Why are kids taught in public schools to believe in next to impossible chance, rather than God?

Originally posted by Observer99

Originally posted by Maslo
(a bunch of fallacy and red herrings)

Comparing evolution (an incomplete theory, at best) with any of the topics you listed is just more unbridled arrogance. Your arrogance is why you fail, and yet you just keep ramping it up.

If you admitted the flaws in evolution, there would be no problem. Instead you teach evolution as dogma, mock dissenters and use facetious arguments to try to state your case, making you no better than the catholic church 500 years ago.

This just shows you dont know anything about modern evolutionary theory and you are just blindly repeating creationist propaganda debunked long ago. It is proven beyond doubt, just as other theories like relativity or germ theory of disease. There are no "flaws".

If you think there are, I challenge you to bring what you think is the biggest "flaw", so it can be debunked.

Originally posted by Maslo
This just shows you dont know anything about modern evolutionary theory and you are just blindly repeating creationist propaganda debunked long ago. It is proven beyond doubt, just as other theories like relativity or germ theory of disease. There are no "flaws".

If you think there are, I challenge you to bring what you think is the biggest "flaw", so it can be debunked.

edit on 17/7/11 by Maslo because: (no reason given)

- Lack of transitional forms for many species including man
- Statistical absurdity of even the simplest self-replicating life-form being able to be formed by lightning in amino-acid soup, do the math
- Lack of coherent explanation how species with different chromosome counts could breed
- In our fused chromosome we have a lot of unique gene sequences not seen in any other species

Until these questions are answered by science, they are unanswered. If scientists admitted they were unanswered, there would be no problem. The hand-waving and arrogance is the problem. You ignore the flaws above because you BELIEVE IN evolution, because evolution and emergence from nothing supports YOUR godless worldview, and that is a religious teaching. True scientists are supposed to deal in facts, not belief. As long as you persist in the BELIEF in the infallibility of evolution, you are a hypocrite. As long as you continue to argue this point, you are also in denial.

reply to post by addygrace


easy answer, gods a fairy tale. im sick of religious nuts askin these questions... take your kids to church to learn about the boogyman (god). schools should teach facts

its weird that when the theory of evolution was first introduced the idea was actually acknowledged by the church and accepted that it might of been part of gods plan. but christians of today take the bible too literally... its a bunch of stories thats supposed to give you a sence of morals, right and wrong.. its not a factual account of events.... idiot

Originally posted by Observer99

Originally posted by Maslo

Until these questions are answered by science, they are unanswered. If scientists admitted they were unanswered, there would be no problem. The hand-waving and arrogance is the problem.

edit on 17/7/2011 by DaveNorris because: sorry but were exactly is the evidence of god. admit your own floors

reply to post by Observer99

- Lack of transitional forms for many species including man

There is no lack of transitional forms, that is a creationist lie:

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
Fossil Hominids - The Evidence for Human Evolution
Creationism and Human Evolution

www.talkorigins.org...
www.talkorigins.org...
www.talkorigins.org...
www.talkorigins.org...

Of course when creationists demand thousands of fossils for every little morphology change and no gaps, they will not get them, but we must keep in mind that fossilisation is a very intricate process requiring specific conditions, so some incompleteness is expected by evolutionary theory and paleontology - claiming that evolution requires thousands of fossils and no gaps is a strawman.
All currently found fossils support and are consistent with the evolutionary theory.

- Statistical absurdity of even the simplest self-replicating life-form being able to be formed by lightning in amino-acid soup, do the math

That is abiogenesis (origin of life), not evolution (subsequent development of life), so I dont know what it has to do with the evolution. Neverthless, it is still wrong.

www.talkorigins.org...

Here is a nice article that summarizes and explains the fallacies of using simple "x/y" calculations when determining the probability of a formation of replicating protein or RNA sequences through evolutionary algorithm.
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations

Problems with the creationists' "it's so improbable" calculations:

1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.

2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.

3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.

4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.

5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.

Let's go back to our example with the coins. Say it takes a minute to toss the coins 4 times; to generate HHHH would take on average 8 minutes. Now get 16 friends, each with a coin, to all flip the coin simultaneously 4 times; the average time to generate HHHH is now 1 minute. Now try to flip 6 heads in a row; this has a probability of (1/2)6 or 1 in 64. This would take half an hour on average, but go out and recruit 64 people, and you can flip it in a minute. If you want to flip a sequence with a chance of 1 in a billion, just recruit the population of China to flip coins for you, you will have that sequence in no time flat.

So, if on our prebiotic earth we have a billion peptides growing simultaneously, that reduces the time taken to generate our replicator significantly.

Okay, you are looking at that number again, 1 chance in 4.29 x 1040, that's a big number, and although a billion starting molecules is a lot of molecules, could we ever get enough molecules to randomly assemble our first replicator in under half a billion years?

