Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

[spartus]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"


Thank you, Spartus, for the congeniality.

I have never been able to get this point across, effectively, ever, but I'm going to try again.

Let's de-construct the gestalt "science":

Its end is to understand for intellectual satisfaction, and to practically apply the knowledge, ultimately.

Its methods are essentially to use "empiricism"; an objective measure of the objective. Testing like with like.

Its collective body of work is a mixed bag, some true and correct, some less so.

That, I believe, unless I'm missing something, is the whole of science.

The difference, and strength, of science as opposed to other what we have decided to loosely call "belief systems" is that it is self-correctable, self-correcting, and what's more, able to acknowledge that going in. There's a thread somewhere where Pete Hanlin decries all this "teaching" of "knowledge", and wishes schools would just stick to the stuff we know, like planets and stuff, instead of all this evolution and things that no one can really prove, since we can't go back in time eleventy skillion years, but we can sure tell that planets move.

This is a profound shift in the religious mindset. Not so very long ago, the position of The Church was that the Earth was the center of the universe, and anything else was heresy. A few intelligent people looked at the evidence, despite the Ptolemy's well-established idea of how it was put together, and came up with a very different--and correct--interpretation of the facts.

Skipping over the rest of the history lesson, five centuries later, we have the deeply religious folk who would have opposed that exact discovery on purely religious grounds now singling it out as a shining example of scientific knowledge and one of the few scientific things we should teach children. I'll leave you to draw the line between this and the current discussion.

Now, let's contrast that to "naturalism":
Naturalism is the point-of-view that everything that exists is, essentially, within a closed system, nature. Anything outside that system is unknowable and, essentially, so speculative as to be practically useless.

People in our current system of science have adopted the naturalistic precept more, and more, and more, to the degree that it is now confused with naturalism and is inseparable from it, in some people's mind.

There, however, is no monopoly on the use of scientific methodology towards scientific aims. Anyone can apply them, even theists, such as myself, and "science" is not proprietary to the "ensconced scientific community" any more than music is proprietary to professional musicians.

What you apparently are, is a naturalist, not a scientist. If you want to maintain (to your above point) a belief system of naturalism, you are as free to do so as you can possibly be. As a theist, I am likewise free to use science to question the body of work science has accumulated, including the evolutionary theory, as many find scientific fault with evolutionary theory, and as anyone who really knows much about evolution is well aware of it's problems (regardless of whether they want to continue using the theory as a valid explanation or not).

You certainly seem driven to tell me what I am--first I'm an existentialist, then a humanist, now I'm a naturalist. Here I thought I was a cynic who didn't know when to shut up. ;)

What's funny, and this a point I keep coming back to which no one's yet satisfactorily explained to me--if so very many scientists have "problems" with evolution, how come I've never heard of any other than "Miss Cleo" Behe? An answer without including the phrases "liberal media" or "socialist professors" would be helpful. When you have a global resource like the Internet, it's hard to claim censorship.

As to intelligent design, in the most basic sense, most people of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim-monotheistic-Western-religion should logically and faithfully be forced to admit that they believe it. As to the intelligent design movement, it is nothing more than a continuation of the culture clash between religious people and secularists.

If you're going to force anyone who's got a variously translated Book of Genesis in their holy book to believe anything (setting aside the serious problem I have with forcing anyone to believe anything), it would, of course, be full-on Creationism: The whole ball of wax in six days, six thousand-year-old planet and all. Anyone else, very simply, is a hypocrite. In fact, we should round people up and force them to believe, and kill those who don't! That'd be terrific, though not entirely original.

This whole debate is on-point ONLY when debating the issue of religion vs. secularism in our society, NOT when either evolution as a scientific theory or Christian belief is being assailed/apologized for.

My point "science can be defined as the attempt to explain the universe without the reference to God" was a hybridized definition I adopted in concession to the ignorant but ubiquitous confusion between science and naturalism.

You apparently have the position that the appropriate marginalization of religious thought and/or the sanctity of "science" disallows the juxtaposition of the word "God" and "science". You confuse political rights for intellectual concepts, apparently. Just because you want your "freedom from religion" (a right not guaranteed, anywhere), you don't want to address the theological aspects of human existence and would prefer to address only the naturalistic ones. That, sir, is tyranny; in a free-thinking society, why should not all perspectives be allowed into discussion?

About freedom from religion: you're right in that it's not an explicitly outlined "right" anywhere in the Constitution. However, trying to argue that since I don't want to know about your religion as it affects you is "tyrannical"--that, sir, is ridiculous.

