If these were my choices I would stay home or vote 3rd party.

Fanatical Wrote:ooh, quotes! They aren't relevant but they are fun to toss out there.

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
-Albert Einstein

Wow!!!

All of these "intellectuals" certainly know beyond a shadow of doubt what the real truth is. I'm quite sure there is no "faith" in their scholarly approach to the most undisciplined soft sciences. While we're at it, we might as well lump in anthropology with political science. What is certainly true is that scientists disagree about many things.

One thing is almost universally true - those in the hard sciences, physics and chemistry, like to distance themselves from those in the soft.

The theory of evolution is called a theory because macro evolution cannot be tested. Sure micro evolution or adaptation can be measured easily. So can moving away from the stove when it is too hot.

With all the wonderful science at our disposal why can't we create life from non-living chemicals? There has been much postulation about how life was formed in evolutionary theory from non-living chemicals. We certainly can create the absolute ideal conditions according to those postulations to form life.

Do you realize how much it would mean to a scientist or the scientific world in general to be able to create life?

Why hasn't it been done - even in the absolute most primitive living form?

This is the challenge to those who have faith not in the Divine but in the church of secular humanism where the temples are the universities and professors are the priests.

Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Until then, you must call evolution a theory if you follow the scientific method and not fact.

And until then, you must also have faith in your beliefs whether they are formed in a university, church, or a mud hut.

Why ,then, call those with whom you disagree ignorant?

Who truly has "blind faith" from the above quote?

Tigerbrother Wrote:

Fanatical Wrote:ooh, quotes! They aren't relevant but they are fun to toss out there.

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
-Albert Einstein

Wow!!!

All of these "intellectuals" certainly know beyond a shadow of doubt what the real truth is. I'm quite sure there is no "faith" in their scholarly approach to the most undisciplined soft sciences. While we're at it, we might as well lump in anthropology with political science. What is certainly true is that scientists disagree about many things.

One thing is almost universally true - those in the hard sciences, physics and chemistry, like to distance themselves from those in the soft.

The theory of evolution is called a theory because macro evolution cannot be tested. Sure micro evolution or adaptation can be measured easily. So can moving away from the stove when it is too hot.

With all the wonderful science at our disposal why can't we create life from non-living chemicals? There has been much postulation about how life was formed in evolutionary theory from non-living chemicals. We certainly can create the absolute ideal conditions according to those postulations to form life.

Do you realize how much it would mean to a scientist or the scientific world in general to be able to create life?

Why hasn't it been done - even in the absolute most primitive living form?

This is the challenge to those who have faith not in the Divine but in the church of secular humanism where the temples are the universities and professors are the priests.

Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Until then, you must call evolution a theory if you follow the scientific method and not fact.

And until then, you must also have faith in your beliefs whether they are formed in a university, church, or a mud hut.

Why ,then, call those with whom you disagree ignorant?

Who truly has "blind faith" from the above quote?

While we're throwing questions around...

Why can't we compromise and say a higher power created life that evolved in to what we see today?

I love this board! Not only am I now a liberal, but I've achieved "intellectual" status as well!

Tigerbrother Wrote:Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Watch out what you wish for...

"We're creating a new chromosome chemically in the lab from scratch that will result in altering an existing living cell to create a new species, a new variation of life," he said.

BrianJ Wrote:Why can't we compromise and say a higher power created life that evolved in to what we see today?

That's why we look to the sky; to see if we can find it.

georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:

RebelKev Wrote:Huck eliminated? I'm not understanding the poll, apparently.

Read one of the very last posts. Somebody switched their vote from Huck to Paul.
http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/showthread...pid2948281

YES!!!!!!!!!!

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:Ignorance is those who believe in Evolution. I can produce tons of documentation even from scientists and faculty at leading universities, including Rice that believe in Intelligent design, it won’t change the minds of anyone that believes in evolution so why bother. Just trying to present the other side for those who aren’t sure.

Just because there are individual scientists and faculty at leading universities who are against the theory (in almost all cases because it contradicts their religious upbringing), does not mean the theory is wrong. In fact for each of those individuals, you'll find another 20 to 100 at those same university who agree with the theory of evolution. None of these leading universities teach intelligent design - with good reason; it is theory completely devoid of scientific merit.

