Awesome, now we're the immature ones. This guy is brilliant.

We are, you fucking cunt-puncher (sorry knk, I love that one). You AREN'T LISTENING TO US, which is what you constant do here. We give you our reasons, and then you sit there with your bible and say "it's not enough." How the fuck can you be serious? One book of stories somehow commands more power than all the time, money, and effort that has gone into scientific theories? Open your eyes, you moron.

Holy crapsicles. You gotta see the irony there, LordsSword. Please tell me you see the irony. You have to.

Yes and many more after the one I pointed out.
My point was that the poeple who crank out "facts" need to be checked on.
The folks here have yet to tell me if they personally have seen or checked anything for themselves. Well there is one but I am waiting to see more of their view...
Manipulation is what it is. Just because somebody does not do it YOUR way doesnt mean they are wrong. Lawyers do this all the time. Give me a break.

Hmmm, this is a point I agree with. I like the fact that you demonstrate a knowlege of and respect for the virtue of Christian values and the proper adherance to such values.
This ladys & gents is a person after my own heart.

The Spock avatar of Arainach reminds me of the cloaking device of the Romulans.
Its a useful tool the cloaking device. Assumptions are what makes it work so well.

Your post is by far the best. I get what you are saying thanks.

I CREATED SOME HUMANS AT THE SAME TIME AS DINOSAURS, BUT UH IT DIDN'T LAST LONG...



Lordsword your mother is still living, why is this?

So, evidently, you'll only listen to statements you already agree with.

You didn't come here looking for education. You came here looking for validation, and you're not going to find it. Not here. Clearly.

"The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature. A special existence can only be proved in a special manner. This faith is therefore only then a true and living one when special effects, immediate appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. Where, on the other hand, the belief in God is identified with the belief in the world, where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where the general being, of the world takes possession of the whole man, there also vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the belief in the world, in natural effects as the only true ones. As here the belief in miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in historical, past miracles, so the existence of God is also only an historical, in itself atheistic conception."

LordSword, your arguments are tired and boring. Science catches a mistake, and science fixes it. Your conclusion? Science must be checked up on! Well, yeah. That's how we caught the mistake in the first place. By checking up on it, you dolt.

And you're right, if someone doesn't do it your way, it doesn't mean they're wrong. But when they're basing their argument on circumstantial "evidence" and storybooks, then chances are, THEY'RE FUCKING WRONG. Especially when they're arguing with documented proof. I assume you don't need us to explain evolution, or the concept of carbon dating. I trust you're not enough of an idiot to need that done. Your ability to write the English language would dictate otherwise, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt anyway.

You don't like anyone who tells you you're flat out wrong. Which is a pity, because you are. You're little more than a religious troll, and I for one can't wait for the day Styphon strings you up by your neck for being the idiot that you are.

Creation science is the laughing stock of the scientific community. The fact that Americans even consider it (read: the religious right thrusts it on community schools) for elementary education makes most of us snicker. And I'm sure that feeds your pathetic little martyr complex, but there you have it. The evidence is on the table, mate. You're choosing not to acknowledge it because of your personal agenda. YOUR bible states otherwise. Too fucking bad. Your book lied to you. Get over it.

Actually, devo, I was watching a thing on Nova last night where they found the leap from Creationism to Intelligent Design. Apparently there was some court case back in the 80s where creationism was ruled to not be allowed to be taught in science classes, and there was a textbook that was supposed to be a "Christian Science" book. It was found that the edition prior to the judgement used the term Creationism and the one afterwards had used find and replace with the term Intelligent Design (and apparently at some points they screwed up and wound up with the term Creintelligent Designism or something like that).

This is actually what the peer review process in academic journals is all about. I was part of a group that was responsible for peer reviewing a paper (well, part of it was delegated to me, but whatever), and we had to figure out if their experiments were valid, new, and interpreted their results in a consistent manner.

As someone with a published paper, I've also had my own work go through the peer review process.

I really fucking hate myself for playing Devil's Advocate, but could you possibly link to the paper that you reviewed and the one you had published RR, and give any details you remember about the peer review process for both?

Sigh... I should stay out of this shit but I just want this fucking thread to die already.

Quick bio: Devout conservative Christian, life-science teacher, political liberal

I often find it difficult to be an old fashioned practicing Christian that knows so dang much about evolution. My solution (albeit a total cop-out) is to just trust that God is the creator, and while the process of evolution seems to be at odds with a literal interpretation of the events chronicled in the book of Genesis, I have faith that in next world everything will make sense. And that goes for all the other crazy stuff in the world that doesn't seem to make sense.

Knowing what I know I can't help but believe that evolution has shaped the biosphere and continues to influence life on earth. But I also understand that entropy is a governing principle of thermodynamics and organized life forms capable of conscious thought seems (to me at least) to be the exact opposite of that. Is it all chance and physics? Was the first living cell a random event? Can some ingenious mathematical equation predict every choice an organism will make throughout its life? How bout the choices I make?

Science has been wrong in the past. Before Darwin there was an assortment of crazy theories that made sense to people back then. Atomic theory went through multiple erroneous incarnations before we got to the contemporary model, which I hope is finally correct. And even now there is uncertainty about how much farther we can break down sub-atomic particles.

