Sam Harris

Barry Cull

A set of principles or beliefs.

The body of dogma of a religion.

Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance.

Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.

Fidelity to one’s promises, or allegiance to duty, or to a person honored and beloved; loyalty.

Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will.

Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.

The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what is uttered; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.

The belief in the facts and truth of the Scriptures, with a practical love of them; especially, that confiding and affectionate belief in the person and work of Christ, which affects the character and life, and makes a person a true Christian.

In general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phil. 1:27; 2 Thess. 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests. Faith is the result of teaching (Rom. 10:14-17). Knowledge is an essential element in all faith, and is sometimes spoken of as an equivalent to faith (John 10:38; 1 John 2:3).

A moral act, as it proceeds from a renewed will, and a renewed will is necessary to believing assent to the truth of God (1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4). Faith, therefore, has its seat in the moral part of our nature fully as much as in the intellectual. The mind must first be enlightened by divine teaching (John 6:44; Acts 13:48; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 1:17, 18) before it can discern the things of the spirit.

Faith requires knowledge and a deeper understanding of the natural world, human nature and the inner workings of the human mind.

Most individuals that profess religious faith do not truly understand the many aspects of faith and typically follow religious leaders who are more likely to be wrong than right.

Actually these parts come and go all the time in human designed systems. If this was not the case then the very first telephone we ever used would be the one we still use. And who needs a camera on a telephone?

I’m confused.  Are you saying humans can design telephones that change themselves over time?

[quote author=“dchoweller”][quote author=“lawrence”][quote author=“dchoweller”] These kinds of parts just don’t exist in human intelligent design.

Actually these parts come and go all the time in human designed systems. If this was not the case then the very first telephone we ever used would be the one we still use. And who needs a camera on a telephone?

I’m confused.  Are you saying humans can design telephones that change themselves over time?

No. I am saying that rotray dial phones, or farther back still party lines,  are seldom being used any more while new ‘air’ phones have cameras on them.

[quote author=“lawrence”][quote author=“dchoweller”][quote author=“lawrence”][quote author=“dchoweller”] These kinds of parts just don’t exist in human intelligent design.

Actually these parts come and go all the time in human designed systems. If this was not the case then the very first telephone we ever used would be the one we still use. And who needs a camera on a telephone?

I’m confused.  Are you saying humans can design telephones that change themselves over time?

No. I am saying that rotray dial phones, or farther back still party lines,  are seldom being used any more while new ‘air’ phones have cameras on them.

In human-designed phones, the parts are made exclusively for a particular purpose.  So, a cellphone has a camera-part to take pictures.  However, a camera-part isn’t slowly modified in later models to serve a new purpose, such as GPS tracking.  Human’s usually tack on a new part which was designed from scratch to serve the new purpose, rather than modifying the camera-part.  Biological “design” seems to take old “parts” and modify them for new purposes.

A proponent of intelligent design tries to analogize between a biological system and a human-designed system, implying that both require an intelligent designer, but they ignore the fact that the design-strategy used appears to be quite different in the two cases.

[quote author=“El_Nuncio”]Well well, most provocative!!

I agree… the watchmaker analogy is compelling to a degree… but what I am most concerned about is how to work out the effects of irreducible complexity on macro-evolution. Any piece of a watch can exist without the rest of the watch… but can any piece of a toad exist without the rest of the toad?

In recent work, the vast majority of rat DNA (the so-called junk DNA) was removed from rats, and the rats seem perfectly fine.  99% DNA gone and still okay!  So yes, assuming what’s true for rats is true for toads, a toad can exist without vast portions of its DNA.  See:  Mice do fine without ‘junk DNA’ 

SUMMARY: Deleting non-coding regions from the genome has no apparent effect….
CONTEXT: Mice born without large portions of their ‘junk DNA’ seem to survive normally. The result contradicts the beliefs of many scientists who have sought to uncover the function of these parts of the genome. More than 90% the genome of…...
news@nature, (18 Oct 2004) News

[quote author=“akalaniz”][quote author=“El_Nuncio”]Well well, most provocative!!

I agree… the watchmaker analogy is compelling to a degree… but what I am most concerned about is how to work out the effects of irreducible complexity on macro-evolution. Any piece of a watch can exist without the rest of the watch… but can any piece of a toad exist without the rest of the toad?

In recent work, the vast majority of rat DNA (the so-called junk DNA) was removed from rats, and the rats seem perfectly fine.  99% DNA gone and still okay!  So yes, assuming what’s true for rats is true for toads, a toad can exist without vast portions of its DNA.  See:  Mice do fine without ‘junk DNA’ 

SUMMARY: Deleting non-coding regions from the genome has no apparent effect….
CONTEXT: Mice born without large portions of their ‘junk DNA’ seem to survive normally. The result contradicts the beliefs of many scientists who have sought to uncover the function of these parts of the genome. More than 90% the genome of…...
news@nature, (18 Oct 2004) News

I recently read that scientists now believe that this junk DNA is used for the creation of protein building blocks. It seems that if too many genes have functions that are no longer valid in a new environment then the gene carrier dies and the genes are not carried forward.

