Religion vs. Science is a false dichotomy

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ID (Creationism) is not falsifiable, period. You would have to change the concept of Science in order for that to be accepted as scientific, which it seems some creationists attempt to do. It isn't a conspiracy, just that it doesn't fit the requirements.


Be specific! What you mean is from the fundies perspective, because there are a lot of Christians that accept evolution.


Who says that? I suppose creationists claim that. The theory of evolution explains the natural world, and that's it, no more no less than that, it has no purpose and no reason whatsoever to argue in favor or against the existence of God, that is a separate field, certaintly not science, much less biology.


ID appeals to the supernatural, therefore it would be offensive if it was indeed considered as science.


Exactly, as much as beautiful ID sounds, science isn't catered to the likes of the creationist observer.


There isn't such a conspiracy.

The question here is not about "teaching children the sciences". The question here is about *what* children are being taught *about* the sciences as well as *about* things physically related to this earth, the universe, our existence and so on.



That kind of comment needs to be tightly tucked into a dark spot.



Get that possibility mentioned in the classroom alongside the "scientific" dogma typically scoffing at anything like it and at least I will have no more complaint.

The worst extreme is the middle.

Even in a setting where government is doing parents' jobs?

But yes, I suppose so.

Well, it was not meant as a reply to your post, but to the thread, and it is not a general law either.

I just think that this whole 'intuition' thing is probably the worst idea in regards to serious topics such as the ones present in the science vs. religion debates, and most likely a form of disguise that religion takes to appear as a third option.

ID is the idea that the earth, the universe, and so on are created by a sentient being that possesses a creative purpose. Strict ID does not assume that the God of the Bible is the creator, nor does it assume any activity of such a creator is evident in current events. Just as geologists and other evolutionists point to the fossil record as evidence of evolution, ID proponents point to the orderly structure of the earth and the universe as a kind of "fossil record" of a deliberate, purposeful, or conscious mind.

Creationism or "special creation" is the relation of origins to the 6-day creation as told by the author of Genesis. My objection to ID is its failure to acknowledge God as that intelligent mind which gave order to chaos. Something I might say from time to time is how certain things in the material and natural world exist as they do "by design." Well, if God is the author and creator of the universe, then logic dictates that He designed it. I dislike ID because of it's nebulous approach to the achievement of creation. Creationism makes more sense to me because it actually gives a name to the Creator and His plan for humanity, not to mention the awesome power IF the universe really was created in 6 days. I've mentioned alternatives to 6-day special creation as to how the account of Genesis may be read in other threads that concede at least the possibility of the six days not necessarily being 24-hour days as we understand them or perhaps the days, which may or may not have been 24 hours, were depictions of gradual events captured in snapshots of the order in which creation occurred but not in CONSECUTIVE days.

The logic is this: If Creationism is correct, then it follows that ID is also correct. But if ID is correct and not Special Creation, it only means something with a mind created the universe--for all we know, we are all participants in some massive computer simulation in which all fundamental sub-atomic particles are simply pixels. For we really know (according to ID), the original designer could have grown old, developed an illness, and died while leaving the computer switched on into perpetuity.

Creationism and ID are origin hypotheses as far as anyone else is concerned. But so is the so-called Big Bang "theory" and abiogenesis. NONE of any of those hypotheses have EVER proven falsifiable. And since evolution has no falsifiable mechanism, it belongs in the same class as ID/Creationism. I mean, if you're going to teach one unfalsifiable presupposition, it's my opinion that others ought to be included even if they amount to little more than margin notes.

Current cosmological-origin theory (the so-called "Big Bang") is indeed falsifiable. Just find another theory that explains the three-degree-Kelvin background radiation of the universe, and observed redshift phenomena, and certain other phenomena observed with the aid of Hubble and other observatories, and which requires neither a God (no matter what name you give It) nor some as-yet-undiscovered physical phenomenon, and it's been falsified.

