December 20, 2005

• "Inanity", not "insanity". But I see the point. If only this were the end of it. It may not be appealed here, but it'll certainly be fodder for the am-radio pundits for a good long time. And just for the record -- that we don't know how something happened doesn't mean God did it, it just means we don't know how something happened. OK, I'm done.
• If there's no God, than who is damning the newspapers that print on-line photos of snow penises?
• Mothra.
• And just for the record -- that we don't know how something happened doesn't mean God did it, it just means we don't know how something happened. We have a winner. How "The world around us is complicated beyond our ability to understand it, therefore it must be molded with God's hand" can ever be considered apporopriate for a science classroom is entirely beyond me. Beyond the fact that it violates seperation of church and state, it's gotta be a rude awakening for any kid who makes it to "real world" academia having put any validity into it. The regression in educational quality offends me more than anything, honestly. Plus: Man, who descended from monkeys... becoming a monkey... on Monkeyfilter... Oh, nevermind.
• Thank God.
• *cheers and claps* *breaks out the party food*
• I'm very glad to see that Jones specifically addresses the "contrived duality" that the creationists are spouting, claiming that any weakness of Evolution is a strength of Creationism. I refust to call it ID anymore. Intelligent design my ass.
• *refuse
• I refuse to believe in any god that can't explain to me why I have nipples.
• *goes a litte jig* *wanders over to Vertex's food*
• *still waiting for the Flying Spaghetti Monster after-school special*
• pfft. n00bz ;)
• Former school board member William Buckingham: "I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state," he said. "We didn't lose; we were robbed." Eh? Where does 'the separation of church and state' come from, then?
• A hell of an impressive statement. That judge has guts. I wonder if he's scuppered his chances for advancement, now.
• I love the word "scupper."
• Its a bit of interpretation regarding the "no law regulating free speech or . . . religious . . stuff" It doesn't explicitly say "the church and state will be separate". An argument taken up mostly by the Xtian neocons i think, but YMMV.
• stepself, it was a phrase in a letter from the recently elected President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in CT.
• Bill of Rights Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
• Intelligent design my ass. posted by chimaera Chimaera, it's cute... but not THAT cute. Sweet Jebus on a humpin'handcar! It's nice to see someone finally take a stand against stupidity.
• Why people persist in lumping Creationism in with ID or vice versa is beyond any sense. Creationism is an explicitly doctrinal system of religious beliefs, whereas ID is more philosophical and logical. There is a disconnect between the two. Neither creationists nor ID advocates like being compared to each other, and yet the media, as well as average monkeys, continue to lump them together, like differing strains of the same virus. I'm not saying ID is accurate. But it does point out some of the flaws and gaps in evolutionary theory. This typically gets short shrift in the academic and scientific community, where any dissent to an established doctrine (yes, I said it!) is rigorously opposed, blocked, or otherwise ignored. Aside from knowing this, I would think a genuinely scientific approach to this whole debate would be to lock evolution and ID in a room and have them battle it out, monkey-style. Let's get everyone's cards out on the table. Just my thoughts.
• I think if you read the actual decision, f8x, you'll see that, at least for those people in this case, the IDers are Creationists in sheep's clothing.
• Here's a link to the actual decision (hosted on CNN, so I don't know when it may expire).
• Right, because nobody can just point out a flaw or gap in evolutionary theory (as happens with peer review all the time), they have to evolve a whole new species of bullshit to throw it into sharp relief.
• >I would think a genuinely scientific approach to this whole debate would be to lock evolution and ID in a room and have them battle it out ID proposes that life arose because of the actions of a supernatural being. It's not science. That's not to say that it's ridiculous or wrong, but it is to say that there's no 'battling out' to be done. And whatever ID is or isn't it's pretty obvious that in this case it was being used to advance the agendas of people who would like to see Christian ideas taught as fact in public schools.
• ID proposes that life arose because of the actions of a supernatural being. It's not science. That's not to say that it's ridiculous or wrong Amen! Whether ID belongs in schools or not, there's no question of it belonging in a science class. We can't gather evidence to prove it via the scientific method. I can see an argument for including it in a sociology class, perhaps.
• A side note, I heard on public radio this afternoon that Judge Jones was a G.W. Bush appointee. >I would think a genuinely scientific approach to this whole debate would be to lock evolution and ID in a room and have them battle it out That is exactly what occurred in this court case. Notable proponents of Creationism were allowed to present their best case for the inclusion of ID in the science curriculum. They had no case and they lost because they were wrong. I'm a Christian, I'll note, a devout and active one, and I applaud this decision. I'll handle my child's religious instruction at home, thank you very much. Some people seem to forget that separating the church and the state is as much about protecting religion from state influence as vice versa.
• By the way, before I get piled on, don't take my comment as advocating or supporting the ID movement, nor that the ruling of this case is incorrect (though I do have some questions about the precedents used in the ruling). I have just noticed that it's trendy to lump ID and creationism together when in fact they are not the same, even if they appear to wear the same cloak. For one thing, Creationism doesn't try to hide the fact that its origins are a divine creator. ID seems more philosophical in its approach. On the other hand, the "Gee whiz, I don't know Who designed the universe..." approach isn't scientifically approachable either. I guess it seems like ID and Creationism are inherently different because of the way in which they approach the problem of origin. It's popular to knock anything that comes along that offers an alternative to the establishment. That's why it's difficult to get your political party back into power once you've lost it, or your team into the race if you've been out of the running for so long. The whole concept of streaks is kind of the same thing. Look at the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages to see it happening (just so I'm not pointing out that it's not just evolutionists who do it--environmentalists do it, Christians do it, and...it just so happens, so do evolutionists). My point is, why is it so difficult to even get a hearing, or even have someone in the scientific community to give you even an ounce of consideration, much less respect, when you propose that, hey, maybe evolution's holes could be partially answered by such and such? I mean, there are multi-PhD evolutionists who have proposed that ID may have some things going for it scientifically, and they're laughed off the playing field. Journals won't publish their work, they lose funding, they get lambasted by colleagues and rivals for their heresy. And everyone assumes, because a court ruled against ID, that not only is ID scientifically fraudulent, but it's religiously motivated as well, and then any good ideas ID (or whatever the surging underdog happens to be at the time) has are thrown out with the bathwater. It seems, in more cases than not, to be an ideological xenophobe mentality, where all ideas contrary, controversial, and alien to the established way of thinking are stuffed entirely. While I don't endorse ID being taught as a scientific alternative in schools, I wonder if the questions ID brings up about the scientific establishment could be?
• The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. What is likely the strongest evidence supporting the finding of ID’s creationist nature is the history and historical pedigree of the book to which students in Dover’s ninth grade biology class are referred, [Of Pandas and People]. Pandas is published by an organization called FTE, as noted, whose articles of incorporation and filings with the Internal Revenue Service describe it as a religious, Christian organization. (P-461; P-28; P-566; P-633; Buell Dep. 1:13, July 8, 2005). Pandas was written by Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis, both acknowledged creationists, and Nancy Pearcey, a Young Earth Creationist, contributed to the work. (10:102-08 (Forrest)). As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards, which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge: (1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID; (2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and (3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards. This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE’s argument that by merely disregarding the words “creation” and “creationism,” FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas.... The weight of the evidence clearly demonstrates, as noted, that the systemic change from “creation” to “intelligent design” occurred sometime in 1987, after the Supreme Court’s important Edwards decision. This compelling evidence strongly supports Plaintiffs’ assertion that ID is creationism re-labeled. From pages 31 - 33 of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District.
• And everyone assumes, because a court ruled against ID, that not only is ID scientifically fraudulent Well, I, as a scientist, "assume" it's fraudulent because it's based on a logical flaw (I can't personally explain how this complicated thing evolved, so God someone created it), it makes no predictions, and it's untestable. But what do I know, I'm part of the "establishment" and therefore brainwashed.
• Yay for missing my point.
• This happens often in science, just without the attachment to God. Sometimes, when a working theory is exposed to be flawed, concepts are invented out of thin air to explain them. (i.e. 'Dark Matter') and then everyone goes off on a search to find this mystery concept and prove it real. That being said, Intelligent Design seems to me to be a cop-out...assuming a concept that by its very nature is unprovable. It discourages further study.
• I wonder if the questions ID brings up about the scientific establishment could be? A good point, but probably not a subject for high-school level science class. The politics and entrenched 'belief' (non-religious) systems in the scientific community are a worthy subject for graduate level study.
• Yes, I could see that. But would it be welcomed? Probably not.
