Posted on 09/28/2005 8:56:34 AM PDT by Crackingham
Supporters of intelligent design argue the concept is not religious because the designer is never identified. But this morning, in the third day of testimony in a federal court case challenging the Dover school district’s inclusion of intelligent design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the designer is God.
Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin on Trial” and “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.”
Johnson, known as the father of the intelligent design movement, wrote of “theistic realism.”
“This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that this reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology,” the writing stated.
Pennock was being questioned by plaintiffs’ attorneys. He will be cross-examined after a morning break.
The fire is directed the other way tonight.
<sarcasm>
Egad! Another left-wing evolutionist! </sarcasm>
And then the ID'rs would have to face reality.
Until science can explain the impossibility of creating something from nothing without any outside interference in order to even have a Big Bang theory, then the possibility of a high being or unknown entity has to be acceptable. People put faith in God just as people put faith in science and both should be accepted in theory.
So nice they can't actually burn "witches" anymore.
It would be ok if they started with the real enemy, The People's Liberation Front of Judea.
How does that help? If it's a problem where the universe came from, why isn't it a problem where this God entity came from?
ID is falsfiable in a lot of ways.
What testable predictions does ID make that would make it false if the results are not as predicted?
I have two copies, the cheap one and the Criterion. the Criterion version is worth the bucks. Worth any three other movies.
Out for the night.
What's interesting is to step over to the religion forum and watch different denominations subject each other to the same treatement they give evolution. It's like the bad neighborhoods where the cops are afraid to go.
Thanks for the idea. I'm thinking of the entertainment value.
To falsify ID, all an evolutionist has to do is show a realistic probability that the prebiotic soup could by chance form life.
Strawman. Organic chemistry isn't random. There are no long chain oxygen molecules.
Or they could show that irreducible complexity can be reduced.
No one has yet calculated the "irreducible complexity" of anything. At this point there is still no such thing as "irreducible complexity". How is something that doesn't exist, reduced?
Or that the universe isn't fine tuned for life.
Strawman. Earth is the only place life has been found so far. It's obvious that life is a rare and precious thing and doesn't appear everywhere in the universe.
There are arguments against each of the points I raise, but until there is consensus, the debate needs to go on.
There has never been consensus on anything in the human experience. This is a ridiculous requirement for any kind of knwledge, much less science.
Until then, neither evolution or ID are above debate.
Still waiting for ID to explain anything. It has yet to explain the designer, the fossil record, or calcualte irreducible complexity for anything.
While evolutionary biologists continue to produce fascinating new information, ID is still looking for an idea. There's nothing to debate.
Neither are a problem, both must be explored and accepted as a reasonable explanation for life.
If the purpose of education is to "educate", then it would be remiss to not include I.D. I'm not saying they should "Bible thump", but to leave out the other side of the "equation" would be a disservice to all students. One has to ask oneself, what are "they" afraid of? Are they afraid that someone might believe in I.D.? Why in the world would a liberal thinker, or anyone for that matter, wish to ban, or censor, ANY information that is a historical part of our country, and the world.
How's this for an oddity that evolutionists (AFAIK) prefer to keep swept under the rug:
"Francis Crick has made a further proposal. In his book "Life Itself" he, too, suggests an extraterrestrial oigin for life but believes that it is unlikely that organic molecules of any complexity could survive drifting in interstellar space. He suggests instead that life in microscopic form may have been sent to other planets by alien beings in suitable protective vessels; that life is liek a message in a bottle."
(Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton)
So Francis Crick, the icon of scientists everywhere, has his own theory of how life evolved. Can this be taught in schools? After all, he's a scientist, and he doesn't believe in God, so he must be all right.
But they don't just say "God did it." They seek examples of situations in the real world than cannot be explained by natural laws or chance or a combination of them. If you saw a chess board that had all the pawns occupying the left field of the board, one in front of the other, you would conclude that neither the laws of chess nor chance could have put them there. ID seeks the same examples in the real world--situations like the fine tuning of the universe--which is so improbable as to be impossible given the rules of chance and physics. They never resort to "God did it." They seek to prove intelligence did it. And that's why it is falsifiable--just show how nonintelligence did it, and ID is falsified.
Exactly, it isn't one or the other, its lets look at all possibilities. This doesn't exclude either or give preference to either while allowing everyone to make their own conclusions. This shouldn't be taught as a class of what is but taught as a class of what if.
Students would be required to access what they have be theorized and give written conclusions. Students would still be required to understand the known universe such as planets, comets, exploration, etc.
In general, any assertion made by the ID side can be falsified by showing a natural explanation.
Since the 'assertion' made by the ID 'side' is that 'God (or the Intelligent Designer) did it', this is the 'and prove me wrong' part of the argument. And each natural mechanism/exclamation response science makes results in the same counter assertion and argument, ad infinitum.
So there you have it...the 'science' of ID 'theory'.
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.