Expelled

[JustAsking]

Not all. The original theory of the Big Bang was formulated by a scientist and Roman Catholic priest from Belgium, Father Georges Lemaître in 1927. If memory serves me correctly, the scientific community of the time thought that Lemaître's idea was ludicrous (and not scientific). Today the Theory of the Big Bang is one of the main theories on the origins of our universe....
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titan,
An interesting post. Actually, the Big Bang theory is a good example of how science works. When it was first proposed, it had no supporting evidence so it was appropriately treated by science as an interesting speculation (called a hypothesis). One thing that the hypothesis predicted was that in the billions of years between the big bang and now, the left over energy of the explosion would be evident in microwave radiation from outer space with a particular spectrum of an object with a temperature of a few degrees Kelvin.

In 1933, a telephone engineer looking for the source of interference on very long distance telephone transmissions discovered to his surprise that the interference was coming from outer space. On further investigation, it was discovered that the spectrum of the interference matched the predicted big bang black body radiation background. And the direction of the interference came from what the supposed was the center of the universe.

This was what was needed for the interesting black body hypothesis to be promoted to the status of a scientific theory. It has continued to be useful in explaining past observations and predicting future ones.

It is a travesty for science deniers to turn this into a kind of "scientists laughed at idea X and idea X turned out to be true." story. What they are doing is turning one of the most reliable and successful processes in the world to evaluate an idea, continually challenge it and put it to astonishingly useful work, and instead demean it by casting it as scientific dogmatism overturned by some other process.

Who do people think actually proves these things to be true? It is science that ends up correcting itself through this process of healthy scepticism followed by careful experiment and independent verification. There is no other intellectual activity in the world that comes with such a rigorous, objective and successful process for discovery and modification of its intellectual property.

 

[JustAsking]

...In my opinion creation and evolution are two parts of the same equation which help explain our existence. Are we not created in the womb? What is fertilisation? Answer: the introduction of (male) sperm into a (female) egg to develop a new individual. As we develop in the womb, our bodies change and we take on final human characteristics. Isn't that evolution?

I guess you could call that evolution if you mean with a small "e". The world "evolution" means change. But if you stopped at your definition of evolution, you wouldn't have the diversity of life on the planet. Dogs would give birth to puppies who would turn into dogs forever.

The important point is that over successive generations, the genetic differences accumulate to a greater and greater degree so that even the adults are very different as you go down the line.

But even that is no more mysterious than what you were suggesting. We observe the difference in a litter of puppies all the time even after they have grown up. They are different than the parents and different than each other. So your point pretty much stands. Evolution is not much of a mystery at all.

The Intelligent Design idea cannot explain the diversity of life without breaking this chain of progeny. If an organism can suddenly appear in the world that is not genetically related to its parents, then it must have been created by some other process than biological reproduction. This is why ID cannot be separated from the notion of Creationism, even though the proponents don't like that label.



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[vindicator]

At this point, i think some denominations need to follow some others like catholics and begin to figure out how to reconcile science with their faith.

At this point in reality, (outside of fundamentalist reality), creationism has been completely discredited in the realm of science. Although fundamenalists make it seem like all scientists are godless athiests, reality and some number crunching proves this can't be true. To many people, including scientists believe in God. I think the difference is that scientists are able to reconcile the work they do with their faith. The same openness and inquizitiveness that makes someone interested in science i believe is what allows them to bring the two together.

What some people need, is to open their minds a little and not be so short sighted.

Instead of saying that they're right, and the vast majority of people plus all of scientific evidence is wrong, maybe they need to take a deeper look at the two.

If you have an open mind, faith and science are not mutually exclusive.

Interesting point, if you read Genesis 1, the creation story PRETTY MUCH is what happened scientifically speaking in the universe.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

if you accept the bible as allegory...


Fundies, don't

They would far rather believe that a magical being made everything... that the creator of this unimaginably vast and complex cosmos is deeply concerned about THEM and that they actually have the ability to influence this super -being.

That is a VERY narcissistic perspective.

 

[dreamer20]

The Sky God mated with the Earth Goddess/mud/clay and gave birth to man... in the ancient Hebrew's Genesis story of the Earth being created in the year 3,761 BC. Are you also one of the 67% of Americans who also do not believe in Noah's flood?

