Intelligent Design is not science!!!

[Jonathan]

Hello all,

A previous post in this forum (World Religions) said that the a rural county in Pennsylvania requires that Intelligent Design by taught along evolution in biology classrooms. Recently, Judge John Jones of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that intelligent design was in fact religion in disguised and could not be taught in public schools.  The judge also declared that calling evolution a "only a theory" is misleading since the common meaning of the term theory differs from the scientific usage (ei theory does not mean guess like most people think).  The court also found that ID relies on false dualism.  This is trick that ID proponents use to try to prove their case; they simply state that if the available scientific theory cannot account for something that means God did it.  This as opposed to revising the theory through scientific means.  Overall I think the decision will move the country (as it is expected to have a wide repercussion) in the right direction with regards to science education.

Opinions???

Sincerely, Jonathan

[MisterJingo]

The correct decision in my opinion.

[NickJW]

I agree as well, whether Christians or whomever want to say it is just a theory; just a guess, they are wrong. The fossil records have already proven evolution to be true.

[Leannain]

what the hell...christians still believe in that? maybe somepne should wake them up into the 21 century

[CFTraveler]

I'm a christian and I agree that the theory of evolution is the closest thing to the truth about our origins.  Although the idea of panspermia is a tempting one...anyway, there are many kinds of christians, and not all of us believe that the earth was created in 6 days.  In fact, some of us believe that the bible was written as symbolic lessons and as a guide for religious ceremony, and it became historiziced later as a result of  the western linear mindset not understanding an essentially symbolic/metaphysical collection of writings, and as a result... well, you  can see what happened.

[PirateBoB]

*sighs* There's a number of different theories about evolution which get thrown under the umbrella terms "the theory of evolution" and just plain "evolution", some of those theories are just as dogmatic as certain christian ideas and theories whereas others are not so.

If the christian idea of intelligent design "relies on false dualism" as Jonathan mentioned then the theory should be modified such that it's not making an illogical blanket statement saying "if not a, then b" when there is no logical reason to believe that. However, this does not throw out the *possibility* of intelligent design right there, just as saying that our current species of man didn't evolve from apes doesn't destroy the theories of evolution.

There are also variations of the intelligent design theory, so to say that it relies upon false dualism is somewhat misleading as there are variants which do not rely upon such.

~kakkarot

PS I agree that religion should not be taught in schools. And yes, I am a christian. If people want to know Christ, they can look for themselves rather than being spoonfed a bunch of lies by dogmatic-yet-unknowledgable people who merely claim the title "christian".

[MisterJingo]

*sighs* There's a number of different theories about evolution which get thrown under the umbrella terms "the theory of evolution" and just plain "evolution", some of those theories are just as dogmatic as certain christian ideas and theories whereas others are not so.

If the christian idea of intelligent design "relies on false dualism" as Jonathan mentioned then the theory should be modified such that it's not making an illogical blanket statement saying "if not a, then b" when there is no logical reason to believe that. However, this does not throw out the *possibility* of intelligent design right there, just as saying that our current species of man didn't evolve from apes doesn't destroy the theories of evolution.

There are also variations of the intelligent design theory, so to say that it relies upon false dualism is somewhat misleading as there are variants which do not rely upon such.

~kakkarot

PS I agree that religion should not be taught in schools. And yes, I am a christian. If people want to know Christ, they can look for themselves rather than being spoonfed a bunch of lies by dogmatic-yet-unknowledgable people who merely claim the title "christian".

To quote someone else:

Intelligent Design is a philosophical-theological theory that uses natural events to try to support itself. No empirical evidence can ever refute it, because it is not in fact, an empirical hypothesis. Although it appears to be empirical, it is relying on the following premises.

All order is created
The Universe is ordered
Therefore the Universe has been created/has a creator.

If you don't accept all of the premises, or the conclusion, the argument fails.
If you do accept them, the argument seems self-evident.

Evolution, however, is an empirical hypothesis, capable of falsification if evidence turns up that contradicts the hypothesis.

Intelligent Design belongs to Philosophy of Religion, Evolutionary Theory to Science.

The problem with intelligent design is that it was portrayed as a scientific theory instead of a philosophical idea, and through its teachings, empirical based theories were reduced to this level too.
To stall all science as not to upset certain religions view of God would still see us in the pre-electricity age with a life span of around 30-40 years.
There are many Christians, Catholics etc who happily merge science and religious teachings, but attempting to reduce science in favour of personal belief does a disservice to the whole of mankind IMO.

[yothu]

Overall I think the decision will move the country (as it is expected to have a wide repercussion) in the right direction with regards to science education.

I believe the opposite.

[PirateBoB]

Actually, for the "premises" you listed in the quote from that other person (actually, they are a logical slippery slope and not real premise), there is evidence to remove support for intelligent design.