• f8xmulder - the archives of The Panda's Thumb explain a lot about the disjunct between ID and evolution. (The commenters can be antagonistic, though - I often don't read them as they do not reflect accurately upon the scientific world at large) They also discuss - a lot - that the ID community is not engaged in producing research of quality that "does point out some of the flaws and gaps in evolutionary theory." (as you put it) In fact you can read, weekly, articles in science journals (popular and scholarly) that ID cannot explain the 'flaws and gaps' in itself, let alone evolution. Science is based on empirical research which is published to a community of peers, challenged, and researched again. This is the quality of ID research - and it is, even to this non-scientist's eye, not good. TalkOrigins contains a lot of excellent, well-written, fact-based articles and FAQs that explain the differences in approach and philosophy of Creationism, Itelligent Design, and evolutionary theory and is a clear indication of how such faith-based (there, I said it!) disciplines are derived from faulty, incorrect or contrarian assumptions. The reason that "This typically gets short shrift in the academic and scientific community" is because ID is neither academic nor scientific. Science is not a political debate - there are not two sides that should recieve equal airtime. There are only assumptions proved false and assumptions proved not-false. In the overwhelming majority, the assumptions of ID 'research' have already been proved false, the literature has been published and the conclusions accepted as another step along the path to understanding our universe. This overview may be a better guide than I.
• there are multi-PhD evolutionists who have proposed that ID may have some things going for it scientifically Sorry f8x, but there are not. There are, however, multi-PhD evolutionists who have proposed that ID may have some things going for it philosophically. Go ahead teach ID in philosophy. I've never heard an argument contrary to that - hell, in my public high school we studied Aquinas' Five Proofs of God's Existence. I would have had a good time studying ID as well. But not in science class. It is not science. And everyone, including this Judge, agrees.
• I think the culture is slowly reforming itself. It goes in burps and gasps, but ultimately the next great philosopher will advance an idea that the elite American culturists can chew on and digest. And then we will have something to argue about. The concept of ID will be assimilated somehow; it's not an emergency. It's a signal that a "paradigm shift" is beginning. Not an earthquake, just a tremor. The vast culture is enlarging, if anything. Give it time. Maybe we need to incorporate the concept of Intelligent Design about now, given all the uncertanties in the world.
• cynnbad - um?
• prismatic: um what? I am simply suggesting that somewhere out there a philosopher might be trying to reconcile the two positions. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
• sorry, that wasn't really clear... thanks for clearing that up. I don't think you're right there, but I don't have the means to unpack it (damn my lack of science! damn it!)
• The hell with unpacking anything. I am no scientist, but here's the take I get from the magic line I have to God: God: I'm going to make the universe but I'm going to do it in a uniform and predictable way! Universe: OK, then you step back and let it all go. That's fine, but what if people wonder? God: Let them figure it out for themselves! Didn't I give the most destructive ones free will?! Universe: I just don't know what to do. Are you going to check in or what? God: It'll all work out anyway; I intelligently designed a deadline.
• yes, fine sure... but where's the evidence?
• You're joking, right?
• >The concept of ID will be assimilated somehow; What concepts does it offer that aren't already part of our culture? Do you suppose we're just now assimilating the idea of a Creator? The point isn't whether ideas like these have a place in our culture. The point is that it's disingenuous to pretend that they're scientific ideas. >the next great philosopher will advance an idea that the elite American culturists can chew on and digest I'm having trouble parsing this- just out of curiosity, who are the 'elite American culturalists'? Is this code for 'evil intellectuals' or something?
• I don't mean this to seem like a dogpile, f8x, but I haven't seen any scientists get laughed off the field for speculating on the metaphysical implications of that which is simply beyond what we can know. Though I agree with Judge Jones in that ID really is simply creationism re-packaged, I'll for the purposes of this discussion take it as though it were not. ID is highly dependent upon the notion of irreducible complexity -- as a matter of fact, that is the central observation made by its proponents that seem to necessarily indicate the presence of an outside designer. It is less predicated upon gaps in the fossil record and evolutionary knowledge, relying upon them to bolster the central core of irreducible complexity. However, the notion of irreducible complexity is not only scientifically flawed (what predictions does it make? Is it empirically falsifiable?), but its domain is shrinking. For decades the case-in-point of irreducible complexity was the eyeball. Both morphological and chemical exploration of the eyeball have shown that it does indeed have intermediate forms, from everything to light-sensitive cells on the surface of a worm, through the eye of the nautilus, through the eye of the human which, interestingly enough, has in a sense regressed from tetrachromatism to trichromatism. And so, with the eyeball becoming a lot less "irreducible" than the IDers originally thought, they have retreated into a smaller gap, espousing the irreducible complexity of the likes of the blood clotting cascade and the immune system. But rather than putting forth any testable, falsifiable concepts regarding these conundra, the IDers have written off inquiry into the evolution of these phenomena as being "irreducible." Irreducible complexity belies not a failure of scientific inquiry, but a failure of imagination on the part of the proponents of ID. Specifically the failure to imagine a scientific advance that, like the with the eyeball before them, intermediate forms, incomplete forms, and paths between extant manifestations are illuminated. Beyond the empirical realm lies metaphysics, the only realm where ID has any credibility in debate.
• quoth cynnbad: You're joking, right? No. I'm really not. Where is the evidence that the singular, Judaeo-Christian God you're invoking created anything? The argument you present is exactly that of ID, that 'something that we don't understand happened at a time that we don't know and resulted in the universe, hence God' As I said earlier, science is empirical. It is based on observation, evidence, and testable hypothesis. ID is not. And it is being presented as science, not philosophy.
• It is code for nothing. I am merely offering the idea that the two apparently oppposing concepts could be reconciled. I appplaud the judge in Dover for a decision to advance "science" as we know it, but I also accept the fact that we have to acknowledge those who disagree. It's still an open question. And on preview, Chimaera is as dense as the fruitcake I just got.
• My point is, why is it so difficult to even get a hearing, or even have someone in the scientific community to give you even an ounce of consideration, much less respect, when you propose that, hey, maybe evolution's holes could be partially answered by such and such? Not to add to the pile-on, f8xy, but the short answer is pretty much the entire history of science. Over the past few thousand years, there have been myriad moments when a predominant scientific theory has butted up against certain problems, such as phenomena it could not explain or gaps in the evidentiary record. Nearly every time, people have pointed and said "See, that's where God comes in." And every time, though it may have taken years or decades or centuries or millenia, every time a natural mechanism was discovered that filled those gaps, or the theory itself was appropriately modified -- kinetic theory of heat replaces caloric, relativity and quantum mechanics step in to explain what Newton couldn't (but we still haven't filled the gap between those two, of course). Given patience and rigorous study and investigation, scientific explanations (not philosophical) eventually come. There are gaps and/or weak spots in every theory. It's why they haven't been labeled "laws." But only scientific investigation will better those theories, or replace them outright. As a theist, I believe fully that there indeed is an Intelligent Designer, but I don't call that science. I call it faith. The arguments I put up to support the existence of God I call philosophy. And I have no problem with teaching such arguments in public school, as long as it's taught under the appropriate heading of either philosophy or religious studies. This isn't for me really so much of a church/state issue. This is about letting the scientists tell us what qualifies as science, not having politicians dictate those definitions to the scientists. The latter road is fraught with danger. As to "respect," pretty much every revolutionary theory was met with reactions ranging from ridicule to trial and execution. But scientific rigor eventually won the day, and the better science eventually broke through. If IDers want what they do to be accepted as scientific theory, then they're going to have to do the appropriate grunt work. They're going to have to make their case to scientists, and back it up with acres of rigor. Lobbying is not how science is done.
• No, we don't have to "acknowledge those who disagree" at all. Science is based on FALSE and NOT-FALSE distinction. It is not a popularity contest where everyone gets their five minutes. Theory must be empirical, evidentiary and testable. ID is none of these things. Evolutionary theory is all of them. ID is FALSE, evolution is NOT-FALSE.
• Sorry about that. I was channeling my inner geek and seem to have disengaged my digestibility filter. But I think my last couple paragraphs are really the point I was getting to.
• Ah, f8x, but the point of the argument is that in ID, some higher power had to take a hand in the development of the species. Evolution theories don't speculate on that. They just report the evidence they've found of what the development was, and they look for the theory that best explains the evidence. And, let me tell you that, in my opinion, if there had been a higher power directing evolution, it could have done a much better job. Too many dead ends where promising species didn't survive over the long run. Why would the designer get to dinosaurs, only to abandon them? Why didn't other apes develop the skills that humans have? Why would an an intelligent designer waste so many millenia on non-viable species? The designer wasn't sure that they were a misdirection till they died out? I think that those who believe in Intelligent Design would suppose that the designer was smarter than we humans are now, but I also think that scientists and engineers of today, and probably those of the past, could have designed a more efficient process. So are our brightest minds more intelligent that the designer? I'm sure that what I've said sounds much more antagonistic that I intended, but I've not seen anything that addressed those issues from an ID perspective. If you're comfortable with ID or Creationism, go with your instincts. But, neither is science, and shouldn't be presented as if it is. On preview, I can't express how much better mct said it.
