Posted on 04/11/2006 10:34:58 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Intelligent design goes Ivy League
Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory
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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."
> each person can still decide what they want to believe
Indeed. People can indeed choose to believe in utter superstitious rubbish. And in a way, that's for the best. We need stratification in society. While some will choose to discover facts and will go to the stars, some will choose to disbelieve facts, and will serve a useful role scrubbing toilets and sweeping the streets, and wondering why it is that their prayers aren't curing their diseases.
"
For centuries, we have been leading the way in scientific advancement because we've been leading the way *from* supernatural explanations *to* natural ones. Now there are those who want to reverse that trend."
There is not the conflict between belief in God and a physical understanding of the world that you seem to see.
People who cannot see that God wants us to understand the world are people I feel need to grow in their understanding rather than being objects for scorn.
> Name calling from either side is not helpful.
It's not? How, then, do we hold a debate if we are not allowed to call things what they are? You've got your naturalists and your supernaturalists in this debate.
> people who believe in God can have well founded reasons to believe - without examining those reasons it makes no sense to dis them
Nobody is dissing those who believe in some god or other. However, it's fully appropiate to dis those who believe that their god created a universe full of fraudulent evidence for the purposes of fooling that gods creations.
> There is not the conflict between belief in God and a physical understanding of the world that you seem to see.
Your barkign upm the wrong tree. It's the supernaturalists who cannot see natural explanations for things who are the ones who have an inability to see.
> God wants us to understand the world
POssibly. If so, God gave Man the ability to reason and use science to discover how things work. Those who reject reason and science would thus be rejecting God.
I think it will go a lot deeper than that. You can support ID all you want, but there are these pesky things called facts that get in the way. If they want to go down the road of irriducible complexity, then that will open the door to all these metabolic pathways and the whole realm of genetics and biochemistry, including cutting edge research. Even ID cannot answer the question of the origin of the necessary complexity of the designer. Since ID claims evidence of design is everywhere base simply on how complicated things are, then those same arguments must be applied to what they describe as a designer.
>.Your barkign upm the wrong tree. It's the supernaturalists who cannot see natural explanations for things who are the ones who have an inability to see.<<
It is at least a two sided problem... you have a contribution too...
>>POssibly. If so, God gave Man the ability to reason and use science to discover how things work. Those who reject reason and science would thus be rejecting God.<<
I would not have put it that way - I would have said their vision of God is too small if they think he can be harmed or disrespected by using our talents to examine the world and trying to understand how it works.
> you have a contribution too...
Indeed. They're called "facts." The things that remain whether you believe in them or not.
> I would not have put it that way
These are people who not only think they understand the mind of God, but also think they can order God and his creation around.
Boy won't *they* be surprised when they find themselves standing before Crom...
I haven't seen where anyone at Cornell demanded anything. I believe the class is an elective, is it not?
What exactly is your meaning for "cruel"? From where does your idea of "cruelty" originate?
You are so amusing. I actually look forward to reading your posts on this subject. Lots of laughs.
"Those who reject reason and science would thus be rejecting God."
So you don't reject God? I never thought you did really.
Possibly from the same inner sense of right and wrong that leads you to call God good.
> It would seem you have anti-religious feelings.
Only with respects to those religious beliefs that stand in stark opposition to the facts.
> But if you want to make a positive contribution you should refrain from being condescending and hostile and indulging in name calling - that is not the way to advance your position.
Take it up with the superanturalists. They are the true experts at name-calling.
Flaws in others do not reduce your own responsibility nor mine.
> So you don't reject God?
Which God?
The important point, though: It's no great shakes for a Christian, say, to reject, say, Shiva as a valid explanation for something or other. But those Christians who insist on geocentrism or creationism are rejecting their *own* god. Rather bizarre.
No, but they make for great entertainment.
Is there *anything* funnier than a creationist? Well, the geocentrists, probably, but they are pretty rare. Though we do have some here at FR, disturbingly.
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