Mony it's easy to call something anti intellectual , it's a little harder to back that claim with evidence my friend .

It's good that china allows state sponsored churches but I think they are being too nice .

[bippy123]

Apropos to this discussion is Carl Sagan's response to the 14th Dalai Lama's claim about reincarnation being hard to disprove:

"Plainly the Dalai Lama is right. Religious doctrine that is insulated from disproof has little reason to worry about the advance of science. The grand idea, common to many faiths, of a Creator of the Universe is one such doctrine - difficult alike to demonstrate or to dismiss."

The problem here morny is that Sagan is using this within the context of methodological naturalism which means that if it can't be analyzed within this paradigm , that it can't be falsified .

Science sees that as a good thing, not a problem.

When you have something better than methodological naturalism for making discoveries about the real world, please let someone know. Oh, and they'll want a corresponding discovery.

Morny, again your post is riddled with innuendos . Why do you assume that the real world consists of only things that can be found by methodological naturalism . Specified complex information is one such example and I've used it continually over and over again. Now ur insertion of the word better is a red herring because it depends on what it is being used to find .

An example would be if we saw a sign drawn on the sand in the beach that said "Steve loves sandy " the methodological naturalist wouod say ""golly gosh far it , this message was made naturally by the waves crashing on the beach a billion times , you illiterate anti-intellectual intelligent design idiots"

While the intelligent design advocate would say "this is a perfect example of specified complex information , a message formed not naturally but by an intelligent , purposeful agent ""

This is also why I brought up doctor Meyers video on the specified complex information contained within the arrangement of the individual nucleotide bases and even their attachment sites which cannot be explained by chemical affinity or blind chance or any evolutionary mechanism.

And voila, there ya go morny 2 examples of specified complex information , and since in all of our experience as human beings we have observed specified complex information only to come about through a mind we have history and the evidence on our side . The onus is on you to disprove that specified complex information doesn't come from an intelligent source .

Sorry I had to flex my caveman anti-intellectual muscle but heck , a man's gotta have something to do when he's not out pulling his cave lady by the hair instead of yelling ya a dab a doooooooo.

Methodological naturalism itself is an anti intellectual position as it constricts us from looking elsewhere for explanations when naturalism doesn't give a rational explanation for a given evidence . No one is saying to give up looking for naturalistic explanations , but to only look for them is ridiculous .

The original meaning of science as defined by the original people that came out with the word means to gain knowledge , not just lab repeatable knowledge but other knowledges .

I guess u can now put South Korea into the anti intellectual camp right morny ?
Those darn South Koreans must be anti intellectual idiots that sit around all day and do a rain dance when the weather is dry . What they need is a dose of that good ole fashion atheistic-communism. This way if we restrict what they think they will be able to think like you , and then they can graduate into the intellectual camp. As by the way lets get a non bible study code enforced so they can liquidate anyone that doesn't think like they do .

Better yet I say we use cloning technology so we can bring back pol pot or Karl marx so that they can enforce some common sense into these backward South Koreans . Maybe liquidate a few million so that the rest can get some common sense .
How dare these friking idiots believe that specified complex information can come from a mind .

Every normal, high iq intellectual knows from our experience as human beings knows that specified complex information can never come about from anything other the. Blind undirected natural forces .

and to that I say ""BRING on that magic show !!!!!!""

[Audie]

It looks to me that its more that religion pushes people away from science than the other way around.

It wont improve my popularity to say that, I say so only because regardless of my nationality I care about the future of the west.

I agree with you Audie, maybe it is religion, not the pure form but man's religiousness and the need for a legalistic life style.

Who cares about popularity, my views have never been popular. A friend once said to me "Daniel your views could be classed as heretical" I said "Heretical to who? What the institutional Church" we both had a good laugh.

My views on science and religion are pretty much mainstream for China. The contortions people go thru to try to get out of
facing the reality of deep time and evolution are generally viewed with amused contempt. If any attention at all is paid to
the eccentricities of a minority religious group's uneducated ideas.

I see things from having feet on both shores and knowing both cultures..what I see in the USA scares me. The anti intellectual
demands of the fundamentalist churches are a danger to the whole nation. I cant prove it, its their country to do as they like,
but I think the atrociously poor scores of US students in science are due in no small part to the number..what is it, 46 percent?
who think deep time / evolution are false and the devil's work.

I see people here just treating it as something to pick,like a new dress or a menu item. Putting their personal reading of scripture ahead of all the research in the world. Or searching out any pseudo-site to confirm whatever they choose on the menu of beliefs.

It just makes me sad for the future, anti intellectualism and passing it to the children is a very dangerous indulgence in an ever
increasingly competitive world.

