2

12/19/2007 2:11:07 PM

Quote :

"Some seem to believe schools should teach that science can explain not only the origin of life but of existence itself."

Define "existence itself."

Seriously.

12/19/2007 2:16:29 PM

^ The universe--from plasma to planets and all points between and beyond.

12/19/2007 2:22:46 PM

Uh, so far it seems like science is winning that one hands-down.

Now, if you want to get into the meta-physical - is there a God, a soul, etc., well, that's beyond the realm of science. But science never laid claim to any of that territory to begin with.

12/19/2007 2:27:01 PM

^ Science cannot explain original singularity.

As a matter of fact, when the Big Bang was first proposed, it was used by the Pope at the time of proof of the existance of God. The Big Bang was originally a Christian theory. Some scientists at the time were upset the church pre-empted their theory of the origins of the universe, not due to science but due to politics, and therefore the theory was re-published removing any notion of an omnipotent creator or being.

For more on this, please read the good book "Angels & Demons" by Michael Brown. In my opinion a far better book than his "Da Vinci Code", and it's on its way to becoming a movie.



[Edited on December 19, 2007 at 2:41 PM. Reason : /]

12/19/2007 2:34:25 PM

Quote :

"The universe--from plasma to planets and all points between and beyond."

Of course science cannot explain the beginning of the universe--that is a result of our far-from-complete knowledge of how the universe works. It does not indicate that science is incapable of ever explaining the origins of the universe.

And--it goes without saying, of course--the current inability of science to explain the origins of the universe does not strengthen the argument for God or intelligent design.

12/19/2007 2:41:22 PM

Quote :

"My concern is more about the incessant push that God and science are mutually exclusive."

12/19/2007 2:44:51 PM

Quote :

"Science cannot explain original singularity. As a matter of fact, when the Big Bang was first proposed, it was used by the Pope at the time of proof of the existance of God."

Science can't do that (yet), but it is a huge logical fallacy to jump from that to proof of the existence of God. The two really have nothing to do with each other. And even if the the lack of evidence of where singularity came from implies a god (it doesn't), it certainly doesn't imply a "personal" or Christian God.

Quote :

"please read the good book "Angels & Demons" by Michael Dan Brown."

12/19/2007 4:43:54 PM

I think it is more accurate to say that science and religion(s) are two different sets of philosophies for approaching the world. Each has their own internal logic and sets of a priori assumptions for approaching questions that arise within their respective fields.

As for the assumptions that science makes, they are essentially that the way matter/energy behaves follows certain "rules" that may be derived from experimentation and/or observation. These same basic rules apply to everything from quantum mechanics to evolutionary biology. That is not to say that science has the solution to every askable question: some questions, particulary the "why?" questions are simply outside of the questions that may be answered by the scientific method. The why questions may be either interpreted as simply unaswerable under any system of knowledge ("whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent" and all that) or answered under a different philosophy. Gould's non-overlapping magisteria is probably the most sensible approach that has been popularized but now he's dead.

There seems to be a disconnect between what people believe scientists do and what they actually do. Belief in religion is completely unimportant to most of the day-to-day work of every scientist. Most scientists are content to focus on their own focused fields and ignore the larger issues as irrelevant to their field: the principles of science have proven useful in approaching the questions they tackle.

I also think the fact that most of the people arguing about science get their information from popular sources makes both sides of the argument look kind of retarded. Those arguing for evolution present watered-down, poorly understood syntheses of evolutionary theory while those arguing against it often do not present arguments that apply to science per se. The issues that scientists actually deal with cannot be summarized in a ten page article in Discover.

The focus of most of the popular writings on species-level events is also counterproductive: much of the most convincing evidence for evolution come from the molecular level (Dawkins in particular is bad at understanding the mechanisms for what he advocates: he comes across as a well-spoken layperson) My advice to those that wish to have a better understanding of evolutionary theory is to devote yourself to reading primary literature by those that actually work in the field (and current stuff too: although The Origin of the Species is a great read it is really only a part of the story and you would be better served to understand the more fundamental mechanisms of speciation and developmental biology)

I personally work in cancer/stem cell biology and, although it has become kind of cliche, nothing about biology does make sense except in the light of evolution. Although there are certainly large gaps in our knowledge of evolution (and there is, of course, a non-zero probability that everything about it is wrong), from every level of biology evolution is supported. From the conservation of functional/regulatory domains in homologous proteins to similar developmental pathways (and their alterations between species) to the geographical distribution of species, everything about evolution makes sense. It may or may not be true, but it explains a hell of a lot of stuff.

