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."
I accept your apology for saying something incredibly stupid.
We've all done it at some point, and I really don't want a single absolutely and incredibly dumb thing said to come in between us in discussing this WRT to epistemology, and other forms of logic and debate.
I just want to offer the olive branch, before we get back to each others throats on this thread.
DK
Basically philosophy follows behind science and asks, "How'd they do that?"
You can ping your friends all you want, but my opinion is just mine. I'm not speaking for anyone else.
The bottom line is this: because we as yet do not have a full explanation for space/time and energy/matter – it is impossible to say that what we presume is randomness (for instance at the quantum level) is actually random in the system. Until the “system” is known, randomness is a misleading and false presumption.
I am aware that afer several centures of successful science, philosophers have attemped to rationalize what it is that scientists do. They haven't been very successful. there is no philosophical definition that helps scientists create new techniques for investigation.
How is not including religion in a science class making a law regarding the establishment or religion? Methinks you are stretching things a bit here.
Really? And what evidence do you have for that statement? Please be as specific and detailed as possible.
"How is not including religion in a science class making a law regarding the establishment or religion? "
this article begins ...
"A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania.."
THAT in this country right now DEFINES LAW!
But if the intelligence is natural, that would be insufficient to renew the culture and stop its inevitable decline into nihilism. You see, according to the Discovery Institute, the natural world gives us no objective criteria by which to judge actions as "right" or "wrong". So it inevitably all comes down to self-serving arguments by competing interest groups. The inevitable result: Hobbes' war of all against all.
No, the Discovery Institute will never abandon its quest to "destroy materialism". They're out to save the world from naturalistic science!
For more than a century, science attempted to explain all human behaviour as the subrational product of unbending chemical, genetic, or environmental forces. The spiritual side of human nature was ignored, if not denied outright.This rigid scientific materialism infected all other areas of human knowledge, laying the foundations for much of modern psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. Yet today new developments in biology, physics, and artificial intelligence are raising serious doubts about scientific materialism and re-opening the case for the supernatural.
What do these exciting developments mean for the social sciences that were built upon the foundation of materialism? This project brings together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences in order to explore what the demise of materialism means for reviving the various disciplines.
Resources for those interested in understanding creationism as a capitulation to postmodernist subjectivism:
To all Evilontionists and Ignoramuses (that's Latin and not an ad hominem)
Three Givens, Three Questions:
The big bang formed a spinning mass and hurled this matter across the universe and as it cooled it formed heavier matter, stars and then lastly planets.
Thus all energy, momentum, gravity, etc was put in place and all subsequent interactions follow from this one bang absent any extra universal input.
The most basic law of physics says that objects will remain in their state of motion until acted upon by external forces.
There is a lesser known to laymen law called the conservation of angular momentum. The basics are that objects spinning in one direction releasing objects from within to the without, those objects which are cast forth retain the exact and specific momentum of the source.
For example, a merry go round spinning clockwise will release riders who inherit a clockwise rotational spin. There is no possibility of releasing counter clockwise particles. None. The only way to have any such effect is if the released particles were directly influenced by a force greater than the original force.
In the case of the merry go round and riders, some outside force greater than the merry go round would have to seize the expelled rider in mid air and produce two times the energy force to stop the clockwise rotation and then apply the counter clockwise energy required to spin the rider in the opposite direction. Again Newton said it best, an equal and opposite reaction.
The famous 2nd law of thermal dynamics and entropy naturally says that things go from order to disorder, from energy to less energy. Nothing is ever added to the universe.
We have galaxies supposedly billions of light years away (forgoing the speed of light problem for now), the questions are these:
#1: Why do some galaxies spin clockwise and some counter clockwise?
#2: Why are some spiral galaxies farther away than non spiral galaxies?
#3: What source of energy can produce both effects simultaneously without a loss of energy?
You are hitting on a lot of subjects which are very, very interesting to me and which I addressed more fully on: Faithful and true? The paradoxical state of Christian colleges (post 64)
In addition to the above, I’d like to observe that many people have a worldview that “all that there is” is three spatial dimensions evolving over time. But many others (I am one) see time as a dimension – in our four dimensional space/time continuum: x, y, z and t. Relativity affirms this view. Moreover, geometric physics suggests there may be more spatial and temporal dimensions!
The speed of light is a physical constant in this universe. The violations of Bell’s inequalities at distance however suggest that the speed limit (from the aspect of four dimensionality) may be exceeded.
This of course is a non-issue if one realizes the potential for extra temporal dimensions which would make time in our four dimensional block a plane and not a line.
As P.S. Wesson suggests in “Five Dimensional Relativity and Two Times,” time-like paths of massive particles in four dimensions can arise from null paths in the fifth dimension, where there is an oscillation around the hypersurface we call space/time. His article also suggests that a particle in the fifth dimension could be multiply imaged in the four dimensions and that the weak equivalence principle in the four dimensions may be the symmetry of the five-dimension metric. Following the multiple imaging to its conclusion, the 1080 particles of this four dimensional block could be as little as a single particle in the 5th dimension, imaged 1080 times.
I agree with their musings concerning the geometry and also lean towards the speed of light as the most logical candidate for such a boundary limit.
On the question of how thought causes muscle action, it appears that William James discussed the mind-dust & dualism problems over a century ago. He is the eye in the hurricane.
Has anyone tried to coin the phrase "natural design" as an alternative to "intelligent design"?
The above quote kinda reminds me of what the psalmist had to say about the "fool" -- or nabal, defined as the man who says in his heart, "There is no God" (Ps 14: 1).
Cicero's word for the "fool" is insipiens, a person who is "guilty" of aspernatio rationalis," or contempt for reason.
Really, Alamo-Girl, to say of you that your well-reasoned, well-sourced, and perceptive analyses are "Freshman-level stoned philosophy major hogwash" betrays the ignorance of the speaker.
Forgive me for being so blunt. But I am sick of polemics like this.
Why do we appear to be in the center of the universe?
Since Copernicus and Galilei we ought to be shy about this observation.
I would like to understand why the speaker thinks a world that contains intelligent beings can have less than an intelligent cause.
Wrong.
"For example, a merry go round spinning clockwise will release riders who inherit a clockwise rotational spin. There is no possibility of releasing counter clockwise particles. None."
Wrong.
Continuity is a comforting way to approach the world. How can something as well-known and so controversial as consciousness just suddenly appear in the universe?
In what way, orionblamblam?
How is not including religion in a science class making a law regarding the establishment or religion? Methinks you are stretching things a bit here.
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What religion is being established? None.
Can the Monist View Account for What Is Life
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