Modern Science And The Establishment Clause.

First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1791.

Even if you are an eternal optimist, like me, you have to admit, two things will probably happen in most people's lifetime. Roe v. Wade will be overturned. And so will the Separation of Church and State (technically called, the Establishment Clause, in more formal legal circles).

Even as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I accept this. No point crying over spilled milk. But I do wonder about its more broader reaching implications.

For one thing, without the establishment clause, what will happen to modern science, in the USA? Some conservative states think the universities should give both Darwinism and Intelligent Design equal time. What effect will that have on cosmology? Biology? Or for that matter, even medicine?

Also, I was thinking. Will it make US scientists want to avoid certain states? So there will effectively an intellectual vacuum, in some states? And scientists will then just naturally flock to the more enlightened states?

And what about the international community? Will they shun the US as a whole? Frightening, and a prediction I hope I am wrong about.

Well, I'm certainly worried. What do the rest of you think ?

 

There already is.....

 

Intelligent design is also a credible, scientific hypothesis that should not be discounted in favour of the more classical models of Darwinian evolution.

 

There's zero science there, it's neither scientific or a hypothesis. It's creationism wearing a labcoat.

It's particularly absurd because it's not an alternative to Evolution. Nothing about evolution begins to deny or imply a creator. It's not relevant to the science of evolution.

What it is relevant to our some people's strict interpretations of biblical texts and scientific observations being at odds. One of those was forged through a century and a half of rigorous application of the scientific process by literally millions of scientists. The others a fairy tale.

There's no reason they both couldn't be true. One of them is certainly true. Organisms change over time to suit their environment.

 

Of course it's science. It's just contemporary, classical science is formed from a different paradigm. Perhaps you have a different interpretation of what intelligent design means to I. Certainly, physics and classical Darwinism falls flat when trying to explain the existence of life in the first place, or even the existence of life. For that you need to stop breaking everything down into clockwork parts and look at the whole, accept that reality is fundamentally a process, and consciousness is a self-generating and self-perpetuating illusion. Mind creates matter, and matter is ultimately nothing more than an intellectual construct of mind.

 

The idea the establishment clause and Row-v-Wade will be overturned contradicts every single piece of evidence I know of. Obama was elected when, for the first time in US history, the major urban population centers outnumbered the rural population and the entire voting system has been so heavily gerrymandered we might as well have a one party system now. Its so bad that half the republican party doesn't even support their own presidential candidate. Similarly, although republicans are dragging their feet as much as possible attempting to prevent Obama from picking new supreme court candidates, the idea of republicans controlling the supremes and overturning Row-v-Wade is utterly laughable. Don't kid yourself, money is doing all the driving these days and the US government is now just another franchise like Walmart and McDonald's, but more like Bank of America.

As for the impact if the establishment clause were overturned it would not be the end of science. The sad truth is that only by pitting the largely religious population against their own secular institutions has the US become the de facto empire of the world. These days even fundamentalists tend to say that science is a necessary evil because it produces technology and the # 1 manufactured export of the # 1 exporter in the world is weapons. You have to see the pentagon and Crystal City for yourself to appreciate the scale of it, but the pentagon alone spends more money in one year than most countries ever make. The US supplies half the troops and costs for NATO and the UN simply because its cheaper for us to rule the world if we get other countries to help chip in for some of the costs, otherwise, we'd just foot the bill for ourselves. As it is, today Europe couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, while the US military they keep referring to as for "defense" purposes is equal to the next six largest in the world combined because we are defending ourselves from entire planet.

 

Ever studied any science? If so, you would understand some of the methods of science, and realize that "intelligent design" couldn't possibly be considered to be one. It's not a theory! It's not even a hypothesis, it's an idea; we've also been there and done that. When you apply science to it, when you remove cognitive bias, observer bias, etc. you would be left with nothing of any value, so, it's useless. I think someone above mentioned that there is nothing scientific at all about "intelligent design", it was not derived by science. How would you research this scientifically, I think I already mentioned why this isn't possible? Maybe you could study the psychological and social aspects of it, but it's really a very vaguely defined and ambiguous"idea".