Yes, one kilogram of the amino acid arginine has 2.85 x 1024 molecules in it (that's well over a billion billion); a tonne of arginine has 2.85 x 1027 molecules. If you took a semi-trailer load of each amino acid and dumped it into a medium size lake, you would have enough molecules to generate our particular replicator in a few tens of years, given that you can make 55 amino acid long proteins in 1 to 2 weeks [14,16].

So how does this shape up with the prebiotic Earth? On the early Earth it is likely that the ocean had a volume of 1 x 1024 litres. Given an amino acid concentration of 1 x 10-6 M (a moderately dilute soup, see Chyba and Sagan 1992 [23]), then there are roughly 1 x 1050 potential starting chains, so that a fair number of efficent peptide ligases (about 1 x 1031) could be produced in a under a year, let alone a million years. The synthesis of primitive self-replicators could happen relatively rapidly, even given a probability of 1 chance in 4.29 x 1040 (and remember, our replicator could be synthesized on the very first trial).

Assume that it takes a week to generate a sequence [14,16]. Then the Ghadiri ligase could be generated in one week, and any cytochrome C sequence could be generated in a bit over a million years (along with about half of all possible 101 peptide sequences, a large proportion of which will be functional proteins of some sort).

Although I have used the Ghadiri ligase as an example, as I mentioned above the same calculations can be performed for the SunY self replicator, or the Ekland RNA polymerase. I leave this as an exercise for the reader, but the general conclusion (you can make scads of the things in a short time) is the same for these oligonucleotides.


So I've shown that generating a given small enzyme is not as mind-bogglingly difficult as creationists (and Fred Hoyle) suggest. Another misunderstanding is that most people feel that the number of enzymes/ribozymes, let alone the ribozymal RNA polymerases or any form of self-replicator, represent a very unlikely configuration and that the chance of a single enzyme/ribozyme forming, let alone a number of them, from random addition of amino acids/nucleotides is very small.

However, an analysis by Ekland suggests that in the sequence space of 220 nucleotide long RNA sequences, a staggering 2.5 x 10112 sequences are efficent ligases [12]. Not bad for a compound previously thought to be only structural. Going back to our primitive ocean of 1 x 1024 litres and assuming a nucleotide concentration of 1 x 10-7 M [23], then there are roughly 1 x 1049 potential nucleotide chains, so that a fair number of efficent RNA ligases (about 1 x 1034) could be produced in a year, let alone a million years. The potential number of RNA polymerases is high also; about 1 in every 1020 sequences is an RNA polymerase [12]. Similar considerations apply for ribosomal acyl transferases (about 1 in every 1015 sequences), and ribozymal nucleotide synthesis [1, 6, 13].

Similarly, of the 1 x 10130 possible 100 unit proteins, 3.8 x 1061 represent cytochrome C alone! [29] There's lots of functional enyzmes in the peptide/nucleotide search space, so it would seem likely that a functioning ensemble of enzymes could be brewed up in an early Earth's prebiotic soup.

So, even with more realistic (if somewhat mind beggaring) figures, random assemblage of amino acids into "life-supporting" systems (whether you go for protein enzyme based hypercycles [10], RNA world systems [18], or RNA ribozyme-protein enzyme coevolution [11, 25]) would seem to be entirely feasible, even with pessimistic figures for the original monomer concentrations [23] and synthesis times.

The very premise of creationists' probability calculations is incorrect in the first place as it aims at the wrong theory. Furthermore, this argument is often buttressed with statistical and biological fallacies.

- Lack of coherent explanation how species with different chromosome counts could breed

Two individuals with different chromosome count CAN mate and produce fertile offspring AS LONG AS important *genes* on the chromosomes have not been damaged a lot by the splitting (or fusion) that changed the chromosome count in one of them.

For example, the domestic horse has 64 chromosomes, while the wild horse (Przewalski's horse) has 66. The two can not only interbreed, but produce fertile offspring. And thats mammals - in many earlier species chromosomal mutations correlate with infertility even far less, and there are populations with differing chromosome numbers that can breed with no problems, or males and females have differing numbers of chromosomes... Chromosomal mutations do not necessarily produce infertility. High school biology rules are often a pedagogic approximation, valid for most higher organisms and humans in majority of cases, but as with any rule, especially in biology, there are many exceptions.

- In our fused chromosome we have a lot of unique gene sequences not seen in any other species

Source? Because its simply not true:
en.wikipedia.org...(human)

The evidence for this includes:

-The correspondence of chromosome 2 to two ape chromosomes. The closest human relative, the chimpanzee, has near-identical DNA sequences to human chromosome 2, but they are found in two separate chromosomes. The same is true of the more distant gorilla and orangutan.[5][6]
-The presence of a vestigial centromere. Normally a chromosome has just one centromere, but in chromosome 2 there are remnants of a second centromere.[7]
-The presence of vestigial telomeres. These are normally found only at the ends of a chromosome, but in chromosome 2 there are additional telomere sequences in the middle.[8]

Chromosome 2 presents very strong evidence in favour of the common descent of humans and other apes. According to researcher J. W. IJdo, "We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2." [8]

Here is a good list of creationist claims with debunking, if you want to know more:
www.talkorigins.org...