• sorry, that was to cynnbad
• Unless I am internally inconsistent, I applaud the judge's decision. I just don't think the ID folks should be summarily discounted. I think their thinking is worth considering..
• What I would like to see come out of this is teachers educating students as to what, exactly, a scientific theory is, as opposed to faith-based "theory". Since the school board apparently think that evolution, being theory, is just made up and therefore they can introduce any old theory that's also just made up, they should perhaps retake basic science class. There's no excuse for that kind of thinking. And if ID ever became "reconciled" with evolutionary and geological theory in the mainstream, I'd ask to get off this earth thing and go somewhere with sane people. Hi. This is merely my own incoherent rant which has been said in much more eloquent ways (as always) by many others before me.
• and path - a great example of the bad design principles our nominal 'designer' had is the size of a human baby's head at birth. Why design a birth mechanism to deliver an object larger than the hole it's supposed to come out of? ID, of course, likes to pretend that we don't know the designer's motivations...
• And also, what MCT said. There is no inherent conflict between theism, (old-Earth) Creationism, and deistic "clockmaker God" concepts on the one hand, and Evolution on the other. Simply put, they speak not of the same things. Science is mute on Purpose. That is where Philosophy and Faith must take the baton.
• I think their thinking is worth considering.. Why? It gives a bad name to science AND philosophy!
• Oh, forget it, people. I was thinking about the wonder of even being here. Maybe a higher power made me lucky enough to step out of the way of a a car that ran a red light, I don't know. Who knows; good luck to you all.
• I appplaud the judge in Dover for a decision to advance "science" as we know it, but I also accept the fact that we have to acknowledge those who disagree. Absolutely...just not in science class. I think it's been said here already, but evolution attempts to explain and describe a process, and not a cause. There is room for God in evolution for those who want to believe in a creator. It's obviously not for those who take the bible as fact literally, but then neither is ID. 'God created a universe that allowed present species to evolve naturally' should be a statement that neither Darwinists nor people of faith have a problem with.
• To follow on what prismatic7 said, there are numerous flaws in our bodies that further shrink the realm where any possible "intelligent designer" could exist. Why does the optic nerve go THROUGH the retina and attach at the front, when it could easily have attached at the rear of the retina? To what intelligent purpose is our retinal blind spot? What purpose the appendix? What purpose anaphylaxis? Why is the human spine so poorly adapted to the purpose of bipedal locomotion (my back hurts today)? What purpose nipples on males? Modern biology and evolution explain the existence of all of the above. But if there were an intelligent designer, I can point to those and tell God Himself, without a shred of fear of being mistaken: "I have a better idea than You did."
• ...and your sources, chimaera? I don't use the Bible myself; I like to see actual source documents.
• >I also accept the fact that we have to acknowledge those who disagree. It's still an open question. *What* is an open question? The question of the existence or nonexistence of God? Yes, that's an open question (but then, since it can never be tested or proven one way or another, what else could it possibly be?). But the question of whether religious/spiritual/philosophical beliefs are equvalent to science is NOT an open question; they are not. Again, that's not to deny anybody's religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, but merely to make a distinction between belief and science.

• [T]he short answer is pretty much the entire history of science. Over the past few thousand years, there have been myriad moments when a predominant scientific theory has butted up against certain problems, such as phenomena it could not explain or gaps in the evidentiary record. Nearly every time, people have pointed and said "See, that's where God comes in." And every time, though it may have taken years or decades or centuries or millenia, every time a natural mechanism was discovered that filled those gaps, or the theory itself was appropriately modified -- kinetic theory of heat replaces caloric, relativity and quantum mechanics step in to explain what Newton couldn't (but we still haven't filled the gap between those two, of course). Given patience and rigorous study and investigation, scientific explanations (not philosophical) eventually come. There are gaps and/or weak spots in every theory. It's why they haven't been labeled "laws." But only scientific investigation will better those theories, or replace them outright. As a theist, I believe fully that there indeed is an Intelligent Designer, but I don't call that science. I call it faith. The arguments I put up to support the existence of God I call philosophy. And I have no problem with teaching such arguments in public school, as long as it's taught under the appropriate heading of either philosophy or religious studies. This isn't for me really so much of a church/state issue. This is about letting the scientists tell us what qualifies as science, not having politicians dictate those definitions to the scientists. The latter road is fraught with danger. As to "respect," pretty much every revolutionary theory was met with reactions ranging from ridicule to trial and execution. But scientific rigor eventually won the day, and the better science eventually broke through. If IDers want what they do to be accepted as scientific theory, then they're going to have to do the appropriate grunt work. They're going to have to make their case to scientists, and back it up with acres of rigor. Lobbying is not how science is done.

  middleclasstool's comment was so good I had to repost it.
• Stan, baby, I think the judgie-poo was right. I think this contentious question is best tabled for another day when the knee-jerks on who are self-leftidentifying can debate it sensibly. That is all.
• cynnbad, that was trollish. No-one has knee-jerked you at all! At worst, I asked you for clarification and... horror of horrors! I rebutted your points by asking for your proof. And don't you dare get all 'left-vs-right' on this issue. The judge is a known conservative and appointee of George W. Bush. 'Sensible debate' doesn't mean 'when everyone agrees with cynnbad'!
• Point of clarification for cynnbad: my sources of what points, specifically?
• OK, so when was I personally knee-jerked? Proof of what, God? Can't help you. Proof of left versus right? I don't know where the judge in question came from. That only matters to you. I'm saying that the decision was right, but that the other side must be acknowledged. You of course would shackle and smother all opposition. Just a comment.
• You of course would shackle and smother all opposition. Um. No. Read it again. Science is research. Research is published and judged by other scientists, based on empirical evidence and testable hypothesis (those words again) ID produces very little research, and what research it does produce is very quickly proved wrong, not "smothered and shackled". Once more, science is not about which hypothesis is "better", "most appealing" or "most popular": it is about which hypothesis is FALSE or NOT-FALSE. If ID produces NOT-FALSE data that can be experimentally or observationally tested then it is science. It has not done this to date. You, cynnbad, spoke for god. You also attempted to bring partisanship into it with your "when the knee-jerks on who are self-leftidentifying can debate it sensibly" comment. I called you on both of these and rejected the place of politics in the debate. Please do not reintroduce politics when it is not relevant. You have absolutely no idea of my political affiliation, or my religious, cultural and intellectual position, so don't attempt to deduce it from stereotypes.
• cynnbad, you're not making any sense now, and you're bring up stuff and then acting like you don't know what anyone is talking about, not to mention the accusation you seem to have levelled at chimaera. How about taking a break from this thread?
• Throughout history, human kind has augued with, fought and killed others of their kind over the 'god concept'. There is and has been a multiplicity of 'gods' - all defended and worshipped with varying degrees of passion, violence and/or fanatacism by all varieties of humans, on all continents and in all climates. To one's knowledge, murder, rapine, destruction and war has rarely been fought or generated by scientists, or by scientific thought and discovery. Even in those cases where there has been cruelty generated by science, it has been the religious and the 'god-fearing' who have been the instigators of said cruelty/murder/rapine etc., and often versus the scientific thinkers. Hence, for instance, medical knowledge accumulated over centuries was almost completely destroyed by the witch-hunts of the 'middle ages'. Witch-hunts which resulted in the killing/torture of hundreds, if not thousands of those who had passed such medical knowledge down over the centuries. One notes that in Mediaeval times, Hansons's Disease (Leprosy) was being treated and cured by Islamic (Muslim) medical practitioners. Scientific knowledge and discoveries have been used by the 'god fearing' to decimate the "evil enemies of right thinking, god-fearing peoples" also throughout history, and it has been the 'god-fearing' who have seen first the potential for death in scientific discovery, and then developed any scientific discovery which had said potential for death-dealing .. and developed same as rapidly as possible and thus to justify said development as necessary in the "war against the evil-doer". Men and women, also throughout history, have been sent off to die with the words of their priests ringing in their ears, and many have died in agony under the knives of their priests. Science has always, in the main, been for the benefit of human-kind, one can not say the same for the 'god concept'. The 'god concept' is primarily the human creature's desire to find a reason why for the incomprehensible, and a desire to make order out of chaos; to find a reason why things must die, and/or why they live, and are driven by an imperative to recreate the species even in the midst of horrible adversity. Human-kind is different to any other animal in that the human has a large pre-frontal cortex and a slightly differently structured brain. An evolution-driven development in a weak species which, without said development would not have survived. Every creature continues to evolve, often in this "modern age" with the help of science (hybrid grains for instance). Human kind is no different (as science is discovering) and the human brain continues to change and evolve. A profoundly significant change in human understanding of ourselves; between those who lived in 1405 to those who live in 2005 - is that science now allows us to observe evolutionary changes as they happen. Human kind has always had similar drives; in most, those drives have been modified by conscience. The Judeo/Muslim/Christian and basic "10 Commandments" were already fixed in human consciousness prior to the rise of those religious tenets. Religion remains the most effective way known to human-kind to control the largest number of people with minimal effort. It is the easiest route to power, the fastest way to accumulate goods and influence, and the most effective way to induce a mass of people to cooperate in the design and pursuit of their own death. Science, quite simply, just wants to understand, and to learn.
