A War on Science
When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.
In the late 1980s Phillip Johnson, a renowned lawyer and born-again Christian, began to develop a strategy to challenge Darwin. To Johnson, the evidence for natural selection was poor. He also believed that by explaining the world only through material processes was inherently atheistic. If there was a god, science would never be able to discover it.
Johnson recruited other Darwin doubters, including biochemist Professor Michael Behe, mathematician Dr William Dembski, and philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer. These scientists developed the theory of intelligent design (ID) which claims that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the result of an intelligent being. To him, the presence of miniature machines and digital information found in living cells are evidence of a supernatural creator. Throughout the 90s, the ID movement took to disseminating articles, books and DVDs and organising conferences all over the world.
To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive – to replace science with god.
God create everything, from thing put knowledge (science part of god knowledge gifted by chosen temporary be refund when the time age before soul be transfer from physical released like when we came from uterus bring nothing. Its same to properties, fame, title all those are temp. Waste time in this worlds with that material that god create to test us but not many take advantage for next journey they end wasted.
Some comments like to even the field and imply that atheists/evolutionists (aka science are simply the opposite side of the religious coin. Not so. The difference is stark. Science-reliers depend on the evidence presented by people (scientists) who observe the way things work and experiment to reveal its possibility/probability/provability. At every step they indicate which of those conclusions they reached and, everything is subject to reassessment and changing or abandoning as new evidence comes to light. That can, by no stretch of the imagination, be compared to religious faith which cannot be doubted by the adherents to the Bible or Koran. (Kelly K., you might bolster your credibility if you knew the spelling of terms you refer to so prominently. Occams Razor.)
John Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution in which year?
And this is why Europe sees most of the americans as uneducated religious rednecks potentially as dangerous and archaic as the most unadvanced integrist societies
The theory of Intelligent Design is not creationism and it doesn't have a religious motive. Just because a scientist is religious doesn't mean that their theory should be denounced. If that were the case the theory of evolution would never have been accepted. If you actually look at the theories surrounding the origin of life then you would realize what they are all missing, an actual explanation. The idea that cells came to be through chance has nearly no chance of being right since the odds of all the proteins necessary for a simple cell to come into existence by chance are 1 in 10^41,000. Those are terrific odds and unless they had all the time in the world to do, not possible. Plus when scientists talk about the primotrial soup and all of that, there is no evidence of its existence, that and a lot of theories say that the earth had a harsh atmosphere that would have allowed things to come together to form life, but recent evidence shows that this also is not true. No theory other than this one actually addresses all the facts and addresses the problems with the information in DNA and the fact that the only things codes that hold information are DNA, RNA, proteins, and things that are manmade like computers. So if the world could get over the religion vs. science they could see that this theory is science and that unless data appears to disprove it, it is valid.
We know with reasonable certainty that civilisation exploded around 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia. Considering how advanced that civilisation was, and our nature to gather together and make tools, I find the idea that we could have been scratching our arses for 200,000 years of existence before that, with little or nothing to show for it, an insult to my intellect.
If the bible is correct, then a rebellious angel rules the world who can quote the bible quite well, so how do you know you aren't under his thumb? The scribes of Jesus day knew the bible better than you (the vast majority anyway) do and they were convinced of their salvation.
As all scientists know, just because a theory can not be proven, does not mean the theory is invalid. Only until a theory is proven invalid can science prove the theory to be untrue. I would like to think there are individuals who are guided by the most noble part of their consciousness.
That is what I call spirit, the highest within each individual, the kindest and most intelligent of reasoning. Religion is the corruption of individual spirit, the perversion of collective spirit. Unfortunately, the genetic psychopaths amongst us, those who desire control over the unfettered, generous, creative spirit of the individual, tend to be drawn into organized religion, just as they are drawn into corporations, politics, and the military-industrial complex. Before the Christian church was highjacked by the declining Roman Empire, the loosely organized Gnostic communities provided service to the common people. They helped each other and most importantly, the less fortunate living within their midst. I still believe there are good, sincere, religious people, although far and few between. Thanks for your response.
Science has become a switch-addiction for religion. Science is most certainly not the panacea that many who have abandoned spiritual belief have imagined it would be. Look around us, science has helped humans on many levels but science has also brought nature to the brink of destruction. Blind science with no reverence for vision is like religion with no respect for science. They are 2 sides of the same coin.
