Posted on 09/30/2005 3:33:47 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
I DON'T BELIEVE that the universe was intelligently designed. I don't think that "intelligent design" is a scientific theory: It appeals to the supernatural and cannot be empirically tested. I think its proponents have religious motivations for trying to insert it into the curriculum.
But I also believe it should be taught in high school biology classes.
The federal court case that began this week originated in York County, Pa., where my kids go to the public schools. The school board of the Dover district mandated that a four-paragraph statement be read in high school biology classes, setting out intelligent design as an alternative to evolution for explaining the current configuration of organisms. Several Dover parents brought suit to prevent that statement from being read.
The issue is symptomatic of the continuing divisions in American culture, as severe now as when the Scopes Monkey Trial was raging in 1925. It tracks fairly closely the conflict between red states and blue states, the religious and the secular, Republicans and Democrats, and so on.
And though Pennsylvania is nominally blue, this county in the middle-south of the state is rock-ribbed red and Christian to the hilt.
To understand what the Dover school board was trying to accomplish, consider how you would feel if your children, in the course of a compulsory education, were taught doctrines that contradicted your most cherished beliefs — that blandly invalidated your worldview without discussion. Think about being heavily taxed to destroy your own belief system. That's how the people in this community feel.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Nothing rests on the toe. That's good, b/c it's made-up nonsense. What the hoaxing evos call "evidence" is stuff the evos "combine, conspire and agree together" is "evidence." One of the nastier evos once posted drawings of different reptile heads, with bones outlined in the different heads. The idea was "This bone is shaped like that bone. That proves a linkage and a common descent!" For the first time I actually felt some compassion for the hoaxing boob. There is no evidence - only scams and goofiness. The toe is circling the drain. Some of us will see it laughed out of colleges...
High treason!!! A nation that competes within itself first is stronger and more capable of competing with other nations. Monopolies, in all contexts, are a source of weakness - hence anti-trust legislation in our nation with respect to business. If you want to win the gold medal explore all training methods.
The question is, do parents ceed power over their children to the state when they put them into the public school system?
http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Gee/gee8.html
And where would that "intelligent principle" [aka a deity] come from? If life on Earth is somebody's experiment in a cosmic Petri dish, the problem would merely become the natural genesis of experimenters. Reductio ad infinitum. Hierarchically working natural selection does answer the mail, at least for the purposes of work in my field [I happen to be a chemist employed in genetic engineering].
They already do in California. Prayer rugs facing toward
some mosque or stone somewhere all the kids learn other
cultures.
The Winning Answer!!!
"The Constitution does not authorize congress to provide for the scientific education of the people."
We need the Separation of State and School.
A side note: How does a teacher mentioning to students that there are scientists who doubt the theory of evolution, and this is way (explaining or even just mentioning the fact) equate to Congress making a law that establishes a state religion?
Many don't see that the word "intelligence" is very broad.
An organizing principle can be an "intelligence."
In fact, many computers do complex organizing, but none of them are living.
"Natural Selection" was an organizing principle that was applied to all of life as we know it. It has failed as an explanatory organizing principle. The world around us is too complex for natural selection to adequately explain.
The "intelligent design" criticism of evolution says that another organizing principle must be found.
Many things can happen in science for which we do not have evidence now. To understand it, just move in your imagination to the past while "forgetting" the later discoveries.
At the time of Newton, the Einstein ideas would look strange and most of the scientists would dismiss them as crazy. Most of scientists are conformists and are attached emotionally to the things they learned.
Does the brain change the DNA code? Are we Telemutagenic? Wow, I didn't know I had super powers.
Well, I can find some hints of the possible mechanism. We know that the code can be written back (like in case of retroviruses). We know that at least "primitive" organisms can share genes even between species!
Such things, even if occurring not very frequently could change the dynamics of evolution in a very radical way. And they do not have to be RANDOM! There might be some undiscovered and functional mechanism of doing them.
Second example is the gene regulation and the role of the cellular memory beyond the mere code (which itself contains unexplained parts). When the organisms procreate, the process does not go from the DNA/RNA blueprint to the cells. It is the cells which control/copy the genetic code and read it selectively. The life process is larger, continuous and it seem to to be in charge like a reader using DNA/RNA according to the needs of the moment.
When you combine these two possibility of writing code back and the cellular process being in charge you get the potential for some Lamarkian dynamics. I am not saying that it is the case, and I am not saying that it is not. I just like to keep my mind open, curious and critical at the same time.