• good idea, tracicle. Blessed holidays to all, and i'll try to tone it down a notch in the new year! God bless the monkeys! Hope Skrik got his gift!
• >The 'god concept' is primarily the human creature's desire to find a reason why for the incomprehensible, and a desire to make order out of chaos; Which is, more or less, the same as the impulse to science. Spiritual feeling in individual humans is not the source of the world's ills. When religions gain sufficiently large numbers of adherents that they become political forces, when they begin to engage in the political struggles for power and status, that's when it all turns to shit; but that has little to do with human religious feeling, which at its best it characterized by wonder, gratitude, and hope.
• Then there was this guy Einstein who was like a scientist or something, and he wrote this: (The following paragraph is the conclusion to the essay "The World as I See It," which is taken from the abridged edition of Einstein's book bearing the same title.) The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
• Come now, that's more than a little simplistic. You might as well say that religion only wants to learn. Science, on the other hand, produced eugenics. So, you know, let's be careful about it. But that's crazy talk. Generalizations of this sort are not helpful, on either side. Also, although I hate the ID crowd, and I am reluctant even to appear to defend them, all this talk about the design argument, while largely correct, ignores the fact that the argument, if it works, makes the existence of a designer more likely. It does not say anything about the attributes of the designer. So, if liberals attack it on the grounds that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent designer could have and would have done better, they leave themselves open to the objection that maybe the designer is not omnipotent or omnibenevolent. I think this is dangerous because I can imagine IDers who might deny that they make any claims about the attributes of the designer, only that one probably exists. This concedes too much. The design argument ought to be attacked because it is invalid -- it does not make the design hypothesis any more likely, no matter what designer people have in mind -- not because it seems to be incompatible with an all-powerful, all-good God.
• Agreed. It is now science which draws those who wonder; those who look at the mystery and structure of the world and seek to understand it.
• cynnbad - I haven't seen anyone smother any opposition. We've discussed the issues from several viewpoints, and everyone's been pretty reasonable in the discussions. Disagreement is allowed, and it's not "smothering" or "shackling." What we're seeing here is (for the most part) opinion. Opinions are basically meaningless, but exciting to discuss, so we do that. No one has discounted your opinion any more than anyone else's. Calm down and enjoy the journey. Just a comment. And, on preview, jearaboam makes a lot of sense, though I'd add that religion has probably kept humans from killing their tribesmen, even when it's fostered killing the "others." Without shared beliefs in something, I'm not sure that any group of humans would live together peacefully. I think humans in general have made progress over the last millemiun, in spite of recent events. At least most societies don't see differences in belief as reasons to wipe out the unbelievers. (Though that's harder to support right now.)
• Sorry f8x, but there are not. There are, however, multi-PhD evolutionists who have proposed that ID may have some things going for it philosophically. Here is one individual who seems hardly a bible thumper, who found himself on the short end of a very angry anti-ID stick. I can't vouch for what he wrote, but he seems like a pretty smart guy with some questions about evolution that he feels ID addresses. Seems like he should at least be given the time of day. I'm sure I could find more examples of folks who haven't found hospitable reception to their dissent.
• Avoiding the politics (because I do believe that your choice of belief system is personal) - if anyone is interested - here is a precis of science attempting to explain the biblical plagues of Egypt. How would ID fit in?
• There are, however, multi-PhD evolutionists who have proposed that ID may have some things going for it philosophically. middleclasstool is, I believe, a former philosophy major, so I'm surprised he didn't address this. But this idea that the design argument is somewhat respected in philosophy is misleading at best. Most philosophers believe Hume eviscerated it in the Dialogues. Most philosophers, theists and atheists alike, believe it begs the question. Thus it cannot prove what it sets out to prove. That isn't to say everyone agrees. But even those who don't, don't use it to prove God (capital G) is more likely to exist, mainly for the reasons path gives, but only that some designer might be more likely to exist.* *For a qualified defense along these lines in a modern text, see, for example, Elliot Sober, "The Design Argument," in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion (Victoria, Blackwell, 2005). Text available here: [pdf]

• I wonder if the questions ID brings up about the scientific establishment could be? A good point, but probably not a subject for high-school level science class. The politics and entrenched 'belief' (non-religious) systems in the scientific community are a worthy subject for graduate level study. posted by rocket88 at 02:24AM UTC on December 21, 2005 Yes, I could see that. But would it be welcomed? Probably not. posted by f8xmulder at 02:40AM UTC on December 21, 2005

  it's already being addressed in epistemology courses at several u.s. universities.
• Three things, then I'll shut up. 1. The ID-is-science supporters received their acknowledgment in the form of their day in court. 2. Science provides the means for eugenics, but without people's philosophical ideas about who should and shouldn't be here, it wouldn't exist. 3. I just finished reading Terry Pratchett's novel The Last Continent, in which there's a "God of Evolution." Very funny and thoughtful read.
• I'm not saying there wasn't some ID involved, I'm saying it doesn't belong in a high-school science class. And I resent that some zealously religious folks want to / tried to / have mandate(d) it.
• Yeah, Smo, I didn't feel up to doing what I though might be some heavy lifting, after my wordy comment. But you are correct. Teleological arguments of any stripe are suspect at best, as usually do little more than reveal the lens through which the arguer views the world, and this isn't only limited to metaphysical questions. It's pretty much true across the board. So no, they don't carry much weight with philosophers.
• Evidently there was not an intelligent designer behind the grammar and spelling of that comment.
• tel·e·ol·o·gy (tl-l-j, tl-) n. pl. tel·e·ol·o·gies 1. The study of design or purpose in natural phenomena. 2. The use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining phenomena. 3. Belief in or the perception of purposeful development toward an end, as in nature or history. for those of us what gotta look up them biggie words
• middleclasstool is, I believe, a former philosophy major... I am currently a philosophy major. Saying that "most philosophers agree" on any philosophical subject is outrageous. When philosophers do reach a consensus on a matter, it quits being a philosophical topic and starts being a science. One of the things necessary for a topic to be philosophical is that it's debatable. And making an appeal to authority to philosophers is especially fallicious. The idea of an "authority on philosophy" is not exactly an oxy moron, but it a self cancelling descriptor. A philospher is constantly looking for answers. If she has all the answers already, she's not a philosopher any longer. ID has been described by someone in this thread as unprovable. Baloney. Some things are provable true; others are provable false. ID is provable true, just find a designer. Or just find a note, a sign from them, or an irreducibly complex anatomy. But Evolution Theory is not provable, true or false. The best ET can do is remain standing when other theories are shot down. It something that is possible, but whether life unfolded the way it did because of Evolution Theory can't ever be conclusively known or proven. The hand of ET is way more invisible than that of ID. If any theory should lose scientific validity for it's inability to be proven, it's ET. The ability to find flaws in human (or other) anatomy does no harm to ID. When you disassemble a golf cart, and discover its engine has a governor on it limiting its speed and power, do you try to make an argument that the golf cart must have evolved, because a designer would've realized that a governor limits the golf cart, and therefore wouldn't have put it in? Since SUVs are prone to tumble, does that prove that SUV wasn't designed, but evolved? No. Designers can put flaws in on purpose, or on accident, or for any number of other reasons. The idea of anatomical flaws may be a thorn for creationism (or for ET), but not for ID. I'm not defending the linked to case. They were obviously creationists with a gospel agenda. But it shouldn't ever be left to a judge to decide what is science and what is not. They are an authority, but not on physical science. To often we leave it up to judges and lawyers to make decisions on subjects way outside their realm of expertise. Lawyers shouldn't be deciding abortion laws, drug laws, brain death, scientific validities, school curriculums, etc... These matters belong to doctors, scientists, and educators. Hi all. It's been a while.
• I'm not trying to be contrary, Mr. Knickerbocker, just curious... how do you think an issue like this case (and the others you describe) should be resolved? Currently, things allowed by the state, i.e. public school curriculums, abortion, which drugs are legal and in what contexts, etc. are defined by the law and the final interpreters of law are judges (under the American system anyway) I mean, how do you propose "doctors, scientists, and educators" should be dictating these laws? Do you think that their should be a group of specialist judges, or do you think there should be no laws about these things, or what?
