Darwinism & 'Christian nation' theory

Originally posted by RJHinds
I have already pointed out the ideas were there long before Darwin
came along and wrote his book.

How on earth can someone claiming to be a historian - as Barton does - seriously think that "the entire debate on creation and evolution" happened "long before Darwin came along and wrote his book"? Shouldn't a historian - one decade into the 21st century - be aware of the huge impact that Darwin's work had on the "creation and evolution" debate not to mention the expansion of scientific knowledge pertaining to this "debate" that has occurred over the 150 years since Darwin?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Just exactly who were these founding fathers to discuss Darwin? Don't you understand the phrase 'founding fathers'? They came about in the late 1700's not the mid 18's.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Yes I understand this and so does Barton. IT IS YOU THAT HAVE A LACK
OF UNDERSTANDING.

Just answer his question.
If you don't know the answer, just say so, no shame in that, instead of trying to disguise your ignorance in the subject by getting offensive.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Okay, in that case I am with you. I thought you meant you did not want it there. 😏

I am going to be rude and put words into FMF's mouth at this point. If I mis-represent him, I am quite happy for him to correct me. However, this is my understanding...

FMF wants children to be taught Creationism in school, in a Religious Education class. Or possibly in a philosophy class. He does not want it taught as if it were actually legitimate science since it clearly is not.

I think he would also be happy for ID to be used as a counter example in a 'What is science and how does it work' module, maybe within the science curriculum. I certainly would. I think it should be discussed along with topics like homeopathy and crystal energy to highlight the difference between science and make-believe.

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by Penguin
I am going to be rude and put words into FMF's mouth at this point.

No problem. I've got a big mouth. Plenty of room.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I have already pointed out the ideas were there long before Darwin
came along and wrote his book.

Wrong. (well you posted it so that's really not a surprise is it, you are kind of just wrong by default.)

Lamarckian evolution, is incorrect and is not Darwinian evolution, and we don't teach
Darwinian evolution because Darwin never new about DNA and so he had a modal with no
mechanism.

Darwinian evolution was replaced with an improved version almost immediately after his death
and there have been several major revisions and improvements since then taking into account
the new information we have discovered with improvements in chemistry and physics allowing
more and more detailed experiments and new types of information and evidence to become
available.

The ideas of modern evolutionary theory thus were evidently and obviously not there long before
Darwin but couldn't possibly have been there before Darwin.

This renders Barton's ludicrous arguments both demonstrably wrong and patently idiotic.
They couldn't possibly have had a complete discussion of evolution before Darwin because we still
haven't finished finding everything out about evolution today and will never know everything about it.

And that is even before you get to the fact that the founders really and demonstrably did intend to create
a secular government to prevent any one religion from imposing it's will on anybody else and the fact
that he disputes this as well either makes him [Barton] a complete idiot and ignoramus or a liar and charlatan.

The fact that you automatically agree with anything anyone says that is consistent with what you already
believe regardless of the merits of the argument or evidence available and are willing to fork out money
to buy such claptrap as this guys book is ample explanation for why he is publishing such a patently idiotic
and evidently false parody of history and reality.

Gullible idiots buy this kind of crap in droves.

Originally posted by FMF
Putting your theory about Christianity being a "false religion" to one side for a moment, do you think that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” as the man cited in the OP claims?

In America 75% of people call themselves Christian - but out of those people there are probably only about 30 % who are serious about their faith.

So yes America is a Christian country.......but that will decline over time as people become unsatisfied with religion all together.

Most people call Christianity their religion because they are ignorant and spiritually lazy - and just accept Christianity for the lack of knowing anything about what is true religion.

If people became serious about spirituality they would drop Christianity very quickly........but people are not serious about God or religion and they will blindly accept Christianity till they die.

Originally posted by Dasa
In America 75% of people call themselves Christian - but out of those people there are probably only about 30 % who are serious about their faith.

So yes America is a Christian country.......but that will decline over time as people become unsatisfied with religion all together.

