Posted on 09/22/2005 8:25:42 PM PDT by Crackingham
A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. Intelligent design, often referred to as ID, has been touted in recent years by a small group of proponents as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. ID proponents say evolution is flawed. ID asserts that a supernatural being intervened at some point in the creation of life on Earth.
Scientists counter that evolution is a well-supported theory and that ID is not a verifiable theory at all and therefore has no place in a science curriculum. The case is called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Prominent scientists Thursday called a teleconference with reporters to say that intelligent design distorts science and would bring religion into science classrooms.
"The reason this trial is so important is the Dover disclaimer brings religion straight into science classrooms," said Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the journal Science. "It distorts scientific standards and teaching objectives established by not only state of Pennsylvania but also leading scientific organizations of the United States."
"This will be first legal challenge to intelligent design and we'll see if they've been able to mask the creationist underpinnings of intelligent design well enough so that the courts might allow this into public school," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which co-hosted the teleconference.
AAAS is the world's largest general science society and the NCSE is a nonprofit organization committed to helping ensure that evolution remains a part of public school curriculums.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of concerned parents after Dover school board officials voted 6-3 last October to require that 9th graders be read a short statement about intelligent design before biology lessons on evolution. Students were also referred to an intelligent design textbook to learn more information about the controversial idea. The Dover school district earlier this month attempted to prevent the lawsuit from going forward, but a federal judge ruled last week that the trial would proceed as scheduled. The lawsuit argues that intelligent design is an inherently religious argument and a violation of the First Amendment that forbids state-sponsored schools from funding religious activities.
"Although it may not require a literal reading of Genesis, [ID] is creationism because it requires that an intelligent designer started or created and intervened in a natural process," Leshner said. "ID is trying to drag science into the supernatural and redefine what science is and isn't."
Why not use Bayesian Probability to determine the likelyhood that it is truly random.
I totally agree, Alamo-Girl! Thank you for the great link, Logos! There's a great quote from Heraclitus in there. I have a translation of these passages (by E. R. Dodd, IIRC) that uses a simpler language: I'll post both translations later, for comparison. Thank you so much for you kind words of encouragement!
A "gut feeling" is not a scientific observation, Junior. You're actually coming over to my side here; i.e., by commmitting an of conscious self-reflection (so to speak), not direct observation -- and then engaging in a species of metaphysics about what one has "seen" in the self-reflective mind.
It is an analogy that might include aspects of mind. When we consider the mind aspect of things, we should ask where the idea of 'wet' comes in. Same for 'flame-quenching'. Hydrogen by itself is flame-quenching; when oxygen is also present hydrogen is not flame-quenching. When the mind aspect comes in we should ask how it feels that water is wet. We should ask whether the feelings of wet are necessary to the existence of the water, much as whether the melody coming off the violin string is necessary to the existence of the vibration of the string.
The sentence begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident,...". That means that the Founding Fathers held EVERYTHING in that sentence as indisputably, undeniably, irrevocably true.True enough. I'm saying that the identity or nature of the creator is not essential to the argument.
Perhaps the phrase "natural selection" could replace "intelligent selection."
The supernatural moves objects with ESP; the natural uses UPS.
No. The English philosopher Occam (or Okham) suggested such a procedure; the procedure has been termed Occam's Razor. Actually, Occam didn't invent the razor, but he liked it so much, he bought the company (and Ye Olde English Patriots Football Teame.)
Well, I claim independent discovery of the analogy. However, I've since seen it attributed to John Searle, so I think we've both been scooped. >:-(
Emergent PropertiesSome properties emerge only after you combine things into wholes. Such properties are called, not surprisingly, emergent properties. That’s often why what’s true of the parts isn’t necessarily true of the wholes, and vice-versa. Using John Searle’s famous example, being wet is an emergent property of water. None of the water molecules are wet. But wetness happens when you put enough of those molecules together. Obviously, then, the following argument is silly:
- All the individual molecules comprising this water lack wetness.
- Therefore, this water can’t be wet.
- But this water is wet.
- Therefore, this water must be more than these mere molecules. This water must have a mysterious non-physical component to account for its wetness.
The move from (1) to (2) is an obvious fallacy of composition because wetness is an emergent property. Searle says consciousness is an emergent property of brains just like wetness is an emergent property of water. Neither wetness nor consciousness necessarily requires anything non-physical to explain it.
What I'm trying to say is we need to get rid of the seventeenth-century categories.
We've inherited this vocabulary that makes it look as if mental and physical name different realms. And it's part of our popular culture, so we sing songs about your body and your soul or we have saying about how your mind is willing but your flesh is weak, and sometimes the other way around, the flesh is willing but the mind is weak. And we have inherited, not only philosophically but in our religious tradition, we've inherited the idea that there are two quite distinct realms, a realm of the spiritual and a realm of the physical. And I'm fighting against that. I want to say we live in one realm, it's got all of these features, and once you see that then the philosophical mind-body problem dissolves. You're still left with a terrible problem in neurobiology, namely, how does the brain do it, in detail? What are the specific neurotransmitters? What's the neuronal architecture? But I think the philosophical problem, how is it possible that the mental can be a real part of a world that's entirely physical, I think that problem I can solve.
And how?
