Roll of the dice election

[NikFu S.]

Originally Posted by gstape

I could argue that intelligent design is logical, and big bang / evolution is not.

You are certainly allowed to, but who could actually pull that off? That's something I'd consider paying to see.

I must reiterate, neither big bang nor evolution discredit IDesign. They aren't mutually exclusive.

[greggbzz]

The foundation for belief in ID seems to come from 2 things:

A.) I look at this world and it's just so beautiful that I can't imagine that it just happened by chance.
B.) How can something (life) so complex happen by chance?

So, that happened by chance idea is the first mistake. Genetic mutaions happen by chance, sort of, but the survivability of subsequent generations is dictated by their environment. This process is very orderly.

So, I counter with - yes the world is beautiful. It's intricacies and workings are endlessly fascinating and elegant. But, when you dig down and really really get to know something, like say.. cellular metabolism, you begin to realize there's no magic. You no longer need to use your imagination to understand it. And when you coalesce several disciplines, you get a strong notion that everything is built with the same physical laws.

Also, billions of years? Can anyone truly comprehend that?

Give me that news paper, let me blow it up thousands of billions of times, and I just might get a dictionary. We've PROVEN that evolution makes slow progressive steps. That's a non-debate as far as I'm concerned. Give evolution 4 billion years, and is it really that unfathomable that we have walking talking humans?

You know, the Buddhist have it going. They are willing to change their concepts.

ID is just another in the long line of compromised Judo-Christian belief systems. Eventually, I feel, it will no longer be a popular idea.

Kind of like, that whole Earth center of the Universe, 6000 year old stuff.

[ensteele]

OK, for you scientists (I happen to be one too), are mutations to a species usually better or worse for a species? Why do they call all of these mutations to humans "Birth Defects"? The order of things is disorder. Does a room become more clean or dirty with time? Do gene pools become better, or watered down? Why with time, would a species become better instead of worse by the birth defects or changes of a species? If the first fish that crawled out of the water to become a lizzard could breath air, where was the other one that it could breed with? Remember, it is a mutation that is not happening all of the time, so how long could it wander around until if found another one to produce more? If there are only a couple of animals and they breed, the genitics of interbreeding would produce more negative mutations than better ones. I find it takes more faith to believe in this.

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by ensteele

OK, for you scientists (I happen to be one too), are mutations to a species usually better or worse for a species? Why do they call all of these mutations to humans "Birth Defects"? The order of things is disorder. Does a room become more clean or dirty with time? Do gene pools become better, or watered down? Why with time, would a species become better instead of worse by the birth defects or changes of a species? If the first fish that crawled out of the water to become a lizzard could breath air, where was the other one that it could breed with? Remember, it is a mutation that is not happening all of the time, so how long could it wander around until if found another one to produce more? If there are only a couple of animals and they breed, the genitics of interbreeding would produce more negative mutations than better ones. I find it takes more faith to believe in this.

here, its even fish related:

http://current.com/items/88968153_th...n_proven_again

[BeneathNorthernSkys]

I find it interesting that the argument is being presented that ID might not be true and that all of these other "scientific" theories are ABSOLUTE. So how do you know that what is consider to be fact, has any true merit. I will argue for the sake of argument, that you simply rely on intelligent men to be correct, they pinky swear to you that what they...prove, to be a fact is a fact. I believe in a lot of things, the earth is round, gravity, so on and so forth. However just b/c some things are proven to be doesn't mean that they function as we've discovered them to. And what I mean by that is simply the facts are made by beings with the capacity to have error. So on that note, I'll get back to topic.

I think both parties are very foggy, neither has a lot of definitive statements about how to lead this country into a better future. However, I feel that Obama will do a better job, call in a gut feeling, or for the sake of irony, faith that he will be a better president than most of us think. Whatever happens though, we all should strive to forget things like political allegiances and just try and make the country stronger as a whole.

Jordan

[RSVX]

Originally Posted by SomethingElse

If you think its necessary to label me a democrat, thats up to you. Ive never had a strong positive feeling for either side. I wanted Ross Perott to win when I was in middle school. Democratic line or not, I think O'bama would have a better chance of making people thinking we are out of this bush rut. even the majority of the world would rather have him. Anyway, when is the last time we had a black president? (movies don't count) would'nt that be interesting? We can never legitimatly here the term.. "its a white mans world" oh snap!

Did you ever stop to think that the rest of the world wants Nobama to be President is because he would make us weaker, more vulnerable?

[gstape]

I could argue that intelligent design is logical, and big bang / evolution is not.

You are certainly allowed to, but who could actually pull that off? That's something I'd consider paying to see.

There are a lot of people that have. Try Google, or Amazon.com.

Can you tell me where all of the matter and energy (I guess it is the same thing?) that started the big bang came from?

The universe is finite and expanding, what is beyond it? Nothing? what is nothing?

[NikFu S.]

Originally Posted by gstape

There are a lot of people that have. Try Google, or Amazon.com.

