Intelligent design and the FSM

[Guest]

This is just, LOL.


http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/11/16/flying.spaghettimonster.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I found my religious call, I am postulant Pastafarian! I always knew parmesan cheese had to be holy.

Maharat

 

[elsol]

I'm an advocate of the anti-pasto.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I can feel His Noodly presence . . .

 

[fieryjen]

My preferred deity will always be the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

But the pasta may come in second place.

 

[Oblimo]

Intelligent Design is rejected by many devout Christians because of a corollary to the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument. The corollary comes from what happens if you accept ID, and take the next step: now that we've established the existence of a deity through science, just what kind of God have we proven?

ID, if accepted, demonstrates evidence for the existence of an abstract benevolent entity that is removed from miraculous interacting with the world. In other words, evidence of ID is evidence against of the divinity of Jesus.

The smart devout figure this out quick and recognize ID as a self-defeating sham to get the Bible taught in public schools.

 

[WRJames]

The smart devout figure this out quick and recognize ID as a self-defeating sham to get the Bible taught in public schools.

Well, what about teaching Darwinism as evidence that there is no God -- which is what it happening in some classrooms? That's not fair either.

There are actually two pieces to evolution -- one, that all life is descended ("evolved") from other life. This is already well established as a scientific "fact". However, proponents of evolution still keep pointing to new evidence in this area as if it had some additional significance.

The second, more controversial part of evolutionary theory, is that this "evolution" occurred purely through "natural" means -- in Darwin's theory., through "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest". This is NOT proven fact -- and to teach it as such is misleading. Of course, what pecentage of middle school students pay attention anyway? I do know, though, that students with different opinions are bullied by their teachers on occassion.

We should remember that neither the teachers nor the students at this level are really equipped to deal with intellectual complexity. I remember my World History teacher was convinced that the modern Greeks could not be descended from the ancient Greeks, because those noble ancients were pure white, just like the marble statues they had left behind.

 

[rgraham666]

James? Have you any proof that the changes in species occurred through unnatural means then.

And the agency of change is pretty straight forward. A change or 'opportunity' in environment puts pressures on an extant species. This causes certain characteristics in its genome to become more prominent. Eventually the change becomes large enough that the new species cannot interbreed with the original.

So far as I know that's a pretty well described phenomena.

However, anyone that says evolution proves that there is no God is talking through their hat. It makes no reference to God at all. Whose existence is impossible to prove or disprove scientifically.

 

[Liar]

The smart devout figure this out quick and recognize ID as a self-defeating sham to get the Bible taught in public schools.

My friend the priest said this about the ID debate:

"Faith is to believe in something despite lack of proof. Science is to believe in nothing unless there's proof. If you feel the need to scientifically prove your faith, you don't have any faith."

 

[WRJames]

James? Have you any proof that the changes in species occurred through unnatural means then.

I think at this point we are truly dealing with opinion (perhaps faith?). Of course, natural selection is a mechanism which could produce evolutionary changes -- just as falling rain is a mechanism that can shape rock. But if you look at the face of Mt. Rushmore -- is it reasonable to assume that it is the result of "natural" erosion?

Now, eventually biologists may have a better handle on the evolutionary mechanisms, and they may be able to explain exactly how we got where we are today, and it all may seem more plausible. But, to my mind, it is a great leap of faith to say that "natural" selection explains more than a fraction of what we observe as the end product of evolution. It's misleading to present that as a proven fact to our naive middle school students. I personally would not go so far as to say that ID should be presented as an alternative explanation -- just that it is NOT proven that all evolution came about as a result of "natural selection" or any other mechanism.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think at this point we are truly dealing with opinion (perhaps faith?). Of course, natural selection is a mechanism which could produce evolutionary changes -- just as falling rain is a mechanism that can shape rock. But if you look at the face of Mt. Rushmore -- is it reasonable to assume that it is the result of "natural" erosion?

Now, eventually biologists may have a better handle on the evolutionary mechanisms, and they may be able to explain exactly how we got where we are today, and it all may seem more plausible. But, to my mind, it is a great leap of faith to say that "natural" selection explains more than a fraction of what we observe as the end product of evolution. It's misleading to present that as a proven fact to our naive middle school students. I personally would not go so far as to say that ID should be presented as an alternative explanation -- just that it is NOT proven that all evolution came about as a result of "natural selection" or any other mechanism.

Mount Rushmore as an argument against evolution. Good one.

What, in particular makes you say that you can't accept natural selection as an explanation for the life-forms around us? What trait, organ, behaviour or other characteristic can you point to that belies the principles of evolution?

