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Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker
The New York Times ^ | December 4, 2005 | LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Posted on 12/03/2005 5:28:45 PM PST by Right Wing Professor

TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum.

...

Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.

On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: crevolist; evochat; intelligentdesign
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To: frgoff

"How about sharks? They've been on the planet for 600 million years."

Really? Citation please.


121 posted on 12/03/2005 6:48:42 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: jess35

As you must know if you have bothered to read any of the central texts, there is no resemblance between creationism and intelligent design theory. None.

But it's a useful way of smearing something you prefer not to argue about or permit anyone to know anything about.


122 posted on 12/03/2005 6:49:18 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: JudgemAll

OH, that was mature. *rolls eyes*


123 posted on 12/03/2005 6:50:15 PM PST by Constantine XIII
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To: Zeroisanumber
The g-d haters have no right to push their hate g-d religion on anyone. Are you scared students may actually be able to make an intelligent choice? The days of the left controlling the schools are quickly coming to an end. The only problem is the ones who are in society today who were not given a choice to get a real education. Were you one of them for you certainly lack tolerance of anything you do not agree with and it is shameful.
124 posted on 12/03/2005 6:52:20 PM PST by Agdistis
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To: Right Wing Professor

Announcements of its death are premature.

I suspect there are a large number of people who will continue to believe that God exists and that He had a hand in bringing about creation.

And if He in fact did bring "all this" about, the scientific process is no less an appropriate tool with which to examine His intelligent design than to examine the claims of evolution.



But people in our country are free to believe what they want, that a frog turned into a prince....


125 posted on 12/03/2005 6:52:38 PM PST by Theo
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
And what's with this *goatheader* crap? Something to do with your personal obsession?

My posts to you on 8/21/05 concerning another evo thread, where you were too scared to give us your scholarly background:

So, Carolinaguitarman. What's your background? Running the Museum of Natural Science, or goatherding? 'Course, you seem to think it doesn't matter. You're simply anointed. Step up, my man. What's your background?

You refused, claiming you were too smart for me. I then replied . . .

"LOL. I never doubted it. So, we are just to believe some guy on the internet who calls himself Carolinaguitarman, and who won't even state his authority as to why we should listen to him? You see, oh great [self] anointed one, maybe we're not quite so stupid as you believed. On that, I'm going to bed. Cheers.

Therefore, I only thought it appropriate to dub thee "Goatherder," as that is the likely level of your qualifications to debate this topic. [You're really bad at it.]

126 posted on 12/03/2005 6:54:13 PM PST by Timmy
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To: Timmy
There is absolutely no evidence for punctuated equilibrium because, of course, it was developed to explain away lack of evidence.

Everything you wrote is wrong (and some of it extremely bigoted as well) but I'll concentrate on this for now.

The scientists who proposed "punctuated equilibrium" actually found evidence of it in the fossil record before they presented their idea.

Niles Eldridge found a locality which preserved a finely detailed transition between two species of trilobite that elsewhere in the fossil record appeared "abruptly" with no transition. Stephen J Gould discovered similar evidence for Caribbean snails.

This is what PE proposed: that species (or at least those with the population sizes and geographical distributions sufficient to leave a trace in the fossil record) tend to remain more or less stable for long periods of time, and that speciation events probably occur among smaller populations and in one particular place. Later when the new species spreads geographically it seems to appear "suddenly" in the fossil record.

The competing view -- phyletic gradualism -- holds that species usually change at a more or less constant rate.

If you're wondering why you have'nt heard much about debate over PE vs PG for years, its because multiple good examples of each have been found in the fossil record (it has nothing to do with your ridiculous claim that "absolutely no evidence" exists) and the general agreement is that both types of transition occur.

127 posted on 12/03/2005 6:54:36 PM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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To: brent1a
my mind was made up about the validity of the ID argument almost a year ago when I saw an interview with the head of the Center for ID or some crazy orginization. He stated that The Grand Canyon was not formed by years of river erosion, erosion which is something that is even a common problem for any farmer, no he stated that he believed that the Grand Canyon was formed by a massive mother-of-all lightning storms apparently brought by God.

If this person's opinions were correctly reported, then as you say he is a fruitcake. There are some fringe organizations out there riding the Intelligent Design movement which I confess I didn't know existed until some of the Darwinists on these threads mentioned them as being the Official Intelligent Design Central.