There is no other side - God believes in evolution; you should too.

Fanatical Wrote:I love this board! Not only am I now a liberal, but I've achieved "intellectual" status as well!



[quote=Tigerbrother]
Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Watch out what you wish for...

"We're creating a new chromosome chemically in the lab from scratch that will result in alteri ng an existing living cell to create a new species, a new variation of life," he said.



I hope you can do better than that. What you're quoting is an article where chemical engineers are using highly targeted chemical reactions designed to produce a certain result - far from the primordial soup of basic chemicals that supposedly and spontaneously one day became a living organism which is the foundation of the evolutionary theory.

The scientists are injecting a synthetic chemical into an already living organism. Without the already living organism these scientist would have some useless chemicals and dirty petri dishes.

Even in this article it plainly states: "We're not creating life from scratch in the test tube," he said. "We're creating new life forms by creating new versions of the genetic code."

What I truly wish is there would be people who would read their articles before posting.

Tigerbrother Wrote:Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Until then, you must call evolution a theory if you follow the scientific method and not fact.

You realize that a "theory" is about as good as it ever gets in the scientific world, right? Relativity is just a theory. And it's a theory until someone finds using the scientific method a counterexample that disproves it (don't waste your time trying to disprove it). So is gravity - that theory has held up pretty well over the past 400 years. Same with evolution. It's a theory - the sum of the scientific evidence supports it, and there are no counterexamples that unequivocally disprove it.

Moreover, the ability of humans to create in a lab is not a prerequisite for a scientific phenomenon to exist. No one has ever made a neutron star or a black hole in the lab, but they're out there and can be observed.

Zero Wrote:

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:Ignorance is those who believe in Evolution. I can produce tons of documentation even from scientists and faculty at leading universities, including Rice that believe in Intelligent design, it won’t change the minds of anyone that believes in evolution so why bother. Just trying to present the other side for those who aren’t sure.

Just because there are individual scientists and faculty at leading universities who are against the theory (in almost all cases because it contradicts their religious upbringing), does not mean the theory is wrong. In fact for each of those individuals, you'll find another 20 to 100 at those same university who agree with the theory of evolution. None of these leading universities teach intelligent design - with good reason; it is theory completely devoid of scientific merit.

There is no other side - God believes in evolution; you should too.

First of all packaging Creationism in a new form called Intelligent Design must be a marketing ploy. Why not just stick with what it is - Creationism.

As far as the Intelligent Design theory or Creationism being devoid of scientific merit, I would like you to prove your point. If you rely on "that's what most reasonable and logical people believe", then you are going on your faith and not a fact. If you want to list the qualifications of the scientists that share your view, again you are using faith in a belief and not something you know as fact which is exactly what you accuse religious fanatics of - blind faith.

To separate faith or opinions from fact one has to measure a phenomenon - produce a number. We measure the world around us to understand it and to produce repeatable and predictable results. This in essence is the scientific method.

To do this we use the language of science - math.

And if we use math to determine such things as the probability of life forms evolving from a primordial soup, we find that the mathematical probability of life forming spontaneously from basic chemicals is infinitely small - not to mention the orders of magnitude jump to specialized cell structures or even the additional orders of magnitude leaps of faith of spontaneously forming specialized organs.

Add to the above the ideal distance from the sun, ideal atmospheric pressure, gravitational forces, and on and on.

Even the most fanatical proponent of evolutionary theory can't argue with the math involved in the above calculations.

Again, which would a reasonable and logical person believe? If you really have an open mind you would have to find some of the established anthropological explanations humorous.

To stand on the theory of evolution as fact is something the scientific community has not done. It is simply the only explanation we have of our past outside of Creationism.

Until life is created in the laboratory. evolutionary theory will continue to be just that - a theory.

Zero Wrote:

Tigerbrother Wrote:Just prove it according to the scientific method - create some form of life in the laboratory no matter how primitive.

Until then, you must call evolution a theory if you follow the scientific method and not fact.

You realize that a "theory" is about as good as it ever gets in the scientific world, right? Relativity is just a theory. And it's a theory until someone finds using the scientific method a counterexample that disproves it (don't waste your time trying to disprove it). So is gravity - that theory has held up pretty well over the past 400 years. Same with evolution. It's a theory - the sum of the scientific evidence supports it, and there are no counterexamples that unequivocally disprove it.