Blah blah blah. I don't think Christians should use, or try to use, science to explain ALL the events in the Bible. Stick with the stuff for which there is little or no debate. If you believe and have faith, then you should be comfortable with the idea of a Creator that is supernatural. The same science that landed men on the moon, created television, nuclear reactors, etc. also came up with evolution. And while some may disagree, we can't help but go along with it.

Additional Spam:
...and on a totally separate note...

Please don't judge all Christians by the ones you see and read about in the media. Most practicing Christians I know, most of them here, and most of the ones everyone else knows personally tend to be quiet humble people.

The Christians that make the news are almost always of the loud, obtrusive, and delusional variety. Oftentimes very un-Christian like in nature.

Uh, I don't think he means scientific review of intelligent design specifically, but I think rather he is explaining the process of scientific peer review of the findings that is published in various science related periodicals.

Look guys, I'll be down with creation science when it can produce predictive models that we can use to create medical treatments.

Let me know how that goes, guys. Seriously, I support any method to cure cancer and shit.

As magi said, I don't have anything to do with the evolution/ID debate in my professional work, but here's a link to some work I was part of a few years ago: ISIJ International I doubt it'll be interesting to anyone around here.

The paper I helped look at I can't link you to since it was rejected because it didn't get accepted. :p The research group I was part of got to review it since they used some of our data in the interpretation of our data, but they completely misinterpreted our research, and didn't actually add anything new to the scientific body of knowledge (actually would have made it worse by putting out bad info!).

Creationism is pretty funny, since it requires one to assume that people who have trained for their lives in the principles of science are all abject failures, while Christian pundits are able to point out "obvious" flaws in evolution.

Entropy is simply the increasing lack of energy that can be used to do work. It doesn't prohibit what we define as order (or whatever bullshit term or phrase Creationists are using).

Entropy on Earth can be reduced, since it isn't a closed system. We receive energy from the sun and radiate energy out into space.

I get that, but the reason I asked was less its relevance to the original topic and more along the lines of showing the peer review process in action to debunk the argument from LordSword concerning it.

See, I tried that. But then I ran into a little problem. Because all those quiet nice Christians? They still vote for the morons you see in the media and as such get stupid laws passed and generally make my life hell. So that didn't work out so hot.

See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Sure, there is strong (and embarrassingly loud) support for the religious right...but that group is part of an extreme. To lump the MILLIONS of Christians who do NOT vote along those lines together in the same group is a completely irresponsible stereotype.

While I do tend to agree with part of this, who says that it's ALL the quiet nice Christians? I mean, yes, I understand that everyone should (and does) vote for their best interests in mind but I'd like to imagine that not EVERY Christian is out to proverbially crucify those of us who don't believe in the invisible man in the sky. That seems a bit irresponsible of a stereotype, don't you think?

Not EVERY Christian is a nutjob. I live with a few reasonably nice ones. But a substantial enough majority of them are that I've stopped even pretending at "tolerance" when it comes to inflicting your religious views on the public square. I leave my religion at home. Why can't you?

Are you unable to read, or just that bloody deluded? :tpg: I'm afraid there isn't anyone here that's after your own heart - I understand Christian principles, yes, but that also means I know enough of it that I can tell that the Creation science museum is spewing fundamentalist propaganda masquerading as "science".

I am currently preparing for my own career as a scientist, so believe me, if you think that I'm assuming things about the vast amounts of money that go into research, then I have the great pleasure of telling you that you're dead wrong.

You know, if you're not in science, why are you coming in here telling us what science is and what science isn't? That's a fair bit of hubris there, mate.

LordSword, one question.

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/2308/03mh0.jpg

Do you honestly believe that?

What does that sign even mean? God made the land animals, including dinosaurs, "after their kind"? After whose kind? What kind? Kind of what? Is it me, or is that sign kind of retarded.

Also, the creator of this thread is a huge prick and probably a narcissist. Here's a little snack for you, my friend: Go fuck yourself, you pseudo-proselytistic fucking recreant.

I believe the sign is quoting Genesis.

And my apologies if I seem to be inflicting my views on anyone. I just want to defend my beliefs and encourage people not to judge a Christian (or any other group for that matter) by their cover.

And for the record, I tend to vote for policy that benefits everyone, not just the zealous. One of the essential doctrines of Christianity is that you are not supposed to force your faith on anyone. And as many have already pointed out, there are quite of few Christians who, for whatever reason, don't adhere to that premise. If the seed doesn't bear fruit, then you're supposed to move on. Which is what a lot do, but it's hardly as memorable as that crazy guy screaming at you to repent.

Wait.

I'm not a Christian, so I don't know how you guys do stuff, but some people say it's your job to impose your religion on others, and then some say you shouldn't like you just did there.

Which is it? I'm a little lost here. Which congregation do you belong to? Must be different from Loserbutt's there. Which is why I always wonder why you all call yourselves Christian when you don't really believe in the same things. (Yea, yea, Jesus and all that - but the Muslims also believe Christ was a prophet or some thing...so uhhh...)