[quote author=“lawrence”][quote author=“akalaniz”][quote author=“El_Nuncio”]Well well, most provocative!!

I agree… the watchmaker analogy is compelling to a degree… but what I am most concerned about is how to work out the effects of irreducible complexity on macro-evolution. Any piece of a watch can exist without the rest of the watch… but can any piece of a toad exist without the rest of the toad?

In recent work, the vast majority of rat DNA (the so-called junk DNA) was removed from rats, and the rats seem perfectly fine.  99% DNA gone and still okay!  So yes, assuming what’s true for rats is true for toads, a toad can exist without vast portions of its DNA.  See:  Mice do fine without ‘junk DNA’ 

SUMMARY: Deleting non-coding regions from the genome has no apparent effect….
CONTEXT: Mice born without large portions of their ‘junk DNA’ seem to survive normally. The result contradicts the beliefs of many scientists who have sought to uncover the function of these parts of the genome. More than 90% the genome of…...
news@nature, (18 Oct 2004) News

I recently read that scientists now believe that this junk DNA is used for the creation of protein building blocks. It seems that if too many genes have functions that are no longer valid in a new environment then the gene carrier dies and the genes are not carried forward.

There were actually two back-to-back papers in Nature.  Certain sections of the rat genome in the so-called junk region appear to play a role in the maturation process from newborn to adult.  Still, this still allows about 90% of the junk DNA to be excised with no observable consequences.  The point of view that life has some kind of irreducible complexity across all scales from molecular to whole organsim is clearly not tenable.  (I should add that there is work indictating that some of junk DNA may allow for rapid evolution/adaptation, but the jury is still not fully in on this idea.)

Michael Denton in “Are We Spiritual Machines?” likes to say, “in all cases the parts [of living things] are existentially dependent on being part of the whole in which they function.  The reciprocal formative relationship between parts and between parts and the whole which is observed in proteins, multimolecular systems and cells is also characteristic of all higher order organic structures—including organs like the brain and whole developing embryos.”

Well, the explain:
(1) Removal of 90% junk DNA from rats with no observable detrimental consequences.
(2) Maintaining protein function despite making a few changes in the molecular formula.  Clearly, changes can only be done up to a point, but still, changes can be made.
(3) As for organs and their reciprocal nature, how does one reconcile artificial hearts? artificial cochleas?  prototype artificial retinas in clinical trial?  prototype artificial hypocampuses in animal studies?  etcetera etcetera…

ID is, of course, nothing but a sneeky back-door way of imposing Creationism in the science classroom - another attempt at rationalizing the irrational for the self’s of the weak of faith and the faithless.  There is no objective difference between micro and macro, between complex and simple.  Reducibility is an irrelevent nonsensical construct.  You cannot assert the “odds” of the state of the universe with another universe to compare it to. 

ID must be stamped out of existence.

Is there a possibility that certain structures of DNA may be useful for a species by providing possibilities for further mutation in the event that environmental changes become acute and require modification of the species?

[quote author=“lawrence”]Is there a possibility that certain structures of DNA may be useful for a species by providing possibilities for further mutation in the event that environmental changes become acute and require modification of the species?

Yes.  And can it also be possible that viruses assisted in the sharing of DNA and therefore in the evolution of all creatures?  Yes.

All the intelligent design arguments die when you ask the question…..

“Who designed the designer”?

All the impossible arguments they give for complexity, etc…. simply don’t carry any weight with respect to the designer.

Is their answer to the origin of the designer….“He just is”?

Their own arguments may then be used against them.

Plus I like Steinhardts Paradigm on the cyclic model of creation…  It doesn’t give ‘ultimate’ answers….but at least it allows us to ask some more questions.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/steinhardt.html

In The Skeptical Inquirer, a “Magazine for Science and Reason,”  (Vol. 29, No. 2: March / April 2005), is an excellent article by Dennis R. Trumble, titled: “One Longsome Argument” (sic, referring to a comment by Darwin).

Because the anti-evolution movement continues to eat away at the very fabric of society’s intellect, and all the reasoned response in the world doesn’t seem to be making a lot of headway against it. Trumble’s article gives us, among other things, some insight into why.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Laboratory experiments and astronomic observations suggest that key organic compounds were present in abundance shortly following Earth’s formation and that natural chemical affinities and mineral scaffolds may have acted in concert to produce the simplest of biochemical copying machines….

....Based on these and other findings, biochemists have proposed several plausible mechanisms by which these compounds may have coalesced of their own accord into the precursors of life….”

As Trumble points out, ID is based on a false or incomplete premise.

Once the missing factor is introduced, that nature at the molecular level does possess innate organizational propensities, the ID theory collapses.

~T