[Edited on December 19, 2007 at 6:17 PM. Reason : ()]

12/19/2007 6:15:09 PM

bttt by request

4/14/2008 9:42:31 AM

Question to the evolution experts here, has anybody (as far as you know) come up with any kind of breakdown on the races showing when splits in the human tribe (so to speak) would have had to occur to result in our current/past mix of races? I've heard stuff like the similarities between native Americans and Asian races, on account of the Bering Land Bridge... but I'd be interested in seeing something more comprehensive if such a thing exists. I'm not sure what kind of Archaeological history we have of past Mass Migrations, but bringing that together with evolutionary studies might help us figure out where we're headed as a species.

My gut says that it'd be a huge undertaking that'd involve Anthropologists, Climatologists and probably several other groups... Anyone familiar with a project like this?

4/14/2008 10:04:42 AM

^ you mostly just need DNA evidence from each of the groups, then you can trace the rate of mutations and reasonably estimate when each group split. I'm sure it has been done, and I'm pretty sure I've heard or read about it, but don't have any sources at the moment.


On the topic of this movie, though, it seems to have been ripped pretty hard by scientists (not surprisingly). Not only because its lack or misuse of academic and scientific facts, but also because apparently a large portion of the film is dedicated to blaming the Holocaust on "Darwinism" (a word that's only used by anti-evolutionists)

Heres a site created by anthropologist and head of the National Center for Science Education Eugenie Scott with reviews and references for errors in the film
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Scientific American, for one, was not impressed
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-michael-shermer
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie

there was also a bit of a hubbub during a public screening in Minnesota a couple weeks ago. An evolutionary biologist, PZ Myers, signed up for the screening in the Mall of America, and went with his family, and brought along a guest who happened to be in town - Richard Dawkins (both of whom appear in the movie). After signing in and waiting in line to go into the theater, mall security came and pulled PZ out of line and told him that the event organizers would not allow him into the theater (i.e. he was expelled from Expelled). The geniuses didn't recognize Richard Dawkins, though, and let him go on in for the screening.
PZ went to the Apple Store in the mall and blogged about it while the screening was still going
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/science/21expelledw.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

4/14/2008 10:50:42 AM

^^ here's some references from the Wiki article on the Americas Migration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_migration_to_the_New_World#Recent_Scholarship

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1952074

Quote :

"Abstract Native Americans derive from a small number of Asian founders who likely arrived to the Americas via Beringia. However, additional details about the intial colonization of the Americas remain unclear. To investigate the pioneering phase in the Americas we analyzed a total of 623 complete mtDNAs from the Americas and Asia, including 20 new complete mtDNAs from the Americas and seven from Asia. This sequence data was used to direct high-resolution genotyping from 20 American and 26 Asian populations. Here we describe more genetic diversity within the founder population than was previously reported. The newly resolved phylogenetic structure suggests that ancestors of Native Americans paused when they reached Beringia, during which time New World founder lineages differentiated from their Asian sister-clades. This pause in movement was followed by a swift migration southward that distributed the founder types all the way to South America. The data also suggest more recent bi-directional gene flow between Siberia and the North American Arctic."

http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297(08)00139-0#

Quote :

"It is well accepted that the Americas were the last continents reached by modern humans, most likely through Beringia. However, the precise time and mode of the colonization of the New World remain hotly disputed issues. Native American populations exhibit almost exclusively five mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups (AD and X). Haplogroups AD are also frequent in Asia, suggesting a northeastern Asian origin of these lineages. However, the differential pattern of distribution and frequency of haplogroup X led some to suggest that it may represent an independent migration to the Americas. Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all Native American haplogroups, including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding population, thereby refuting multiple-migration models. A detailed demographic history of the mtDNA sequences estimated with a Bayesian coalescent method indicates a complex model for the peopling of the Americas, in which the initial differentiation from Asian populations ended with a moderate bottleneck in Beringia during the last glacial maximum (LGM), around 23,000 to 19,000 years ago. Toward the end of the LGM, a strong population expansion started 18,000 and finished 15,000 years ago. These results support a pre-Clovis occupation of the New World, suggesting a rapid settlement of the continent along a Pacific coastal route."

4/14/2008 10:57:35 AM

I have a question for the "believers" like hooksaw.

You say that a god has to be involved and that science and god should not be mutually exclusive. Why? Why, for something you do not understand, does a god have to be involved?

Think of all of the scientific discoveries that were originally attributed to "God", just because people didn't understand them. If you lived in ancient times, you would believe that the Sun was a god. Why don't you believe this now?


