Evolution vs. Intelligent Design discussion

Two incompatible ideas? I don't think they are, but they need to be addressed.

I hear a topic commonly brought up in debates about how life ORIGINATED. The general scientific consensus is some form of abiogenesis. Look it up and read about it.

What needs to be made clear is that while we do not know exactly how life STARTED on this planet, we know how it has PROGRESSED into what it is now. I think that to attack neo-darwinism for not explaining the origins of the first organic molecule is like criticizing music theory for not explaining exactly how humans first conceived of music.

Perhaps this entire debate of Evolution V. Intelligent Design should be aptly renamed as Abiogenesis V. Intelligent Creation.

Thoughts?

Tedwood wrote: "Perhaps this entire debate of Evolution V. Intelligent Design should be aptly renamed as Abiogenesis V. Intelligent Creation."

I think most of the same people debate on both sides. A very few people I've talked to on GR have held the position that God must have started life but that thereafter it evolved, possibly with divine loading of the dice but evolution nonetheless.

The fundamental argument is very much the same, though. "I don't see how X could have happened naturally, therefore it must have happened supernaturally, therefore God did it." Oops, I meant "I don't see how X could have happened naturally, therefore it must have happened DELIBERATELY as an act of an intelligent superbeing. Therefore Go-- I mean "an intelligent superbeing" did it."

Pure argument from personal ignorance, intelligent superbeing of the gaps. Of course, this requires a lot of wilful disregard for evidence and argument to be able to maintain the requisite degree of ignorance -- one nearly has to pluck out one's eyes, deafen one's ears, and create a gap with prefrontal lobotomy that cannot be filled with readily available evidence, at this point, in order to maintain a gap large enough to drive an intelligent superbeing through for evolution.

The gap is indeed larger for origins of life. Here the gap is still maintained by ignorance, but here it is the ignorance of how everything works, and why we have very little reason to believe that this has a special cause when nothing else that we ever observe has a special cause (one that is outside of the range of effects available to natural causes, basically phenomenal that cannot be connected back to the laws of physics.

It's like creation. the JCM religions are really big on creation. Only, no human being has ever witnessed the actual creation of anything, something from nothing. We have this law, the law of conservation of mass-energy, that basically states this as an empirical truth that is so tightly integrated with the laws of physics that they'd break horribly if it were violated even a little; we'd have to pretty much start over. All we ever see is stuff that already existed, moving around and changing form, the time evolution of matter that is what physics is all about. But ID people don't "get" that -- they still all really believe in creation, and so they look for the creation of life, instead of the time evolution of life as an extension of the time evolution of the matter that life is made up of.

Still, I agree with you that there could and perhaps should be a split debate (to the extent that there is any "debate" when the argument is really "Genesis" vs "Science", not "One scientific hypothesis" vs "A plausible alternative"). At least that would focus on a real gap in our knowledge, although not a gap that we have any reason to believe won't/can't be filled by physics.

rgb

What separates both sides of this debate is the availability of information/evidence. Someone claiming that an intentional being created any from nothing has nothing to recommend to help his/her opponent to gain knowledge support for the claim. It is for this reason that I advocate spreading the terms and their meanings. I feel the defining of terms will foster a better understanding.
For instance, if abiogenesis and evolution had been clearly defined in the film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," any viewer not familiar the scientific principles at hand would have instantly been more equipped to make an informed decision as to what they believed about the film's claims.

No argument there, although from the sound of things (I haven't seen the film, but others on various lists I'm on have) it was pure trash from beginning to end anyway, and therefore had no interest in clearly defining terms or putting forth arguments.

rgb

R.C. wrote: "Expelled was hate filled propaganda, pure and simple. Even the target audience could not stomach it, and it failed miserably. "

Yeah, I didn't have a LOT of respect for Ben Stein beforehand, although I thought he played a butthead adequately in The Mask. But comparing people who believe in the science of evolution to Hitler is pretty far out there...

rgb

Yeah, like that. And of course I'm a scientist, and you gotta know I hang out on street corners with a big garbage bag and a can of Raid, hoping that I can impromptu-gas a neighbor, just like all of my scientist-nazi friends...:-)

Or perhaps not. Perhaps some of Mr. Stein's "relatives" were people like Albert Einstein who fled Europe because they could see what was coming with clear eyes better than most people and ended up over here, where free science has produced a couple of centuries of incredible progress and an enormous amount of wealth, where science has eradicated smallpox and can control diseases that would once have become pandemic plagues, where science has permitted us to predict the paths of Hurricanes and thereby save many lives that would otherwise be lost, where science is slowly cleaning up the lakes and rivers and preventing the overfishing of our Oceans and waterways.