“Religion an attack on science”? Only from the fundamentalists that believe blindly that something as complicated as the stellar nucleosynthesis process (Proton-proton and the CNO cycle) can be answered with “…and God created in 6 days”. Yet the Bible is not saying that it was simply done it is just giving a layman’s simple reply to cause and effect of our deliberate informationally bounded existence. Should I state in conclusion that “Henry Ford created the Model T Ford and could pop them out at a rate of one every 6 seconds or so?” Well, I could. It would not be totally incorrect…. And children do learn this and it would not be argued much in everyday chat. However, in digging into it there is the assemble line process and a big building and much machinery and many workers. AND, each model however, did not evolve on its own cognition! The model A Ford has similar parts and operations but the changes were designed deliberately…all the way up to seatbelts! There are intelligent people/minds behind EACH different version…the
different models do not evolve on their own decision based on the few inferior models that could not get along on the road with their ‘peers’ and so ‘limped’ back to the factory to ‘magically’ come up with a better mutation of design! Information always points back to Intelligence! And we never make information we only discover it…sometimes nicely and well hidden in the ever increasing entropy of this universe. We are so surrounded by information that we do not even see it anymore—we are like fish in water, we do not know we are wet. Religion is NOT against science fundamentalists are against science!! The Bible even states that we are to: always “seek knowledge in our youth”; to “come let us reason”; to “seek and the door will be opened”; to “test everything and hold on to that which is good” (what works and is true); that we are “to NOT conform to
the pattern of this world but be transformed by a RENEWING of your mind.” (You are to renew YOUR mind not be influenced incorrectly by cults and Ouija boards or astrology…any non-reasonable input).
Andrew Dickson White and John Draper began the separation of religion from science back in the mid 1800 (look them up on Google) even though it was mostly Christian and Islamic folks who initiated learning from out of the times of the dark ages (you want fundamentalism then go look to the medieval inquisition)
with the beginning of universities. And I quote from Google “History_of_Christianity_of_the_Middle_Ages”:
Modern western universities have their origins directly in the Medieval Church. They began as cathedral schools, and all
students were considered clerics. This was a benefit as it placed the students under ecclesiastical jurisdiction and thus imparted certain legal immunities and protections. The cathedral schools eventually became partially detached from the cathedrals and formed their own institutions, the earliest being the University of Paris (c. 1150), the University of Bologna (1088), and the University of Oxford
(1096). Universities as institutions that issue academic degrees were inspired by Islamic madrasahs founded in the ninth century.[10] For instance, the University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco is thus recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest degree-granting university in the world with its founding in 859 by the princess Fatima al-Fihri.
As with all things “human” we tend to go to extremes. And we should NOT do that. There is a medium ground. We need to find that narrow line/zone and be careful to not lean too far one way or the other.
Even if irreducible complexity was discovered, that doesn't prove a creator, it just proves that evolution is random. In the same way that creatures may evolve worthless parts, and those parts may continue to evolve until they are useful somehow, and therefore help the creature to, for example survive better out of the water. So naturally(literally) that species migrates to a new environment(because it can) where it may thrive.
Obviously..
Intelligent design is absurd. It implies that living creatures have been created by someone long ago and that they have never changed that design of theirs. Animals nowadays are constantly adapting and evolving. A biological 'machine' could never do that. Maybe these anti-evolution thinkers should first read some cytology. There's your 'intelligent' design. Of course the mechanism is perfect, they have to be after having changed and adapted for millions of years. And any religious fanatic who claims the world is 6.000 years old and that it was made in seven days, you are just hypocrite. How can you deny fossils? Have scientists placed them all around the world to combat creationism? It's so silly, so pitiful, that you can't deal with a world without God; we can all do perfectly fine without it. It is what animals have done for millions of years.
I love how in every documentary, any quote displayed of George Bush is followed by stereotypical banjo music. This is highly appropriate.
27:30 -- No, you're not hopelessly misguided. You're hopelessly misguiding.
A war? It is like a kid arguing with adults. How the hell can they make a war out of that? We should deal with them, like we should deal with trolls; Ignore them.
great job Vlatko, really confrontational doc, you could start a war with this
eanough of evolutionISM and creationISM, there is no point in debating except the pretext of violence
Yah and what about this global warming farce!
i yi yi. You can't really say the naysayers against evolution are against science itself only evolution ............