Here, let me light a match for you. Wow, look at that! Fire! To someone who has no education at all, or someone from the prehistoric era, that would be MAGIC. That could even be evidence of a God. To them, YOU would look like a God. The idea of something like electricity, computer chips, optical drives, all this would be completely god-like to someone 500 years ago. They would think it was witchcraft or devilry.

So, can you see how completely ignorant it is to assume that just because you don't understand how something works, does not mean that it is evidence of a god?

Not to mention, that the following is a list of evidence for the existence of a god:

























Oh wait, nothing here except ancient fables. Move along now.

4/14/2008 12:31:00 PM

Why is the word "believers" in "quotes"

4/14/2008 12:35:01 PM

I don't know, I guess I'm mocking them. Anyone who believes in God is an idiot.

4/14/2008 12:37:07 PM

God, or a god.

You're leaving open the possibility of polytheism here.

4/14/2008 12:39:25 PM

^^^^ Why should the two be so mutually exclusive?

Quote :

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

I'm not talking about teaching children creationism in public schools here... I'm just asking why a handful of zealots on either side of the discussion should get all the airtime and that there should be no dialogue between the two?

You're not going to find a "Made by God" signature somewhere in the fossil record any more than you're going to find some kind of fossilized evidence of the first protein or the first living cell. The fact that you won't find either of those doesn't PROVE anything, not by the Scientific, or any other method.

4/14/2008 12:48:22 PM

Quote :

"Some seem to believe schools should teach that science can explain not only the origin of life but of existence itself. I find this to be preposterous. "

i don't know. it seems most every science i had after elementary school or so, taught that science is our best guess now based on evidence.

4/14/2008 12:53:48 PM

Quote :

"To someone who has no education at all, or someone from the prehistoric era, that would be MAGIC. That could even be evidence of a God. To them, YOU would look like a God. The idea of something like electricity, computer chips, optical drives, all this would be completely god-like to someone 500 years ago. They would think it was witchcraft or devilry. "

Well, wouldn't you be a god? A being with knowledge and comprehension beyond theirs, who can bend the universe to your will in ways they can't imagine. The existence of some supreme being doesn't require it to fit the christian definition of an omnipotent being. In many religions gods were not omnipotent, merely having powers above and beyond that of a mere human.

4/14/2008 12:55:42 PM

Quote :

"You're not going to find a "Made by God" signature somewhere in the fossil record any more than you're going to find some kind of fossilized evidence of the first protein or the first living cell. The fact that you won't find either of those doesn't PROVE anything, not by the Scientific, or any other method."

But doesn't "God did it" sound like such a write-off excuse for not having to do any work? Imagine if I was answering a biology test, and I wrote down "God did it" for every one of the answers.

Let's look at this question, for example:

Question: How did life form from non-living materials on Earth?

A. The current theories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life
B. Some other theory, or something else that we haven't figured out yet.
C. God did it. No more research to be done here, folks! God did it, so we don't have to worry about why or how or whatever. God did it somehow. And his great infinite knowledge is far beyond ours and we should not question the will of God. In fact, let's abandon science all together. There's harm in knowing what goes on in the natural world. After all, God did it.

4/14/2008 1:26:56 PM

'God did it' is actually just as valid a theory as anything else when given a complete absence of evidence.

Just you know.

4/14/2008 1:28:03 PM

^No, because it is completely untestable and unfalsifiable. It's no more a theory than if I said that life formed due to "magic."

There isn't an absence of evidence for the origin of life theories. There are geological formations, evidence of fossilized protein cells, etc, etc, etc.

They've done experiments testing early Earth conditions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_experiment

[Edited on April 14, 2008 at 1:31 PM. Reason : ]

4/14/2008 1:29:43 PM

As I'm sure you can empirically show that single-celled lifeforms spawned mammals.

4/14/2008 1:32:29 PM

*I* can't, obviously, because I am not a biologist. You should speak with Dr. Dawkins on the matter. Also, I'm sure there are tens of thousands of papers on Lexus nexus you could check out.

Where's the research, experiments, and tests done on this whole "God did it" theory you're pushing here?

4/14/2008 1:36:01 PM

have you ever used lexIs nexIs?

4/14/2008 1:43:46 PM

Ssh, I am looking for cars, so I am distracted.

