While I was out last night planning the overthrow of religion with my fellow amoral atheists, the BBC was broadcasting a documentary in which it presented a poll showing that nearly 40% of Britons thought Intelligent Design or Creationism is the best explanation of life on earth.
So it appears that Britain, too, is being swayed by the crackpots.
Barry Dorrans
Evil hat on :)
How is the use of god to explain that for which there is no discovered scientific reason different to the creation of particles such as gravitons or entities such as dark matter or cosmic strings to gloss over problems in the latest explanation of the universe?
The acceptance of a diety on faith is almost like the acceptance of an imaginary particle whose presence is only inferred from some new scientific thought.
Perhaps, for example, the new theory of modified gravity which brings the imaginary graviton to the mix is, in fact wrong. Gravitons may not exist, instead the effect they are suggested to create comes from fat angels.
Now that would make both sides happy :)
ahj
Or maybe the effect comes from the flying spaghetti monster?
No, the point is that scientific ideas (dark matter, gravitons, cosmic strings) come from theories which have other scientific justification -- if various other, unrelated, ideas from particle physics such as supersymmetry are true, then all of these things are predicted to exist.
Moreover, just because these entities can't be observed today, that doesn't mean that they are in principle unobservable. This is very different from the god of (say) Christianity whose existence seems to require my death to check, an experiment that I, for one, am unwilling to perform.
Barry Dorrans
Well perhaps we just don't know the method to prove the existence of god :)
The problem with saying that theories have a basis in other scientific justification is that sometimes theories depend on other theories and it gets a little bit silly. Claiming predictions based on ideas which are as let unproven is almost scientific indulgence, a thought exercise designed to prove how clever the thinkers are, not to show how correct the thought is.
Maybe I should start my own cult. Order your purple robe now Andrew, I'll need a right hand man...
Barry Dorans
You realise of course this really is drunken geek dinner conversation ...
we should start this in front of gia and watch her get more animated than normal :)
Alejandro Rivero
How many laboratories have shown some interest about repeating experiments similar to the one of Stanley Miller? I bet you can not quote a handful of similar experiments running, and perhaps no one runing junst now. Even the advisor of Miller was not interested at all, remember. So no surprise that "origin of life" is in the hands of religion, if science does not show interest on it.
Plato
Sorry Andrew, but as layman at heart, I would have to see "Enlightenment" in other ways, and might be, as shown here?