Thread: Split from Palin for VP: Creationism in schools

Originally Posted by JohnP

Just read your red-shift quote. Yes, redshift is repeatable and we did use it in labs, etc, but it only demonstrates we can use optical qualities to determine distance

IIRC, supernovae have a certain frequency that denotes their explosion, the redshift is how that inital frequency has been altered by the two bodies in question (us and the supernovae) having accelerated away from one another.

Originally Posted by JohnP

-likewise it is fine not to say life was created, so long as saying it happened by random is also not called "science".

We've discussed the difference between evolution happening randomly and happening naturally many times before, there is a huge difference.

Random implies that you have genes that are just mutating and expressing themselves with no regularity, this does not happen in real life. Natural means that the environment that an organism resides in has an affect on how those genes are expressed and that the environmental conditions determine which memberrs of a population pass on the genes that allowed them to survive.

Randomness couldn't be farther from what causes evolution.

Originally Posted by JohnP

Science is all about observable, demonstrable, things. Evolution, or more specifically this idea that life was not created but just happened, by the interaction of still more things that happened to already be there, in the right proportions, etc etc is a theory and as such is also not science, either.

First off, you've just barred creationism from the discussion with that first sentence. It's a hard reality to grasp but you've done so quite well. (but seriously, you are correct in that statement and it does eliminate the Supernatural as being credited for natural events).

Secondly, yes science is entirely based on theory, every science book in the world is filled with similar theories. And until they are disproven they will be taught as the prevailing explanation for the phenomena that we observe.

There is no difference between a scientific answer and a scientific theory as you suggest that there is. The reality is that your using a general speech form of the word "theory", not the scientific definition, which is much more rigorous.

Originally Posted by JohnP

Russel, I propose a draw as to which idea explains the origins of life-as to be honest, if one is willing to accept astronomical coincidences acting on matter and energy which cannot be created or destroyed...in the right order and making it subject to not only life but adaptation-then it is just as believable that likewise an intelligent being who also cannot be created or destroyed, intentionally brought these events to pass.

John P.

I accept.