crimsone

I did wonder that... The thread title is "The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design", but having read through the entire thread as it's been written, I have seen no such scientific case. I've seen little more than even vague and fleeting attempts at such a case if even those. What there is a lot of here is attempts to use supposition and philosophy to discredit evolutionary theory, but that does not make a case for Intelligent Design. Intelligent design as a scientific subject is, in my opinion, a very clever ploy. It has been established that science cannot prove the existence of a supreme being (god to be specific, but any other supreme being is equally applicable), which throws creationism right out of the scientific spectrum. What the ID philosophy does is to obsfucate that issue... It turns the question around... it tries to prove the probable existance of such a supreme being through the medium of natural diversity and complexity. There is NOTHING so complex that it cannot occur by any variety of means, be it chance or be it design. An example is a snowflake... billions have fallen, and each one of them different. To suggest one or the other, or anything outside or in between these two points as the more likely cause/origin of a complexity with no supporting evidence is nothing more than either a guess or a belief. On one hand, evolutionary theory has been around for around 150 yrs, and has stood firm and quite solid in spite of its original (and continuing) challenge and ridicule by the church, and scientific scrutiny so far. On the other hand, we have ID, for which the only substantive scientific evidence we could hope to gain in support of ID is proof of the existence of an intelligent designer (AKA a supreme being of some sort).

While I would personally agree broadly with that statement, I cannot see it as a justification of intelligent design as science. Evolution is science... it's a theory that despite repeated attempts has not been disproved, and is supported by those scientific "facts" that we know so far. Intelligent design however is not science... Just like the existance of god, it can niether be proved or disproved beyond a certainty of 50% either way, and cannot be either directly supported or detracted from by any current scientific knowledge. The former is a matter of science, while the latter is a matter of faith and philosophy.

Meh - it's the G8. There's a reason that the summits are surrounded by protests every year, and it's a good one. when it comes to the smaller things, cynicism isn't allways warranted. On the other hand, when it comes to the rich getting richer - not so much average people, but at the top levels - I don't feel in the slightest bit cynical, and my views pay dividends! I get to ignore the statements and laugh at the enthusiasm, and not get caught in the hype when the G8 say such things as "we'll save africa" (translated: we'll stop screwing over africa), because it just isn't going to happen where it means disadvantage for the G8. Heck - it took Bob Geldof, Bono, and a huge and well publicised campaign just to get them to pay lip service. Imagine the kind of bad image it would take to get them to actually do anything, or would even such an obvious and seriously bad image force them to do anything? One of the curious things that's just occured to me actually, is that I recall someone on these boards presenting a well reasoned argument that a major contributing factor to climate change was the uneven distribution of the worlds wealth and resources. I wonder if the G8 have considered the same possibility? If they haven't, it's probably because it doesn't suit them, and if they have, evidently it doesn't suit them.

First of all, my spelling is irrelevant. If what I've typed can be read fairly easily, then that's what matters, and my spelling on the whole isn't that bad either. When I do get it wrong, it's usually in typing. Secondly, advanced fares aren't always available, and as they are in limited numbers, only a few may be lucky enough to get them. You might also like to know that I've seen the service in Austria, and no company in the UK compares niether in price or in service. You might also like to scroll back a few pages where you'll recall that overcrowding is a big problem, as is pricing people out of the market of rail travel on trains which have become a lot shorter. No, the service hasn't improved - it's gotten worse. Safety might have improved in one way, but standing on a two and a half hour journey from London to Bridgend, and paying a rediculous price for the priviledge is not my idea of fun - and yes, the prices are rediculous, and they've been made that way in an attempt to solve the overcrowding problem. ...and no - I haven't failed to consider your point on capital investment. A company may be valued on it's assets, but it's also valued on its profits. There is no incentive to spend money on keeping the roads in pristine condition because as long as they are usuable, drivers will use them. Due to the fact that roads are very expensive to maintain, especially in an excellent condition, the company stands to make more profit by not doing so and reaping the rewards of charging no less for using them. The only thing that would provide an incentive would be for the companies to be forced to maintain them in such a way by an external body. I suspect that you're so convinced of the righteousness of your opinions that you feel you have both the right and the duty to tell people that they are wrong, you are right, and sooner or later they'll come around to your way of thinking. I suspect that you think that such a high and mighty pedistal is a reasonable and desireable place to be, and that there is no fault in such an attitude. In any case, I know that such people are not the sort of people that I generally feel a desire to engage with or otherwise get to know in any way.

That's truly one of the most rediculous things I've ever heared. Firstly, in the case of the railways, they've screwed up in a big way. It's for that reason that we now have to pay rediculous fares for a lesser service. Secondly, motorists use the roads they need to use, regardless of the state they are in, untill the point that they become impassable or unusable, or less efficient than an alternative route. The government keeps roads in a usable condition, but less than perfect. As drivers will use whichever roads they have to use, private companies have no more incentive to keep them pristine than the government does! Here's an idea - let's have cycle tracks, footpaths and pavements owned and tolled by private companies too!

It might help to get as much freight as possible off of the roads and onto the rails too!

Being a victim of your own success while running a vital public service, in business terms, I believe is known as screwing up - if that is in fact what's happened - it depends on what the raw statistics really are. While, apparently passenger numbers have increased by 70%, it seems a little more than coincidental that the length of an average train seems to have reduced by a similar amount.

