Intelligent Falling

[ShieldAxe]

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

This article in The Onion is a joke of course, but i got to wondering... why don't christians want this Intelligent Falling theory to be presented in schools as well? After all, like evolution, there are gravitational theories (traditional theory, theory of quantum gravity, energy density theory, etc. ) to explain the mechanism of gravity, but they are still theories. This Intelligent Falling 'theory' is every bit as valid as Intelligent Design, so why not teach in schools?

[micatala]

axeplayer wrote:
plants competing for land space? can plants move? no. they grow wherever it is that their seeds land. It is pure randomness, there's no competition involved.

Uhh...allow me to suggest, in the kindest and most loving way possible, that you're terribly, horribly, wrong. Most individual plants can't move, as you say. But they do tend to have seeds, and the seeds kinda have to grow someplace other than in the place that the mother plant already is, so the seeds are dispersed to new locations. What are the variables that determine whether a seed germinates in any particular place? Well, there's obviously the type of soil and the amount of water. There's also the presence or absence of other plants, and whether those other plants can prevent the seed from germinating, or prevent the seedling from growing very well. This type of interaction between plants is called "competition." It's very well known.

Anyone who thinks plants don't compete for space hasn't seen my lawn full of crabgrass.

Is the Big Bang "theory" actually a theory that makes sense? or does it go against the law of energy conservation and suffer the huge risk of the "heat death" scenario? is there really any evidence that supports the big bang theory?...no sir.

Actually, there is a good amount of evidence for the general aspects of the Big Bang theory. Especially impressive is that the Big Bang Theory predicted the existence of the microwave background radiation of 2.7K or so, and voila, we eventually found it just as predicted.

You might visit the Big Bang THread, where I posted some of the evidence for the Big Bang, including this article on the microwave background radiation.

It included the following passages.

The existence of the CMB radiation was first predicted by George Gamow in 1948, and by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman in 1950. It was first observed inadvertently in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building. Coincidentally, researchers at nearby Princeton University, led by Robert Dicke and including Dave Wilkinson of the WMAP science team, were devising an experiment to find the CMB. When they heard about the Bell Labs result they immediately realized that the CMB had been found. The result was a pair of papers in the Physical Review: one by Penzias and Wilson detailing the observations, and one by Dicke, Peebles, Roll, and Wilkinson giving the cosmological interpretation. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel prize in physics for their discovery.

People don't usually win Nobel prizes without evidence.

Today, the CMB radiation is very cold, only 2.725° above absolute zero, thus this radiation shines primarily in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and is invisible to the naked eye. However, it fills the universe and can be detected everywhere we look. In fact, if we could see microwaves, the entire sky would glow with a brightness that was astonishingly uniform in every direction. The picture at left shows a false color depiction of the temperature (brightness) of the CMB over the full sky (projected onto an oval, similar to a map of the Earth). The temperature is uniform to better than one part in a thousand! This uniformity is one compelling reason to interpret the radiation as remnant heat from the Big Bang; it would be very difficult to imagine a local source of radiation that was this uniform. In fact, many scientists have tried to devise alternative explanations for the source of this radiation but none have succeeded.

Note especially the last sentence. Science always seeks to provide the best explanation for the data that we have. At this point, no other scientific explanation for the background radiation seems to exist, other than the Big Bang.

[Jose]

Note especially the last sentence. Science always seeks to provide the best explanation for the data that we have. At this point, no other scientific explanation for the background radiation seems to exist, other than the Big Bang.

Gee whiz. Do they have to be scientific explanations? Can't I just say "the Big Bang doesn't make sense to me" and then have everyone ignore it forever? Why can't I offer a non-scientific explanation, like "Raven pecked a hole into the edge of the dark, and the universe exploded through the hole"?

But, on a more useful note, I was thinking of axeplayer's comment, "plants competing for land space? can plants move? no." It might be interesting to look at Roger Hangarter's time-lapse movies of plants moving. I particularly like the corn worshipping the light and coleus geotropism. Of course, they're all good. And those are just short-term movements--micatala has provided a great example of plant competition in the invasive growth of crabgrass, but that takes a little longer than the events in these movies.

It's funny how easy it is to make bald assertions of Absolute Truth, when there's a huge body of evidence that disproves the assertions, often in several different and unrelated ways. What puzzles me is the Certainty that people must have to do this, and their lack of interest in looking around to see if, just maybe, they might not be fully aware of all there is to know.

[Chimp]

I think the term is phototropism

If you read any botany books on rainforests they always remark about
the violent fight for sunlight between various plants.

