Posted on 04/20/2008 8:49:48 AM PDT by Soliton
“Intelligent Design” is of no scientific value in determining the origins of life in the universe. A designer would have to be supernatural (i.e. not subject to the laws of physics) or natural and subject to those laws. If the designer is natural in origin, then it would have to have been designed by another designer –again supernatural or natural. Ultimately come to an original designer that either evolved from a lower state of matter, or was created by a supernatural being. You will note that this is back to where we started. Science does not deal with supernatural phenomena by definition. Scientifically, the only answer is evolution. ID, however, is really about the cosmology of the Book of Genesis anyway, but if that is admitted, it can’t be taught in school. And there’s the rub.
The term “Intelligent Design” was adopted by the Discovery Institute, the originator of the ID movement, and a non-profit company that was incorporated specifically to get the story of Genesis taught in public schools (as specifically stated in the incorporation documents). To that end a Creationist textbook was published called Of Pandas and People.
In 1987, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that teaching creationism in public schools violated the separation of church and state in Edwards vs. Aquilard.
In a similar later case, Kitzmiller vs. The Dover Area School District involving the school’s acquisition of Of Pandas and People, it was proven in court that the publishers and the people who financed the purchase lied in depositions when they stated that Intelligent Design wasn’t just another term for Creationism. They did this by showing that dozens of passages in the pre-1987 Edwards vs. Aquilard copies of the book used “Creation”, while later versions substituted “Intelligent Design” in its place.
The entire Intelligent Design movement is a dishonest, legalistic Trojan horse specifically intended to teach creationism in public school even though it is against the law.
Complete transcripts of Kitzmiller vs. Dover can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html
So are you happy with 1930’s era tech?
You're right. Except for a few fields, it doesn't really matter much what you believe about evolution or creation. A creationist could design an airplane, write a computer program or study the atmosphere just as well as an evolutionist. The academic success of Christian schools provides ample proof of that.
If I was in the 1930’s, yeah I would be. But your new argument is running off the assumption that technology would have stalled after 1930 if creationism stayed and that prior to 1930 there was no advancement, both laughable assertions.
Wow. I misspeled a word so that invaldts my hole postg.
Looks lik evoltin didnt help you one bite.
creationism wasn’t used as a method to gut science. ID on the other hand does gut science.
One can not explore / question the universe when the answer to every question is ‘%deity% did it so don’t question it’.
It doesn’t help that the set of people who support ID overlaps quite a bit with the set of people who think vaccines are evil and the set of people who think the world is 6,000 years old.
Just my 2 cents.
"Potential" is correct, since there isn't any actual evidence, nor has any "potential" evidence been offered by the ID promoters.
ID is an idea. A philosophy. An alternative without any evidence for science to examine.
In the event ID promoters offer something other than the promise of "potential" evidence, I'm sure science will thoroughly examine it.
I don’t mind them teaching ID nonsense in public schools. Most students are going to come out dumb-as-a-stump, heads full of mush, and uneducated anyway. The few students interested in science will be informed or inform themselves regardless.
NOT an attack, merely a statement of fact Tokenatheist.
You are making an assumption based off of fear and prejudice. There is no evidence that what you say will inhibit technological progress.
Those advanced weapons systems are not designed and built by those who are content to stop at %deity% did it for a reason.
Do you think we would have won WW2 if our weapons designers simply wrote off nuclear research as ‘to domain of %deity’ and something that we would never be able to understand?
That is what ID teaches when it is taught as science.
Therefore one must not be allowed to question evolutionists.
Atheist doublethink.
ID doesn’t have an evidence to support it either so can I expect your denouement of it soon?
But when Creationism and its disguises comes up, the conversation usually turns to (only half in jest) “How can you complain about the Taliban when you let your schools and children's minds be hijacked by the Creationist fools and scammers.”
Question all you want. Just do it in a scientific way.
Why is that so hard for people to understand. If ID wants to be treated as science they have to play by the same rules as every other scientific discipline. They don’t get to make up special rules simply because they think they are special.
No, because I havent come out in support of ID. Of course if you had bothered to read my previous posts you would have known that.
There was no statement of fact. It was purely a personal sentiment, hoping someone else's soul would be damned for eternity.
Well, I can see that you have the talking points memorized but your parody of ID hasn't advanced the discussion.
Or perhaps you don't really understand ID.
Or perhaps you don't understand the metaphysical foundations of your viewpoint.
ID is a realization (based in part on mathematical reasoning) that neo-Darwinian model of evolution is inadequate model for explaining the observed phenomena of life and its evolution. That is certainly a much healthier attitude toward science than pretending to know what is not known and silencing the doubters using censorship, courts and police.
A designer would have to be supernatural (i.e. not subject to the laws of physics) or natural and subject to those laws.
That's a straw-man. ID doesn't postulate anything about lawfulness of the "designer". It simply says that the observed complexity of life requires far greater level of intelligence and foresight, or far more powerful algorithm than the algorithm of "random mutation" and "natural selection" of the neo-Darwinian dogma. The nature of that additional intelligence/algorithm is an open question that needs to be scientifically investigated.
As to the "laws of physics" as presently understood, that, too need not be held as the final word on the subject. Many among the greatest physicists of 20th century, including Planck, Einstein, Dirac, Schrodinger, de Broglie,... had realized that our present modeling foundation in physics, the quantum fields, are merely an approximate (linearized) computational algorithm for some unknown underlying reality.
If the designer is natural in origin, then it would have to have been designed by another designer –again supernatural or natural.
Not correct. It is perfectly conceivable within ID that some more fundamental physical laws provide mechanisms sufficient to explain composition of computationally more powerful systems from the less powerful ones. Cellular automata, such as Conway's Game of Life, demonstrate that such schemes are at least mathematically possible. Steven Wolfram as well as the scientists associated with the Santa Fe Institute on Complex Systems believe that the vastly greater intelligence responsible for origin of life and evolution may be of this perfectly lawful kind (albeit with laws still largely unknown).
In a similar later case, Kitzmiller vs. The Dover Area School District involving ...
When a "scientific theory" starts using courts and the brute force of State to silence doubters, it's a sure sign that its days are numbered and that its defenders know it.
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