No, they are not. They are propagandists and nut jobs who are trying to use ID theory for their own purposes without properly understanding it. That does not discredit the work of real thinkers like Michael Behe, to mention one name. No more than some silly novel about cave men discredits Darwin. Darwin and General Evolution stand or fall on their own, not on what some idiot may happen to make of them. Does George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman" discredit Darwin? Of course not. It's a play, not a scientific treatise.

But when you say "My mind was made up," I can well believe it. All the Darwinists on these threads appear to have made-up minds that nothing is likely to change.

128 posted on 12/03/2005 6:55:19 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman; RussP
RP: When mathematicians prove that the first living cell couldn't have fallen together by random chance, the evolutionists distort that to mean simply that "we don't yet know how it happened."

CG: Mathematicians have proved no such thing.

Sure they have. The same mathematicians who can calculate the chances of rolling a six in an unknown number of passes using an unknown number of dice with an unknown number of sides.

129 posted on 12/03/2005 6:55:48 PM PST by Gumlegs
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To: Right Wing Professor

Your thread's been moved to the smokey backroom. The weekend mods are on duty.


130 posted on 12/03/2005 6:56:21 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, common scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: Agdistis
You seem like a "B" kind of person. Good luck with that.
131 posted on 12/03/2005 6:57:40 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
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To: phantomworker

www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36-704663@51-699613,0.html

www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b010cf95d18.htm?

humanists.net/humankindadvancing/6/5-3.htm


132 posted on 12/03/2005 6:58:00 PM PST by JudgemAll (Condemn me, make me naked and kill me, or be silent for ever on my gun ownership and law enforcement)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

http://www.sharkfoundation.com/facts.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0613_050613_sharkfacts_2.html

I'm sorry, my numbers are off. It's 400 million years. TOE predicts a few million descendant species over that time. Why hasn't anyone found them?


133 posted on 12/03/2005 6:58:14 PM PST by frgoff
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To: Timmy
" You refused, claiming you were too smart for me. I then replied . . ."

I am, though I doubt I said that was the reason. More than likely I just brushed you off as a buffoon.

"Therefore, I only thought it appropriate to dub thee "Goatherder," as that is the likely level of your qualifications to debate this topic. [You're really bad at it.]"

And the name I give you would get me banned. :)

Too bad you couldn't actually debate my arguments instead of what you suppose my qualifications must be. You DO understand the logical fallacy you are engaging in, don't you? :)
134 posted on 12/03/2005 6:58:19 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Jeff Gordon

I liked it, actually, It should be right up there with the rest.


135 posted on 12/03/2005 6:58:21 PM PST by Gumlegs
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To: JudgemAll

Parlez vous Francais? No!


136 posted on 12/03/2005 6:59:54 PM PST by phantomworker (We don't see things as they are, we see things as WE are.<==> Perception is everything.)
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To: frgoff
"I'm sorry, my numbers are off. It's 400 million years."

600 million, 200 million... it's only numbers...

"TOE predicts a few million descendant species over that time. "

LOL that's a funny joke! Now citations where the TOE predicts *millions* of descendant species.
137 posted on 12/03/2005 7:00:32 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: sagar

Read my mind. :)

Solution: Just leave it alone. Don't squash or force feed ID or EVO. End of story.


138 posted on 12/03/2005 7:01:54 PM PST by Killborn (Pres. Bush isn't Pres. Reagan. Then again, Pres. Regan isn't Pres. Washington. God bless them all.)
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To: RightWingAtheist
....who's a fervent believer in astrology. Guess where her politics lie?

Virgo?

139 posted on 12/03/2005 7:01:58 PM PST by longshadow
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To: Agdistis
"That's a classic debating trick: discredit some (strawman) arguments against a position, then infer that you have discredited them all."

The advocates for Darwin frequently lump together anti-Christianity arguments with their arguments against ID. Not only are these two different spheres of debate, there are two different wars.

The liberal war against Christianity is the one to watch. Frankly, I wouldn't want to guess the outcome of a conflict between God and his detractors. God will probably win.

140 posted on 12/03/2005 7:02:13 PM PST by Liberty Wins (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it.)
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