[Cathar1950]

I loved the worshiping the light video.
There are some who think God does everything.

Dilettante wrote:

The point was clearly that by attacking evolution, Creationists are attacking science in general. In fact, the point seems well taken. If science is not to be trusted on the origin of species, why trust it on any other area? If only those theories which conflict with a literal reading of the Bible are attacked, perhaps it is because the attack is motivated by religion rather than by alternative scientific findings.

Creationist are not the only ones guilty of this anti-science. I see it in some New Agers. Scientology seems kind of anti-science too.

[MagusYanam]

Creationist are not the only ones guilty of this anti-science. I see it in some New Agers. Scientology seems kind of anti-science too.

Not really anti-science so much as science-fiction. Though they are very well-known for their disapproval of the psychological and psychiatric disciplines.

The way I heard it, though, L. Ron Hubbard didn't really even believe the religion he created. He created it (as I heard it) on a dare that he could get people to believe a completely made-up worldview based on science fiction.

Thank goodness there's no Trekkatology, or it would be one of the most prevalent religions in this country (heh heh).

[Cathar1950]

I heard that when he first came out with the book Dianetics.
I also heard that he said if you want to make money start a religion.
I wonder why Starwars failed? May the force be with you.
I did hear it was Jewish(Starwars). Hollywood and tv, some times they sure have some junk. They would just be little sects.
We could make a list and try to figure out what kind of religion movies and tv could create.
ET; Good religion or bad?
Time cop;
We should all get together and make up something. If we have cleaver lawyers.

[QED]

axeplayer's post embodied numerous misconceptions. I noticed that each one could be cleared-up in a sentence or two, but somehow I don't think it will make a difference. I find this quite worrying. What on Earth is going on out there that can distort a persons viewpoint to the degree that they believe bacterial resistance only takes place in humans that use medicine?

It is one thing to challenge scientific ideas using logic and observation, but to have a generation coming forward in denial of pre-existing knowledge is frankly highly disturbing to me.

[Cathar1950]

I understand QED.
Dogs were not genetically changed by humans they were breed.
The genes allowed the adaptation to different needs we humans desired.
This was thru breeding. The dogs did the rest. What is interesting is the variation is obvious. This is an obvious display of adaptation.
Humans are the environmental factor at work but they did change and adapt. They have shown studies where head lice became body lice about 70,000 years ago about the same time man started wearing clothing.
All animals have resistance.
QED wrote:

It is one thing to challenge scientific ideas using logic and observation, but to have a generation coming forward in denial of pre-existing knowledge is frankly highly disturbing to me.

It disturbs me too. I can just see the future when Creationism is taught in schools.
They will not be able to teach logic and observation. Math will be performed with calculators. If they can still be built.
History will be rewritten. Of course, it will be a short history.

[Jose]

Not really anti-science so much as science-fiction. Though they are very well-known for their disapproval of the psychological and psychiatric disciplines.

The way I heard it, though, L. Ron Hubbard didn't really even believe the religion he created. He created it (as I heard it) on a dare that he could get people to believe a completely made-up worldview based on science fiction.

He created it as "dianetics," but had legal troubles based on "practicing medicine without a license." So, he changed it to a religion. While it and its schools have some tremendously good ideas, it also has some whole-hearted wackiness. Drugs are bad "because they prevent you from absorbing vitamins." Good message, wacky reasoning. The reason the Soviet Union failed (or communism failed--he'd died by the time the Soviet Union collapsed) is because they based their world on "modern science" rather than religion (his, of course). They disapprove of psychology because it teaches about the psychological tricks they use to instill absolute loyalty in their members. They also require that people sign "the billion year contract" when they join Sea Org, because they want to be sure that the members remain members in their future lives.

Oh yeah...heaven is a reprogramming station, where your old memories are erased before you're sent back for a new tour of duty. LRH knew--he'd visited heaven three times.

But, like True Christians, they consider evolution to be wacky. It's interesting that they don't join forces to combat the common enemy. Why not? Their particular dogma is more important. It's not that evolution is bad, it's that there is something that counters their dogma.

[Cathar1950]

They are wacky. I hope we don't have to go to court.
The worse movie I have seen was Cocktail.
So any one want to start a religion.
Just for money of course.
I think that I could not actually do it.
How could I keep a straight face?
I would buckle as soon as some poor soul had a problem.
I would just say God loves you be a gardener and avoid the nuts.
An Animist might be nice.
I will just stick with Panentheism.