Moreover, the ability of humans to create in a lab is not a prerequisite for a scientific phenomenon to exist. No one has ever made a neutron star or a black hole in the lab, but they're out there and can be observed.

I couldn't disagree with you more. The scientific method by definition is a method that measures nature and can produce repeatable results. If you base your belief system on science, then the scientific method is what defines science.

There is no mention of a counterexample anywhere in the scientific method.

For example, you can predict if you flip the switch on the wall the light comes on. You can measure the photons emitted from the light bulb, and you can repeat this countless times with the same result. Therefore, you know it to be a fact that the light will turn on if you flip the switch.

The absolute foundation of the evolutionary theory is that life formed from a primordial soup in the warm shallows of the sea stimulated by tides and perhaps lightning. These are phenomenon that can be replicated in a laboratory and in fact have been tried many times with Zero success. Sorry, pun intended.

Gravity is also not a theory. It is a force that is easily measured as are magnetic electrical, and atomic forces. We know that they are there because we can measure them. They are not theories. Furthermore, these measurements are repeatable with high fidelity and produce the exact same result.To say a human needed to create these in a lab is unequivocally humorous.

You are correct about the theory of relativity, however. But that is only because we cannot travel at the speed of light. We, however, can measure that speed. And the math behind most of the theories you mention is solid with the exception of one - evolution.

In fact it is the math behind these observations that explains this phenomena.

If anything, the math predicting evolution does the opposite - proves that it is virtually impossible.

Quote:Moreover, the ability of humans to create in a lab is not a prerequisite for a scientific phenomenon to exist.

I am not sure what a scientific phenomenon is. Is it maybe a natural phenomenon? Are you saying that the ability of humans to create in a lab not a prerequisite for a factual or natural phenomenon to exist? If that is the case, you are very correct but missing the point of the evolutionary theory entirely.

All of the conditions mentioned in the very foundation of this theory ARE easily duplicated in a lab by humans.

And, well you know the results.

Maybe one day we can train primates to do these experiments too.

Tigerbrother:

It's called the Miller-Urey experiment. Read up on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

You too can create amino acids and the basic building blocks of life out of nothing in a matter of days.

Tigerbrother Wrote:Even in this article it plainly states: "We're not creating life from scratch in the test tube," he said. "We're creating new life forms by creating new versions of the genetic code."

What I truly wish is there would be people who would read their articles before posting.

Good lord, of course they are creating a new species using an existing template. We (humanity) haven't had much experience at this and are just starting genetic engineering. If a country goes to war and needs tanks fast, it doesn't create new factories, it uses existing factories. In the same way the scientists are using already constructed cells and inserting an entirely new genome(of course it is synthetic, everything made by man is synthetic). The unfortunate reality of our biological knowledge is that we are limited to it, since we aren't smart enough to figure out something new. Yet another reason to search for life in the stars.

As GTS showed above, the building blocks of life are simple to produce. Now we can toss it into some water in a closed ecosystem and wait a couple million years and see what happens.

Quote:The absolute foundation of the evolutionary theory is that life formed from a primordial soup in the warm shallows of the sea stimulated by tides and perhaps lightning. These are phenomenon that can be replicated in a laboratory and in fact have been tried many times with Zero success. Sorry, pun intended.

Gravity is also not a theory. It is a force that is easily measured as are magnetic electrical, and atomic forces. We know that they are there because we can measure them. They are not theories. Furthermore, these measurements are repeatable with high fidelity and produce the exact same result.To say a human needed to create these in a lab is unequivocally humorous.

You are correct about the theory of relativity, however. But that is only because we cannot travel at the speed of light. We, however, can measure that speed. And the math behind most of the theories you mention is solid with the exception of one - evolution.

OK, we need to clear up some definitions.
Evolution, gravity, relativity are not theory; they are fact. They all really happen, have happened, and will continue to happen. The attempt to explain how they happen is called the theory. This is why we have a theory of evolution.

Evolutionary theory does not describe how life originated, it describes how life has changed over the eons to come to the present form. Life could have come from an organic soup, the stars, or magic and the theory of evolution does not change.