4/14/2008 1:45:06 PM

Quote :

"As I'm sure you can empirically show that single-celled lifeforms spawned mammals."

just because you are ignorant of evidence and research doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Quote :

"But doesn't "God did it" sound like such a write-off excuse for not having to do any work? Imagine if I was answering a biology test, and I wrote down "God did it" for every one of the answers. "

There was a bill introduced I think in Florida or maybe Oklahoma last year that basically said just that. It said that a student could not be punished/marked down for answering a question on a test if the answer was consistent with his religious views. i.e. on a geology test "How old is the earth" if a Christian student answered 6000 years, he must be marked as correct. I'm not sure what happened to the bill, if it passed or not, and unfortunately I can't remember enough about it to find documentation.....

4/14/2008 1:47:29 PM

^^ You're sort of proving my point, except for the part where you completely ignore someone else's logic and jump straight to condescension and hyperbole. My simplification to "God did it" isn't the totality of the handful of theories out there, and you know it.

Despite Mill-Urey, you still have no evidence showing that in-fact those building blocks can suddenly turn into a life form on their own. The current most widely accepted scientific theory still leaves a hole as to the external force that turned those proteins into more complex mechanisms. Even if it were proven that the right temperature, a blowing wind and a certain spark of electricity were to suddenly create single celled life forms... It still doesn't disprove anything.

The notion that extremist atheists hold that there can be no place for a higher power than what we currently understand within the context of science is just as unacceptable as the extreme right wing Theists who throw out the all kinds of tested theories of science on account of it asking more questions about God than they have explicit answers for...

4/14/2008 1:53:33 PM

I'm not saying I am 100% sure there's no God. I tend to use the same scale that Dawkins came up with. 1 means you're absolutely 100% sure that God exists. 10 means you're absolutely 100% sure that God does not exist. I sit on a 9, where I am very sure that God does not exist, but I won't discount the possibility if solid evidence is presented. I don't believe he exists the same way I don't believe that Bigfoot exists or ghosts exist.

The fact is that when people say, "Oh we just want there to be a possibility of a higher power, can't you give us that?" they are bullshitting you. You aren't talking about "any" higher power. You're talking about the Christian God, about Jesus Christ, about the whole kitten caboodle. It's the same way people try to wedge in religion into science.

Seriously, where is the evidence for a God interacting with life forms? Let's be specific. The origin of life. Where is the evidence of that? So, we can't find anything concrete on how life formed. Why does that suddenly mean that some mysterious omnipotent life form was responsible? Some mysterious omnipotent life form who science has not ever shown any evidence of in all of modern history. And why are the only people who believe in this shitty "theory" the same ones who were indoctrinated as youths to believe in a god?

You want to believe it was a being in the sky? Fine. PROVE IT or shut up and get the fuck out of my schools and my government.

4/14/2008 2:05:47 PM

^ Why are we just limiting this to the Christian God? I mean, yeah, they're the religion that is being vocal about believing their creation story was the way the world was actually formed, but all religions have that idea. I mean, I bet I could dig up some fundamentalist Odinists who still believe the world was licked into existence by a giant Space Cow. (Can't make this shit up.)
Personally, I believe in taunting all religions at once, including my own, if I have a chance.

4/14/2008 2:12:34 PM

^^ Do me a favor and don't presume that because I don't think your 'screw everybody keep education free from these evil God-believers' that I'm automatically part of the 'teach ID side by side with evolution and count them as equal theories' crowd.

That might be Stein and the filmmakers' point of view, but my point has been, and remains that your mutually exclusive mentality prevents intelligent debate from happening. I'm not saying that a 'God has to have been involved' in the creation process. I'm saying quite simply, don't teach what you can't prove. Talk about the experiments like Miller, and talk about what has been proven, and talk about what we're trying to figure out still. You don't have to liken the creation of the first life form on earth to a masculine tripartite God, and in fact, I don't want my children to learn something like that in a public school.

But the school should leave the door open until science can prove that it's shut. There's no need to get into what caused or didn't cause those proteins and amino acids to 'come alive' unless we can make it happen in a lab to prove it.

4/14/2008 2:24:58 PM

The school should leave the door open, eh?

How would this go in class?

First, kids, we're going to learn about the scientific method, and how how theories are tested.

...Fast forward to biology class...

Now, kids, let's learn about the origins of life. Here is an theory that life was created by a supreme being. Keep in mind that this "theory" completely violates any idea of scientific method and it is completely untestable and unprovable. In fact, we have no evidence or empirical data about this theory, but let's put it on the same level as other theories that have had numerous experiments performed for them.

[Edited on April 14, 2008 at 2:33 PM. Reason : BECAUSE I COULD JUST SAY THAT LIFE WAS CREATED FROM THE SPERM OF ZEUS'S COCK,]

[Edited on April 14, 2008 at 2:34 PM. Reason : AND IT WOULD BE JUST AS CREDIBLE AS YOUR SUPREME BEING "THEORY"]

4/14/2008 2:33:15 PM

why would anyone listen to you when time and time again you prove how stupid you are, God.


