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Finally the elite liberal media is staring to take the FSM seriously! His spirit is truly at work!!
Of course! Now I know the origin of the FSM. Oregon State – go Beavs!
Religion has no business being involved in science – ever. Science is the study of real things – quantifiable, measurable, observable. Real scientists develop theories and test them. And test them again. And their peers test them, and again and again.
Religion is the opposite – dealing with the supernatural – things that cannot be observed, quantified, or measured. They cannot be tested over and over and again. Religion belongs with philosophy, not science.
Science represents a structured discipline of systematic examination for the purpose of obtaining knowledge. Historical evolution has no impact on experimental science because it can never be observed nor tested. Fossils can’t help with the advancement of medicine, only living animals have an impact.
Creationists and ID proponents come to different conclusions with the evidence than what evolutionists propose. I believe scientists should have the right to follow other proposals other than Darwinian evolution. Rachel Maddow has shallow opinions, it’s no wonder they are last in the cable ratings as far as news is concerned. Making fun of the majority who don’t believe in evolution is not good.
I refuse to watch. She’s a traitor to Air America. Besides that, television is toxic. I don’t have one.
Having said that, she is reasonably intelligent, I just really think she did better on radio.
Thank you for posting this!
There were all these references to the FSM floating around, and it was like hearing the gist of a joke, without knowing how all these people got to joking about the same thing.
Thank you for my education in theology.
And Rachel Maddow – repeating the truths of the FSM’s True Prophet, Bobby Henderson – is right: if you’re gonna let one theology into science classes, you oughta not be so damn picky; you gotta let the other ones in too!
Wintermute,
If by life we’re talking about biological organisms, then yes, you’re right saying creationists claim life came from non-life. Maybe a more refined way of stating it is abiogenesis is the theory that life emerged from non-life without the intervention of an intelligent agent.
So if a claim is not repeatably testable, we ask ourselves what the likelihood is, and demand evidence inversely proportional to likelihood. Is that correct?
THIS IS JESUS!!
I come looking for he who calleth himself John C!
Stop signing thy posts with mine initials, or I shall damn thee and thy children to the lake of fire for all eternity!
Also, stop doing this thing with the…ellipses. It gets really…annoying.
Shout out to Daniel. Love the blog.
I’m off!!!
**poof**
At the top of this blog Still Evolving wrote-
“dealing with the supernatural – things that cannot be observed, quantified, or measured. They cannot be tested over and over and again. Religion belongs with philosophy, not science.”
Here is a link to sites that approach the supernatural and its’ phenomena using scientific methods and perspectives, many of them bona fide scientists and degreed college professors.
http://www.ianlawton.com/links.htm
By the way Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann would fall more into the catagory of a news COMMENTARY show than a straight news show. Unlike Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh who are pure FICTION.
Great video thanks Daniel. This is my favorite video on this topic. It’s 10 min but well worth it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc
Religion isn’t *the opposite* of science, just different. The meme that religion and science must be antagonistic is recent, destructive, and counter to most of the historical record. Only when both have become attached to politics do they become actually antithetical.
For the most part they are simply different methodologies and looking for different things. And they do in fact intersect, legitimately, all the time. Science may be the search for empirical truth, but it is also a human endeavor, and so it must be humane and constrained by ethical boundaries; Ethics started to be made rigorous as an adjunct to Theology, and continues to be married closely to religious thought. Science in turn informs religion as to what parts of their traditions are based upon incomplete ancient understandings of the natural world. Many religious people welcome finding out more about the world. (Though, I’ll grant, stubborn ignorant fools tend to be the louder).
—-
And if you wanna get right down to it, both science and religion belong to philosophy, in more ways than one. In any empirical discipline, epistemology is king.
What, specifically, about the theory of abiogenesis can be tested over and over again?
“Rachel Maddow has shallow opinions, it’s no wonder they are last in the cable ratings as far as news is concerned.”
Exactly. If only here opinions were as well thought out as O’Reilly’s, then she could finally taste success.
“Creationists and ID proponents come to different conclusions with the evidence than what evolutionists propose.”