Can you tell me where all of the matter and energy (I guess it is the same thing?) that started the big bang came from?

The universe is finite and expanding, what is beyond it? Nothing? what is nothing?

Google and Amazon are not going to help me sift though piles of crap.
Honestly, my point is it is not possible to discredit evolution with any faith-based "theories". It can't be done.

I can't tell you where everything came from because that is something nobody knows. My belief is the first matter always existed. I don't believe in the concept of "nothing".

We don't know that the universe is finite. Our ability to view the universe is finite. I'd love to continue but I have to go.

I'll expend on this later.

[greggbzz]

You never prove things right in science, only invalidate. No science theory is absolute.

The whole point of science is to find out more, to keep learning, to keep adjusting wrong ideas.

A theory is openly published, and thrown to the wolves, who do their best to discredit / validate it. This is called peer review. You do an experiment to see if the other person was right. Almost invariably, every experiment that we can think of says that evolution is right. Until someone can show that it's wrong, well.. we have it.

The peers have reviewed ID for 50 years. It's just is not better. Sorry.

Now the problem with ID is that's it's just not testable. Plus, frankly, it does not make any sense to me.

I read an interesting article years ago, about the rate robotic development as compared to biological evolution.

You can't even graph the discrepancy in scale. No picture gives it justice. The chart they showed was a flat horizontal line along the very bottom (evolution) and a straight vertical line shooting up the left side (humans building robots).

The fact is, these intelligent designers (humans) have made more progress in a 20 years then evolution did in 1 or 2 billion years. So, if
life really is the design of someone infinitely intelligent, why has it taken them hundreds of millions of times longer then the pitiful humans to build a biped?

Evolution just makes more sense to me and a lot of people more brilliant then me, sorry.

[msvx95]

Originally Posted by RSVX

Did you ever stop to think that the rest of the world wants Nobama to be President is because he would make us weaker, more vulnerable?

I heard alot of this foolish talk about if there is a Democrat in office, all of the sudden our military will collapse...WTF, please! We will always have a strong military to protect us. What is the reason we would be weaker??

[NikFu S.]

Originally Posted by greggbzz

The fact is, these intelligent designers (humans) have made more progress in a 20 years then evolution did in 1 or 2 billion years. So, if
life really is the design of someone infinitely intelligent, why has it taken them hundreds of millions of times longer then the pitiful humans to build a biped?

My answer to this is humans had a pretty decent model to copy from.

Humans had to be designed from the ground up, literally.

Originally Posted by msvx95

I heard alot of this foolish talk about if there is a Democrat in office, all of the sudden our military will collapse...WTF, please! We will always have a strong military to protect us. What is the reason we would be weaker??

This is what I'd like to know.

[msvx95]

From what I listened to when he was in denver giving his speech...he was fired up about the fact that Bush and McCain still want to keep the focus on Iraq while he wants the military to hunt out Osama and get that scum in his cave!
So why again would we be weaker?

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by msvx95

I heard alot of this foolish talk about if there is a Democrat in office, all of the sudden our military will collapse...WTF, please! We will always have a strong military to protect us. What is the reason we would be weaker??

Dead wrong. How big were the reductions under Clinton???? Some were called for, of course, because of the changing world picture, but he over did it. That is why we are having problems now. Even in apparent peaceful times we need strong military and intelligence agencies. Clinton raped the intelligence budgets to help in his so called balanced budget.

The far left democrats don't believe in a strong military. They are against it--remember San Francisco that doesn't even want to let the military recruit there??????????????

Lee

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by msvx95

From what I listened to when he was in denver giving his speech...he was fired up about the fact that Bush and McCain still want to keep the focus on Iraq while he wants the military to hunt out Osama and get that scum in his cave!
So why again would we be weaker?

Pure politics. Anyone with any common sense knows that it will be very difficult to find Obama--I mean Osama as long as he stays low and hides in radical muslim tribal areas. It is not possible to do any more militarily to find him--at this point its and intelligence game.

He is using the Osama card as pure politics.

Lee

[gstape]

Evolution just makes more sense to me and a lot of people more brilliant then me, sorry.

Thats fine and I have no problem with that point of view in public schools. After all as you say there are a lot of people that believe evolution makes the most sense. But teach it as a theory, not as truth or fact.

But why not teach creation / intelligent design as another possibility? After all that makes sense to the 2 billion people in this world that call themselves christians (including 70% of Americans). And among those 2 billion people there are a bunch of brilliant ones.

(I think that Islam also believes in ID too? Alah is the creator. If that is the case that makes it 3.25 billion people that believe in ID.)

I would want my kids to be tought about the world, the people who live in this world and what they believe (again you don't teach as truth and probably not in a lot of depth). Isn't that at least in part what education is about?

I might be a little bias here because I think Todd Palin is cool... 4 time champion of the 2000 mile Iron dog smowmobile race. Articat team racer is a bit of a negative. I ride a Skidoo.