It would be sad if the scientific pseudo-orthodoxy has frozen the innovative thinking and at the same time imposed on the society the rigid order. We could end up in a scientistic nightmare of the type described in the Brave New World which would be more intrusive and less respectful of the human beings or spiritual dimension than the last scientistic nightmare of the Soviet system (the last was based on obsolete early XIX century scientific concepts).
There were numerous tests done on acquired traits. If you have half of a group of men lift weights with their right arm, and the other half lift weights with their left arm and test the arm strength of the children they have after this experiment; what do you think they would find based upon the experiments that disproved Lamarkian inheritance of acquired traits?
THIS IS FASCINATING! I would love to read more about this experiment. Please provide some sources so I can look into it.
And founding/publishing/career pressure. Unpopular research tends to be underfounded and underpublished and not leading to the tenure of promotion.
That is why most of the studies will have to support global warming, dangers of second hand smoking and to present homosexuality as a wholesome normal life style.
Most of scientists are conformists and cowards and for a very good reason of self-preservation!
Have you seen yet exactly who these "parents" are???
Maybe in Hollywood movies or in "hard sciences" like physics.
The intelligent design hypothesis states that “certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection”.
The “intelligent cause” is not specified as to whether it is a phenomenon or an agent – much less a specific phenomenon or agent.
There are two basic types of intelligence as a phenomenon: emergent property (such as from self organizing complexity) and fractal intelligence. And there are various candidate intelligent agents: God, collective consciousness, aliens, Gaia, etc.
The intelligent design hypothesis does not say which is the "intelligent cause" for "certain features". It could even be a mix of phenomenon and agency.
Any “intelligent cause” which is determined to be the best explanation for “certain features” will vindicate the hypothesis, for instance:
2. Phenomenon: That molecular machinery chooses to cooperate to the survival of the whole organism.
3. Phenomenon: That collectives of organisms (swarms, etc.) make decisions the component organism cannot, which gives the species a survival advantage.
4. Agent or Phenomenon: That there exists a universal will to live – a life principle, fecundity principle, or evolution of one – which is the primary inception of information (successful communication) in biological systems.
5. Agent: That the complexity of “certain features” cannot be explained by natural mechanisms given the age of the universe.
6. Agent: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.
The organizing principles concerning biological life to which xzins speaks are currently being investigated by mathematicians and physicists who have been invited to the table by the biologists. More specifically, the areas include information (successful communication), autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence. Such subjects are of little interest to biologists (Pattee “Bridging the Epistemic Cut”) but are crucial to physicists/mathematicians (Rocha, Schneider, Adami, Kauffman, Wolfram, etc.)
It should also be noted that these mathematicians and scientists do not usually claim to be intelligent design theorists. And to me it doesn’t matter whether the answers are found because of intelligent design or despite it.
In any science. The key word is "successfully". Existing establishment does not welcome such a development [if only for ego reasons], thus it is a path with obstacles. First it is not easy to come up with a superior product [be it non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevsky and Riemann in mathematics, Linneus' classification system in biology or Pasteur's work on vaccinations in biology/medicine], and then there is a "marketing phase", although this is easier than coming up with a breakthrough advance, for a breakthrough success in science has a way of demonstrating and "selling" itself.
Pons and Fleishmann are a good exhibit here - they went after the brass ring with their cold fusion, and failed. Their professional reputations now are best passed over in charitable silence. But IF it was reproducible and worked - it would be widely used by now, and their likenesses would be gracing the walls of every physics department.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!
Most scientists are cautious because they know how easy it is to fool yourself. You know, like you do.
Actually there is a lot of evidence. Check this one out and let me know what you think.
Fossil skull from Ethiopia indicates human ancestor, Homo erectus, was single, widespread species 1 million years ago http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/03/20_daka.html
6. Agent: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.
A-G, I personally am turned to these two to such a great degree. I believe that is where we'll eventually find our organizing principle.
However, there is still the issue of a phenomenon as organizing principle itself being the cause of all the complexity of life that we see.
The current, insufficient paradigm is "natural selection." Its deficiency as an organizing principle is evident in its inability to explain hyper-complexity.
I'm guessing that a more adequate phenomenon-based organizing principle, if another is proposed, will involve an intersection with another dimension....many have proposed time as a 4th dimension.
But -- what if "will" or "life" were to be dimensional intersections that we mistake for this world phenomena?
We ask "what has departed" when we compare a dead rabbit and a live rabbit. Are we really witnessing the end result of a chain of events that led to the separation of an intersecting dimension?
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