Most people call Christianity their religion because they are ignorant and sp ...[text shortened]... e are not serious about God or religion and they will blindly accept Christianity till they die.

Jesus loves you Dasa......even if he was spiritually lazy. 😛

Originally posted by Dasa
Its an absolute joke that for over 50years the great debate of whether to teach the kids creationism or evolution in the class room is still going on.

The joke is that we have false evolution in one corner and false religion in the other corner trying to to convince the other of their origin of life theories.

When we speak of creationism ......why is Chri ...[text shortened]... understood Vedic knowledge coming about by speculation and fabrication by unqualified persons.

All the arguments made by science against Christian creationism apply equally and identically
to all other forms of creationism including yours.

So whether you accept those arguments or not, it really makes no difference which version
of creationism happens to be sciences opponent. The debate and outcome is identical.

No version of creationism is science, and thus none can or should be taught in a science class.

The fundamental problem that creationism has is that it is the argument that 'god did it', whichever
god or gods you pick. You still fall to the same counter argument which says that creationism isn't
science because it makes no, and can make no, predictions because a god can do anything for any
reason and that it can't be tested or falsified because no set of facts would be inconsistent with it
and therefore it fails to meet the criteria of a scientific theory which requires that it be testable and
falsifiable and make predictions.

Notice I didn't need to or bother to mention which version of creationism or any specifics of any
particular religion to make that refutation of creationism being science.

It doesn't matter which version of creationism is being put forward or by whom.
No version of creationism can ever be science, even if it is correct.

So science classes will, and must, contain evolutionary theory and will not, and must not, contain
creationism in any form.

This isn't false science, this is science, these are the principles upon which science operates.
If you don't like these principles then fine, but anything you propose as an alternative is thus
not-science and shouldn't be taught in a science class.

You can argue that evolution and science is wrong and the creationism is right (you would be wrong but hey)
but you can't argue that evolution is not science and the creationism is.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Theory of Intelligent Design

http://www.crystalinks.com/intelligentdesign.html

Science of Intelligent Design

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/832

Top Questions on Intelligent Design

http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php

The fact that a load of creationist whackjobs have made websites titled the theory of
intelligent design does not demonstrate that they are right or that such a thing exists.

And certainly the scientific community disagrees with both you and them, and fought and won
a trial to prove it.

I.D. is creationism with some buzzwords in it to make it sound pseudo-scientific, of course
they claimed it was science, that was the whole point of the exercise, to get around the separation
of church and state by attempting to fool people into thinking I.D. was science and not religion.
They failed.

I.D. fools nobody, it's religious, creationist nonsense. It is not a theory.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Wrong. (well you posted it so that's really not a surprise is it, you are kind of just wrong by default.)

Lamarckian evolution, is incorrect and is not Darwinian evolution, and we don't teach
Darwinian evolution because Darwin never new about DNA and so he had a modal with no
mechanism.

Darwinian evolution was replaced with an improved version false parody of history and reality.

Gullible idiots buy this kind of crap in droves.

In the future we will have more information supporting intelligent design
and creationism, but in the meantime we have to deal with the information
that we have and that is what they did in their times. Surprise! 😏

Originally posted by googlefudge
The fact that a load of creationist whackjobs have made websites titled the theory of
intelligent design does not demonstrate that they are right or that such a thing exists.

And certainly the scientific community disagrees with both you and them, and fought and won
a trial to prove it.

I.D. is creationism with some buzzwords in it to make it s ...[text shortened]... .
They failed.

I.D. fools nobody, it's religious, creationist nonsense. It is not a theory.

That does not mean it is the end of all trials on the subject, Spanky. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
In the future we will have more information supporting intelligent design
and creationism, but in the meantime we have to deal with the information
that we have and that is what they did in their times. Surprise! 😏

You have no information supporting intelligent design.

For information to support a theory (which I.D. is not) that theory has to only be
supportable by specific information.
So that if the information were different then it wouldn't be in support of the theory.

The value of a theory is not what it predicts but what it doesn't predict.
The narrower the focus of a theory, the fewer things that it predicts if true, the better that theory is.