• *sits in Lotus position, attempts to channel SideDish* Om mani kittens, so mani kittens...
• Fuck the fucking kittens, and the endless cute animal story bullshit which leads to zero interesting conversation.
• Except the baby hedgehogs. They were adorable.
• Look, teach religious theory in religion classes, biology theory in biology (or 'science) class, and let those with brains decide for themselves. ID is religious theory. End of. Can we talk about kittens to fuck quiddy off now?
• Oh, and there is no god! *tee hee - other views are available in the shops*
• Saying that "most philosophers agree" on any philosophical subject is outrageous. Generally, I'd agree with that statement, but there are very few areas of surprisingly large consensus, and this is one of them. So I'll rephrase to make it more palatable: Design arguments are really only accepted by a minority of philosophers, some theists, some atheists. But I've never seen one that couldn't be turned on its head, and I'd be willing to bet that eight out of any ten philosophers (if not more) would agree with me on that point. Which, given the nature of philosophy (and philosophers) is quite a ringing condemnation. Design arguments are, simply put, crap. And making an appeal to authority to philosophers is especially fallicious. The idea of an "authority on philosophy" is not exactly an oxy moron, but it a self cancelling descriptor. While I have a lot of sympathy for this view and a very critical eye for the practice of philosophy (as does anyone who graduates an undergrad program in philosophy), that appeal was intended not as a refutation of ID itself, but a refutation of f8x's claim that design arguments carry any real currency in the academy. Again, there are those who like them, but they constitute a pretty small minority, and with good reason.
• But Evolution Theory is not provable, true or false. What if i discovered my neighbour's cat has no DNA? Wouldn't this put a hard twist on the genitals of the theory?
• We're starting to drift into murky epistemological waters -- scientific theories are not "provable" to be true. At best, there is only enough evidence to give a very, very high degree of confidence in them. The point of a prediction and a theory is, can it be proven false? If it cannot, it's not (or not yet) a scientific theory, merely a hypothesis, hunch, or wild-ass guess.
• Oh, and there is no god! *tee hee - other views are available in the shops* Best post of 2005!
• StoryBored, I think your neighbor would be wondering why you were taking tissue samples of his cat! To pile on late to the discussion, I have never understood why the theory of evolution and the theory of a creator have to be mutually exclusive. A creator can have started the process and let it go. On the other hand, as so many others have said, the theory of a creator is not science, and doesn't belong in a science class. I'm resisting posting a cute kitten pic, but it's hard...
• ...Design arguments are really only accepted by a minority of philosophers I cannot concieve of a way for someone to consistantly reject ID without rejecting all arguments for God. It would look like this: "I reject the Ontological Argument, because a result of it is ID, which I reject." and so on for all "God exists" arguments, except for the ones that portray God as a limp noodle that never has/can't interacted with the universe. I'd be willing to bet that eight out of any ten philosophers (if not more) would agree with me on that point. I'd take that bet, if there were any reasonable way to measure it. If you have a group of ten philosophers without 4 or 5 different viewpoints on this topic (instead of just the two you insist), then I'd say that you've poorly chosen your sample group. that appeal was intended not as a refutation of ID itself, but a refutation of f8x's claim that design arguments carry any real currency in the academy. Fair enough.
• Sorry nanojath, I just now read your comment. It's easier to describe the other kinds of cases first, then return to the topic case. So... Currently we have the medically incompetent making laws over medicine. The only person qualified to make laws over medicine and the human body has a degree in medicine. Leave it to doctors to decide laws over medicine and the body. Doctors (and only doctors) vote the laws into place, and it's a doctor who is the presiding official over any medicine based case. The most computer-challenged people make and enforce computer/internet law. Because of their incompetence, they have the least authority on the subject, yet we give them supreme authority. Why!? I guess it's a form of elitism, but I think only those with the proper training, knowledge, and/or experience should be the authority. Being an expert on legal procedure doesn't prepare you for an abortion case or hacking case. The topic specific solution would before these (pseudo)-IDers to petition the school or BoE. Hell, the whole reason they didn't is because of what I'm talking about. They're counting on getting a scientifically challenged judge. The case only went as far as it did because these people were working the system, and counting on the fact that an expert in legal procedure is not an expert on physical science.

• ID has been described by someone in this thread as unprovable. Baloney. Some things are provable true; others are provable false. ID is provable true, just find a designer. Or just find a note, a sign from them, or an irreducibly complex anatomy. But Evolution Theory is not provable, true or false. The best ET can do is remain standing when other theories are shot down. It something that is possible, but whether life unfolded the way it did because of Evolution Theory can't ever be conclusively known or proven. The hand of ET is way more invisible than that of ID. If any theory should lose scientific validity for it's inability to be proven, it's ET.

  i think this reflects a confusion between provability and falsifiability. the problem with intelligent design is that it is not falsifiable because it does not make predictions that can be tested (or at least it does not bring anything to the party in producing predictions that depart from evolutionary theory). the strength of evolutionary theory is that it does make such predictions and to date has done so with remarkably good results. evolutionary theory may not be provable in itself, but statements made upon its basis are falsifiable.
• Thank God for roryk and evolution.
• Wait, hang on a second ...
• roryk, how do you claim ET is falsifiable? ET's "strength" is that it's not falsifiable. And what predictions does ET provide? Because I've not heard one.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, I suspect that the source of our disagreement is over what, exactly, I and middleclasstool mean when we say that most philosophers reject arguments from design. Many philosophers, I'm certain, believe that God created the world and human beings as well (via evolution, probably). In that sense, he designed everything. But hardly any philosophers believe the design arguments themselves can show this. You have to assume design to make the arguments work. An argument like this obviously cannot be valid. That doesn't mean the conclusion is false (I am not saying that most philosophers belive that), only that the argument does not make it any more likely to be true. This points to two senses of "design." The first is to invoke teleology. This is what IDers do. Most philosophers reject this as an argument. The second is to make a wider claim about a creator and his intentions. This is to invoke teleology as a conclusion. Many theistic philosophers do this. The IDers do not do this because this is most obviously religion and courts would squish them right away. But philosophers who believe in "design," in this looser sense, believe in it for other reasons, maybe because they think the cosmological argument is valid (but not, I think, the ontological argument, since there too most are not convinced by it, for a wide variety of reasons) or, more likely, because they believe God has "revealed" himself to them. In the latter case, philosophical arguments to "prove" his existence miss the point. So I don't want to say that most philosophers reject design in this loose sense, just design arguments.
• And this just an example of why I've always enjoyed Doonesbury It's topical, I promise
• As for science being closed to criticism, I don't see it. The times I've seen people's careers suffer because of an unpopular idea, it was usually well-deserved suffering, they persisted in clinging to their idea after it had had its hearing and was discredited. Unwilling to accept this, they persisted in trying to get funding for the bad idea, appropriating resources from their university to pursue the bad idea, and generally embarassing themselves by persisting in trying to popularize the bad idea. A few names come to mind; Peter Duesberg, Fleischman and Pons, Michael Behe. And what should have become of them? They had their hearing. Does the university continue to give them laboratory space to pursue the harebrained idea? Do they continue to have the ear of the community when all they do is harp about the bad idea. And finally the result is often a persecution complex: they were treated unfairly. Their idea was really a good idea and its the bad bad scientific establishment with its dogmatic attitude towards the popular theory that is at fault. ID is the same thing. Its a bad idea. If you play with it, and you can't produce something to redeem it, reams and reams of evidence for it (because it is making an extraordinary claim and would require extraordinary proof), then its a waste of time and money to give you the time of day. And if you had such evidence, for a designer, every scientist would want to see it. But nobody has produced any. It has nothing to do with dogma, it has to do with the utter crap research the ID'ers have tried to pawn off. Nobody is interested in reading any more about "conservation of information" or entropy disproving evolution. Its wrong, the counterexamples are everywhere. Bring hard evidence of a designer, not just argument from incredulity, and you'll start to make a case for it. But they started off wrong, and have very little credibility left. The opportunity window to get peoples attention and make a solid case has already closed. /this evolutionists opinion //hasn't had a problem getting heretical ideas accepted, but came with reams of evidence
• Look, I think you'll find I've conclusively closed this argument. Let's move on to, if not kittens, then how about raccoons? Members of the bear family? I can't remember...
• I thought that was Panda bears in the Raccoon family... ?

• roryk, how do you claim ET is falsifiable? ET's "strength" is that it's not falsifiable. And what predictions does ET provide? Because I've not heard one.