In science you study some effect, do your best to narrow down the amount of variables contributing to the cause, or mechanism to "less than anything you can think of" so you have a chance to actually maybe elucidate it a tiny bit. Under what conditions is the effect observed to occur? Can you form a hypothesis using something axiomatic and test it in order to see how the results may differ from your predictions? When certain 'independent variables' are present is there a correlation with the observed results? How does manipulating these affect this?

If you can't possibly do this, it's not science. Period.

Intelligent design: is this claimed to be biology, physics, chemistry; what is it even, other than an idea? What axioms is it formed on? It's definitely not science, not a scientific theory; its not a scientific discipline for sure. Biological evolution and its mechanisms can actually be studied using science: tested, experiments done, understood better over time, etc.

Only place for religion in Uni is in history class, or anywhere else that social factors and human thought and behavior are studied where it actually is relevant; people really should learn from history and try to remove factors from society that have been observed to be involved in the development of many "things gone wrong".

 

Biological evolution and its mechanisms



Biological evolution and its mechanisms

Twice for good measure. How exactly do the editing feature of this work, if anyone knows the secret let me know.

I can see the flaw in your argument straight away from the terminology you use.


Standard science has a limited applicability when it comes to answering the ultimate question, and the deepest questions always lead to paradoxes. Noone has ever satisfactorily explained how we came to be, or even why.

The biggest problem with the modern science is that it is carried forward by people who have the limited mentality that they think ultimately science will answer every question we ask. We all have to consider the possibility that science itself may be limited, or maybe it's not and that it's our perception of science that is limited. We have to question what science is, and what thought is. Consciousness and thought are fundamentally a part of the universe as well, and logic dictates that a thing can only understand itself through reflection or comparison with other things. It may be that the fundamental essence of being is intrinsically incapable of ever finding a theory or a hypothesis to explain it's own existence.

The theory of emergence seems like a good way to find a bridge between the dualistic, incongruity of the science vs religion debate.

 

Why did a tick or mosquito come to be?
It is only man that asks these questions due to his over inflated feeling of self importance.

 

Mosquitos and ticks can both fuck off, little bastards. I am not your dinner

 

If intelligent design isn't science, then feel free to explain this-

 

funny thing is that it is impossible to remove those bias. The only way would be if the "observer" were fully not a part of "our" universe, again an impossibility given our current point in our evolution/understanding.

also may I remind everyone that evolution does not negate the possibility of a "creator". Actually it's a pretty damn good methodology for creating life.

 

To completely dismiss the idea of intelligent design altogether is to fully embrace the mind from matter hypothesis, and to say that all conscioussness is the result of atoms and molecules interacting in a certain and highly complex way via the laws of physics, and by statistical chance. Contemporary hoslitic scientific models based on chaos theory and quantum physics are turning that notion on it's head, and suggesting that it's the other way round or that perhaps mind and matter are both experiences that are the ultimate result of mind, whatever that is. In a sense, the idea that there might be a god creating, or bringing forth the universe, or reality makes more sense than the current, persistent, classical interpretation. If this is true then it might well be the case that the entire universe is "conscious" on different levels, and that we are all part of the universal, creative mind that some of the more monotheistic religions have interpreted as "God"

 

You seem to be laboring under several false assumptions. First many people think that saying that Intelligent Design is not a theory is equivalent to saying that it is false. This is a mistake. Even if Intelligent Design is true it is still not a scientific concept because it lacks the necessary components of a scientific. The most import components being that a scientific concept must be defined in such a way that people can be reasonably sure that they are talking about the same thing when they talk about that concept, and the argument for the concept must rely on testable claims. There are currently about as many definitions of Intelligent Design as there are people who adhere to it, and there isn't even a particular definition that could be pointed to as the majority position. In addition every definition of Intelligent Design I have come across so far fails to provide a set of claims that can be tested. Therefor even if Intelligent Design is true it is not, in its current form, a valid scientific concept.

Another false assumption is that the theory of evolution, in its modern form, is an attempt to explain where life and consciousness come from. Unfortunately Darwin helped create this confusion by titling his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Although to be fair anyone who has read even a few pages of that book knows that Darwin's theory was about the origin of the diversity of life, and not the origin of life itself. So really neither in its classical or modern form is the theory of evolution an attempt to explain the ultimate origin of life (although of course it clearly is a goal of science to explain that as well).

You also claim that denying Intelligent Design means that one has to commit fully to a scientific explanation of all facets of existence. That is not true. It is possible to find both positions lacking.