For that matter, find any object in a deep-sky image that is more than fourteen billion lightyears away, or is at such a distance but is of such nature that it could not exist by current cosmological theory until much later (remembering that due to speed-of-light lag in observation, the farther away something is, the older the image we see is). Bang, it's disproved, and cosmologists begin stumbling over themselves to be the first to propose a viable alternate theory.

ID is non-falsifiable as it posits a Creator that exists outside Its creation; since It is not a part of the universe It created, any failure to observe It is easily explained away as It just not being there to observe. There is no experiment or observation which could possibly disprove Its existence.

As for abiogenesis - this is one of the greatest misconceptions in all of cosmology. The Big Bang doesn't purport to explain the origin of life, nor does evolutionary theory - we note that it exists on this planet, we note that we have not yet discovered its existence elsewhere, and lacking more than the one data point on how life started, we hold theorizing in abeyance. (As Holmes observed, it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has facts. Insensibly, one begins to twist the facts to suit the theory, rather than the theory to suit the facts.)

We can observe the chemical bases for life elsewhere in the universe - Saturn's moon Titan, for instance, or certain interstellar clouds which contain organic matter. We can therefore suppose it possible that life has come into existence elsewhere, although we cannot call it "theory" until we have more data. Perhaps Hoyle's "panspermia" theory is correct, in which case the important question becomes - where did the seed come from? Perhaps it is not. We can have no idea yet.

"Big Bang" is NOT falsifiable because it can neither be observed to have happened, nor can it be recreated in the lab. Now, we can observe certain effects of "something," but the "Big Bang" is only one of any number of possible explanations. "Big Bang" is little more than our best guess.

Now, deep-sky imaging only works within our ability to observe. It's possible that we COULD observe light/radiation sources that ARE more than fourteen billion lightyears away, or it could be what we observe as distant, small objects are actually MUCH larger objects lying at greater distances. Plus, various anomalous light phenomena have been observed that are really only explained (once again, best guess) either by combined intergalactic gravitational forces or other mirror or "lensing" effects. Seems like the universe just gets yet another billion years or so older every decade.

Now, it's simply not possible for the universe as we know it to be infinitely old. One MIGHT read Genesis to record the origins of the earth and the universe as God revealed it to the seer. It actually makes MORE sense to interpret it as a miraculous 6-day special creation. But if you don't, there's no reason to think that the Earth and the remainder of the universe are the result of two unique and separate creations. If God wanted a consistent creation that followed physics and logic as we understand it, then the Earth could very well have been in God's timeless presence for a length of time that is anyone's guess. By the time the earth was positioned, all the lights of the universe had enough "time" to reach the Earth by our present point in time. After all, Genesis does indicate the creation of "light" before the sun and the moon. If the "glory of God" was enough to light the world and support the arrival of life sparked by God Himself, then there would be no need for the Sun. The Sun and the rest of the universe are necessary only for sustained life independent of the creator. It explains a number of things, such as why if the universe is so old that there does not exist any known planet upon which life is sustainable nor why life hasn't already appeared before or again since us. It suggests to me that the design of the universe is deliberate, not some cosmological accident.

It offers a respectable enough explanation, though not necessarily a "scientific" one in the contemporary sense.

The question becomes, then, why one supported "theory" (to use that term loosely) is more respectable when it has little more actual scientific merit. None of them are falsifiable, yet anti-believers lend them a tremendous amount of credence, all things considered. It suggests, in my view, that such explanations are worthy of more weight than creation simply because their proponents find something about religion, Christianity in particular, hugely distasteful. And this lends the question of what that "something" is, and I have an idea that "something" is far removed from science.

You have no idea what "falsifiable" means, do you?

Let me help you out here: if an idea can be disproved by some hypothetical observation, then it is falsifiable. DeaconBlues just gave you several examples of possible observations that would disprove the Big Bang theory, thus demonstrating that it is falsifiable. Evolutionary theory would be disproved by fossilized Cambrian bunnies or by the existence of Vulcans. Newtonian mechanics would be disproved by an object changing its velocity in the absence of any force acting upon it.

