No – the vast majority 90% of scientists and engineers and technicians and other workers who have done the real work – data collection and data analysis – are in agreement that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real and serious.

A news item just came out that blew headlines off of newspapers and news feed across the world recently: AGW is worse than predicted in 1997!

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091122/SCI.Climate._09.Post.Kyoto/

Same for biological evolution. No real researcher denies the fact and theory of biological macro-evolution.

If you wish to choose a topic for which most scientists are NOT in agreement: pick USOs, UFOs, the Alien Hypothesis, and crop formations. Most scientists don’t get funded to study these, so most know nothing about it. Many of them are arm-chair speculators and debunkers. But, many scientists, police officers, medical doctors, and military personnel do accept the Alien Hypothesis for many crop formations and UFOs.

There is not quite as much evidence for Bigfoot and there is to support the Alien Hypothesis. But, there is still quite a bit of good hardcore physical research, often done by the few who have gone out in the field. Their paid job titles are irrelevant to the work they do.
Go to Bigfoot Field Research Organization to read the blogs of expeditions.

However, lowest on the scale of evidence is the theory that outlawing meat (to protect animals – as I support) and outlawing gas cars and mandating building electric only cars will “hurt” the economy. No – it will help those who deserve it. It will rightfully punish those who refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
The free-market extremists have been coddled and saved by reverse socialism = corporate welfare for centuries. They have no concept of the meaning of what real loss of freedom means – such was the kind of confinement vegetarian animals (pigs, chickens, cows, turkeys) feel in factory farms and fur farms (minks, foxes) and laboratories (birds and mammals of all types).

Have yoau heard about Ben Stein’s new Movie coming out tomorrow on Intellegent design called Expelled?

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

Perhaps you can clear this up for us DaveScot.

I just say that because it appears that you are using the ‘irreducibly complex’ scenario to critique him, and to me it seems incongruent to do that if he’s not making that specific argumental move…

Just a side comment… Go hard.

-d-

Intelligent design rests on just on a few assumptions:

1) intelligent agency exists in at least one instance in the universe (humanity) proving the universe can produce instances of intelligent agency (a part of nature)

2) complex machines with many interdependent parts serving a purpose and all abstract codes that serve to specify the construction and operation of such machines are, in all cases where the origin is known, are produced by intelligent agency

3) no demonstrably capable source other than intelligent agency can produce the machines described above

So if you point to a process that you believe to be ‘irreducibly complex’ and a valid explanation is found for how that apparent complexity got there without the intervention of an intelligent agency does the whole theory go out the window or do the goalposts just get moved?

Does intelligent design (in the absence of positive evidence of a designer) exist only at the margins of our knowledge?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there was an advanced alien civilisation who intervened at some stage in the evolution of life and go us over a hurdle that would have otherwise been insurmountable. It might have been a bit of DNA-fiddling or the planting of special food crops. This hypothesis is entirely possible and I’d say that most scientists would agree in principle. First of all you should find the evidence in life that look like there’s been some intervention (in ID’s case it might be the bacterial flagellum) and exhaust every possible natural explanation before jumping to the conclusion that it was a supernatural event. And, yes, this means actively searching the stars for this alien civilisation as a possible natural explanation.

What I dislike about the ID approach is that they generally want to jump straight to a supernatural explanation without having even tried to find natural explanations, alien or otherwise. If it weren’t for this flawed methodology I’m sure the scientific community would be quite supportive.