I don't think this thread would be complete without touching on Gaia theory... _______ Gaia theory Gaia theory is a class of scientific models of the biosphere in which life fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by affecting Earth's environment. The first such theory was created by the English atmospheric scientist, James Lovelock, who developed his theories in the 1960s before formally publishing them in 1979. He hypothesized that the living matter of the planet functioned like a single organism and named this self-regulating living system after the Greek goddess, Gaia, using a suggestion of novelist William Golding. Gaia theories have non-technical predecessors in the ideas of several cultures. Meanwhile today, "Gaia theory" is sometimes used among non-scientists to refer to theories of a self-regulating Earth that are non-technical but take inspiration from scientific models. Among some scientists, "Gaia" carries connotations of scientifically unrigorous, quasi-mystical thinking about Earth, and Lovelock's own hypothesis was received initially with much antagonism by the scientific community. No controversy exists, however, that life and the physical environment significantly influence one another. Gaia theory today is a spectrum of hypotheses, ranging from the undeniable to the radical. At one end is the undeniable statement that the organisms on the Earth have radically altered its composition. A stronger position is that the Earth's biosphere effectively acts as if it is a self-organizing system which works in such a way as to keep its systems in some kind of equilibrium that is conducive to life. The history of evolution, ecology and climate show that the exact characteristics of this equilibrium intermittently have undergone rapid changes, however, which are believed to have caused extinctions and felled civilisations (see climate change). Biologists and earth scientists usually view the factors that stabilize the characteristics of a period as an undirected emergent property of the system; as each individual species pursues its own self-interest, for example, their combined actions tend to have counterbalancing effects on environmental change. Opponents of this view sometimes point to examples of life's actions that have resulted in dramatic change rather than stable equilibrium, such as the conversion of the Earth's atmosphere from a reducing environment to an oxygen-rich one. However, proponents will point out that those atmospheric composition changes created an environment much more suitable to life. Some go a step further and hypothesize that all lifeforms are part of a single planetary being called Gaia... full article
you're finally right about something here - one of us is free in the truest sense of the word while the other is trapped by their religion
The Buddha said that nothing in his world happens by chance or accident. It as all due to causes and conditions, Karma. Causes formed in the past are manifested as effects in the present. Causes formed in the present will be manifested as effects in the future. This is the soundest theory to me.
George W. Bush and "intelligent design" have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Keep D&D Civil!!
Grizzled; I've been and currently been travelling so I haven't had a chance to get back to you till now. Do you understand why its called the Big Bang? Its the creation of all matter and energy in the universe from the massive expansion of a singularity wherein theoretically everything in the universe existed undifferentiated. It is the prevailing scientific explanation of where matter came from. That's absolutely a terrible comparison. The methods I use to design buildings are totally knowable and are no secret but infact have to be a matter of public record. To your examples though there have historically been many things that people thought to be articially constructed that ended up being natural phenomena. The Giant's Causeway and the face on Mars for examples. For other things like the pyramids there are historic records to prove they were. The point being that just because something seems patterned and structured doesn't automatically mean it was intelligently designed. To draw that conclusion one needs supporting evidence. Again I'm not the ID proponent but the ID skeptic. You're asking me as the skeptic to make the decision for you the proponent which ID hypothesis is more plausible. Why should I do that when I don't find any of them plausible. To prove to you that I'm not a hypocrite or diversionary I will be glad to explain to you why I find speciation to be based on mutation and selective adaption if you like as the basis of why I find Evolution scientifically plausible but I wouldn't expect you to do the same since you're a skeptic. But this is where you're logic is faulty. Its not an either/or question. If A is not true that doesn't mean B is automatically true. You're presuming there are only two possible paths, Evolution or Intelligent Design when there could be other potential paths such as a jump in speciation not due to a process of mutation and adaptive selection or intelligent design but some other factor. Lets say for instance the Earth was bombarded by a gamma ray burst at the start of the Cambrian explosion leading to a sudden massive mutation without adaptive selection or perhaps those species we see in the Cambrian explosion had existing during the Vendobot period prior but we haven't found the fossils yet. Again you're making an assumption that since the Cambrian explosion throws a wrench into the standard Evolution model that means it has to be ID when there's nothing that would indicate the presence of an intelligence or its methods. At that point without empiracal evidence to support straight up Evolution or a designer it could be either one or something else but until ID proponents can offer proof of an intelligent designer and its methods all they're doing is critiquing Evolution and not offering a plausible theory of their own. Do you understand inductive logic and why its used in