Why, then, must religion only be dragged into the discussion if it's evolution? Why not have science class about the rare burning bushes of Egypt? Meteorologists could be forced to spend a whole semester purely on raining toads--the causes, the historical precedents and how to wear our hair to discourage God from doing it again (hint: Like Pat Robertson). The civics of slavery? Animal sacrifice as it pleases the Lord? We could even encourage kids to rat out teachers that go off-curriculum for thirty pieces of silver. Oh, wait. They're already doing that.

The very idea of teaching certain (ie. Judeo-Christian) religious ideas in public schools, in a nation pledged to honor religious freedom, is what's tyrannical. Wouldn't you howl if your kids had a 6-week unit on Satanism? Under whose authority could you keep out Pastafarianism? In a discussion with an OD a year or so ago, he asked me what I thought about "Under God" being in the Pledge of Allegiance. I asked him if he thought it'd be okay if it was "Under Buddha", or "Under Allah". He didn't like the idea very much, and still tried to argue the point of "Well, 'God' can be a generic term." If that's your aim, then first off, you'll have to make sure the passage is written "under god", not "under God", otherwise you'll offend followers of multitheistic religions, like Hindus, who have several hundred million gods. You see what a can of worms you open when you try to bring it into the public sphere?

Here, I'll invent a religion: To ignore all other religions. Other than that, there are no requirements, strictures, or guidelines to follow. Now, forcing any adherents of this new faith to learn religious teachings is specifically against my religion. And so now, the free exercise of this faith is being prohibited. To what end?

"Why...why...it's SCIENCE class, for crying out loud" you may say. "Why should we debate such wide-ranging theories as creationism vs. evolution? No, WE THE PEOPLE have spoken: the only OFFICIAL PERSPECTIVE that we will allow in PUBLIC schools is "Scientific Naturalism". All the while, most do not understand that what is being taught as objective fact has many, many, many unanswered questions and is riddled with near-fatal flaws. My opinion is that ignorance is begetting ignorance: because the general lack of critical thought, people are way to quick to defer to a bearded, tenured, middle-aged man with academic credentials to do academics. If "science" has the temerity to claim to explain the origins of man and the universe, it ought to have the intellectual guts to debate all comers on a level playing field.

Please, please, please please provide me with ONE "near-fatal flaw". Please. You see, unlike religious thinkers, I find things that make me question my "beliefs" and what I think I know help me understand more of what I think and why I think so, and--gasp!--sometimes change my mind. I haven't seen a single bit of evidence to make me question evolution yet, so I'd invite anything and everything you can supply me with. Remember, science doesn't purport to know everything--that's your "side"--it just gives us the best explanation of what everything is so far.

[chip anderson]

"Congress Shall Make No Law...." Think how much better life would be if they had stopped there.


Chip

[ksquared]

The Ksquared post Rinselberg is responding to

Originally Posted by rinselberg

Well, ksquared, it's not too hard to identify some of the current and future research problems for Neo-Darwinian evolutionists - like this conversation we've just been having about the evolution of the human ear.

What I haven't been able to see, to date, is how these currently unsolved problems for the Darwinists move us away from the still evolving theory of evolution, and towards any of the theories of Intelligent (Biological) Design.

I’m not sure what you mean here. ID isn’t what’s moving scientists away from the theory of macro-evolution (molecules to man). It’s the evidence and a biased definition of science that’s causing the drift. Even the Darwinists admit this.

The Blind Watchmaker - Dawkins " Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose". Two pages later, despite acknowledging "the intricate architecture and precision engineering" in human life and in each of the trillions of cells within the human body, Dawkins flatly denies that human life or any other life has been designed. Pretty strange for a man who believes that science is based on observation.

The Wedge of Truth - Francis Crick, another ardent Darwinist agrees that there is the appearance of design. In fact the appearance of design is so clear he warns: "biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."

Billions and Billions of Demons - Richard Lewontin of Harvard University: "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a natural explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated...." ...but I digress. I’ll leave the politics of the ID debate for another time.

Science is a search for causes. We have 2 choices; either the cause was intelligent and nonintelligent (natural).

The Neo-Darwinist scientists will only consider one option. They claim that life arose from non-life (spontaneous generation) and new life forms arose from existing life forms (macro-evolution), all without any intelligent intervention. Natural nonintelligent laws must be the cause because they consider no other options. By redefining science to exclude an intelligent cause, it also allows them to say ID isn’t science. The problem here is their argument is based on their biased definition of science. If your definition of science rules out intelligent causes beforehand, than you would never be able to consider ID as science.