I also find it funny that you attempt to support the idea that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory by posting a picture of a fractal. This is funny for a few reasons. First fractals are generated by very simple mathematical formulas. Secondly you provide no argument for how Intelligent Design explains fractals. Lastly you provide no argument to show that even if Intelligent Design were required to explain fractals that that would mean that Intelligent Design is science.

There are, of course, practitioners of every major religion who believe that the theory of evolution is correct. Most of them believe something along these lines: The mechanisms of evolution are the means by which God created the diversity of life. A simple statement that many seem unable to grasp. Again though we must note that this is not a scientific concept.

I have always found it strange that people want what precious little time there is to teach science in high school to be wasted on teaching Intelligent Design. The appropriate venue for Intelligent Design (until a truly scientific definition is formulated) is at home, at church, in Sunday School, in groups and clubs, and finally in philosophy and comparative religion classes (I studied Intelligent Design in a philosophy class in a state university).

I personally do not currently believe in any sort of Intelligent Design, not because it is not scientific, but because I have never come across a formulation that actually adds anything to my understanding. Intelligent Design does not explain in any way how matter obtains the quality of being alive, how diversity of life came to be, or how matter can possess consciousness. If a person says "As of this moment I believe that an intelligent being created matter, arranged matter in to forms, gave those forms life, and gave life consciousness." that person does not now know more about the world then they did before they uttered the statement, even if they mean it genuinely. Of course most (perhaps all?) formulations of Intelligent Design suffer from the same logical fallacy. You can't explain the complexity of the universe, how life came to be etc ... Therefor there is an intelligent designer. Fair enough but you can't explain the complexity of the designer, or how the designer came to be, or how the designer is conscious etc ... therefor there is a Super Intelligent Designer. Fair enough but you can't explain ... ad infinitum.

So I reject Intelligent Design not necessarily because I believe that it is false, or that there are better scientific explanations, but rather because Intelligent Design in its current forms is essentially worthless.

 

The problem with intelligent design is that we have no one to judge what is and isn't intelligent. It's too convenient for God to say, "This is intelligent because I created it and I'm intelligent because I say so." Does the ability to design itself make one intelligent? Am I exhibiting signs of intelligence if I use my hands to shape a piece of poop into a bear?

I do entertain the notion that mind plays an integral role in evolution. Perhaps there can be no evolution where mind is not present. I don't think this mind is necessarily intelligent, however. It's arbitrary. The theory should be called Mindful Design, not Intelligent Design. I don't know how one could expound upon this theory, that mind is integral to evolution, because we can't say where mind exists and where it doesn't exist. I suppose if it was possible to create a race of P-Zombies it would be possible to see whether they evolved or not over a long enough period of time. But I think that they wouldn't evolve because they would have nothing defend. I think it's the being itself that is driving evolution onward, evolution being the means by which we protect the mind/being. We're not just evolving to defend ourselves as objects. We evolve to protect the sacred being. Evolution defends an immaterial, subjective relationship that exists between objects.

So yeah, I would be pretty annoyed if intelligent design were taught alongside evolution. At least evolution is a possibility. Intelligent design is not even a possibility, as there is no standard by which something can be deemed intelligent or unintelligent. But with our leaders being complete slimeballs, I wouldn't put anything past this country. Our leaders care fuck all if we're intellectuals or scumbags. They just want to line their pockets and have perverted sex.

 

You see, that's just not true. Take the hypothesis of self-generating emergent life systems modeled on Chaos theory for instance, documented at first by Maturana and Verala. Their hypothesis was based on a discovery in the early 1970's by the chemist Ilya Prigogine, who won a nobel prize for his paper.

I think it's entirely fundamental to the science that people are sure they are talking about the same thing, however language, being a part of communication and subject to interpretation must be allowed a certain flexibility. Certainly, when it transpires that modern science is lending itself more and more to a less quantitative regime and becoming more qualitative and holistic. At the end of the day, the fundamental worth of sincentific hypotheses are the thoughts they give rise to, and what indeed are they?

What are thoughts?

It may well be the case that knowledge itself is as transitory and evolving as the minds that try to understanding, being intertwined they are.

I'll read the reast of your post later and get back to you, right now I'm busy catching up with some cutting edge Coronation Street drama.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LCVknKUJ4