science? As an engineer I presume you test things on smaller scales before you implement them fully. That's inductive logic right there. Obviously if say you were going to test the ability of a new type of tuned mass damper by building a full scale skyscraper so you build a scale model and test it in a wind tunnel. Right there you're engaging in inductive logic. You're using the micro to develop supporting evidence in regard to your theory regarding the success of the macro. Anyway to address this issue head on "Micro" Evolution is only one support for the theory of Evolution. The other supports are fossil evidence showing transitory species, like australeopithecus to homo erectus, morphological comparisons among species, genetic analysis and even computer modeling. That's not a fallacy in logic its only pointing out that within the time span that it is possible for Evolution to occur. Its not saying absolutely that the Cambrian explosion was due to Evolution because Evolution could occur from Ape to man in 3 mil years but saying that there is evidence indicating Evolution occured in that time so that 20 mil years seems like Evolution could occur then. I'm only pointing out that 20 million years is a very long time where in a lot of things speciation wise could occur. Whether that is the case I don't know from my understanding the problem with the Camprian Explosion isn't that speciation couldn't occur in the time period its the lack of transitory fossils from the very different Vendobot organism to the Cambrian Explosion organisms. I understand there have been some transitory fossils found of Cambrian Explosian organisms but almost none showing the bridge from Vendobot to Camprian. Again I wouldn't jump to a conclusion yet because its still possible transitory fossils will be found. Heck maybe a 500 mil. year old spaceship will be found but until then I'm not going to make presumptions. I would disagree with that. There are definately problems but there is still far more empiracal evidence supporting Evolution than any other theory. Anyway as I said even if Evolution is disproved how does that prove an Intelligent designer? A not true doesn't equate to B true. Those the Nazca lines you're talking about and the prehistoric accounts all are relating to human history whereas Evolution is relating to speciation over the course of the history of life itself. Even barring that the Nazca lines and some of the prehistoric accounts could be conclusively proven to deal with alien life that still doesn't mean that aliens had anything at all to do with speciation unless someone could also show that there was some sort of sudden change in speciation at the sametime. I would be very convinced if someone could find a spaceship (and prove it was a spaceship) from the time of the Cambrian explosion that maybe aliens had something to do with speciation. The fact I've heard of the Cambrian Explosion shows I've heard of these and even agree they are problematic for standard Evolution Theory but as I continue to stress that still doesn't support ID. It might disprove Evolution but there are many other explanations besides ID. So you're agreeing that evidence for ID doesn't exist yet you still cling to it. I've already stated that I support Evolution because its based upon morphological comparisons (that's how Darwin developed the idea by looking at finches on the Galapagos and comparing how they different species specialized to the point of being different species while sharing some key features with themselves and finches in South America), fossil evidence (The well document fossil record of species that appear to be moving from being more ape like to human in roughly chronological order), mutation observed and documented (such as frogs developing more eyes or limbs in the presence of mutagens), observed specialized selective adaptions (most notably among microbes and pest organisms in adapting to survive attemps to eradicate them), genetic analysis that shows genetic relationships between different species hinting at common ancestry (for instance between chimps and humans) and finally computer modelling that has shown that Evolution could work (I've run some simple versions of these myselfs on a computer game). I'll agree that when looking at each of these pieces of evidence there are certainly unknowns and unanswered questions but what is telling about these is that for a large part with the exception of computer modelling these fields of study were developed independently and offer independent support for the theory. In the case of Evolution Darwin developed a hypothesis based on observation. He and others were aware of fossils and the idea for genes already existed but there was no way of dating the former and testing for the latter. Further the ideas of mutagens was a poorly understood concept. Since then though its been shown independently that genes are subject to mutations leading to morphological and genetic change, that organisms with a helpful mutation tend to thrive and reproduce taht mutation when their environment changes and also that different species may still share many similar genes. Further with dating technologies its been shown that in many, not all, cases fossils showing transitions between species. So there you have it Darwin observation, Darwin hypothesis, further testing, supporting evidence for hypothisis leading to theory. The problem with ID is that you have ID observation (there are problems with Evolution's timeline and there seems to be areas of irreducible complexity) ID hypothesis (There must be an Intelligent Designer) but what is missing is further testing and supporting evidence that would apart from the first observations show the presence and methods of an intelligent designer(s). Its no more than a hypothesis and why I call it intellectually lazy is that ID proponents are fine with that. Even argue for it as its strength. What questions and issues? Just show me supporting empiracal evidence that would support the presence of and methods of an Intelligent Designer. How hard is that.