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:If random events can cause something to come into existence then if I take all the parts needed to make a Rolex put them in a bag and shake them up then dump the contents out if I repeat the process enough times a fully functional Rolex should fall out. Under the big bang theory I shouldn’t even need the parts, if I wait long enough millions of years in the future, a Rolex will Magically appear in the bag on its own.

You haven't taken many science courses, and evidently never heard of the concept of entropy.

It is true the one of the possible configurations after shaking a bag of rolex parts up is an assembled rolex. Without even getting into the energetics needed to make the assembly operation and just looking at the configurational entropy of the situation, it is easy to see why this would never occur. Lets say that there are 30 rolex parts. There are 1000 possible locations in the bag, and 4 different rotations they can end up in, in each of 3 directions.In order to assemble into the a rolex, all of these must be precise. The probability of this happening is ((1/4)*(1/4)*(1/4)*(1/1000))^30 = 1/(1.53e144)

Even with this gross oversimplification of the conditions needed to reassemble the rolex, the number of times that you would have to shake the bag to get the rolex is a number that is too high to ever achieve.

Statistical thermodynamics is a wonderful thing - it's one of God's wonderful mathematical ways to describe the world. I'm sure He would be disappointed in you for trying to misuse the beauty of this work to try to tear down one of His other inventions.

Tigerbrother Wrote:As far as the Intelligent Design theory or Creationism being devoid of scientific merit, I would like you to prove your point. If you rely on "that's what most reasonable and logical people believe", then you are going on your faith and not a fact. If you want to list the qualifications of the scientists that share your view, again you are using faith in a belief and not something you know as fact which is exactly what you accuse religious fanatics of - blind faith.

We do use the language of science - math and the scientific method to explain things. Intelligent design and creationism have produced a combined Zero (pun intended) experiements which show that they are viable, scientifically sound theories. That is why I say they are devoid of scientific merit. QED.

As for the qualification issue - that was in response to one of your fellow IDs who tried to prove creationism by listing universities where people who believe in ID work. It's good for fooling the public because it sounds impressive, but not scientifically rigorous.

Quote:To stand on the theory of evolution as fact is something the scientific community has not done. It is simply the only explanation we have of our past outside of Creationism.

Until life is created in the laboratory. evolutionary theory will continue to be just that - a theory.

It's a very good theory - and that's why it is still a theory. In contrast to creationism, there are countless hypothesis developed, experiments performed, and observations gained that support it.

And I agree, it's only a theory. You don't seem to understand that this means it meets a very high degree of scientific rigor.

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:If Man evolved from ape why are there still apes? If the fictional "missing link" was an improvement in the evolutionary chain over apes why did the "missing link" die out and apes survive? Why isn't there extensive fossil evidence of the "missing link".

Oh man, I've been missing out on this thread. I just happened to look in and see yet another "I ain't come from no monkey" thread. Good times.

This argument has always been one of my favorites. The blatant disregard for what evolution is and says is very evident here.

First, man did not evolve from monkeys. The correct way to phrase the statement is humans and monkeys share a common ancestor. Also man is an ape. No, really, look it up.

Finally, the easiest way to debunk this argument is to ask it in a different manner. If Americans came from Europe why are there still Europeans?

You guys are just too funny.

Tigerbrother Wrote:I couldn't disagree with you more. The scientific method by definition is a method that measures nature and can produce repeatable results. If you base your belief system on science, then the scientific method is what defines science.

There is no mention of a counterexample anywhere in the scientific method.

Do you even understand the scientific method? I recommend you learn a little bit about it before trying to use it to prove your point.

The counterexample is a very fundamental element of the scientific method.

You develop a hypothesis. You perform an experiment. If the experiment disproved your hypothesis, then you have a counterexample. No sense in try to develop this hypothesis into a theory, because it is wrong - you have a counterexample. You used the scientific method to produce one.

Evolution by natural selection is a proven fact, observed in countless labs on every continent on the planet (including antartica!). All you really need to witness it first hand is a test species with with a short enough lifespan to permit observing many generations within a reasonable time frame, a measurable change in their environment, and as pretty much all such species tend to be very... very small, a microscope.

Thanks to the wonders of the human genome project and the leaps forward in our understanding of our own DNA it has (and continues to generate) it is possible to even trace a lot of our own evolution through the footprints it has left in our own DNA.