ID scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. They realize that by ruling out intelligent causes from science, you also have to rule out archaeology, cryptology, criminal and accident forensic investigations and even the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). They don’t appose continued research into a natural explanation. They are simply observing that in the world of biology, the known natural explanations fail and that the empirically detectable evidence points to an intelligent designer. When they conclude that intelligence created the 1st cell or the human brain, or a molecular machine; their conclusions are based on empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent cause. They are following the evidence where it leads.

The answer to "what caused what" shouldn’t depend on whether a person is an atheist or a theist, btw. Maybe some of the ID proponents are religiously motivated. So what. Does the religious motivation of some Darwinists make Darwinism false? The answer doesn’t lie in the motivation; the answer lies in the quality of the evidence. Where does the evidence lead? Does the evidence support a natural cause or does it support design? The biological evidance is just one piece. When you take into consideration all of it; the fossil record, genetic limits, cyclical change, irreducible complexity, nonviability of transitional forms and molecular isolation; there is not only a lack of evidence for macro-evolution, there’s positive evidence that it hasn’t even occurred.

[chm2023]

The Ksquared post Rinselberg is responding to


The answer to "what caused what" shouldn’t depend on whether a person is an atheist or a theist, btw. Maybe some of the ID proponents are religiously motivated. So what. Does the religious motivation of some Darwinists make Darwinism false? The answer doesn’t lie in the motivation; the answer lies in the quality of the evidence. Where does the evidence lead? Does the evidence support a natural cause or does it support design? The biological evidance is just one piece. When you take into consideration all of it; the fossil record, genetic limits, cyclical change, irreducible complexity, nonviability of transitional forms and molecular isolation; there is not only a lack of evidence for macro-evolution, there’s positive evidence that it hasn’t even occurred.

So what?? Well the issue I have is ID proponents trying to bypass the traditional method whereby knowledge and theories become part of school cirriculum--peer review. When you have ID proponents--who in the case of the Dover Pa situation were virtually all "civilians" with no science background, petitioning individual school boards to include ID in science classes, you need to question motivation. You can conclude these are religious zeolots, or I guess you could accept that a bunch of plumbers and accountants and farmers all became wildly interested in evolution independent of any religious motivation. At the same time.

[rinselberg]

I wish I knew more about some of the terminology that is being deployed by the ID (Intelligent Design) camp. Could someone - perhaps the author of that famously titled OptiBoard post you should see the one that got away - elaborate on the distinction between "genetic limitation(s)" and "cyclical change(s)" --? ... "molecular isolation" --?




There's nowhere you can go to escape this controversy ...

Credit: http://www.troubletown.com



More than just a search for little green men

[QDO1]

The ID camp might be better off starting at a different point - where they are all unified in thier beliefs and arguments. At the drop of the hat some discount the old testament, others believe it. Some say days are years, others that days are days, some say we will never understand God... They all seem to discount the blindingly obvious fossil records, and the subsequent dating of them. Some just invent new terms like irriducible complexity... but then refuse to accept any of the obvious arguments against it.

The only thing so far that unifies the ID camp is the lack of a clear and coherent argument

[drk]

CHM, you (correctly) point the direction of the argument towards what policies a school district should take in devoping their curricula. I agree. That does not refute the validity of KK's point, however, nor does KK's address what a school district should do when there is an obvious plurality of opinion. I think you are for an orthodoxy on scientific thought, determined by "mainstream" scientists. I think that's a really healthy position for critical thinkers to take. (NOT)

KK, you're post was superb, as to the primary subject matter being discussed. You will, unfortunately, not convince naturalists of our point, because, as you so eloquently posted, the a priori assumptions that people invariably make is a condition of their hearts, not their heads. No one is truly neutral and unbiased, and I know you know that.

QDO1: You may interpret as "incoherence" the positions of various I.D. supporters, but I think it speaks less to cohesiveness as a "movement" and more to the diversity of groups that comprise I.D. proponentry. That is, simply, more people don't buy evolution than you think. You're an elitist scientist, though, and the unwashed's opinions don't phase you.

[QDO1]

CHM, you (correctly) point the direction of the argument towards what policies a school district should take in devoping their curricula. I agree. That does not refute the validity of KK's point, however, nor does KK's address what a school district should do when there is an obvious plurality of opinion. I think you are for an orthodoxy on scientific thought, determined by "mainstream" scientists. I think that's a really healthy position for critical thinkers to take. (NOT)

KK, you're post was superb, as to the primary subject matter being discussed. You will, unfortunately, not convince naturalists of our point, because, as you so eloquently posted, the a priori assumptions that people invariably make is a condition of their hearts, not their heads. No one is truly neutral and unbiased, and I know you know that.