"The universe is ordered so God must have created it" - this could be disputed due to the nature of chaos and order flowing into one another; it has been "observed" that order eventually leads to chaos and chaos eventually leads to order. One might throw this into philosophy rather than science because there are no instruments and machines involved in the observations and the conclusions are drawn from watching reality rather than empiracally testing it but one must never forget that science is the methods of learning in general and need not *rely* upon machines.

As well, the statement about order coming from God could be disputed on the question "IF there is a god, why would it HAVE to create an ordered universe? What if the 'creation god' has characteristics more akin to those ascribed to Loki?"

The intelligent design idea of most christians falls short, I agree, because it's based heavily in doctrine and wishy-washy beliefs, but that doesn't mean all variants of intelligent design have to be so shoddy.

In the end, though, the unanswered question still remains "What is the origin of the universe?", and science hasn't yet given a "proper explaination" you can't simply throw out the intelligent design theory because religious nuts abuse it.

~kakkarot

[magicmac2000]

I agree that ID should not be taught at school as science, because it is not science. On the other side, evolutionists can't explain everything out there, and when they find gaps without explanation they always use the terms "millions of years" as an answer.

I do not agree completely with Evolution, there is a book called "Darwins Black Box" from Michael Behe which explains some cases where evolution is almost not an option. Unfortunately, he has a "hidden agenda" inducing readers to believe that ID is the only option, but I have to admit that his theories (first half of the book) are not crazy.

So, I disagree with ID but I think that there are a lot of things that evolution simply can't explain. For sure, ID should not be taught at school masked as "science".

Cheers,
Magic.

[NickJW]

Sure people can write ideas about how they believe evolution is false, but they dont just through the term "millions of years" around like it means nothing. Like I said, the fossil records have already proven evolution, the only discreprancy is when they cant find an animal that went between to other animals. Plain and simple they just haven't found that animal's fossils yet. It really dosen't chnage the fact that evolution is real and proven.

[CFTraveler]

There is a theory that has been largely ignored which is catastrophism, or saltationism, which is basically evolutionary but doesn't  rely on long processes to produce new lifeforms, it combines this process with catastrophes causing new lifeforms to appear.  It is undemonstrated but very interesting. I'm only mentioning it because it kind of fills the gaps that modern evolution leaves, as mentioned in NicJW's post.

[Jonathan]

"*sighs* There's a number of different theories about evolution which get thrown under the umbrella terms "the theory of evolution" and just plain "evolution", some of those theories are just as dogmatic as certain christian ideas and theories whereas others are not so.

I'm aware of only one theory of evolution currently being used but with many subdivisions.  Evolution relies on the fact that all life on earth shares a common ancestor/s, which is supported by the fossil record and even more strongly by molecular similarities.  Based on this Darwin speculated that the mechanism of change was Natural Selection.  After Darwin many more mechanisms of evolution have been discovered like genetic drift, sexual selection, neutral evolution, and theories of speciation.  Research is currently being conducted in all of these areas but common descent is a fact.  You should also note that unlike many people believe abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of evolution.  The explanation of how the first living cell came to be is not a part of evolutionary theory.

The statements I made before about false dualism pertains only to the defendants of that case.  Some types of Intelligent Design theories try to positively prove that there was a creator; they've failed miserably so far.  For example William Demsky tried to prove that there is an intelligent designer by using Irreductible Complexity.  Simply put he said that there are some structures in nature that have the property of Irreductible Complexity, that if even a single minute part is missing the whole thing is useless.  Then he tried to establish a mathematical limit on what chance can do.  That is he said that some things are so mathematically improbable that one cannot reasonably assume that they can happen by chance.  The problem with this approach is that no modern biologist has ever proposed that complex structures arise by chance but rather that they evolve by incremental changes and their irreductible complexity only holds true if you assume a single function.  Modern biology does not claim that from a soup of assorted elements by pure chance a cat came out, but rather that all living structures evolved gradually from less complex ones.  Much like the fins of dolphins were once used to move on land not on water so too can other complex structures differ in function from their predecessor.  To my knowledge this is the most scientific attempt at proving intelligent design ever devised and it falls short of credible science.