Love of God and compassion and empathy (alone) lead you back to a place and time where the world was flat, the sky was solid, the cure for disease was prayer (which is just like saying there wasn't any cure for disease), the cure for poverty was prayer (which is just like saying that poverty was ubiquitous), the cure for warring princes was prayer (which is just the same as saying that the whole world lived in a state of constant war), and where if one dared to speak out against prayer and attempt to invent a better way of learning about the world you were hung, burned at the stake, had your skin "carded" (scraped off of your body in bloody strips by a carding comb), were castrated, disembowelled, beaten, raped, robbed, racked, whipped -- all in the name of the Love of God.

Indeed, most of the people who actually gassed the Jews were Christians, and they hated the Jews because the New Testament taught them to hate the Jews because the Jews killed Christ. Not "Scientists" -- quite the opposite. Christians, especially Christians of the ignorant sort, steeped in e.g. John and Paul's words. It's funny, not funny ha-ha but funny sick, that Jesus was a Jew, preached to the Jews, commanded his followers to strictly follow Jewish Law (e.g. the laws as laid out in the Old Testament, no pork or shrimp, stoning adulterers (which includes all who have ever been divorced and remarried), stoning all the Wal-Mart employees who work on the Sabbath, and only beating your slaves almost to death) and even called a Canaanite woman who came to him to beg a miracle a "dog". But the Jews -- surely the people best equipped to recognize their own Messiah -- rejected him as the Messiah, and the Gentiles who co-opted the new sect when the Jews proved to be a resistant lot basically decided to ignore Old Testament Law except when and where it suited them, and to blame the Jews for the death of the Jew that they worshipped.

Science is so simple, so clean in comparison.

rgb

Honestly, I'd never heard of "skin carding" before. Interesting and juicy...

If neither of you have read it, I highly recommend Daniel Dennett's "Breaking The Spell." RGB, as a scientist, I'm sure you will find the research advocated within very intriguing.

People like Stein are dangerous, and they aren't going to go away over a decade. The only answer, it seems, is to be equally vigilant and provocative and outspoken with the advantage of intellectual honesty.

Tedwood wrote: "Honestly, I'd never heard of "skin carding" before. Interesting and juicy...

If neither of you have read it, I highly recommend Daniel Dennett's "Breaking The Spell." RGB, as a scientist, I'm sure..."

Remember, if you use the "add book/author" link above the comment entry form (or use [some markup you can learn clicking the link next to it) you can inline the books so a) they get automatically added to the books mentioned in this thread panel(s) and b) clicking them takes you to the book's review page and e.g. amazon or B&N links. Makes it easier for us to check out the books. Just another goodreads feature...;-)

Like so:

[book:Breaking the Spell Religion as a Natural Phenomenon|2067]

Click on it and see where it takes you, and not it on the toplevel discussion page (I hope).

rgb

Oh, and carding -- I found an accidental reference to it when looking up some things about the Spanish Inquisition. It was a real favorite of the inquisitors to use on Jews, Moors, people who had land you wanted to sieze. But there were so many hellish tortures used throughout this era. See e.g. History of Torture Throughout the Ages. A really, really appalling book.

rgb

HIstory of Torture...added to my "to read" list. Thanks!

Perhaps you've also heard of The Spanish Horse. Imagine sitting straddled on a wedge and having weights tied to your feet until you are split in half.

Tedwood wrote: "HIstory of Torture...added to my "to read" list. Thanks!

Perhaps you've also heard of The Spanish Horse. Imagine sitting straddled on a wedge and having weights tied to your feet until you are spl..."

No, but there are so many horrible things and ways that our ancestors used to kill one another, slowly. It's good to live now, and not then. The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is one of the best ideas our founding fathers ever had. Our current system of law and punishment has many flaws and is far from rational or perfect, but at least we don't condemn people to be racked, half-hung, castrated, drawn and quartered any more, all before a cheering audience.

rgb

Correct. Lethal injections and water-boarding are quit palatable in comparison. Nowadays, the cheering audiences will settle for choreographed violence and, to the most extreme scenarios, unregulated bare-knuckle fights. I wonder if we'll always be a violent species.