QDO1: You may interpret as "incoherence" the positions of various I.D. supporters, but I think it speaks less to cohesiveness as a "movement" and more to the diversity of groups that comprise I.D. proponentry. That is, simply, more people don't buy evolution than you think. You're an elitist scientist, though, and the unwashed's opinions don't phase you.

Innocent M'laud... I dont care how many other think about whatever, what I care about is the utter codswallop that these people want to teach to the young people, in the name of science

I have stated right from the beginning - teach Darwinisim, Greggor Mendel, fossil records, geology, and the "propper maths" of probability in science class, and teach ID (if you care to) in Religious Education class, allong with all of the other belief systems - for example Christianity, Bhuddisim, Paganisim, Hinduisim, witchcraft, allong with the other major philosophies and religions.

I also think youngsters should be taught to think, not follow

That last statement says that I believe science is open to scrutiny, and so is religion. Let youngsters decide for themselves what weighting they decide to put to each side of the coin

[drk]

Hey, King, how about this?

We stop classifying subject matter into headings and we just teach all subjects together, integrating all things into little kids' minds instead of making rather subjective divisions!

History, science, history of science
Religion, politics, politics of religion
Art, science, the aesthetic beauty of the natural world
Mathematics, science, applied mathematics

You see, there are truly no real divisions. We just have a "construct" of division of studies that have a (perhaps unintentional) deeper message, don't we? "Those that name the classes have the power" so to speak.

Surely you understand this. Those that set the agenda are in the better position, et cetera. Just by defining "science class" and what's in it, and "religion class" and what's in it, is making a statement, is it not? What if we put "Native American Studies" (God FORBID) in religion class? We'd have a meltdown in this country. What if we taught about Sir Oliver Cromwell in "Modern Mythology"? Well, you'd be fit to be tied.

Who's kids would be "followers" in my system?

[QDO1]

History, science, history of science
Religion, politics, politics of religion
Art, science, the aesthetic beauty of the natural world
Mathematics, science, applied mathematics

Awkward one... some subjects do go hand in hand - mathematics and physics

Some subjects overlap - religion-philosophy etc. or history and religion

BUT there is a divide. History is about the facts of what happened in the past, but the application of what we learn from history is more to do with philosophy and politics

There is a overlap between science and history, but only in the sense that history records the changing position of science, and documents the progress of learning and knowledge

by saying there is a common denominator - History in this case does not mean you should teach ther exploits of Napoleoen in science lessons. in the same vein, that would be my same line of reasoning for not teaching religion in science class

by all means teach religion, and science, and "join them up" in history and philosophy class

by mixing up the subjects, children will loose focus on the harder aspects of the individual topics covererd

back to the main point - they can teach ID, when there is a semblance of a "theory" that stands up to mainstream scientific scrutiny... bottom line is that ID is a religious philosophy (or heavily religiously motivated), being passed off as a scientific theory

"houses built on the sand" and all that

[spartus]

What if we taught about Sir Oliver Cromwell in "Modern Mythology"? Well, you'd be fit to be tied.

Yet you'd like your mythology taught in science class. Funny, that.

I also note with interest that you haven't replied at all to one little thing I mentioned above. I can repost it, in case you don't have one of those mice with the scrolly wheel. They're handy.

[drk]

Spartus,
This Bud's for you:
http://www.origins.org/pjohnson/pjohnson.html


http://www.answersingenesis.org/crea.../evolution.asp


http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Mic...&pstart=1&b=11

[QDO1]

I also note with interest that you haven't replied at all to one little thing I mentioned above. I can repost it, in case you don't have one of those mice with the scrolly wheel. They're handy.

Now that was funny

[spartus]

Now that was funny

:)

I still intend to reply to this. I've just been very, very busy.

[billps]

Please explain to me how matter and energy upon the earth fails to obey the Laws of Thermodynamics.

What about a snowflake. Through losing energy (heat), randomly arranged atoms of water vapour become ice crystals with an ordered and wonderfully complex six sided symmetry - more ordered than they were previously in the water vapour state. What about a seed growing into a tree. What about an egg growing into a chicken. What about a little bundle of cells growing into a marvellously complex human being. Now that wasn't hard, was it? All of these processes violate your take on the Law of Thermodynamics because biological processes are not a closed system. Energy is put into them from the sun, into food and animals grow by eating that food and therefore become more ordered. Looks like ID is not so intelligent after all.