 

[Liar]

I think at this point we are truly dealing with opinion (perhaps faith?). Of course, natural selection is a mechanism which could produce evolutionary changes -- just as falling rain is a mechanism that can shape rock. But if you look at the face of Mt. Rushmore -- is it reasonable to assume that it is the result of "natural" erosion?

No, becuase it doesn't look like rocks usually look.

The humans Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln all pretty much looked like humans usually look though.

 

[rgraham666]

Well, science is not about proven fact, but about observed phenomena and the hypothesis about what makes those phenomena occur the way they do. When an observed phenomena doesn't jibe with the hypothesis the hypothesis is changed.

Some hypothesis cover such a large area and stand up to such repeated testing that they get advanced to theories. Evolution is one such theory. It doesn't claim 'This is the truth because of these proven facts." It says "This is the theory that explains these phenomena. It may be subject to change as we discover new phenomena."

But humans are uncomfortable with something as mutable with theory. So they transmute it to truth. Then they can get back to fighting about which truth is true. One of our favourite pastimes.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Beautifully put, Rob

 

[rgraham666]

Thanks, Stellla, But I've kinda been cribbing.

I just read two books on the subject recently. In The Beginning and Abusing Science

The first is a pretty easy read. Some of the evolutionary lines the author covers are fascinating, like the line from Eohippus to modern horses and from reptiles to mammals. Did you know that the bones in your ear were originally part of the reptile jaw? Neither did I!

The second deals more with what science is and why Creationism (and ID) don't qualify.

Good reads. Highly recommended.

 

[thebullet]

I think at this point we are truly dealing with opinion (perhaps faith?). Of course, natural selection is a mechanism which could produce evolutionary changes -- just as falling rain is a mechanism that can shape rock. But if you look at the face of Mt. Rushmore -- is it reasonable to assume that it is the result of "natural" erosion?

Now, eventually biologists may have a better handle on the evolutionary mechanisms, and they may be able to explain exactly how we got where we are today, and it all may seem more plausible. But, to my mind, it is a great leap of faith to say that "natural" selection explains more than a fraction of what we observe as the end product of evolution. It's misleading to present that as a proven fact to our naive middle school students. I personally would not go so far as to say that ID should be presented as an alternative explanation -- just that it is NOT proven that all evolution came about as a result of "natural selection" or any other mechanism.

James, are you really falling back on that old chestnut? Christ, when will you people realize that Intelligent Design is merely repackaged Creationism. It means nothing. It proves nothing. It shows nothing.

This week's Nova was about the fight to have Intelligent Design introduced into school curicula. It was conclusively proven in federal court that ID is not science, it is religion. ID is Creationism with another name, just a ploy by religious zealots to get their foot into the door of science. The eventual goal is undoubtedly to remove the teaching of many branches of science that these people find objectionable from American classrooms.

James, evolution is the base that biology stands upon. Without it, most of the rest of biology doesn't work.

Open your mind up just a bit, James. Why do you feel that evolution precludes religion? Is your god too small to encompass evolution? Is your god too small to have existed for twenty-five billion years, rather than 6,000 years?

Why do you feel the need to include god in science? Where is your proof? Do you have a bumper sticker: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it"?

Why not allow for a more open, more diverse Universe? Don't you know that the vast majority of Christians have no problem including evolution in their belief systems, merrily standing right next to their religion without any conflict whatsoever?

It's a big Universe out there, James. Why not rejoice in it, rather than trying to limit it to the dimensions of your apparently small mind?

And by the way, James, you are dead wrong about natural selection. It has been tested again and again. There are no holes there. The speed of evolutionary change, the manner in which it occurs, those things have been debated and addressed for the last century. But the primary mechanism of Natural Selection remains unassailable. We have plenty of "transitional" species. We have easily disproved the primary ID explanation they refer to as Irreducible Complexity.

To the layman this sounds pretty good: certain organs are so complex that they could not have evolved. Take away a single part of the organ and it doesn't work. How could it have evolved? It must have been created out of whole cloth.

There is a professor at Lehigh University who developed this theory of Irreducible Complexity. I saw him testify about a particular organ on a particular bacteria that could not function without all of its component parts. Take away one and the thin just doesn't work. The thing is an amazing organ that acts like an outboard motor to propel the bacteria through the media it is living in. The Lehigh professor claimed that the organ could not have evolved, since taking away any one of its parts would make it dysfunctional.

But guess what? Another scientist then showed another bacteria with exactly the same organ, except it was missing two of the parts of the outboard motor. Otherwise it was identical. It wasn't an organ for motion, it was a weapon! The outboard motor could easily have evolved from the weapon, or perhaps some previous bacteria was father to both of the organs and that version had a different function.