Originally posted by AQuestion
reply to post by addygrace

 

I am a Christian and would be angry if the public schools taught about God.

I am sure God would be very proud of you for that attitude.

“But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33).

Originally posted by Common Scarecrow

Originally posted by AQuestion
reply to post by addygrace

 

I am a Christian and would be angry if the public schools taught about God.

I am sure God would be very proud of you for that attitude.

“But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33).

Keep you choice of God - in your own home.

There is a reason the US is a secular government.

reply to post by addygrace


If you really want your kid to be taught about religion in school then why don't you just send them to a catholic school?

Public schools are for the general public and not everybody in the general public believes in your "god".

reply to post by SaturnFX


But there is the problem. The science field is the only field of studies where you’re evaluated by what? Other scientists. Must be nice to be evaluated by your friends and coworkers on a job well done. Would love to be in that field. A field where a group of scientist form a theory, back each other up on it and proclaim it as fact. That would be so awesome. Case in point, Global Warming. The hoax that has been stopped. Just one of thousands of facts. www.iceagenow.com... Glaciers growing around the world and even in the US. 2010 records lows.
Just one of many examples on how scientists manipulate fact to fit their own agenda.

reply to post by kellynap43


inaccurate data

GMBB

mass is on the decline, ill let the data speak for itself.

A religion/science combo is already in nearly all U.S. schools, so let's get real.

Or are there any practitioners here who would confirm or deny the legitimacy of what is being represented in these books?

shop.scholastic.com...

Here are some sources that seem to be legitimate participants/adherents in this particular belief system, and it seems respectful to me to let them speak for themselves

paganwiccan.about.com...


www.youtube.com...

I am a born skeptic, and really thought this was kind of fanatical. But apparently, Wiccans verify J.K. Rowling's earnest research and attempts at authenticity.

So does this lessen its importance as a religion? And if not, should this be considered equal ground with Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc?

Should teachers be able to follow the road of learning wherever it leads? Or is it only Christianity that is closed to investigation or study?

Originally posted by kellynap43
reply to post by SaturnFX

 

But there is the problem. The science field is the only field of studies where you’re evaluated by what?
Other scientists.

Partly corrected. Your work is evaluated by those with the necessary expertise in your field, aka your "peers". It would be useless to have the validity of cutting edge researched evaluated by non-experts, such as users on a conspiracy forum.

Must be nice to be evaluated by your friends and coworkers on a job well done. Would love to be in that field.

No, the peer review system isn't a glorified pat on the back. I suggest you educate yourself on the topic. Hell, no-one's stopping you becoming a scientist. Finnish high school, go to college, get good grades, get a PhD in your field, tackle the burning issues of the day. Or keep playing the ignorant armchair scientist in the internet.

A field where a group of scientist form a theory, back each other up on it and proclaim it as fact.

Erm... do you understand the meaning of the scientific terms 'fact' and 'theory'? Evidently not. Scientific theories attempt to explain and interpret scientific facts. Theories don't become facts and facts don't become theories. Ever.

That would be so awesome.

Get good grades at high school and follow my advice above. No-one's stopping you.

Case in point, Global Warming. The hoax that has been stopped. Just one of thousands of facts. www.iceagenow.com... Glaciers growing around the world and even in the US. 2010 records lows.
Just one of many examples on how scientists manipulate fact to fit their own agenda.

I see the poster above (vjr1113) has refuted this particular piece of misinformation on your part.

reply to post by vjr1113


So your data is right. Let me guess, because you think your right. I will enlighten you with some more data, they have bright pretty colors. Maybe that will make it elementary enough for you.


www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu...
www.iceagenow.com...

reply to post by kellynap43


the first only looks at the smaller picture. which is correct. but it fails to explain the larger picture (decades).

the second only shows the antarctic sheet. so there is not enough info to refute GLOBAL warming.

im not biased or prejudice on this matter, i just want the truth.

good luck.

reply to post by Common Scarecrow


Dear Scarecrow,

I don't deny him and never would. Lets be clear, it says we should have an answer for why we believe. That presumes you were asked a question. It doesn't say force atheists or anyone else to teach about him. It does not say that we should force our beliefs on non-believers. In fact, it says if you enter a town which does not wish to hear to leave the town and shake the dust off your feet.

Public schools are part of the government not part of the church. They simply cannot be trusted to teach children about religion, government is not the friend of religion and religious governments are the worst as they attempt to use God to push social agendas that are anything other than Christian.

Why lie to our children and pretend that Christianity is the real religion when every tradition, holiday and story comes from much older religions that were conviniently labeled as pagan.

reply to post by Annee


Oh yes - there is a reason why those in power separated church from state.
Why they separated God from every aspect of our society
Why they separated God from many peoples consciousness.
Why they are striving to convince people it's a myth or fairytale,
Why they are striving to convince people that a belief in God somehow is a weakness

What a perfect way to hide Satan's rise.

Hell...why don't we go full out and teach other fairy tales in class too? And let's start when kids are still young too, when their minds are still open to nonsense.