Attack on science

[Tagred]

Well in my travels over the past few months i have noticed that there has been a growing movement to attack science from almost every quarter. Unfortunately most of it is coming from fundamentalist christians and other religious types.

Most of this is coming from evangelical america where there is an ongoing battle to allow things like "intellgent design" and alternatives to evolution being taught in their schools and colleges. In some cases the school governors have succeeded in forcing id to be taught in science classes alongside evolution, even though it is clearly stated in their Constitution that religion and the state must be separate. Some of the argument is that intelligent design is not based on religion but a science, which offers an alternative to evolutionary theory. and its not just limited to America, schools in the UK are springing up with these classes and science in general is being attacked in favour of other reasons.

So everyone, whats your thoughts on intelligent design and science, are they compatible and is id an alternative to evolution? You may already guess what my thoughts are on the subject but i will leave any in depth arguments for later on once the thread has got started.

So come on all, give us your thoughts and reasons for and against id and evolution...

[meow]

Intelligent Design haha thats such a laugh, I mean how intelligent is it to have stuff like death etc ...
and famine earthquakes, global warming, nuclear waste, terrorissts, mental and handicaped people and deformed babies that we can make survive for a few months longer, sounds like realy god dam stupid design if you ask me. if someone was capable of creating all this matter out of nothing surly they could of done a bit better ?

no I think its purly random.
it may or may not be deterministic im not realy sure, quantum physics is to wierd to realy know if were even close to knowing how much more we have yet to learn.

"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This made a lot of people angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea. "

[Tagred]

Thing is a lot of creationist argue about the big bang saying that something cant be created from nothing. there are 2 flaws in that argument.

1. If thats true and they use that argument against science, then surely it can be used against a creator
2. The big bang does not explain the beginnings of the universe, only the time (and note the word) time immediately after the big bang and how the universe may have evolved, the idea is to push that time as close to zero as possible. the big bang theory cannot exist without time, because time was evolved from the big bang, therefore at zero time the argument is irrelevant (so far).

Non sequitor, or circular argument? you decide.

[meow]

wichever way you look at it, its imposible that we could have been created,
for if theres a god what made god? and what made the thing that made god ...

and if its a big bang what cuase the big bang, and what cuase the thing that cuased that ?

but if god could have existed for al time then so could the universe,
time is just a human state of mind anyway.

So realy I think were all just must be a figment of each others imagination.

[teflon]

I know, its crazy to think religion could be taught in a science class to kids who don't know any better.
But it is probably a losing battle look at this .pdf from last week's Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multime...fX_227035a.pdf

[Mankind]

lol, 47% of women believing in telepathy.

jesus christ.

[meow]

I wonder how many people actually beleive those satistics ?

[teflon]

Originally Posted by meow

I wonder how many people actually beleive those satistics ?

Good point, obviously all surveys extrapolate on fairly small numbers and there could have been a credulity conference in town that week, but I do think a lot of people believe in all those silly things mentioned in that survey, just from my personal experience.
Otherwise why would horoscopes be in every tabloid, Derek Acorah not have been assassinated and schools be teaching the bible in biology?

They really do seem to believe in it, a lot of folk.

[meow]

chinese people seem to be totaly into that sort of thing.
I know someone who makes a fair bit of money out of it.

[Tagred]

What scares me though is the we are told that religious fundamentalism is basically bad, and everyone wants to kill everyone else because of it. The people who are telling us this though, are religious fundamentalists... o.O

Christian fundamentalism is just as bad as any sort of religious fundamentalism. The shocking thing is that it is creeping into politics and into our schools. I used to think that religion had no. Now i'm certain that it has no business being in anything at all. Just a shocking way of controlling those who cannot understand that everything to do with religion and gods are a human construct.

In the words of Chriostopher Hitchens "god is not great" and it is certainly a delusion. If it wasnt for science we would still be living as peasants with lafe spans less than half of what they are now, and we certailnly would have no better knowledge of our universe

[majin]

why are they arguing for ID to be taught in science classes? it has no place there, it should be in religious class, not science class..