Posted on 11/22/2005 12:44:07 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
THE first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library.
In short order, the School District was dragged into court by a group insisting the school policy constituted an establishment of religion, this despite the fact that the unmentionable book bases its argument on strictly scientific evidence, without appealing to religious authority or attempting to identify the source of design.
The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of attempts to silence the growing controversy over contemporary Darwinian theory.
For instance, after The New York Times ran a series on Darwinism and design recently, prominent Darwinist Web sites excoriated the newspaper for even covering intelligent design, insulting its proponents with terms like Medievalist, Flat-Earther and "American Taliban."
University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers argues that Darwinists should take an even harder line against their opponents: "Our only problem is that we aren't martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough," he wrote. "The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians."
This month, NPR reported on behavior seemingly right out of the P.Z. Myers playbook.
The most prominent victim in the story was Richard Sternberg, a scientist with two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology and former editor of a journal published out of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. He sent out for peer review, then published, a paper arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms 530 million years ago.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel reported that Sternberg's colleagues immediately went on the attack, stripping Sternberg of his master key and access to research materials, spreading rumors that he wasn't really a scientist and, after determining that they didn't want to make a martyr out of him by firing him, deliberately creating a hostile work environment in the hope of driving him from the Smithsonian.
The NPR story appalled even die-hard skeptics of intelligent design, people like heavyweight blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds, who referred to the Smithsonian's tactics as "scientific McCarthyism."
Also this month, the Kansas Board of Education adopted a policy to teach students the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. Darwinists responded by insisting that there are no weaknesses, that it's a plot to establish a national theocracy — despite the fact that the weaknesses that will be taught come right out of the peer-reviewed, mainstream scientific literature.
One cause for their insecurity may be the theory's largely metaphysical foundations. As evolutionary biologist A.S. Wilkins conceded, "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."
And in the September issue of The Scientist, National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell argued that his extensive investigations into the matter corroborated Wilkins' view. Biologist Roland Hirsch, a program manager in the U.S. Office of Biological and Environmental Research, goes even further, noting that Darwinism has made a series of incorrect predictions, later refashioning the paradigm to fit the results.
How different from scientific models that lead to things like microprocessors and satellites. Modern evolutionary theory is less a cornerstone and more the busybody aunt — into everyone's business and, all the while, very much insecure about her place in the home.
Moreover, a growing list of some 450 Ph.D. scientists are openly skeptical of Darwin's theory, and a recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that only 40 percent of medical doctors accept Darwinism's idea that humans evolved strictly through unguided, material processes.
Increasingly, the Darwinists' response is to try to shut down debate, but their attempts are as ineffectual as they are misguided. When leaders in Colonial America attempted to ban certain books, people rushed out to buy them. It's the "Banned in Boston" syndrome.
Today, suppression of dissent remains the tactic least likely to succeed in the United States. The more the Darwinists try to prohibit discussion of intelligent design, the more they pique the curiosity of students, parents and the general public.
Faith, like science, rarely if ever operates apart from evidence.
"No. You have been saying what science cannot do, when it should be left as an open question."
YOU just said the following,
"Likewise, science can, and should, adopt an agnostic approach and say it does not know whether intelligent design or other factors are involved in the presence of organized matter."
THAT is EXACTLY what I have been saying. An agnostic approach means that science CANNOT know if either choice is correct, THEREFORE it is NOT a scientific question. You have repeatedly said previously that science CAN know which choice to make. That is false.
If you have a problem before you and there is no way to rationally choose between two options, any choice you DO make will be extra-rational. You can certainly make a choice and believe that an intelligent designer did create the universe (more or less my feeling), but that assertion is NOT a scientific one. It's a subjective one.
Perhaps the best thing to do, in that case, is to produce an empirically verifiable, reliable, testable method for determining the presence of intelligent design. Do the science first, and the rest will fall into place of its own accord - i.e., don't put the cart before the horse.
I'm not so sure he is. From observing him and his actions/statements over the years, I think his primary interest may be in "expanding" the domain of science's applicability far enough to sell more of his books and get more lecture fees and so on.
Wherever there's a "movement", there are always folks who realize that there are personal benefits to hopping out in front and becoming one of its leaders.
Can you cite an example where science has been able, even for very small, limited, simple systems, been able to algorithmically distinguish between design and non-design?
In any case, the "truth" tends to square with one's starting assumptions. We are clearly dealing with two different sets of starting assumptions, both of which are very capable of making the evidence fit, neither of which are completely accessible to science.
"That's like saying a car is not designed because one cannot directly observe or know the designer."
We DO know the designer, Man.
Exactly.
Oh? Then why does Faith pride itself on being maintained not only *despite* lack of evidence, but even in the face of *contrary* evidence?
When your "faith is tested" by things which might cause you to doubt it (i.e., contrary evidence), and you continue to have faith even so, isn't that considered a *worthy* thing?
ROFL! :-)
Same way that ToE proposes a no-design concept. It ignores the possibility of angels.
One of the following strings was generated randomly, the other was designed -- I challenge the IDers to describe how they would determine which is which:
31dd02c5e6eec4693d9a0698aff95c2fcab58712467eab4004583eb8b7f89 55ad340609f4b30283e488832571415a31dd02c5e6eec4693d9a0698aff95c2fcab50712467eab4004583eb8b7f89 55ad340609f4b30283e4888325f1415a
No. I do not have a single detailed example where science has laid out, for example, an algorithmic way to disinguish between an automobile and a stalk of corn. If the universe is replete with design, it would be difficult to distinguish design from non-design. The best argument against design is utter chaos. (viz Congress?)
One set of assumptions is defined as "science", and the other isn't. If we'd like to scrap that definition in favor of some other definition, I'd personally like to see what that is supposed to gain us before we do it.
Even a randomly generated string has an element of design which thereby distinguishes it from the non-random string.
I bet it'd be much easier sneaking a Torah into a school in Saudi Arabia. Darwinism is the foundation for Communism and Nazism. The law suit and all the comments on it prove it.
We DO know the designer, Man.
who flashed the blueprints in the mind of man?
I bet it'd be much easier sneaking a Torah into a school in Saudi Arabia. Darwinism is the foundation for Communism and Nazism. The law suit and all the comments on it prove it.
Please explain this -- if anything Darwin's theories are more closely linked to capitalism.
Thanks, AG. Thanks for sharing that, Resty.
I'd kick some butt myself if I didn't have a project to write.
The root meaning of "science" is knowledge. Knowledge is acquired through the observation of organized matter. It is inherent in anything that is organized that it has design and is intelligible. Science only deals with intelligible data.
One may start with the assumption there is no intelligence or design and that science is incapable of determining the presence of either one. All the evidence will fit that starting assumption fairly well, except where there is a lack of chaos.
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