Over 80% of the world believes in a "greater being"... President Bush mentioned NOTHING of the Christian God or any other gods (oh dear, I only capitalized the G in Christian God) so why WOULDN'T they teach that? Intelligent Design teaches nothing of a set religion, simply that our universe is too vast and too complex to be a scientific fact. If you don't believe teaching what the VAST majority of people in the world believe then what should we teach? Get real...
Intellegent design implies a supernatural conciousness outside the realm of human experience that directs the evolution of species. Be it crawfish or an ethereal bearded man in outer space it would qualify under the definition of god. And since it's existence is not a testable , it's effects are not attributable, it's nature purely subjective; it would have to be considered a religious belief, not a scientific hypothessis. So don't give me that "He didn't say God " crap. I think we should teach our best estimate of what is scientific fact.The results of scientific menthod as far removed from bias and the psychological needs of human beings as possible. If we didn't, and just taught what most people in the world think , we would still believe the world is flat or all the other ridiculous things people have thought throughout history. Just look at the creation myths from the link above and tell me people should have continued to teach those as fact.
ID as scientific theory: How? How is ID a scientific theory? What model is proposed by ID? What predictions does it make and how do we test it? If ID is to be considered scientific, it needs to provide a consistent framework for describing natural phenomena. The main description of ID I hear is that: The world is too complex to have happened by chance, therefore some higher being/process/whatever must have caused the complexity. How is complexity measured/quantified in ID? Why can this complexity not exist without a higher being? What level of complexity would we expect given to chance? Why is the higher being not subject to being too complex itself? Most importantly, does ID provide a predictive framework for describing phenomena that can be tested? Until ID can meet that standard, we shouldn't even be considering teaching it in a science class.
So you are saying we should abandon current scientific methodology and instead vote on which ideas we think are best? Just imagine all the money we could save on all of those researchers and equipment!
Didn't the majority of the western world once believe that the sun revolved around the earth? Heavier objects fall faster than light objects? World is flat? Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't make it true. So your argument doesn't hold.
Just like with that whole global warmin talk, the science behind all this evolution propaganda is just plain 'fuzzy'. Who the hell is any labtech in a collar-stained white coat or eccentric neolib professor in academia to tell me that God didn't create me and the flowers and the catfish and the roaches? Hell, those science rats and nutty professors are probably gays trying to marry each other for all I know. And one more thing, we also need to teach children in our schools that guns don't kill and it's perfectly within their God given right when they reach adulthood to go buy 2,3,4 maybe 16 if they want and there's nothing like takin a deer down with a good strong semi-automatic.
Exactly. The definition of a theory in a scientific sense vs. the colloquial use of the word should be emphasized.
I'm trying to find a true theory of ID - this is about as close as it gets (I guess). They are quite fuzzy on the specifics... ____________ Intelligent Design The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion. In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection -- how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences. D is controversial because of the implications of its evidence, rather than the significant weight of its evidence. ID proponents believe science should be conducted objectively, without regard to the implications of its findings. This is particularly necessary in origins science because of its historical (and thus very subjective) nature, and because it is a science that unavoidably impacts religion. Positive evidence of design in living systems consists of the semantic, meaningful or functional nature of biological information, the lack of any known law that can explain the sequence of symbols that carry the "messages," and statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation. Other evidence challenges the adequacy of natural or material causes to explain both the origin and diversity of life. Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement that includes a scientific research program for investigating intelligent causes and that challenges naturalistic explanations of origins which currently drive science education and research. link
Why would anyone infer any intelligence in the way life is structured on this planet unless it it was maybe an intelligent psychopath. Survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten, terrorizing death and dismemberment, parasites, disease, yep, god loves all the little animals.