I'm being a bit incoherent, too many interruptions.
Gotta go now.

That should suffice for any residual popularity I might have had anyway.

Anti intellectual ?
Maybe these guys in Asian are crazy right ? This must be a figment of my imagination .
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/06/as ... 60691.html

Doesnt look imaginary, What point is there to posting it tho?

Quoted from your link...
e plausible indications that information on evolution is simply being updated, to keep up with current views in the evolution community itself.


The ainti intellectualism Im referring to is not on the part of legitimate researchers, but on those who promote the panoply of claims... plauxy man tracks, hydropalte theory, " dr dino",the endless stream of misrepresentations of science and ilogic from the creationist sites. The claims that evolution / deep time is all a conspiracy, and that any who oppose will be "expelled".

But get this: While some Darwinists have worriedly taken note of spreading doubts about evolutionary theory in Europe, Asia has emerged as the hottest new frontier for the scientific critique of Darwinism.

"Darwinist" and "Darwinism" are rather quaint terms, but ok... some might take the inquiries as a sign of something.. (what, exactly?), scientific critique of any theory is good.

In Korea, a mainstream publisher of popular and science texts, Book 21 Publishing Group, has brought out an edition of Explore Evolution, a textbook presenting both sides of the evolution debate. The translation was done by a pair of Korean academics, Seung Yup Lee and Eung Bin Kim, whose scientific specialties are respectively in biomimetics and environmental microbiology. Both teach at universities, Sogang and Yonsei, ranked in Korea's top ten

.

I wonder what the "other side" is? Surely not a 6 day creation followed by a flood.

Are these guys nuts mony? How date they teach both sides of the fence there ? Sounds like Korea is going down the tubes . I really think that Korea should take a page out of China's book and arrest any of those hoodlum rats that that dare to make bible studies in their own home .THE NERVE OF THOSE ANTIINTELLECTUALS !!! WHO the heck do they think they are ???

I presented my hearfelt and I think entirely sound thoughts. What call is therre for such snarkiness?

Anyways back at the barn .

Dr. Lee's research fuels his questions about macroevolution. His work on the amazing "natural design" of the South American Hercules beetle and its humidity-sensing shell was highlighted in Nature. In the Preface to the Korean Explore Evolution, Lee advocates investigating "alternative theories" to undirected Darwinian evolution.

It is always good to investigate. Basic research finds many things.

Korea also has its own Research Association for Intelligent Design......

That is fine, but irrelevant to my concern with anti intellectualism in the West. If someone can demonstrate ID, that will be spectacular. By all means try.

Non-existent copyright enforcement is a fact of life in China.

someone is always picking on China.

But seriously, this is not at all the topic.

On the book-publishing side, Center for Science & Culture senior fellow Paul Chien has been largely responsible for introducing intelligent design to China. A biologist at the University of San Francisco, Chien has translated Phil Johnston's Darwin on Trial and Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box among other titles.

Again, ID is not the topic, fut if someone can show it, fine. If they did, it would still not address the anti intellectualism I referred to. You know, the kind that says ice core dating has to be wrong because it doesnt match their idea of what the bible says.

Even so, one of his Chinese editors lost his job for editing a pro-ID book. Dr. Chien knows of two professors who were expelled from teaching because they criticized Darwin. Still, compared to the U.S., he regards the situation in Chinese academia as relatively open.

Hmm, I see the word "expelled" has come in. You nor I know what happened there.
Every such issue has sides to it, and those who lose a job always have an agenda and a version. This is of no evidentiary value here.

From informants in the country, Dr. Chien knows that ID "is doing really well in academic circles, among science professors, philosophy professors, and grad students. They use the material in their classes. This is the frontier of science."

It may be a frontier, it may be a dead end. As of now, it is speculation , like cold fusion.

2 professors losing their jobs for daring to critique Darwin? I think people like that should be hung from the middle of the town square .

You cannot back that with evidence, you do not know what they taught nor how they taught it.

Mony it's easy to call something anti intellectual , it's a little harder to back that claim with evidence my friend .

Why no, I will have to disagree completely there. I can bring in vast reams of it.I mentioned a couple, above.

More, in academia even? Behold Dr Kurt Wise, who has made a point of saying tht even if all the evidence in the universe turned against YEC, he'd still be a yec, as its what the bible seems to indicate.

It's good that china allows state sponsored churches but I think they are being too nice

I do have a real topic that is of concern to me, and perhaps to some few others.
If you'd like to discuss it, that is welcome. If your perference is to be snarky and dismissive, we are done.



.[/quote]

[Audie]

Every normal, high iq intellectual knows from our experience as human beings knows that specified complex information can never come about from anything other the. Blind undirected natural forces .

and to that I say ""BRING on that magic show !!!!!!""