Irreducible Complexity is a scam. To those of us who are not scientists, it is all like magic anyway, right? Make up a neat name, push it forward as a fact, and suddenly you've proven the existence of God?

Please James. Open your mind and smell the roses.

 

[thebullet]

The term "theory" is what the creationists have grabbed onto as a means of fooling people like James into thinking that Evolution is merely an educated guess that may be totally disproved when a few more facts are known.

RGraham has rightly shown that in scientific terms, a 'theory' is a set of concepts designed to describe something that happens in the physical universe. As he so well stated, the 'theory' of evolution is one of those scientific theories that has been able to stand the test of time.

When Darwin popularized the theory of evolution (he was by no means the first to propose it, but his mechanism of natural selection was a new means to understand how it may work), all he had to go on was a very limited fossil record and some finches in the Galapagos Islands that were the same but different.

But we've developed new sciences since then, particularly the science of genetics. If anything could disprove evolution, genetics would be it. Instead it has confirmed evolutionary theory at every stage. The more technology and new science we throw at evolutionary theory, the stronger its basis in reality.

James, your 'holes' in evolutionary theory are just not there.

I saw one scientist testify that gravity is a theory. And yet, if we saw a rock rise off of the ground and float into outer space, we would immediately be looking for some new and previously unknown mechanism and trying to understand how it fit into the theory of gravity, rather than assuming that it disproved gravity.

ID/Creationists don't have any evidence whatsoever to disprove evolution. All of their so-called 'proofs' are negatives.

 

[fieryjen]

I once read about this experiment where they used electrical circuits to simulate evolution (I read this a long time ago and forgot where it came from, so if anyone has heard about this and does know, tell me).

They had a series of circuits and a goal - what those circuits should be able to do. Every cycle, they made tiny, random changes to the circuits and had a computer go through all of them and only keep the ones who were closes to the goal. It did take a huge amount of cycles until one finally managed to fulfill its function.

The cool thing was, however, that they weren't even able to figure out how it worked (at first, anyway). It was put together very differently from any circuit a human would build, very complex, and best of all, if they took away a single piece, it would not work.

I just thought that that was very interesting.

 

[3113]

But if you look at the face of Mt. Rushmore -- is it reasonable to assume that it is the result of "natural" erosion?

Ah, the old "It's so complex it MUST have been created by an intelligence!" argument. Which goes back to the old "Watchmaker" argument.

Guess it's time for my favorite "yes, evolution COULD create something that complex" video: Blind Watchmaker

Enjoy!

 

[WRJames]

James, are you really falling back on that old chestnut? Christ, when will you people realize that Intelligent Design is merely repackaged Creationism. It means nothing. It proves nothing. It shows nothing.

This week's Nova was about the fight to have Intelligent Design introduced into school curicula. It was conclusively proven in federal court that ID is not science, it is religion. ID is Creationism with another name, just a ploy by religious zealots to get their foot into the door of science. The eventual goal is undoubtedly to remove the teaching of many branches of science that these people find objectionable from American classrooms.

James, evolution is the base that biology stands upon. Without it, most of the rest of biology doesn't work.

Open your mind up just a bit, James. Why do you feel that evolution precludes religion? Is your god too small to encompass evolution? Is your god too small to have existed for twenty-five billion years, rather than 6,000 years?

Why do you feel the need to include god in science? Where is your proof? Do you have a bumper sticker: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it"?

Why not allow for a more open, more diverse Universe? Don't you know that the vast majority of Christians have no problem including evolution in their belief systems, merrily standing right next to their religion without any conflict whatsoever?

It's a big Universe out there, James. Why not rejoice in it, rather than trying to limit it to the dimensions of your apparently small mind?

And by the way, James, you are dead wrong about natural selection. It has been tested again and again. There are no holes there. The speed of evolutionary change, the manner in which it occurs, those things have been debated and addressed for the last century. But the primary mechanism of Natural Selection remains unassailable. We have plenty of "transitional" species. We have easily disproved the primary ID explanation they refer to as Irreducible Complexity.

To the layman this sounds pretty good: certain organs are so complex that they could not have evolved. Take away a single part of the organ and it doesn't work. How could it have evolved? It must have been created out of whole cloth.

There is a professor at Lehigh University who developed this theory of Irreducible Complexity. I saw him testify about a particular organ on a particular bacteria that could not function without all of its component parts. Take away one and the thin just doesn't work. The thing is an amazing organ that acts like an outboard motor to propel the bacteria through the media it is living in. The Lehigh professor claimed that the organ could not have evolved, since taking away any one of its parts would make it dysfunctional.