You mean like the private companies running the train service in this country that are pricing people out of the market to deal with overcrowding rather than put on more carriages? ...and as for not knowing how to run a proper public transport system being a worse problem under labour - not that I'm a labour supporter (or a tory one for that matter) - how did National Rail get in such a state that denationalisation became the only affordable option? ...Another thing worth considering in "the social cost of motoring" is the social cost of not motoring for many people. The result being that it's easy enough to find out when a train is running, but actually affording to pay a fare to use it is quite another matter - and a seat for the journey is just asking waaay too much.

Not forgetting of course that VAT is even payable on fuel duty. lol

While the train providers are trying to price people out of the market to solve overcrowding rather than putting on extra carriages, the two are indeed incompatible... and all this moving people are going to have to do is going to mean far more lorries and vans on the roads. One of the biggest congestion problems out there is actually just that - lorries... and with road pricing, even that's going to suddenly become a lot more expensive to do.

I seem to recall from the NASA widget on my google homepage that they are using some sort of new technology this year?

My insurance on my first car, with a clean and new license at age 21 (a 1 litre old banger of a citroen AX) cost me £889 (and that was cheap!!! Everywhere else i looked wanted around £1.3k!) My current car is a 1.6 Astra - old but well looked after for its age. It's currently costing me about £460 (can't remember the exact figure off hand, but it's fairly close). Anybody else out there with roughly equivelant figures from before then? (might be worth adding that I'm 25 now! lol)

Time Team have found a few interesting things, including one or two rarities!

...and now imagine it was a small yacht or rowing boat. lol I wouldn't like to imagine how many felt a little unsettled on that voyage.

There are currently thunderstorms consolidating on the center (as one might expect) according to the NHC advisory discussion, so assuming that they don't die out before the system reaches land, and provided that the system reaches land at the location of the tournament, there may be a prettygood chance of a storm stopping play. Of course, playing Pro golf in a monsoon isn't a usual thing, and so regardless of how stormy the system is, if it makes landfall near the tournament, the chances are it will be stopped anyway (as mentioned by others already, it may well produce enough rain to cause flash flooding on the dry, dry ground - so, not really golfing weather). Not that I have that much of an interest in golf personally.

A video of an absolutely beautiful tornado, a lot closer up than I would have ever would have been! lol My first thought to be honest as the video started was "oops!". It's a great vid though...

No, I was specifically referencing two statements in the text - one being that the ten petals of the void represented the ten commandments, and an earlier statement on the subject of sex and the base chakra (which was pretty good untill it pretty much suggested that only sex within marriage was spiritually OK. Niether of these statements would have been found in the system as concieved and intended. I don't think I'm being particularly cynical at all. I actually recognise that more and more people in this world are opening up to a ll sorts of spiritual and esoteric possibilities. Unfortuantely though, there's too much of a tendancy for people to taint these things with their own personal values and "knowledge" before they even understand what exactly it is that they are tainting. It's far better to truly know what something is before taking it upon oneself to change it. The trouble with changing something before understanding it is that all context and meaning eventually becomes lost.

Quite interesting, but not entirely free of religious dogma. Quite where the ten commandments or the requirement for sex to be only within marriage enters into an ancient indian system of working with the bodies own energy, well, who knows? I actually find it quite frustrating that there are so many out there that profess to know so much of the system, and so few ready to admit that very few know more than very little. Yet, somehow people are oh so ready to ascribe and intertwine their own values and "modern" knowledge into an ancient system that's barely understood and somehow profess to the world its correct interpretation. I guess that's the real definition of "new age" though. Sometimes it's better to take things back to a more basic form to better understand them. For this reason, I personally hope to see a "new new-age" sometime soon, where people are centered more on how much they don't understand, rather than wax lyrical about how much they do (and inevitably don't).

We came from the earth, and we'll be buried in it, GreyWolf. Homo Sapien is nothing more and nothing less than the dominant species of animal on the planet.

I'd guess (perhaps incorrectly?) that solar panels are like anything else commercially sold in the world - the more you pay, the better the quality.

There was one little experiment some time back that compared the melting of "clean" floating water-ice with the melting of very, very salty floating water-ice. I've forgotten what the result was. I seem to recall that either through the experiment, or criticism/further work on it, it wasn't regarded to have too much significance. (or for that matter - was the experiment about the melting of floating "clean" water-ice on either salty or non-salty water? I can't remember that either! ... ... There was an experiment - it involved ice, clean water, and salt. )

...besides; EVERYTHING in science is a theory untill it's proven beyond doubt, at which time it stands a chance of becoming a "law". Even there, on rare occasions, laws become theories again. Such is the nature of science. Theory of evolution, Theory of relativity, Pythagoras' theorum (maths, but the same deal), ... etc.

Actually Mondy, you seem to have missed the fact that I did just that shortly after entering the discussion (my second post here in fact). I recall saying that "arguments against this programme can't be countered by a mention of Al-Gores piece. The only real comparison to be made is that both pieces are as rubbish as each other." Incidentally, you mention that climate change is natural - not man-made. Personally, as already stated, I view global warming in no other term - I don't have to obsess over whether human beings are to blame to know that it's happening and that it will have detrimental effects on human society. Clearly, even if the suns output were entirely responsible, we're not about to go cooling the sun. That being the case, surely, regardless of whether it's natural or not, it's better for human society to be doing what it can about it - and if that involves a reduction in greenhouse gasses, then so be it.

In all fairness to the good scientists working on the problem, I think that they realise that it's somewhat outside of their remit to ask for changes. They merely tell us what changes they think are needed in accordance with the information they are asked for - it's other people that then use that data to ask for change (and dare I say, even an element of self conciousness on the part of human beings that makes some people feel as though the scientists are asking for change.) The sticking point is the politics that comes between the scientists and us (the general population).

No - This time around I just felt like another Monty Python reference