Interesting point, if you read Genesis 1, the creation story PRETTY MUCH is what happened scientifically speaking in the universe.

No it is not. The story is a mythical story. Please note that the primitive men who made up this story suggested that the Earth was made before the Sun and stars. What we know as planets nowadays were no different from the other stars in the night sky to the ancients and they believed that the Moon cast its own light.

 

[dreamer20]

eagles,
That is a very interesting question. Actually, ID is ...a 150 year old idea, first proposed by William Paley at the beginning of the 1800s in his book called Natural Theology...
The Discovery Institute, in Seattle, who has published recently on Intelligent Design and is making all the noise about it has an annual budget in the millions of dollars, all supplied by Christian fundamentalists. They do no research, nor do they submit papers to scientific journals. It is a political lobbying firm and all their budget goes into lobbying the public and the federal and state legislative bodies of state boards of education.

The following Bible sticker is based on stickers that used to be in Georgia biology school textbooks. The stickers warned that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things" etc.. (Gravity is just a theory too). The stickers were approved in March 2002 and were removed by court order in June of 2005. With anti-science Christian fundamentalists, this battle will continue to be fought:

Untitled Document

I'd love to stick one of these on Ben Stein's DVD::smile:


http://www.centennialsociety.com/images/biblesticker/biblestickersmallbnw.gif

 

[JustAsking]

The following Bible sticker is based on stickers that used to be in Georgia biology school textbooks. The stickers warned that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things" etc.. (Gravity is just a theory too). The stickers were approved in March 2002 and were removed by court order in June of 2005. With anti-science Christian fundamentalists, this battle will continue to be fought:

Untitled Document

I'd love to stick one of these on Ben Stein's DVD::smile:


http://www.centennialsociety.com/images/biblesticker/biblestickersmallbnw.gif

Haha, yes indeed. I actually have that sticker on the Bible I use in church. It doesn't raise any eyebrows, though, because mainstream Protestants and Roman Catholics insist that a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible is not only incorrect, but that it is heretical.

I also have a bumper sticker on my car that has the words "Intelligent Design" crossed out and corrected with "Retarded Nonsense".

Here is an example of what mainstream Christianity really thinks of science.

 

[JustAsking]

Ironically, there is something about the Creation story in Genesis that sets it apart from Creation theology in other religions, that is responsible for promoting the development of science in the church rather than prevented it.

If you look beneath the literal story of Genesis, you find that Genesis sets up a special relationship between God and his Creation (including man). That relationship sets the stage for thinking that Creation has a definite separateness from God and has a capacity to operate on its own even to the extent that by chapter 2 it breaks God's heart.

This special relationship gives a kind of theological justification for studying God's creation in terms of its own natural processes. As this became more and more successful, it was this special relationship that allowed the investigation of natural processes to flourish within the church well before The Enlightenment moved it further into being a secular pursuit.

Here is St Augustine, considered as one of the 100 "Doctors Of The Church", in 400 AD laying down the law to his fellow clerics about the folly of using the Bible to explain natural phenomenon.

On The Literal Meaning of Genesis - St. Augustine.

Before science became a self-perpetuating secular institution, most of the world's science was conducted by Catholic clerics. There was a time when the church was the leader in astronomy, optics, mathematics and geophysics. In fact, up until the 20th century, the study of earthquakes and their prediction was know as The Jesuit Science. To this day, most of the best seismographs are in institutions that were started by the Jesuits.

There are some 35 craters on the moon named after different Jesuit astronomers who identified and mapped them back in the 1500s and going forward.

The first accurate observations on the movement of the Sun were made across Europe using cathedrals as observatories. They made small holes in the domes of the cathedrals and tracked the projection of the Sun on scaled inlaid in the marble floors as it moved through the day.

I find this stuff fascinating. I tend to go on about it. It explains why I don't get invited to many parties.

 

[HazelGod]

I find this stuff fascinating. I tend to go on about it. It explains why I don't get invited to many parties.

Dude, you would so be invited to a party at my house.

 

[Bob Ross]

Dude, you would so be invited to a party at my house.

Right on! That's good stuff JA...Everyone who is familiar with the "argument" of evolution v. intelligent design and who has not yet read Roger Ebert's review of this "documentary" (Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed) should do so...Its a lengthy, but pretty well constructed and humorous article...

Roger Ebert's Journal: Archives