But guess what? Another scientist then showed another bacteria with exactly the same organ, except it was missing two of the parts of the outboard motor. Otherwise it was identical. It wasn't an organ for motion, it was a weapon! The outboard motor could easily have evolved from the weapon, or perhaps some previous bacteria was father to both of the organs and that version had a different function.

Irreducible Complexity is a scam. To those of us who are not scientists, it is all like magic anyway, right? Make up a neat name, push it forward as a fact, and suddenly you've proven the existence of God?

Please James. Open your mind and smell the roses.

Oh -- I feel the need to go through this point by point! Apparently your "large" mind was not actually reading (or understanding) what I had posted?

First --

"James, evolution is the base that biology stands upon. Without it, most of the rest of biology doesn't work."

Yes -- as I said, there are TWO pieces to evolutionary theory -- first -- the concept that all life is descended from other life, that all life is related. Without this, biology does not make much sense.

The SECOND piece is the MECHANISM -- natural selection or whatever, by which that evolution was driven. Here is a discussion on that topic that you may find interesting.

"And by the way, James, you are dead wrong about natural selection. It has been tested again and again. There are no holes there. The speed of evolutionary change, the manner in which it occurs, those things have been debated and addressed for the last century. But the primary mechanism of Natural Selection remains unassailable. We have plenty of "transitional" species."

Well, one of the most amazing "evolutionay" sequences I ever saw was Chevrolet models from the early 1900's to about 1985. The fossil record, however complete, cannot conclusively prove INTENT, or lack thereof. Obviously matural selection exists as a mechanism -- but the conclude that it explains EVERYTHING is a leap of faith.

"And by the way, James, you are dead wrong about natural selection. It has been tested again and again. There are no holes there. The speed of evolutionary change, the manner in which it occurs, those things have been debated and addressed for the last century. But the primary mechanism of Natural Selection remains unassailable. We have plenty of "transitional" species. We have easily disproved the primary ID explanation they refer to as Irreducible Complexity."

Let me quote from the link:

Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms.
- Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", American Biology Teacher vol. 35 (March 1973) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, J. Peter Zetterberg ed., ORYX Press, Phoenix AZ 1983

All I am saying is that it is overly simplistic and misleading to present the MECHANISM of evolution as proven fact to middle school and high school students. At this point ID has even less to back it up, and it probably does not deserve to be mentioned. However, I personally remain VERY unconvinced that natural selection is an adequate explanation of HOW evolution came to be.

"It's a big Universe out there, James. Why not rejoice in it, rather than trying to limit it to the dimensions of your apparently small mind?"

Hmm -- how much physics do you understand? The physicists in the 19th century thought they had it all figured out, or would in very short order, and the discoveries of the 20th century blew them away. I suspect biology is getting close to that point.

 

[3113]

We should remember that neither the teachers nor the students at this level are really equipped to deal with intellectual complexity.

Sooo, let me see if I understand this argument. Because neither the teachers nor the students can deal with intellectual complexity (hmmm...I think that qualifies as a questionable premise. We all get bad or stupid teachers like your history teacher, but that doesn't mean that all teachers and all students at...which level are we dealing with?...are not equipped to deal with what you consider to be subject matter too complex for their intellect. I'm afraid I'm going to have to reject the premise on which this conclusion is based, as you can't prove that both teacher and students at some level or other are not equipped to deal with whatever you mean by intellectual complexity. However, assuming I *was* willing to accept it...) because they can't deal with such complexities, we should forgo teaching evolution?

I'm afraid if we follow this logic, we wouldn't be teaching science at all, because science at higher levels is always VERY complex. Newton's Principa where he explained his theory of gravity is no light reading. Yet we're able to explain gravity to grade school children. We offer many simplified versions of how science works to lower grades, and more complicated versions to higher levels.

I really don't think that just because evolution can be a complicated subject that it can't be taught in some valid, simplified version to grade school kids. Or that if it is complicated, that it shouldn't be taught at all. That would be like telling kids the Earth is flat because it's too complicated to explain to them that it's round, so why bother? You don't lie to kids just because the truth is complicated and lies are easy.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Oh -- I feel the need to go through this point by point! Apparently your "large" mind was not actually reading (or understanding) what I had posted?

First --

"James, evolution is the base that biology stands upon. Without it, most of the rest of biology doesn't work."

Yes -- as I said, there are TWO pieces to evolutionary theory -- first -- the concept that all life is descended from other life, that all life is related. Without this, biology does not make much sense.

The SECOND piece is the MECHANISM -- natural selection or whatever, by which that evolution was driven. Here is a discussion on that topic that you may find interesting.

that link leads to a very concise and cogent essay which says just about exactly what has already been said here on the subject of evolution-- AND on the subject of what constitutes a scientific fact.