Wikipedia article on Intelligent Design My first reaction to teaching intelligent design, as a Christian but science-obsessed guy is that it it a bad idea. After further thought, however, I'm not so much opposed to the idea in it's most pure form, but rather that the concept will open the floodgates for a massive influx of all kinds of other religion-like stuff into education. After all, have you ever heard GW Bush vocally support any other viewpoint on any other theoretical science? I can only deduce that his interest in the subject is religious. My primary problem with Inteligent Design comes by comparison to another "scientific issue", the Face on Mars. (I especially appreciate his mock arguement that NASA has photos showing the keyhole nebula "Giving us the finger". When Viking I returned a picture of a rock outcropping containing what appeared to be a face over Cydonia, some people said "hmmm..." The original technician actually wrote "Face!!!" on the image. The most likely explanation was that it was a result of natural erosion combined with the photography angle. I'm sure at least some NASA people would've been open to the possibility that it was an alien artifact, but Richard Hogland, with no more than the original photo in hand, claimed that it was absolutely the product of alien inteligence and that there was a conspiracy to cover this up. Eventually, later missions showed that it was in fact just a rock outcropping, but Hogland basically ignored this and has moved on to other bizarre crap. In response to the list of scientists who support intelligent design, an otherwise smart and qualified PhD named Horatiu Nastase published a paper on archivx.com here in PDF form claiming that the heavy ion collider at Brookhaven National labs had created a mini-black hole with the implication that they could, in the future, destroy the world. The Heavy Ion collider has continued to work and we all still exist, but the they have had to persistently dedicate resources to refuting this arguementBrookhaven has a page on the subject here. The point of the above is that while spouting off a list of PhD's who are Intelligent Design proponents sounds all impressive, many of them aren't even in relevant fields, and PhD's don't make you incapable of being wrong, or having wrong ideas. The codiscoverer of DNA, James Watson, is a proponent of Nazi-style euginics! The list is like the famous "look at the silly monkey" South Park moment, designed to distract and confuse. The problem that I personally have with intelligent design is the numbers involved in the nature of the universe. The number of stars, galaxies, and the amount of time involved are simply impossible for the human mind to grasp in a way that it can manipulate. It's like manipulating a polytope on this page and saying that you can predict the outcome. I'm willing to accept that Intellignet Design is a possibility, but anybody who claims that it is supported by sufficent evidence that it should be taught as science, should consider that under the criteria established, theories of Inteligent Design involving Scientology and Xenu would be equaly valid a source of the intelligent design. Should we teach about Xenu as well as God? In other words, the inteligent design education arguement is designed as a way to introduce Christian religious ideas into education. I accept the posibility of intelligent design and would like to believe in it in it's more passive iterations. I try to integrate it to my beliefs when I can. I just think that the arguement is more philosophical at this point. Perhaps we should teach History of Philosophy in high school. A little Immanuel Kant and William Paley would get forth he same idea, but not interfere with the concept of provability that is so important to Science, and Science education.
Actually, most computer random number generation functions are more properly termed psudorandom and are not in reality random. True random numbers You need something like a dedicated hardware random number generator to get random numbers, but your point is well made.
I think the question I would like answered is why can't these scientists question the theory of evolution? What is so sacred about a theory that is taught in high schools as fact yet more and more scientists with credentials are questioning. Where is the harm in testing the theory? I know religion is the buggy-man here and I am sorry for that. Everyone already knows that I am not a scientist and don't have a clue how to answer a scientific question. I am also a believer in the Biblical account of creation. But I do think I am not unreasonable in questioning evolution. Nor are the scientists who dispute evolution quacks. That is reactionary to discredit these men and women. Intelligent Scientists have painstakingly designed intelligent experiments for years trying to come up with an answer to this question with regard to origins: How did something appear out of nothing? The question was 'begged' from classic Darwinism of the 19th century and has been increasingly difficult to answer by modern science. Experiments that reproduce 2 amino acids in very controlled and 'intelligent' processes do little too satisfy the thought of randomness and complexity for the entirety of amino acid and protein synthesis. Finding amino acids in space and extrapolating that to the complexity of developing DNA mapping by randomness is utterly upsurd. The evolution of DNA itself is nothing but hypothesis. (bad hypothesis at that) Design and complexity are facts. Any science on origins is a theory. Intelligent design is not a science of origins any more than Evolution can be a science of origins. Macro Evolution is a theory of the process of simple inorganic and organic development by randomness and long periods of time. There is no 'facts' as to origin. Intelligent design cannot provide any facts as to origin either. Macro Evolution assumes that there was an origin to the universe and then a process of random development resulting in design and intelligence. Intelligent Design assumes that do to the complexity of matter there is design and intelligence in the origin. Both theories make huge assumptions! BOTH! Neither theory is scientifically sufficient to explain origins. If anyone can prove to me how something came from nothing. I will believe. No theories please.
the dutch minister who wanted to add ID to the dutch sience class was unsuccesfull. Most biology teachers didn't want to teach it. IMO science should be discussed in Science class and school. Religion should be taught in church. however some religion should be taught in school. I think that it would be good to have a class about the largest religions in the world. So that the children know something about all the different religions and then make a choise if they want to believe any of them and if so which one. ID does not belong in biology class, it belongs in religion class(or what its name is)