Arguing against evolution is akin to trying to argue that the earth is flat; sure you can try and do it, but any argument you come up with has to come from ignorance, insanity, wickedness, or gross stupidity.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. With that said here are my parting comments on the whole evolution v. creation debate.

Moses gifted scientist before his time or a man of great faith. I am amazed at how the account of the creation of the universe follows what modern day scientists largely support.

1) the universe has a beginning
2) the universe is older than earth
3) the earth was formed from a shapeless mass
4) after the earth was formed the surface was covered with water
5) land formed
6) plants grew on land and sea creatures appeared
7) land animals appeared
8) finally last animal to appear MAN.
9) man was set at the apex to use all plants and animals for man's benefit

How did a man educated in Egypt, where nothing like this was taught and spent most of his life as a nomadic herdsman get all this right?

Tigerbrother Wrote:For example, you can predict if you flip the switch on the wall the light comes on. You can measure the photons emitted from the light bulb, and you can repeat this countless times with the same result. Therefore, you know it to be a fact that the light will turn on if you flip the switch.

You can flip that light switch lots of times, and eventually it's going to burn out. Maybe it happens after 3000 flips of the switch, that light bulb is going to burn out.

Now, if you replace it with a seemingly identical light bulb and do the same experiment, you;ll get similar results and it will burn out, but not after the same amount of flips, maybe say 2500. There are experimental variations that do occur, even in rigorous scientific experiments. This is amplified in biological systems, which are considerably more complex with far more variable inherent that can be modeled in a typical experiment.

Then there are processes which are random. Look at the radioactive decay of an individual atom of a radioisotope. You can know the half life and thus predict when it has a 50% chance of having decayed, but can't predict with any certainty when that atom is going to decay. Stochastic processes exist in nature,

Quote: These are phenomenon that can be replicated in a laboratory

How do you replicate a billion years in a laboratory?

Quote:Gravity is also not a theory. It is a force that is easily measured as are magnetic electrical, and atomic forces. We know that they are there because we can measure them. They are not theories. Furthermore, these measurements are repeatable with high fidelity and produce the exact same result.

Gravity is indeed a force, and the original description Newton used to describe it is a theory. But what happened before 1600 - did gravity just not exist because no human had developed the theory and done the experiments to show it? Obviously not.

The evidence for evolution is out there, all around us. And just because part of this hasn't been adequately mathematically modeled or there are missing pieces of the puzzle automatically mean that the theory is wrong.

Quote:To say a human needed to create these in a lab is unequivocally humorous.

I'm glad that you realize the crux of your very own argument is laughable. The rest of us do too.

Quote: You are correct about the theory of relativity, however. But that is only because we cannot travel at the speed of light. We, however, can measure that speed. And the math behind most of the theories you mention is solid with the exception of one - evolution.

It's much easier to grasp the simple algebraic expressions of one and two body theories like relativity an gravity. The mathematics and chemical reactions are going to be much more complex.

Quote:I am not sure what a scientific phenomenon is. Is it maybe a natural phenomenon? Are you saying that the ability of humans to create in a lab not a prerequisite for a factual or natural phenomenon to exist? If that is the case, you are very correct but missing the point of the evolutionary theory entirely.

Nope, you're the one who is completely missing the point. Evolution, gravity, and relativity all occur and have occurred since the big bang. You're the one who seems to thing a human-performed experiement is needed. It's not all magic if that experiment doesn't exist (yet) as you claim.

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. With that said here are my parting comments on the whole evolution v. creation debate.

Moses gifted scientist before his time or a man of great faith. I am amazed at how the account of the creation of the universe follows what modern day scientists largely support.

1) the universe has a beginning
2) the universe is older than earth
3) the earth was formed from a shapeless mass
4) after the earth was formed the surface was covered with water
5) land formed
6) plants grew on land and sea creatures appeared
7) land animals appeared
8) finally last animal to appear MAN.
9) man was set at the apex to use all plants and animals for man's benefit

How did a man educated in Egypt, where nothing like this was taught and spent most of his life as a nomadic herdsman get all this right?

He didn't get it exactly right. Seven days rather than 15 billion years, waters above the firmament, land vegitation before sea vegitation, flowering plants before ferns and conifers, plants before stars, birds before dinosaurs; but hey, with the knowledge he was working with that wasn't too bad.