All I am saying is that it is overly simplistic and misleading to present the MECHANISM of evolution as proven fact to middle school and high school students. At this point ID has even less to back it up, and it probably does not deserve to be mentioned. However, I personally remain VERY unconvinced that natural selection is an adequate explanation of HOW evolution came to be.

read that same article once more; we can watch natural selection actually taking place right here, right now. natural selection as the main driving force for evolution is one of those theories that has been so well proven and so well defended that it comes very close to being a 'fact'.

Hmm -- how much physics do you understand? The physicists in the 19th century thought they had it all figured out, or would in very short order, and the discoveries of the 20th century blew them away. I suspect biology is getting close to that point.

yes, and the doctors of the nineteenth century thought that Glands were the answer to everything, and Freud thought that he understood all the wrongs in the minds of men-- although he admitted that he never figured out "what women want"

The Victorian age was a welter of absolutes. It was a time when scientists thought they could draw hard and fast lines between species, including human ones, and find the one single beneficial ingredient in any herb. Scientific thought was in its infancy, and like all children, there was a good deal of careful coloring inside the lines. There was a certain amount of hysteria--- the difference between knowing nothing and knowing something is about a thousand percent, and when some new thing becomes knowable on top of that!

Science is never quite so surprised at new discoveries as the media likes to make out. Individual scientists, certainly-- but the big picture simply enlarges its frame and keeps looking for more.

I understand what you mean when you say that students are mislead when theories are taught as fact; read your article once more for an apologia for that habit. If kids went to a secular Sunday school and spent time learning about the real world, and about how the process that is science actually functions, then it might be less confusing to them to hear other terms. But they learn Jesus-loves-me-yes-I-know, instead, and study the bible as if it were actually fact. No wonder they get so confused!

 

[Caitano]

The term "theory" is what the creationists have grabbed onto as a means of fooling people like James into thinking that Evolution is merely an educated guess that may be totally disproved when a few more facts are known.

RGraham has rightly shown that in scientific terms, a 'theory' is a set of concepts designed to describe something that happens in the physical universe. As he so well stated, the 'theory' of evolution is one of those scientific theories that has been able to stand the test of time.

Theory actually ranks higher than fact. A theory like evolution by natural selection is based upon many thousands of facts.

 

[WRJames]

Sooo, let me see if I understand this argument. Because neither the teachers nor the students can deal with intellectual complexity (hmmm...I think that qualifies as a questionable premise. We all get bad or stupid teachers like your history teacher, but that doesn't mean that all teachers and all students at...which level are we dealing with?...are not equipped to deal with what you consider to be subject matter too complex for their intellect. I'm afraid I'm going to have to reject the premise on which this conclusion is based, as you can't prove that both teacher and students at some level or other are not equipped to deal with whatever you mean by intellectual complexity. However, assuming I *was* willing to accept it...) because they can't deal with such complexities, we should forgo teaching evolution?

I'm afraid if we follow this logic, we wouldn't be teaching science at all, because science at higher levels is always VERY complex. Newton's Principa where he explained his theory of gravity is no light reading. Yet we're able to explain gravity to grade school children. We offer many simplified versions of how science works to lower grades, and more complicated versions to higher levels.

I really don't think that just because evolution can be a complicated subject that it can't be taught in some valid, simplified version to grade school kids. Or that if it is complicated, that it shouldn't be taught at all. That would be like telling kids the Earth is flat because it's too complicated to explain to them that it's round, so why bother? You don't lie to kids just because the truth is complicated and lies are easy.

Not quite understanding gravity does not have the political and philosophical implications of not quite understanding evolution -- and by the way, Newton was at best a first approximation to understanding gravity. It remains one of the more mysterious of the natural phenomena.

 

[WRJames]

read that same article once more; we can watch natural selection actually taking place right here, right now. natural selection as the main driving force for evolution is one of those theories that has been so well proven and so well defended that it comes very close to being a 'fact'.

Well, certainly is would seem to be a fact that narural selection can shape evolution , just as erosion can shape rock. I go back to my Mt. Rushmore example though -- is it reaonable to suppose that it can be the SOLE mechanism of evolution? It just seems to me to be -- well, wildly improbable.

 

[Liar]

is it reaonable to suppose that it can be the SOLE mechanism of evolution?

According to researchers who have studied the phenomena of genetic variations, mutations and natural selection, asked questions like "How many generations, how many rounds of random variation and natural elimination would it take to reach from A to B?" and sat down to calcualte this: Well...yes.