Creationism/ID has no interest in such concepts as evidence — why would when they’ve already decided that the answer is goddidit?
But evolution happening in the present can (and has been) observed and tested, so you’re good with that, right?
True, but fossils have help with all sorts of other, non-medicine fields, such as climatology. Were you trying to make some kind of point?
Yes, they come to the conclusion “La la la la la… You can’t make me look!”
They should, and do. The moment that someone finds some evidence that suggests that evolution is not a valid explanation for our current biodiversity, that person will win a Nobel prize, and have many universities named after them. Until that day, refusing to look at the evidence is not the same as explaining it, or even (as creationists seem to think they should be doing) refuting it.
In fact, just to make the point, Darwinian evolution is now about as outmoded as Lamarkian evolution. The current theory of evolution is the Modern Synthesis, which includes many ideas that Darwin couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Propose a theory that explains everything we know about biology, and that can potentially be falsified, and you’re more than half way to becoming the most famous biologist who ever lived. Step two involves demonstrating that your theory is a better explanation than the currently accepted theory. This kind of overturning of “dogma” has happened repeatedly within science (see Einstein and Darwin for the most obvious examples), and is something that every grad student dreams of doing.
What is preventing creationists from actually doing this? Other than the fact that the evidence completely and utterly undercuts their position, I mean?
Actually, it was pretty good for me.
Didn’t you watch the video?
39% wouldn’t be a majority if all the rest believed only one other way. The 3-way split had… oh, why tell you? Watch it yourself!
There is no theory of abiogenesis. There are some competing hypotheses, though. Each of those hypotheses has components that can (and have been) tested.
If you’re asking if we can re-run the early history of the Earth, testing cubic miles of reactions over millions of years, then obviously that’s not going to happen any time soon. But we can test every individual step to see if it can work.
Don’t all these competing hypothesis fall under the theory that life arose from non-life? While our speculations of individual steps may be tested and confirmed, is it possible to test this essentially unrepeatable event?
Further, should we be restricted to believing in only that which is repeatably testable?
By the way, even though we can’t repeat the original event(s) of abiogenesis, I do think the approach of testing individual little steps is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I’m not trying to argue that this is a bogus line of research.
The key difference, and this cannot be stated strongly enough, is that to Creationists/IDers no matter what or how much evidence is presented the answer shall always be the same. The only use they have for evidence is to try and discredit current theories and/or ideas in the belief that if you create enough confusion then you can start equating goddidit with science. You only have to look at some of the information put forward which ranges from plain ignorance to outright lies.
Havin’ yourself a pretty productive day there huh Winter? Letting your “fingers do the walkin, talkin”?
When you are no longer satisfied to know what you know…then you can…know.
Paradoxical Paternity…its a trip.
That’s not a theory, in the scientific sense of the word. And, besides, doesn’t creationism also teach that life came from non-life?
You mean, can we know that it absolutely, definitely did happen this way? No, we probably can’t do that. Quite apart from anything else, the environment was very chaotic, and any number of reactions could happen, and it would be very difficult to tell which set actually lead to the formation of life.
But, we can narrow it down, and say it looks like it happened this way, but it might have been that way, or even something we’ve not thought of yet.
In the same way, we can’t know for 100% sure how the Moon came to be. But we know enough about geology and planetary dynamics to make a pretty good guess. it’s always possible that an invisible pixie from the 5th dimension magicked it into place, and we’ve got no way of knowing that isn’t the real answer. But it looks a hell of a lot like it was ejected when another planet smashed into the young Earth.
No, of course not. This is where we get into the plausibility of the claim. The more extravagant a claim, the more evidence should be demanded before you accept it.
If I tell you that yesterday I met a man wearing a hat, you would probably believe me, even though you cannot test my claim or repeat the event. It’s a trivial claim that doesn’t require any great evidence to be accepted.
On the other hand, If I tell you that yesterday, I met a man with a pet tiger, you would probably refuse to believe me unless I could show you a photograph, or possibly show you the footprints it left. This is a fairly surprising claim and scepticism should should be the default position until some reason to believe can be provided.
