Posted on 10/21/2005 10:26:36 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University Interim President Hunter Rawlings III on Friday condemned the teaching of intelligent design as science, calling it "a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
"Intelligent design is not valid science," Rawlings told nearly 700 trustees, faculty and other school officials attending Cornell's annual board meeting.
"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights," Rawlings said.
Rawlings, Cornell's president from 1995 to 2003, is now serving as interim president in the wake of this summer's sudden departure of former Cornell president Jeffrey Lehman.
Intelligent design is a theory that says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. It has been harshly criticized by The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which have called it repackaged creationism and improper to include in scientific education.
There are brewing disputes involving evolution and intelligent design in at least 20 states and numerous school districts nationwide, including California, New Mexico, Kansas and Pennsylvania. President Bush elevated the controversy in August when he said that schools should teach intelligent design along with evolution.
Many Americans, including some supporters of evolution, believe intelligent design should be taught with evolution. Rawlings said a large minority of Americans — nearly 40 percent — want creationism taught in public schools instead of evolution.
For those reasons, Rawlings said he felt it "imperative" to use his state-of-the-university address — usually a recitation of the school's progress over the last year — to speak out against intelligent design, which he said has "put rational thought under attack."
You wrote:
"There's no reason to think that the current edges of our scientific understanding define where the natural world ends and God begins."
You are so right. We are hundreds and hundreds of years, if ever, away from understanding God's creation.
"Competition" is welcome in the form of *falsifiable* hypotheses. ID does not meet this standard and is therefore not a valid scientific theory. It is not even a hypothesis.
If schools want to teach ID in comparative religion class or philosophy, that is OK with me. I draw the line at calling it science, because it is not.
A list of complaints about the modern synthesis of Darwinism is not a theory--no matter how long it is or how many people sign on to it.
"Again, you are confusing the Metaphysical (God/Zeus/Allah) with the Physical (ie the existence of Dinosaurs in the past, the age of the earth, etc.)."
It appears I have to repeat this over and over again.....it appears I have to repeat this over and over again....it appears.....
ID looks at the same body of evidence as Darwinists and comes to a different conclusion....that life did not occur by chance as per Darwinism but through Intelligent Design. That's it in a nutshell. ID proposes that, given the extreme complexity of even the simplest beginnings of life the chance of it occuring by chance is about the same as a tornado going through a junkyard and forming a 747. Possible but...cmon....get real man!
Your retrodiction is superb.
I only wish that academics like Rawlings would apply similar intellectual vigor to, for example, the equally unproven theories of global warming.
I am glad to read this.
You can't hide God. People understand he is the creator. I think most people have no problem with adaptation, which is of course observable. But stating humans descended from apes, well, a lot of people have a problem with that. Still, I think ID will get in.
> How dumb do those ID fruitcakes think we are?
Pretty damend dumb... and they're often right. Just read this thread. You'll see lots of ignorance on display... "evolutionis a religion, the Big Bang is a myth, blah, blah, blah."
ID can get into school but only into a religious course.
I will never, ever believe humans descended from apes until I see irrefutable proof, which I don't believe exists.
When we were able to repeat them in a laboratory.
Check under your bed. Then your closet. Let us know what you find.
I think what I would like Rawlings to say is that experiments need to be carried out pursuant to scientific principals and based on those observations, scientific hypothises should be confirmed or thrown out.
The Big Bang theory was repeated in a laboratory?
You imagine yourself clever, don't you?
Again, we didn't decend from apes. We and certain present day apes decended from an ape like create that is now extinct.
"Competition is welcome in the form of *falsifiable* hypotheses. ID does not meet this standard and is therefore not a valid scientific theory. It is not even a hypothesis."
As I asked in #26, should we ban teaching string theory in physics for the same reason?
I believe microwaves were used as a testible way to demonstrate the bigbang theory.
You mean you don't determine the worthiness of a person based on their church attendance?!?
The horror.
Please tell me I don't need a /sarc for you...
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