Weren't you in some kind of trouble not too long ago for illegally distributing a cache of porn?

4/14/2008 2:48:32 PM

Nah, it ended up being all a ruse.

4/14/2008 2:51:33 PM

Quote :

"why would anyone listen to you when time and time again you prove how stupid you are, God."

GREATEST

QUOTE

EVER.

4/14/2008 2:55:23 PM

Again, I AM NOT ADVOCATING CREATION THEORIES BEING TAUGHT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

"Leave the door open" means to allow for the possibility of not teach as fact, and I specifically said they should not be taught side by side in the classroom. The lesson on the origins of life would go more along the lines of "we don't know how life started on Earth... here's what the current scientific body of thought says..."

And you go into Darwinism (and I'm talking about classical Darwinism here), the big bang theory, and for that matter evolution. You get into the scientific theories on the origins of life, point out where scientists are in researching those, and point out that, as any real scientist will tell you we don't know how it began, and we don't need to know how it began to observe the processes of natural selection.

And you stop there. We don't know how it all began, tons of theories on both sides of this argument aren't realistically testable. We should explain the difference between testing by observation and by experiment, and we make clear which processes have and have not been tested each way and that is that.

4/14/2008 3:01:16 PM

I'm fine with that.

4/14/2008 3:02:56 PM

Cool.

4/14/2008 3:04:29 PM

Here's an extended clip from the film, which opens Friday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGCxbhGaVfE&feature=related

I'll go ahead and post this opposing viewpoint on behalf of you neckbeards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoVQ5AzDt_k&feature=related

4/14/2008 4:23:47 PM

scientists = neckbeards

4/14/2008 8:29:33 PM

academics & intellectuals & researchers & engineering & scientists = neckbeards

(oh, right - i just watched that video. yeah, that dude's a d-bag)

[Edited on April 14, 2008 at 8:59 PM. Reason : .]

4/14/2008 8:46:19 PM

im sure glad everyone already knows what the movie is going to be, saves me some time.

4/14/2008 9:01:46 PM

Ars technica has an article about this movie: http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/04/10/academic-freedom-gets-legislated-and-expelled

And after watching that opening clip of this movie, it seems Stein's premise is that science and god are mutually exclusive to each other.

This idea seems to be pushed more by the Creationists types anyway. The agnostics at least, which represent a lot of scientists, don't see the idea of a god to be exclusive with science.

[Edited on April 14, 2008 at 9:06 PM. Reason : ]

4/14/2008 9:02:29 PM

what's to know..... Ben Stein has made it pretty clear what his thesis and agenda are.
The reviews from places like Scientific American seem to cover most of the bases so far

4/14/2008 9:05:22 PM

I think it's interesting how the talks about oppression of ID-ists, when he's a multi-millionaire putting out a movie that's gotten tons of press discussing that very issue.

Where are the movies by famous people talking about evolutioN?

And when you consider that the US, by far, has the HIGHEST amount of people dis-believing evolution (right at 50% IIRC), it's completely absurd for these nutjobs to assert they're being unduly silenced.

4/14/2008 9:11:10 PM

50% is being generous, unfortunately

4/14/2008 9:13:27 PM

^that's pretty sad

4/14/2008 11:36:40 PM

why do you need a movie pushing evolution w/ big name stars when you already have every public school in America teaching it? Seems like a waste of time to me...

and, for the record, the "science" being pushed in this thread is far from it. Most "scientists" today don't use the correct scientific method, especially ones who go out digging around in the desert for shit. These people go out and find data to fit their pre-formed conclusions, ignoring any other data around them. And this is in much the same way as many ID-ists go about their "research." let's be fair in how we compare the two, ok?

4/15/2008 5:55:00 PM

Quote :

"why do you need a movie pushing evolution w/ big name stars when you already have every public school in America teaching it? Seems like a waste of time to me..."

obviously that education isn't taking, according to the graph above.

concerning the evidence for evolution - recent (past 10-15 years) research on the DNA and molecular-level have cemented everything that was previously known as fact and has supported and furthered fossil and geological data that has been gathered for the past 150 years. With everything that has been discovered about how all studied living and dead creatures are related/similar with respect to their DNA, it is 100% clear that either evolution has and is occurring, or if some IDer made everything, he made it appear exactly like it has evolved, down to the DNA level.

4/15/2008 6:07:24 PM