  i wonder if we have different standards of predictive ability? let's say i sum up (oversimplify) evolutionary theory as: a. evolutionary change happens but is gradual and takes thousands to millions of years b. the primary mechanism for evolution is natural selection c. the current diversity of species arose from one life form through specialization from these three statements, i can make predictions concerning the fossil record, adaptive physiology in plants and animals in places unexplored in darwin's time, molecular biochemistry, genetics, and a range of other disciplines. these predictions are refutable, the more so as our abilities to analyze improve. the body of evidence supporting evolutionary theory is growing because its predictions, i.e. the statements one makes in a particular domain upon the basis of ET, are sound.
• If you have a group of ten philosophers without 4 or 5 different viewpoints on this topic (instead of just the two you insist), then I'd say that you've poorly chosen your sample group. Well, the two options I'm proposing are: 1) Teleological arguments, as a class, are worthless and establish nothing. 2) Teleological arguments, as a class, can in fact have philosophical merit (if the specific argument is sufficiently well constructed). I can't think of a third or fourth or fifth option here. Though I'll readily admit that my assertion is built entirely upon my own experience -- of all the philosophers I've known and studied with, I've known maybe two who thought design arguments in general were worth a damn. I cannot concieve of a way for someone to consistantly reject ID without rejecting all arguments for God. This depends entirely on how you define ID. If you're going for the simple, broad definition that there is an Intelligent Designer, then yes, any pro-theistic argument means you are a proponent of ID. But I think their claim is more specific than that. I think what they're saying is that evolution (and by extension, pure secular science) cannot sufficiently explain the creation of life, in particular the problem of irreducible complexity. And though I'm a theist, I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. I think science can reveal all mechanisms by which life came to be and evolved into its current state. Simply believing in God doesn't necessariliy require throwing science out the window, and vice versa.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, I think you have some confusion about what 'falsifiable' means in the scientific context. We're not talking about 'can be proved to be false' any more than we're talking about 'right' and 'wrong'. What 'falsifiable' means is 'has a hypothesis and a method that can be tested'. Just as 'theory' has a different meaning in the scientific world to the everyday world...
• "The ability to find flaws in human (or other) anatomy does no harm to ID." This is a deceptive argument. We are not talking about limiters or filters in a mechanism such as a catalytic converter or a muffler, we are talking about clearly redundant or problem causing elements that inhibit the efficiency of the organism overall that an intelligent designer would not introduce because they are, obviously, not intelligent ways to achieve the postulated results. Reducing the efficiency of a design in a clumsy or inelegant way is not intelligent. I'm pretty sure I can prove this logically, too, but I won't make this post any longer with that right now. For examples of dangerously flawed design in an organism, in humans, the pelvis tilts forward at an angle, causing the spine to have to curve rather dramatically for us to stand erect. This serves no purpose whatsoever, even in the sense of some kind of 'governor' to the system's operation. An intelligent design for an erect biped would be to have a perpendicular pelvis and straighter spine, thus eliminating lumbar pain and making a more efficient lifting structure. Arguing that the intelligent designer had some purpose for giving his creations life long lower back pain goes out of the realms of philosophy and into the crafty dodging of sophistry. Similarly, during birth, the human child must pass thru the pelvis, which is an horrendesly stupid design that can only have come about, as it most certainly did, thru evolution of a quadraped to a biped, altering the configuration of the birth canal in relation to the pelvis. The impinging of the prostate gland into the urinary system is another rather odd design choice for someone who is 'intelligent'. There are many others, the foreskin, the appendix, etc. Too many teeth in the mouth! What's the purpose of that? To bring about the going forth and multiplication of orthodontists? The squashed muzzle bones of the human skull preventing proper drainage of the sinus cavities, what governing design purpose can this achieve? Further, Mr. Knickerbocker's logic that Intelligent Design can indeed be proven, simply by finding evidence of the designer, can be turned against his own argument when he says Evolutionary Theory is not able to be proven false. Baloney. Evolutionary Theory can be proven false simply by finding an organism that has sprung into existance fully formed by a godly miracle! You see, that line of argument is fruitless and I suspect rather a strawman. The issue is not provability. The issue is falsifiability. You *can* prove elements of evolutionary theory to be false, and indeed the theory has been revised many times to accomodate new data that showed previous conclusions to be wrong. You cannot prove that the Intelligent Designer does *not* exist (only that he is not very intelligent); you cannot prove a negative (and don't bring up Gödel here or I'll know you really are barking up the wrong tree of life). You cannot prove that God exists or that he doesn't exist. Therefore it's not a scientific line of reasoning. That's the issue here, not the viability of the ID concept vs ET philosophically. You could argue that God is a moron, of course, which is my personal theory.
• "You could argue that God is a moron, of course, which is my personal theory." As a hypothesis, its called "Incompetent Design", and there are plenty of examples to support it.
• Jesus, I think I may actually *be* Don Wise.
• I have to agree with Chyren on both the not-so-intelligent design of living things and the falsification of evolution. Holy shit, there are miracles after all. f8x: The reason why people persist in lumping creationism in with ID or vice versa is because ID is the latest iteration of the evolution of creationism. Since the idea of teaching biblical creationism as science has lost in both arenas of the classroom and public support it has had to adapt in order to compete with real science. Proponents of creationism realized the creationism of Morris and Gish had the fatal flaw of not only admitting it wasn't science, but also incorrectly denying evolutionary theory was science. Proponents realized after their defeats that their Tu Quoque arguments couldn't stand scrutiny and thus Morrisonian creationism was a dead-end. Creationists changed strategies -- if denying evolution is science hadn't worked then perhaps stripping the obvious religious significance from creationism and relabeling it as strictly science would work. Luckily, it seems it isn't working. Expect creationism to incrementally adapt to its environment again to be a better competetor.
• I suppose that I was considering ID from my point of view. As a creationist, I find ID to be a denigration of my personal view of a personal, knowable Creator. ID, from what I've gathered, postulates that some designer, we don't know who or what he/it is, had a hand in the universe's origins. It's like selling God by hiding Him. Now that I've looked into it a bit, it does seem that ID is a kind of reformed Creationism. For my money, though, it's not a very becoming notion.
• First off, I think ID is bunk "science." I do self-identify as a Christian, but I believe equally strongly that religion should be kept far away from public schools (unless you're studying it from a philosophical or historical viewpoint) and from government in general. However, I think what f8x was trying to point out was not that he agrees with ID persay (or the people behind it), but that he wonders if the movement for ID could point out that science is not pure and unbiased. Science (like all human endeavor) is colored by individual scientists -- and the science community as a whole's -- value systems. By "value systems," I simply mean the question of what is valuable and what is not. What types of evidence is acceptable? What methods are useful? What conclusions are let into the "mainstream?" All of these questions are deeply rooted in the culture the scientist is raised and trained in, and it's hard to avoid. I think my ideas about science are very influenced by Thomas Kuhn's _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ (this is a link to various discussions of the work. The full text used to be online, but I can't find it right now. Also, here's the Wikipedia link), where he asserts that all science is based in the culture in which it is studied, and that once a good working paradigm has been found the science community is very unwilling to change it. If the new paradigm is good enough it will probably prevail, but in the years prior to that anyone who holds to the old paradigm is mocked as a loony. The other article that influences me is Stephen Jay Gould's "Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs", which asserts that there is good science and bad science -- and that ID is bad science.
• Propounders of Scientific method do not claim science is pure and unbiased. Quite the opposite. This is why we have strict and highly methodical peer review processes. It sometimes appears.. hell it always appears.. that religious people think that science is this vast oligarchy or consensus view on reality, that is maintained by some kind of ranked society of inducted hierophants holding down one agreed on dogmatic view against all heretics. It isn't anything like that. It's more like a chaotic and continued loud debate between multiple variant groups and individuals, and the only thing holding it together in any sort of cohesion is the fundamental principles of logic and the scientific method.
• ID is provable true, just find a designer. Or just find a note, a sign from them, or an irreducibly complex anatomy. Finding a designer (or something with the apparent characteristics of a designer, or a "sign" from a designer) is not proof that they have carried out design - either generally, in relation to a particular class of things, or in a specific case*. To take a deliberately daft example: I have found a rock that's roughly the same shape as a 1957 Buick Century; I have evidence that automobile engineers exist; therefore, automobile engineers designed my BuickRock. Clearly absurd, yet a valid argument according to your statement. I think, Mr K, you're confused both about what evolution can predict (which was covered well by roryk) but also about what ID actually says. The trouble with ID as it currently stands is that is really, really doesn't make any positive, testable predictions. It's an almost entirely negative position, set up in an exclusive (and false) binary opposition with neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory; any percieved evidence against evolution by natural selection is automatically assumed to be evidence for ID. But that's both philosophically and practically nonsense. The deliberate avoidance of giving consideration to the nature of the designer, the mechanisms of that design, or the purposes, principles and motive forces behind the design mean that ID in its current form doesn't even make it to the status of "hypothesis". It offers no specific, positive predictions as to what we should expect to see, nor any general framework into which a plurality of different observed facts might fit. *By the same token, Chy's "Evolutionary Theory can be proven false simply by finding an organism that has sprung into existance fully formed by a godly miracle!" is also off-base - finding one miraculous product of intelligent design doesn't imply that others did not evolve. Chy's right, though, both that your arguments did contain a contradiction, and that evidence of repeated miraculous abiogenesis would clearly weigh heavily against evolutionary theory in the constant back-and-forth, muddling-through, cumulative balancing of suggestive evidence that gets called "the scientific method".