However those in the global warming / green complex are making war upon the scientific method of questioning everything. And that is MUCH worse.
@Over the Edge
'holy text explosion batman!' I'm stealing that. That's pure genius.
Excellent documentary cheers TDF and all involved!
I'd just like to add if there was an intelligent creator he/she must have been a civil servant.
Who else would put the waste outlet in the middle of the pleasure complex?
The clean up was necessary. I wish you all have Happy New 2012. Am I too late with this greeting?
@Mistymoo, for the past two days I'm deleting your CAPS LOCK comments all over the site. Now you're fighting here. Maybe it's not only your fault, but please read the Comment Policy and behave.
@robertallen1, I like you, and I agree with you almost all the time, but you might want to try to tone down your comments a little bit.
@Everyone Else (@Az excluded), keep it civil.
Yes, the conversation turned into pointless trolling, far off topic.
Now where were we?
I gave up on biology a long time ago. If you intelligent designers are really looking for proof, you need to examine the very fundamentals of matter. Biology is basically the "social science" of the natural sciences. Everything and anything within it can be explained by increasingly natural fields. There is no evidence that directly points to God here. You are fighting a losing battle, go read something besides your Bible, please. Maybe you will avoid such a tremendous embarrassment every time you decide to open your mouth.
Bwarff! Stopped viewing it. Anyhow, at any moment in the evolution of humankind, some, anything may have been necessary to be given to homosapiens to acquire reasoning.
Therefore, Darwin could already had this in mind at the time he set his principles. Did he ever squarely state that there is no God?
Evolution principles don't mean that no God ever seeded human being with reason?
Pierre.
holy text explosion batman. i don't see what the big deal is. so Robert doesn't hold back and says what is on his mind. his tone might scare some off or rub some the wrong way but all i care about is if someone is right and can back it up. i have been told i am going to hell many times on this site and if you think about that it is probably the worst thing a religious person can wish on another (in their mind). look if someone wants to be treated with respect i have an idea. when debating with others use logic, provide evidence for your argument back up assertions with facts and if a statement is an assumption or opinion state it that way, don't answer a question with a question or bring up non related topics. see if that helps
Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.
"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department, told Reuters on Wednesday.
"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."
I like it when people say they don't "believe" in the theory of evolution. Like the entire scientific world is just pulling an elaborate practical joke.
@over the edge I do appreciate your last response to me, it showed a level of maturity, that we could disagree but don't get disagreeable. That shows that we didn't evolve from monkeys or that we and monkeys don't share the same or common ancestor. Now you spoke about "bacteria that eats byproducts of nylon which contains an enzyme that allows it to digest it"....Question...Have you done your personal experiment on such or is it just your belief of another's theory? Why I am asking, is because at some point in time you have to believe in something that you have not personally proved or experimented with personally. Take for instance you said that nylon wasn't developed till 1935, can you personally prove that? Having said that! you asked me who created the creator? Now I did answer you in my last blog, the creator was not created because the creator possesses eternal life which in the Hebrew is called Zoe meaning God's own life, that's why Jesus said "I am come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly." Now I am not saying that I don't believe in the bacteria experiment, not at all!! because I do know that a bacteria is very intelligent creature, but who gave it, it's intelligence? What school did it attend? The ant is also a very intelligent creature, again what university did it attend? Some years ago there was tsunami that killed almost 300,000 people, but did you know what they discovered? Some-how there wasn't any animals among the dead, are animals more intelligent than human beings? Or is it, that they live by their God given instincts?
@Vlatko
I appreciate the reasoned response that you gave and the website that you pointed me to. It really contains a plethora of information that I will enjoy reading. After reading some of the posts and doing some other research, I will apologize for using the examples of irreducible complexity and mathematical impossibility. I still contend that the fossil record is incomplete and open to interpretation. With that being said, the current evidence does seem to support the current theory. As I live and learn, I find that there is more out than I could ever possibly know on my on.
I will amend my statement and say that abiogenesis is a problem for those studying the origins of life itself. There are many different theories out there, and they all seem to fall in and out of favor. Evolution is absolutely independent of abiogenesis.
Again, I want to say that I appreciate your non-combative response. This is a hot topic that seems to bring out the worst in people.