Maybe they just didn't add enough water.
Posted on 04/11/2006 10:34:58 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Intelligent design goes Ivy League
Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory
--------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 11, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Cornell University plans to offer a course this summer on intelligent design, using textbooks by leading proponents of the controversial theory of origins.
The Ivy League school's course – "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" – aims to "sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole."
The announcement comes just half a year after Cornell President Hunter Rawlings III denounced intelligent design as a "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
Proponents of intelligent design say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. Supporters include scientists at numerous universities and science organizations worldwide.
Taught by senior lecturer Allen MacNeill of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, Cornell's four-credit seminar course will use books such as "Debating Design," by William Dembski and Michael Ruse; and "Darwin's Black Box," by Michael Behe.
The university's Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness club said that while it's been on the opposite side of MacNeill in many debates, it has appreciated his "commitment to the ideal of the university as a free market-place of ideas."
"We have found him always ready to go out of his way to encourage diversity of thought, and his former students speak highly of his fairness," the group said. "We look forward to a course where careful examination of the issues and critical thinking is encouraged."
Intelligent design has been virtually shut out of public high schools across the nation. In December, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' gave a stinging rebuke to a Dover, Pa., school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class to hear a one-minute statement that says evolution is a theory, and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."
Jones determined Dover board members violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on congressional establishment of religion and charged that several members lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs.
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
As Behe testified in order for ID to be accepted as science the method of science would have to change. The is already a method to teach your children anything you want. Its called philosophy.
Maybe they just didn't add enough water.
You are deliberately trying to change the topic. If you think science can explain the origin of life, along with some real evidence, you have nothing to offer.
Why can't science explain the origin of life.?
> Nope. Tentative.(
Nope, *wrong.*
I'm sorry that you're stuck in the liberal "there's no such things as wrong" mindset, but that really is *your* issue.
> This strawman thing seems to be quite convenient to throw out there when there is something you prefer not to answer.
Yes, because you're debating dishonestly. I have little interest in actually debatign those who use such blatant falsehoods.
>>(Please debate honestly, please)
>It would not occur to me to do otherwise.
Obviously, it has, since you've gone to the bother of inventing positions for your "opponant," positions he doesn't hold.
And Martin Luther concluded that scripture precluded accepting the Copernican model of the solar system. Once you have determined that scripture is wrong about a physical fact, what do you do?
Organized matter that performs specific functions, which in turn might best be understood as products of intelligent design, which understanding is hardly a threat to our way of life in America.
My daughter's high school biology textbook presents the origin of life as possibly a series of chemical transactions unguided by any intelligent agent. The book asserts such a beginning for life in uncertain terms, which is good. This area of science should be tentative because there is no empirical way to test for the beginning of life as we know it. There is also no empirical way to test the assertion that all life is derived from a common ancestor. The greater part of evolutionist teaching is based upon reasonable conjecture, which in turn is made from the direct observation of change within limits.
Actually there is, and that involve producing the necessary stages in the laboratory. It would not be the first time a scientific understanding has required centuries of work.
The alternative to research is to give up on understanding.
Don't forget the phlogiston theory of combustion, that's my favorite.
Producing "the necessary stages in the laboratory" always involves intelligent design, and always entails uncertainty as to whether laboratory conditions accurately replicate the processes that took place when mankind was not present to observe them.
We don't have to find the specific and correct historical process that led to life. All we have to do is demonstrate that natural processes are sufficient.
Just as we have demonstrated on earth the natural processes necessary to keep the sun supplying energy, even though we have never been to the sun.
Fusion on earth is "intelligently designed," but that does not prevent us from asserting it occurs without intervention on the sun.
You would look more intelligent and more honest if you spent a few minutes thinking things through before posting.
From this it is apparent your interest is not in scientific accuracy, but in supporting a naturalistic philosophy. Your advice about "thinking fist" would be better spent on yourself.
Here is a balanced version of the Martin Luther story. It is actually favorable to Luther. I do not quote Luther because I think him stupid or ignorant. Rather the reverse. I quote him because he was brilliant, and he was wrong about this particular thing.
http://www.leaderu.com/science/kobe.html#copernicus
fist = first
Who exactly is this "Scientific Community" of which you speak?
"Who exactly is this "Scientific Community" of which you speak?"
That's one of those things you really know the answer to before you try to change the scientific community - much as you should study the government or the church before you try to run them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.