• Kuhn's book influenced me greatly in my scientific education. I think it's quite possibly the best (as measured by how compelling and elegant the ideas are) single philosophical work of the 20th C.
• We are not talking about limiters or filters in a mechanism such as a catalytic converter or a muffler, we are talking about clearly redundant or problem causing elements that inhibit the efficiency of the organism overall that an intelligent designer would not introduce because they are, obviously, not intelligent ways to achieve the postulated results. Reducing the efficiency of a design in a clumsy or inelegant way is not intelligent. Firstly, you're reading too much into the the name ID. It's a convenient shorthand. It doesn't require that the designer be smarter than humans, or even as smart as a houseplant. It just requires that thought and intent (from an outsider)went into the process. The Designer could be a brain-dead purple moon banana, just so long as it was the responsible force for life on Earth. But regardless, every "flaw" you find can still be explained as a feature, not a flaw. The birth "flaw" you point out creates a family oriented social structure. Babies are forced to be born before they're fully developed, forcing parents to care them. Note that this explanation is ETers way to explain the function of that "flaw". I understand that, as a designer, you'd give everybody heat vision and invisibility and every other super power you could think of. Apparently, if there are designers, they have different interests than making the perfect, invincible super race. I think that's a good thing, too. Life would be much duller if someone designed our flaws. It's our trials and experiences that make each of us what we are. You guys do realize the circles being run here, right? Someone complains that ID is not falsifiable, while someone else (or often the same person) tries to demonstrate its falsity. Can't have it both ways, guys. Evolutionary Theory can be proven false simply by finding an organism that has sprung into existance fully formed by a godly miracle! This baloney, and in multiple forms, too. If an organism, like say a purple moon banana, suddenly and miraculously showed up, in front of every single human being, science would not be able to identify/label it as a miracle. Science demands that there is explanaition, regardless of whether we know it. If any literally miraclulous event happens, science is not equiped with the ability to recognize the events true nature. But let's pretend that science is capable of coping with miracles. The purple moon bananas show up, and scientist all over the world recognize it as a miracle. This still does nothing towards falsifying Evolution Theory. As has been pointed out by many others, ET is not mutually exclusive with ID, or with any other origin theory. ID may not be more falsifiable than ET, but it could not be any less. Just in case someone is questioning my motives, I should mention that I am not, nor have I ever been a creationist.
• Like I tried to say before, I don't think the two positions are wholly incompatible, but whatever.
• On postview: ...I have found a rock that's roughly the same shape as a 1957 Buick Century; I have evidence that automobile engineers exist; therefore, automobile engineers designed my BuickRock. Clearly absurd, yet a valid argument according to your statement. To make your example fit with my claim ("find the Designer"), you'd have to find the guy responsible for the rock. Not find a guy who could've, but find the one who did. You're talking aobut treating an entire list of suspects as the perp, I'm talking about finding the perp. It offers no specific, positive predictions as to what we should expect to see, nor any general framework into which a plurality of different observed facts might fit. ID provides as many specific, positive predictions as ET when it first appeared. It needs the same sort of treatment ET was allowed, if it's to get to the same level as ET. And it does provide a general framework. without knowing anything about the nature of the designers, just having the perspective that designers existed at one point, still provides alot to work with. I can't believe no Star Trek fans are in here backing ID. Maybe all the fans hate the many pro-ID episodes in it.
• Much of what's been said here must look pilpul-ish to the IDers or Creationists in our midst. I'm not sure that the explanations of the difference between science and other more speculative disciplines make real headway in persuading them that their goal of having those theories recognized as equivalent to ET isn't the point. Maybe, if they could come to grips with the differences, they'd find that qualification as a science isn't what they're looking for. But as learned as the discussion has been, I don't think it has effectively addressed why qualifying as a scientific theory wouldn't make their assertations any more "true." (Or at least in the terms that non-scientists understand.) f8x or anyone else - let me ask you. Why is it so important that ID or CT be given scientific chops? Did any of the above discussion ring a bell as to why that's probably not where your efforts should lead? Science is kind of like mathematics. I may be stretching an analogy, but not being able to find mathematical proof of ID is about as relevant as not being able to claim tht ID is a science. IDers are really barking up the wrong tree, IMO.
• You're talking aobut treating an entire list of suspects as the perp, I'm talking about finding the perp. Well, regardless of the the fact that you actually did say a designer, not the designer... Your argument has become entirely circular. Find the perp, sure. How do you know he's the perp? Because we've got proof that he did it! What's the proof? Whaddya mean, what's the proof - we found the perp! You're just left with the bald assertion that ID is provable under circumstances in which ID is proven. Which, while impeccably truthful, is also fairly useless as a starting point for an assessment of evidence. ID provides as many specific, positive predictions as ET when it first appeared. Such as? Seriously, I've never, ever heard one before. I'm genuinely fascinated to learn what positive predictions about observable biological phenomena ID makes (or could make) that - if observed - would be considered evidence supportive of ID. It needs the same sort of treatment ET was allowed, if it's to get to the same level as ET. Howls of moral outrage and widespread societal condemnation? Okee-dokee...
• "It doesn't require that the designer be smarter than humans, or even as smart as a houseplant." I am certain that supporters of ID would not agree with this assertion because a key element of their belief is that the universe is far too complex to have come about 'by accident'. If the universe is too complex for humans to comprehend, then the universal designer must be more intellectually complex than human beings, QED. "But regardless, every "flaw" you find can still be explained as a feature, not a flaw." How about, say, cancer? Some flaws might be possible to argue away by a clever rhetorician using extremely convoluted and increasingly dubious arguments, but not every flaw. In addition, proposing that measurable defects or vulnerabilities in an organism are designed to lead to social benefits or technological advances in the organism in which they reside, thousands or even millions of years after the flaw originates in the species itself, requires a very intelligent designer indeed, so not the brain-dead purple moon-banana. Claiming that the relative helplessness of the human new-born and the physical difficulties of birth, for example, lead to stronger social structures and tribal organisation would be a post hoc fallacy, I think. You have to establish a causal link between the elements, & it might well be possible to point to human groups that do not adhere to the sorts of family-oriented practices assumed by that, so it's begging the question, too. "I understand that, as a designer, you'd give everybody heat vision and invisibility and every other super power you could think of." Not actually. I would design them to be without defect. But that is entirely beside the point. "You guys do realize the circles being run here?" It appears to me that we are on the one hand discussing why ID is not a valid scientific hypothesis, and aside from that, being drawn into the actual problems with the concept itself. "If any literally miraculous event happens, science is not equiped with the ability to recognize the events true nature." If a singular event contravenes the (currently understood) laws of physics and nature without creating a collapse of the function of those laws everywhere else, I would say that many scholars would be able to recognise it as a miracle. In fact, I'm prepared to risk saying that scientific method is indeed equipped to recognise a miracle if one occurred. "ET is not mutually exclusive with ID, or with any other origin theory." ID proposes that life on earth is far too complex to have arisen by the process of evolution, so it is a counter-theory.
• ...you actually did say a designer, not the designer... Fair enough. The purpose of saying a vs the was to leave some ambiguity towards its nature. The designer sounds like insistance of a godlike nature, while a sounds more open for possibility. But I see how it makes for a different read. Your argument has become entirely circular. I see where you're coming from, and why it sounds circular. I am assuming that if you believe you found the designer that you have evidence for that belief. That same evidence proving you found the designer would also prove there is a designer. If that evidence (that you've found the designer) requires the assumption there is a desgner, then yes its circular. If the evidence (that you've found the designer) does not require an assuumption that a designer exists, then its not circular. Howls of moral outrage and widespread societal condemnation? Okee-dokee... heh. Good one.
• Man, that editing error with the italics destroyed alot of my message. Let me retry that: ...you actually did say a designer, not the designer... Fair enough. The purpose of saying a vs the was to leave some ambiguity towards its nature. The designer sounds like insistance of a godlike nature, while a sounds more open for possibility. But I see how it makes for a different read.