Grizzled; Skimming through this thread I continue to see a few serious logical fallacies that you keep on bringing up. 1. The criticism of Evolution because it doesn't answer where matter came from. I've said this repeatedly and I will say it for the last time. Evolution is a biological theory. You're dealing with a physics issue. You might as well say that Gene theory is wrong because it doesn't state where matter comes from or any other theory hat doesn't deal with the origin of matter. 2. That because things seem to fit and work so well it must be intelligence. First off you're clearly not aware of the principle of the antropomorphic universe. Things are as they are because we aren't aware of other possibilities. For instance I could argue that that I happened to get delayed in Philadelphia last night is because of an intelligent will because given any point of time from the beginning of the Universe to a week before last the odds of that event happening are uncalculatable. Second though things don't really work that well. If things are designed to be so good why is there so much waste and maladaption. Why do we have appendixes or vestigial tales? Why are human eyes relatively poor when compared to an octopus or a hawk? Why aren't can't we see infrared or grow hair faster or slower to adapt to climate change? If there is an intelligent designer its one that's made a lot of mistakes. 3. Well this isn't a logical fallacy but a lack of knowledge fallacy. You say that there is more evidence supporting UFO visitation than Evolution clearly you're not up on science or you would realize that Evolution is one of the most strongly supported scientific theories. There's less supporting evidence for the structure of an atom than there is for Evolution. As for UFO visitations you must've missed the US Airforce, Soviet Airforce and a few other airforces and scientific studies on UFO's which overwhelmingly said no. Then again you just might be a big fan of the X-Files.
It is possible, even likely, that dark matter and dark energy existed before the big bang and that in fact, the bang was an anomaly in the stasis between them. I think Buddha must have been a physicist. The Nazca lines could very easily have been laid out using grid translation where a picture is drawn on a small grid and then translated to a larger grid. I think I learned how to to that in art in about the 7th grade. It's fairly understandable that a primitive people would do that to signal their god. No real mystery there.
Sishir, I feel for you. I used to spend lots of time on the neverending "intelligent design" threads here in the D&D. However, after about the 8th thread on the subject I realized that arguing with a devout christian about this will get you nothing but a headache. I respect rhester's and grizzled's beliefs, but they really don't care to acknowledge/address facts that counter their point of view. I'm not trying to lecture you - I am trying to save you some time.
Agreed. And I would like to acknowledge that I do read each response and listen. I do appreciate and respect the debate and the responses. I don't want any to feel that the time given to post is taken lightly by me- anyway. My opinions are definately based upon my Christian faith. The science is very interesting also but I don't have any way to prove anything scientifically although I think it is healthy to be open to alternative information. Even for myself. (maybe I am tired of evolution- I am a recovering evolutionist )
I am somewhat offended by the constant implication from some people here that philosophy is somehow less respected for gaining knowledge than science, since I am from the philosophy background. I am pretty sure that y'all know that what is science today was once philosophy. In fact, the groundbreaking work of Newton was titled "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy." I am not an ID expert. But from my limited knowledge so far, I know that most seriously done ID research is by philosophers who have backgrounds of scientific training. So I agree that ID is in the philosophy rather than science arena at this point, and should be taught as philosophy. Yet, I do believe that if enough scientists do serious work on ID, it can become a legitimate science. If something did happen, it could be studied by science, right? The problem is that evolution is the paradigm of biological science. Anything that goes against it is quickly branded "non-science." As Kuhn observed, it will take a tremendous amount of amonalies against evolution to force the incumbent scientific community to abandon a paradigm. I think finding the anomalies was mainly what the ID people were doing a couple of decades ago. Only recently have they been trying to do some positive construction. It will take time for them to be respected as science. And it will take some geniuses to start a new paradigm, much like guys such as Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein.
Sure, most ID people are motivated by their religious beliefs. But so are a lot of hardline evolutionists who are motivated by their naturalistic beliefs. It's the only credibly theory available so far to explain the existence of life without a supernatural creator.
You mean only Christians believe in a creator god? Many Jews and Muslims would think you are prejudiced.