The way I solve it is to get rid of the traditional categories. Forget about Descartes's categories of res existence and res cogitance, that is, the extended reality of the material and the thinking reality of the mental. Once you get rid of the categories and you ask yourself how it works, then it seems to me there are two principles which, if properly understood (it's not all that easy to understand them, but if properly understood --) provide you with a solution to the traditional mind-body problem. Those principles are first, all of our mental processes are caused by lower-level neuronal processes in the brain. We assume that it's at the level of neurons, but that's for the specialists to settle in the end. Neurons and synapses -- maybe you've got to go higher, maybe you've got to go lower -- but some sorts of lower-level processes in the brain, whether it's clusters of neurons or subneuronal parts or neurons and synapses, their behavior causes all of your mental life. Everything from feeling pains and tickles and itches, pick your favorite, to suffering the angst of post-industrial man under late capitalism, whatever is your favorite.
Or stubbing your toe.
Or stubbing your toe. Whatever is your favorite feeling. Feeling ecstatic at a football game, feeling drunk when you've had too much to drink. All of that is caused by variable rates of neuron firings in the brain or some other such neurobiological phenomenon, we don't know in detail what. Okay, that's principle number one. Brains cause minds. All of our mental life is causally explained by the behavior of neuronal systems.
The second principle is just as important: the mental reality which is caused by the neurobiological phenomena is not a separate substance that's squirted out. It isn't some kind of juice that's squirted out by the neurons. It's just the state that the system is in. That is to say, the behavior of the microelements causes a feature of the entire system at a macro level, even though the system is made up entirely of those elements that cause the higher level behavior. Now that's hard for most people to grasp, that you can accept both that the relation between the brain and the mind is causal, and that the mind is just a feature of the brain. But if you think about it, nature is full of stuff like that.
Look at this glass of water, for example. It's liquid. Now, liquidity is a real feature, but the liquidity is explained by the behavior of the molecules, that is, the liquid behavior is explained by the behavior of the molecules, even though the liquidity is just a feature of the whole system of molecules. I can't find a single molecule and say "This one is liquid, this one is wet, I'll see if I can find you a dry one." Similarly, I can't find a single neuron and say "This one is conscious or this one is unconscious." We're talking about features of whole systems that are explained by the behavior of the microelements of those systems. So I think the philosophical problem is resolved. That is, I don't have any worry about the philosophical mind-body problem. But the scientific problem -- how exactly does the machinery do it? -- that's still very much up for grabs. And I'm in the middle of that battle as well, even though I'm not a neuroscientist. Okay, there are a whole lot of other philosophical problems left over, but that one I'm not worried about.
The spelling is Occum, and yes, he bought the company.
A distinction needs to be made between religion and the nature of the universe. Religion is the practice of faith and belief according to certain dogmatic principles. The nature of the universe is such that it may or may not have been created by God.
While most religions accept the premise that God created the universe, some do not.
The issue, if I may apply Occum's razor, is whether the premise that the universe is created by God shall be taught as one theory of existence. The refusal to do so is both arrogant and ignorant.
Congratulations, you have achieved a new level of triviality
The direction you think a galaxy is spinning depends on wheter you are looking at it from the "topside" or from the "underside"
> I've been a nuclear reactor operator for a number of years. A bunch of my friends are also ROs, and several, not all of course, accept ID. So are we just a bunch of "hardly-s"?
Yes. The fact that a small number of people may believe something basically irrational makes them "hardly any" when the group as a whole vastly outnumbers them. In any event... what is it about reactor operation that actually requires scientific training? What scientific field is your degree in? I ask this not to be a prick, but to get info. You see, I work in the rocketry field, and while I am scientifically trained (a bach in Aero E, whooop-de-doo), the vast bulk of those who work at this facility are not so trained. One does not need to be a scientist to be a technician.
Yes, Occam, died in 1350, studied at Oxford. I had to go back and check my college text. Google had the misspelling.
Occam's claim is that we should not multiply our entities beyond necessity. A fair and helpful admonition.
Occam argues, specifically, that we can not know more than the observable specifics of a thing. Thus, the categorizations of living things is unacceptable to Occam. He says that only the name of the thing is valid, not its extensions. What we know of Homo sapiens is sapiens. Homo is not observable.
By this logic he would find evolution an unacceptable extension of reason beyond observable data. Evolution is not science but metaphysics. So is theism.
> I was speaking of mathematics, physics and the intelligent design hypothesis - not creationism.
And the difference between ID and Creationism... is?
> if you believe that science has a full explanation of space/time and energy/matter then please give sources.
Irrelevant. The fact that quantum vacuum fluctuaions and the like do not have good explanations does nto give the slightest bit of credence to the notion that randomness is actually the expression of the desire of some super-being.
>>[Schroeder's] math is silly and ridiculous.
>In what way, orionblamblam?
The origina quote: "a typical protein is a chain of 300 amino acids and that there are 20 common amino acids in life which means that that the number of possible combinations for the protein would be 20^300 or 10^390."
There's lies, damned lies and statistics. Where this math falls down is when it keeps the math too simple. Amino acids won't all line up any which way in any length. Only some combinations work. Those small combos that work build upon themselves. Those that don't work either fall apart, or never happen in the first place.
Take a look here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
I first encountered the phrase emergent properties while reading Ernst Mayr's "This is Biology". He used the phrase in explaining why living things have properties unique to living things while not violating any known laws of physics or chemistry.
He attributed the phrase to earlier scientists working in physics and chemistry. He also used water as an example.
major bump
You failed again to deal with your original mistake. You purposefully added "directly" to my post. It was not implied, except by you. It is your bias.
It is not a matter of clarification, it was a matter of obfuscation and misdirection.
Why don't I ask you what you think is supernatural instead of having you "parse" my words?
DK
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