For example, say you have an experiment where you react two chemicals together and want to know
what temperature the resultant product will end up at. (rounded to the nearest degree K for simplicity)

Hypothesis A predicts that the temperature will be between 25K and 56K

Hypothesis B predicts that the temperature will be between 49K and 54K

You run the experiment and find that the temperature comes out at 52K

Both hypothesis got this right, but one had a huge range of potential answers and the other a small one.

Hypothesis A predicts 31 different possibilities, and hypothesis B predicts 5 possibilities.

So the a priori chance that any one of those possibilities is right is much higher for hypothesis B than for A.

The a priori chance that Hypothesis A has for the actual result being 52K is 100/31 = 3.23% +/- 0.005

The a priori chance that hypothesis B has for the actual result being 52K is 100/5 = 20.00% +/- 0.005

So hypothesis B is better because its predictions are far more accurate and precise.
Despite the fact that A and B both predicted the right answer, hypothesis B gave a much higher probability
of 52k being the right answer.

Hypothesis A gave 52K a 3.23% appx probability of being right.
Hypothesis B gave 52K a 20.00% chance of being right.


Now lets put the god hypothesis to the same test, call it hypothesis G.

Hypothesis G states that 'god did it' and that whatever the outcome it is gods will.

God is an infinite transcendental and infinitely complex being which we don't have any knowledge other than
it's defined as being able to do anything (or just anything logically possible).

So the possible results that could be caused by god are infinite.

So the predicted temperature range from hypothesis G is from 0K to [infinity]K.
this gives us an infinite number of possible outcomes.

Thus ...

The a priori chance that hypothesis G has for the actual result being 52K is 100/infinity = 0% (mathematicians don't freak out,
just take deep breaths)

So the probability assigned in advance by hypothesis G to the right answer is zero.

So the god hypothesis does in fact include the right answer in it's range of possibilities, but only by including ALL
possibilities.

Thus no result that this experiment could have would actually disprove hypothesis G.

Thus no result would actually support hypothesis G.

Creationism posits that god did it.
God can do anything, and thus any result or observation or piece of information would fit.
The probability creationism assigns to any particular outcome before hand is zero.

'god did it', predicts absolutely nothing.

Thus no information can be considered to be for creationism.
Because first it would have to be possible for information to be against creationism...
For there to be the possibility of evidence that would contradict it.

So no, in the future we will have exactly the same amount of information supporting ID as we have today.

None whatsoever.

Originally posted by RJHinds
That does not mean it is the end of all trials on the subject, Spanky. 😏

I am sure there will be more ridiculous trials and you will lose those too.

This argument is done and won, and you lost.

Creationism is and never will be science, and this would be true even if it were
correct and evolution was false.

Originally posted by googlefudge
You have no information supporting intelligent design.

For information to support a theory (which I.D. is not) that theory has to only be
supportable by specific information.
So that if the information were different then it wouldn't be in support of the theory.

The value of a theory is not what it predicts but what it doesn't predict.
The nar ...[text shortened]... tly the same amount of information supporting ID as we have today.

None whatsoever.

Nice; thumbs up. (As a non-mathematician, I still want to whisper “in the limit, goes to…”, but I know that’s why you made the aside about taking deep breaths, whilst keeping the argument uncluttered.)

I’m wondering if a similar example might be constructed with regard to the probability that such a god-of-infinite-[logical]-possibilities exists?

The bottom-line is, as you point out, that you end up with a proposition that is in principle neither verifiable or falsifiable (i.e., is indefeasible)—as I understand it, neither empirically nor logically.

Originally posted by googlefudge
You have no information supporting intelligent design.

For information to support a theory (which I.D. is not) that theory has to only be
supportable by specific information.
So that if the information were different then it wouldn't be in support of the theory.

The value of a theory is not what it predicts but what it doesn't predict.
The nar ...[text shortened]... tly the same amount of information supporting ID as we have today.

None whatsoever.

You are becoming a complete NUT. 😲