• f8x, thanks for reiterating your point. I'm rather late to the thread as I've been in the archives, but I'd echo meridithea's note: if you haven't already read it, I heartily recommend Thomas Kuhn's Stuture of Scientific Revolutions. The basic premise is that the body scientific--the sum of all people engaged in science or a particular subfield--is like any society. There are certain societal norms and assumptions: paradigms. And despite the wonderful nature of science to be ever-adapting to new data, some paradigms stubbornly remain unchanged and/or hostile to new ideas. It sometimes takes major shakers, like Copernicus or Einstein to cause a paradigm shift. For me, with a heavy background in biology and going into anthropology, this required reading was a paradigm shift in and of itself. As you may know, anthropology is pretty young amongst the scientific disciplines, and so has had to deal with the gamut of very good to not so good science--and this in recent memory, scientifically speaking. Couple this with the fact that evolutionary theory is most definitely a concern of our discipline, and you can guess accurately that this is an issue near and dear to my heart and mind. I suspect there are a large number of scientists who are rather annoyed that, while almost at the threshhold of "understanding it all" are still shell-shocked after a century of successive salvoes of relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. Never before have we known so much and been so certain of the vast landscape of what we don't know. We know the minutiae of what we don't know. So I think that's some of the temperature you're reading in terms of being open to anything even philosophical-wise. The other factor is that the current standard bearers of ID are creationists quite uninterested in the proper teaching of science nor admitting that it, like any human pursuit, is prone to flaws. They want more religion in schools I suppose. More on that in a bit.
• I agree with tracicle's comment earlier that we need to teach what the scientific method is in schools. I'm so tired of hearing the whole "theory not fact" line by people who clearly do not understand what theories are, scientifically speaking, nor how relying on them had rather helped our modern technological world. The ability of people to review and add to scientific knowledge, to test a hypothesis with a disinterested eye (not uninterested eye) is vital to discovery, invention, and ingenuity--and we've got a world that could use as much of that as possible. I see these folks pushing creationism, and now ID into classrooms as nothing more than ego-driven posturing that does not serve science nor the students in learning. For all the verbiage of having "open minds" they don't want the students to question the nature of the universe, they want to promote their viewpoint. Students interested in challenging evolution will go on to do so if they choose. But in science class, let them do it on the principles of science. Let it be done with the knowledge and examination of the scientific record. Copernicus wasn't ignorant of Ptolemny. Einstein didn't come up with his ideas without exploring Newtonian physics. The proponents of ID do not present that attitude of exploring the wealth of ideas and letting the scientific curiousity generate new questions. They want to give students an answer. That's perhaps my biggest problem with these folks. They clearly don't understand science because science is about asking questions more than it is ever about giving answers. Now, finding answers is a joyful occasion, but that just leads the true scientist on to more questions. I haven't found many religions to be about questions and uncertainty, but more about answers and, hopefully, a moral compass. And as it happens, I think students should learn that too. When I was in sixth grade, we learned about the five largest religions in the world (based on the percentage of the world's population that purportedly practiced it). We learned about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bhuddism, and Hinduism--and we had kids who were of all five religions--and it was a glorious dialogue. The environment the teacher created was one of curiousity, not judgement. Learning of others' religions led us to understand our own better. Man, could we use that--though I doubt such a class is still taught. And, I have to say, that I seriously doubt the folks wanting creationism in science class would want it taught either. I don't find them supportive or learning or healthy curiosity--so I am happy their efforts were quite thoroughly thrashed by this ruling.
• [although I agree strongly with Chyren and others who defend evolution as a science, and condemn ID as not science, this is a great thread -- still civil with this many comments!]
• STFU! (ho ho, I'm kidding obviously)
• Sorry to derail the thread, but I just wanted to reiterate other people's point that religion and evolution aren't necessarily in opposition. I stopped going to church because the Southern Baptists (who were moderates when I was a kid, believe it or not) got too fundy for me (and I still think the Baptists have the best music). Here is the difference: When I was a kid, my preacher taught me that God created the world, and evolution was how he did it. He said that the whole "seven days" mentioned in the Bible were a metaphor for an amount of time the writers couldn't account for, and could very well have been millions of years. It was "religioous poetry," not science. (This same preacher was about ten years older than dirt and completely blind, but had memorized most of the Bible in English, Latin and (in appropriate places) Hebrew and Greek. He liked to talk about how different phrases could be translated, and debate with people about how one could interpret texts. He was "old school" Baptist, which held that each person had to interpret religion and the Bible for themselves. You know, that whole "priesthood of all believers" thing.) When I was in highschool, my preacher (my first pastor died, so this was a different one with *no* religious training of any kind -- he had an M.A. in English) preached against evolution in the same sermon in which he preached against homosexuality and witchcraft. He asserted the literal truth of the Bible and refused to truck with people who debated meaning or deviated from the "straight and narrow" course he had outlined. I decided that my original pastor (who had omitted "obey" from the marriage ceremony and worked for civil rights, not to mention married both my grandparents and parents... and would give any kid who walked up to him in the middle of church a stick of gum) would think that this pastor was a complete idiot, and I left the church.
• kitfisto: putting the 'ho' back into 'holiday'
• Intelligent Design can only make sense in a science curriculum if not only does it provide answers, but those answers can be used in search of other answers to the questions of how the universe works. This is how we accumulate knowledge: usually through incremental, very, very occasionally through revolutionary, advances built upon research that has gone before. It's important to understand that science can't and shouldn't be concerned with 'who' made the Universe. That knowledge, if it could ever be attained (and the struggle to work that answer out would be akin to a sentient spring attempting to discern the name and address of the watchmaker purely from information contained within the watch), would only be useful to science if that 'who' was willing to answer technical questions regarding the way the Universe works at its most fundamental physical levels. Sadly, none of the Gods humanity has toyed with and persecuted each other over throughout history, including the current batch, have ever demonstrated a willingness to answer questions of this type. Until they change their minds, they are superfluous to the pursuit of science in anything but an 'I wonder what color underwear God is wearing today?' kind of way [1]. Intelligent Design has no place in science because it provides a 'magic answer'. "Don't understand why the Universal Constant now appears to perhaps not be a constant? Because the Designer made it that way." That's a transaction that leads to no new knowledge, it's a dead end, and it potentially stifles further effort to understand how the Universe works. It is infinitely more appropriate for scientists to say "we don't know, but we'll keep trying to work it out" than it is for them to say "because." [1] A field of inquiry best left to philosophers with an underwear fetish.
• in addition to kuhn, i'd recommend karl popper, ludwig wittgenstein, imre lakatos, and paul feyerabend to anyone who's interested in 20th century epistemology. i'm also reminded of this passage from hhg2g: "The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from his own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish." "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence than anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God." "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' 'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
• yay me! way to kill the thread! now, can i tell you about my butterfly collection?
• Tis the Mothra season, roryk. I say, share anything even vaguely Lepidopterical.
• well, there's "flappy", who's white with black dots; and there's "flutters", who's red with black dots; and there's "lies-there", who's possibly dead.
• 
• 
• You didn't kill the thread, roryk. Everybody's probably run off to read the books you recommended. *wanders off to find Kuhn*
• 
• ... and we get to the anime god crap and I know it's all over.
• ... and we get to the anime god crap and I know it's all over.
• sorry about the double.
• mightiest monster in all creation! ravishing a universe for love that is so cool. count me in with the mothraists.
• So i was reminded that the pro-ID crowd is pushing a literal interpretation of the bible, which - yeah.
• I'm in with the mothraists, but only if we get special hats. It's about time that we got back to having gods that fight each other... none of this peaceful hippie crap.
• Do I photoshop a Mothra hat? No, Lara, that would derail the thread. But it would be fun. No, Lara, get back to work. But it's the last workday before Christmas. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work. But a Mothra hat would be so cool. On topic, I guess what gets me the most is how many people don't bother to research the issue either way and just take whatever side their church/political party/favorite crazy homeless guy on the street with a "world is ending" sign tells them. You guys, no matter what side you're on, at least know what you're arguing about.
• I think a mothra hat would have moth wings on it like the mickey mouse hat has ears
• Everything I'd have said on this subject has been said already by wiser heads than mine (count me in the "yay for the outcome of the court case; of course religion and science aren't mutually exclusive but religion doesn't belong in the science classroom, not if our schools hope to produce any scientists" camp.) I just wanted to say that meredithea's first pastor sounds really, really amazingly cool.
• Hey, another late(!!) to the thread, wish I'd been around earlier...didn't see anyone post this the reducibly complex mousetrap. ID = Imagination deficit (for my money anyway).
• > the reducibly complex mousetrap. i really wanted a little mouse to appear when i clicked "animate"... nevertheless, a good illustration of reducing complexity.
• The evolution of creationism: After their notorious legal defeat, intelligent design proponents are resurfacing with insidious new assaults on science.