Could you provide us with precise scientific definitions of these words, and explain what they mean in the phrase? Best if you dont refer to anything but your own understanding.

Considering how much of what has been learned about physics and other areas of research is very counter intuitive, and very difficult to understand even with a
deep background in higher math, its not reasonable to say that normal human experience will tell everyone how to spot what is impossible.

[Morny]

Why do you assume that the real world consists of only things that can be found by methodological naturalism .

I don't. As far as I know, angels guide atoms around. If so, because of methodological naturalism, I can infer that such angels seem to have a flawless knowledge of and devotion to physics. But to simplify study, I make the provisional assumption that atoms obey simple physical laws. This practical approach also saves me from having to take courses on angel psychology.

An example would be if we saw a sign drawn on the sand in the beach that said "Steve loves sandy " the methodological naturalist wouod say ""golly gosh far it , this message was made naturally by the waves crashing on the beach a billion times , you illiterate anti-intellectual intelligent design idiots"

False again. We know from experience that lovers are prone to writing messages on sand. And patriots are prone to carving portraits of leaders into the side of a mountain.

This is also why I brought up doctor Meyers video on the specified complex information contained within the arrangement of the individual nucleotide bases and even their attachment sites which cannot be explained by chemical affinity or blind chance or any evolutionary mechanism.

Experts across fields of geology, biology, mathematics, and so on, nearly unanimously point out massive problems with Stephen Meyer's writings. And when even a slow-witted person like me can see Meyer's basic misunderstandings, your case is on shaky ground.

Helpful Hint #17: when you google topics, force yourself to read and understand something from at least one non-creationist website.

[bippy123]

Experts across fields of geology, biology, mathematics, and so on, nearly unanimously point out massive problems with Stephen Meyer's writings. And when even a slow-witted person like me can see Meyer's basic misunderstandings, your case is on shaky ground.

Helpful Hint #17: when you google topics, force yourself to read and understand something from at least one non-creationist website.

Morny , so no answer huh ? That's like you explaining evolution and asking me for a refutation and me saying "the experts say he's wrong ""

An appeal to the majority and an appeal to the experts isn't much of an answer .
Helpful hint #18
I was an evolutionist for 18 years and I was debating on the side of evolution as early as 7 years ago so I know all the non creationist points. I explained why I shifted my position and it wasn't a ""the experts said "" answer , and it wasn't because a theological bias . In fact most catholics are theistic evolutionist . I am an Id advocate precisely be uses I know both sides and I personally feel that the evidences supports ID. Is it 100%?

Of course not and that us why I am ok with someone taking the other viewpoint , and I brought up Kenneth miller as an example if a believer that's an evolutionist .

There are hybrids as well. Professor behe is an ID advocate who happens to believe in commonn descent and he gets along very well with his fellow ID'sts.

[bippy123]

Every normal, high iq intellectual knows from our experience as human beings knows that specified complex information can never come about from anything other the. Blind undirected natural forces .

and to that I say ""BRING on that magic show !!!!!!""

Could you provide us with precise scientific definitions of these words, and explain what they mean in the phrase? Best if you dont refer to anything but your own understanding.

Considering how much of what has been learned about physics and other areas of research is very counter intuitive, and very difficult to understand even with a
deep background in higher math, its not reasonable to say that normal human experience will tell everyone how to spot what is impossible.

Well I do not prescribe to the many worlds interpretation as I see idealism as being able to explain reality in a much simpler way , but that's another topic

[Audie]

Why do you assume that the real world consists of only things that can be found by methodological naturalism .

I don't. As far as I know, angels guide atoms around. If so, because of methodological naturalism, I can infer that such angels seem to have a flawless knowledge of and devotion to physics. But to simplify study, I make the provisional assumption that atoms obey simple physical laws. This practical approach also saves me from having to take courses on angel psychology.

An example would be if we saw a sign drawn on the sand in the beach that said "Steve loves sandy " the methodological naturalist wouod say ""golly gosh far it , this message was made naturally by the waves crashing on the beach a billion times , you illiterate anti-intellectual intelligent design idiots"

False again. We know from experience that lovers are prone to writing messages on sand. And patriots are prone to carving portraits of leaders into the side of a mountain.

.

It is of course quite hard sometimes to tell what is an artifact, and what is not.
Archaeologists have various guidelines, but there are fuzzy areas. Is this flint biface man made? How did this scratch get here? Tough to say for sure.

Far less, I think, has it been established how one could determine just when something
supernatural was involved in the (apparent) design of something, what is a fuzzy area and what for sure is not.