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."
That is no more rational than saying that everyone who accepts evolution is atheistic.
But since your worldview allows for such equivalencies, there is no point in my continuing to discuss this with you – instead I leave you to others who enjoy volleying back the same kind of global condemnations.
Hope to see you again this evening. Hugs!!!
That doesn't really answer my question. What is "Marxist atheism" and how does it compare with standard atheism?
Doing something is not the same as talking about it. In all your rolling on the floor laughter, you have failed to cite an instance where a working scientist has credited formal epistomology for a discovery.
Your view of religion as supernatural is primitive, at best. Religion is about creeds and rituals. You also fail to differentiate between religion and a universe that includes God. There are plenty of scientists for whom God is a practical and functioning aspect of the universe. Certain mathematicians and cosmologists speak of God as a knowable principle/principal.
I certainly do not believe that the universe is Methodist or Catholic. I do know that the universe is best understood by scientists who accept the reality of God consciousness. This is no less knowable and testable than evolution which draws conclusions from observable phenomenon.
The ChiComs have an answer its called
Marxist atheism
Party’s secret directives on how to eradicate religion and ensure the victory of atheism The Department of Propaganda has prepared a new paper to promote atheism and ban religions and superstitions. It is intended to stop conversions among leading party cadres and youth.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – ‘Westernising’ and ‘disintegrating’ trends in the name of religion threaten China and the government must “be patient and meticulous in imperceptibly influencing the people”, especially the young and leading party cadres, so as to stop the “growth of religions, cultic organisations and superstitions and strengthen Marxist atheism”.
These are the main points presented in a paper prepared by the Department of Propaganda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to stop the growth of religion and spirituality among the Chinese.
My mistake. I thought you were talking about evolution itself, not the theory of evolution.
You still tried to use Occam's razor, which is a method for deciding which of a number of equal hypotheses is likely to be correct, to claim that taxonomy is more complex than it should be, therefore because of the inclusion of taxonomy in the Theory of Evolution, the theory is invalid.
This of course ignores all of the other hypotheses that make up or contribute to the ToE.
The necessary complexity of taxonomy is not enough to make the ToE invalid by way of Occam's Razor. The ToE has many more components that determine its truth value than just taxonomy.
Jumping to conclusions is not a valid argument.
My understanding of Occam is that he ackowledged the observable details of a thing and dismissed relationships, deductions and hypotheticals as not verifiable.
In my book, whether or not the scientific method is based on Epistemology does not validate your attitude. Using appeals to emotion such as belittling your opponent rather than sticking to the arguments, while it may give you some small substance within your in-group, does not win arguments.
"You are confusing the active formal study with the use of epistemology. You cannot test a theory without using epistemology. You may want to call it the scientific method, but it is still epistemology.
If that is the case then you should have been clearer with your definitions. Your repeated use of the term philosophy lead me to believe you were saying that scientists had to study how they made decisions rather than using methods epistemology has determined are effective. My statement still stands that you conflated, you blurred the lines between, the study of, and the lessons learned from, epistemology.
You seem to have a need to pigeonhole science and scientists into your neat little narrow definitions. Remember that theories come from science, methodology comes from practice, and definitions come from use, not the other way around.
"I will repeat this quote because you really ought to read more.
Yes I should.
>>Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge. It attempts to answer the basic question: what distinguishes true (adequate) knowledge from false (inadequate) knowledge? Practically, this questions translates into issues of scientific methodology: how can one develop theories or models that are better than competing theories? << http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/EPISTEMI.html
I see here no methodology or adjusting principles to current methodology. Care to post those?
"Back off? You called me a troll, albeit in small letters, and you did it to another poster. You did not even have the honesty to use discourse directly to me. Don't start of fight, unless you're willing to be in it.
I apologize. I should have included you in the ping.
Where I started my forum experience, a Troll is someone who is more interested in eliciting emotional responses than in discourse. I'll leave it to others to decide if this describes what you do or not.
You are arguing from personal incredulity. Your vision of design in biology is not a rigorous test nor is it an argument.
ID is considered to be based in the supernatural because of the ID adherents attitudes and the difficulty in determining a natural cause for design in biology.
I'm glad you lepton it like that.
Schroeder can be shown to be false without resorting to Bayesian probability. It is easy to show his initial assumptions are overly limited and incorrect. Further than that it can be shown that any probability calculation of abiogenesis will be inaccurate simply because of the current lack of knowledge of initial conditions.
In other words, we don't know the system.
"Metaphysical naturalists (atheists) cannot have it both ways - decrying combinations here and then using combinations to aver that this universe is equally possible in a field of 1080. If you want to go Bayesian to reduce the field wrt the protein, then you must do the same wrt the big bang.
We don't need the option of Bayesian probability to allow us to decry the way combinations are used by Schroeder. His calculations can be shown to be inaccurate using frequency probability.
Combinations are valid if we presume that all possible universes have equal probability. Further to that, if we posit that all universes exist concurrently, we would find ourselves to be in one of them. Simply put, we would not exist in a universe that does not have constants that support our type of life. Even if the universes existed sequentially, we would find ourselves in this universe.
However, if we are limited to the existence of only one universe of 1080, any probability calculation sounds questionable.
"Probability is like the complexity argument. Select a method and stick with it.
Why? Would it not be better to use those tools that give us the best results in a given situation? I certainly would not exclusively use an 1/2" box end wrench to tear a car apart.
> You are saying that because most people who support the intelligent design hypothesis believe that "God created the universe" ...
Not "most." "Virtually all" would be far more accurate. Do *YOU* believe that God created man and skipped over the whole molecular biogenesis thing and Darwinian evolution?
This is just bad logic.
Deductive logic, and science, works by falsifying hypotheses not by trying to verify. Any other methodology limits the possible explanations available and can lead to missing a correct explanation. He may be correct that the simpler is the better, but I think he misses the point otherwise.
So I guess Christians can't be scientists. Oh well, we've been getting a lot of that lately. Apparently we shouldn't be Supreme Court justices either.
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