What would disprove ID?


Right, except you are not being oppressed. A very large number of biologists are Christians. They have no anti-Christian agenda. They support evolution because it is backed by this thing called "empirical evidence." My evolutionary biology professor sends her daughter to a Christian preschool. She's hardly pushing some nefarious atheist agenda.

We understand the mechanism of evolution - that of the chemical process of reproduction of genetic materials. As for ID, WHAT you designer is supposed to be made of? HOW you designer make the lifeforms from nowhere?

Creationists had disguised their creationist agenda as Intelligent Design.

Intuition is not some ethereal, unexplainable feeling that somehow suggests answers to questions out of the blue. Intuition is the result of years of experience and reason. It's applied without referring to the particular logical thought process that led to the intuition, because those thoughts are not always handy; one may have internalized them -- that's how they led to the intuition -- but not be able to recall them at the moment.

I agree that science is not the ultimate refutation of religion, I think that common sense is. You could call that "intuition."

Science admits to what it doesn't know, so it will never be able to make sweeping declarations, which is unfortunately why it's easy for religious zealots to attack it: because as a field of study it's so honest it admits there are many things it doesn't yet know.

(However, the theory of evolution has reams of evidence to support it.)

Intuition is not all that reliable. It frequently leads to incorrect conclusions.

Aristotle intuitively believed that heaver objects fall fast than lighter object (in general). He was wrong.

ruveyn

ruveyn

Who am I to gainsay my patient? I give my advice, but it's the patient's decision, not mine. It is only when a patient is incapable of making an informed consent that I can substitute my judgement. Legally, ethically and morally, this is the correct approach to the practice of medicine.



Rational means, to me, weighing the potential risks and benefits of various courses of action, and making a decision about which of those courses of action to take bearing those risks and benefits in mind. Provided that a patient has listened to me and understands when I tell the patient that antibiotics will kill the pathogen infecting the tonsils and that a tincture of wolfsbane won't, there's nothing I can do beyond that. More to the point, there is nothing that I would want to do beyond that.

People have a right to be wrong.



I disagree with you. Further, taking a straw poll of my colleagues this morning (not a representative sample, I grant you) 100% (16 out of 16 physicians) disagree with you, too. Certainly there are physicians who are "disorder-centric" but most of them are clinical researchers rather than front-line caregivers.

There are times that I do want to see someone die, because I know that any aggressive action that I take is only going to provide a marginal extension of their life, with very little, if any, quality. I have signed plenty of DNR orders where my patient has decided, with my full support, that science is to be held at bay.

There are plenty of situations where "the cure is worse than the disease." At that point the science of medicine becomes the servant of the art of medicine. If an oncology patient choses to forego chemo or rad therapy, at what point do we hand over the morphine pump? That decision has to do with balancing the patient's pain with the patient's quality of life, which are not readily quantifiable or subject to "scientific" assessment.

And I'm sure you didn't ask any leading questions that would result in completely unanimous agreement with your stance.

Physicians and "front-line caregivers" are always a bit removed from the science, simply by the nature of their work, so they will not always regard science with the same importance as do the researchers who develop the treatments you apply. We have watched the effects of physicians disregarding science before, and the outcome is the return of bacterial disease because too many "front-line caregivers" have no idea whatsoever how to responsibly prescribe medications.

And you would be right. (And your ironic speculation is both unwarranted, and a little offensive.)



You are conflating incompetence with my description of ethical medical practice. There is no excuse for shoddy practice. Allowing a patient to make an informed decision about a course of treatment (or withholding a course of treatment) is an ethical practice. Reaching for the prescription pad when the patient says, "I want more Xanax," is not.

I don't want to discount the importance of the work that researchers do. It is a key component of what makes my job possible. But the practice of medicine doesn't happen in the lab, it happens in the relationship between patient and physician (note who comes first in that formula).