If I were to claim that yesterday I met a man with a pet dragon, you would probably not believe me even if I could provide photographs. The hypothesis that I ‘shopped a dragon into the picture is rather more likely than that I actually took a photograph of a dragon. Perhaps you would need to see the dragon in the flesh yourself to believe.
And that process is SO not believable!
Better to believe a cobbled-together thousands-of-years-old book full of violence and bizarre stories.
Air America is a traitor to…America. But I agree, she certainly looks better on radio…lol. Just Kidding…hold the cards & letters folks.
“The unrenewed mind, left to itself will eventually see to its own demise…all the while thinking itself a glorious bird of free will and ascent”
Metanoi
What is more, evolution does make predictions that can be tested. Like: you will not find hominid remains in precambrian rocks.
And medicine doesn’t do much for the advancement of aircraft mechanics.
I gotta agree with wintermute: that was a pointless statement.
Christianity can’t help with the advancement of medicine. Since you son-sequitured it up.
I’m never satisfied to just know what I already know. That’s why I study things like evolution. To learn more.
Do you have anything substantive to say on the subject, or do you just want to try and join in the grown-up conversation?
“More refined” maybe, but less accurate. The concept of abiogenesis is that at one time there was no life, and then later, there was life. You can choose to redefine it however you like, but it helps the conversation if people use the standard definitions, so that we each know what we’re talking about.
And once again, it is not a theory. Scientifically, a theory is a a body of explanation that explains all available evidence and successfully predicts evidence that is as yet unknown. What you’re describing would be better called an “idea” or a “guess”.
Basically, yes. You need to work out what the actual claims being made are, and evaluate them according to their prior probability.
Explanations that have no additional explanatory power, and introduce additional entities, or explanations that can accommodate any possible evidence are not preferred, for obvious reasons.
I never want to grow up…again. It only serves to resurrect what has already died and been crucified, namely the Self.
Or have you not heard…”that He has hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and has revealed them to infants”. Matt 11:25&26
Gotta go now…its nappy time. ha
JC
Well I’d rather use standard terminology than redefine things as I choose, so thanks for the correction. So abiogenesis does not in and of itself necessarily entail the absence of an intervening intelligent agent, right? The objection to a creator comes in on the grounds of one (or more) of the following:
1) Having a creator of life doesn’t explain anything.
2) Positing a creator introduces an additional (and unnecessary) entity.
3) Once we admit a creator, we could just say “God did it” to answer any question.
Have I understood you?
Points two and three are on the money. Point one is in contention; there may be evidence that is better explained by the presence of a god than by existing, naturalistic theories. However, as it stands right now, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I demand that the laws require evolution to be taught in theology classes.
Jesus, LOL!
Literally, out loud. Now that you’ve given John C his “first warning”, is it OK to believe in you? Or at least laugh at your jokes?
Follow up with the second warning – it will be needed.
Funny, funny!
The first Jesus I can actually relate to!
*poof*
Do you mind if I ask, in your opinion, what are the most convincing evidences in support of modern evolutionary theory?
The most convincing evidence? To be honest, there’s so many different lines of consilient evidence (and each of them very strong) that it’s hard to pick out one or two examples as particularly good.
However, I’d say that the fact that you can construct identical philogenetic trees from genetic, anatomical and proteomic data is very convincing. The many detailed sequences of transitional fossils are also very convincing. Ontogeny would probably also be in the top three lines of evidence I’d cite.
Actually…JC stands for…John C, get it??
JC, JC, JC, JC
But JC stands for???? righteousness, mercy, love, peace, compassion, forgiveness, redemption, kindness, life, wholeness, light, revelation, eternal spirit, patience, longsuffering, self-control…and on and on and on and on and on and on.
Love is the soil by which our nature grows!
Uhh JC? lol
rAmen!
John, at least you’re benign, sort of like a growth.
I hazard the guess that a lot of people on this site tolerate you as our benign village id— uh, local color.