Sincerely, Jonathan

[dirty_blonde]

I just said this about 5 minutes ago on an other thread:

"I hate the 'god of the gaps' stance that many religious people take, ie those who believe in the 'theory' of intelligent design. Basically, its says that anything science cant explain at this very moment, will never be able to be explained by science. How foolish. Science is a provisional truth that is always refining but will never be complete. Its truth without certainty. What its discoveries is true, but its never the whole truth, it can never be the whole truth for certain. Look at history and its relentless ability to explain away 'supernatural' phenomena as natural phenomena for example. Those who believe in intelligent design seem to believe in a few other notions that I, and I'm willing to bet that themselves might, find very disturbing. The first is the belief in the finicity of God's capability as an ironic result of trying to prove his omnipotent ability. Simply put, they doubt that God has the ability to create a self-sufficient, self-governing system (known as Nature)...and thus, God himself has to personally and continuously step in and tinker with this system in order to keep it from breaking down, and in turn, God can be found in the gaps of science. The second belief is a product of the first. According to process theology, the only way for God to grant the beings in the universe "free will" is to make the universe itself independently functioning and self-governing. So as a product of believing in Intelligent Design, you not only undermine the power of science and rationality, you also undermine the power of God and ones own free will."

There are gaps in the theory of evolution, insignificant ones that don't discredit what evolution has discovered.  For those who say "wheres the proof?" ill respond with "how can you prove what wasn't, first, theorized?"  

Give it time.

[CFTraveler]

dirty blonde said:

Those who believe in intelligent design seem to believe in a few other notions that I, and I'm willing to bet that themselves might, find very disturbing. The first is the belief in the finicity of God's capability as an ironic result of trying to prove his omnipotent ability. Simply put, they doubt that God has the ability to create a self-sufficient, self-governing system (known as Nature)...and thus, God himself has to personally and continuously step in and tinker with this system in order to keep it from breaking down, and in turn, God can be found in the gaps of science. The second belief is a product of the first. According to process theology, the only way for God to grant the beings in the universe "free will" is to make the universe itself independently functioning and self-governing. So as a product of believing in Intelligent Design, you not only undermine the power of science and rationality, you also undermine the power of God and ones own free will."

There are gaps in the theory of evolution, insignificant ones that don't discredit what evolution has discovered. For those who say "wheres the proof?" ill respond with "how can you prove what wasn't, first, theorized?"

Amen, sister.

[Jonathan]

btw, ID does not necessarily mean an omnipotent being created life.  Creationism which was blatantly religious (with genesis references and all) was struck down as being a permissible alternative to evolution in public schools a long time ago.  The ID movement has been very careful not to mention any gods or sacred texts in their writings (as opposed to the creationist movement) so that it couldn't be struck down as a religious belief.  According to modern ID theories ET could have been responsible for the creation of life on earth; the designer need not be divine.  Their actions betray them however, no serious scientist comes up with a theory and then goes around the country lobbying school boards and courts for it to be taught in school.  A serious scientist presents their ideas to the scientific community; when and if those ideas ever become accepted by their colleagues then school boards, on their own include them into the curricula.  At least that's the way it should be done.  Long after evolution was widely accepted by the scientific community it was still not being taught in most American public schools.  In the famous Scopes trial (1925) a biology teacher was tried and convicted for trying to introduce evolution to his students.  It wasn't until the US was falling significantly behind in education that the whole curriculum was revised to include evolution among other things.  I repeat, anyone who is serious about presenting a scientific theory will do it through scientific venues, they will not lobby for it to be taught to children and they will not give out misinformation in pamphlets at the supermarket.  The latter behavior is consistent with wanting to indoctrinate someone not with trying to educate them.  

[Gandalf]

However ID should still be struck down for the sham it is. While in its current guise it does NOT mention god or jesus, it is now well known from recovery of documents from important religious organisations in the US, that there is a project by fundamentalists to try to foster support by promoting ID. The plan is to start off by leaving it open as to who is responsible for ID, ie aliens etc... then the next stage, once ID is accepted, is to move to the stage of promoting the idea that god, and jesus are responsible, basically the biblical creation story would be the end result..

personally, i cannot believe the US is actually debating this nonsense, but this kind of backwards thinking is a very real threat to progress in todays world and parallels the islamic fundamentalist nonsense in the middle east.

Religious fundamentialism is the single biggest threat to the modern world, be it islamic or christian fundamentalism, both of which strike at the heart of modern civilisation and progress.

I think christian fundamentalism is actually more dangerous, because it already has wide support in the so called 'civilised' world.

Doug

[dirty_blonde]

As for the notion that ID is open to other explanations besides religious ones....i doubt it.  Sure, perhaps ET made us, but who made the ET's?  No matter how much they try to beat around the bush, the real question is and always was about the origin of life in its most absolute sense.

[no_leaf_clover]

The fossil records have already proven evolution to be true.

Fossils can provide evidence for micro-evolution. I don't think there's any evidence for macro-evolution. Not to mention, there have been a lot of oddities along the way for which neither can reasonably account.

[PirateBoB]

oi vey, the entire debate about evolution vs science is fundamentally flawed anyway, on both sides.

The ID proponents can just keep saying "well, God created the universe and everything in it, so even if science can explain something that doesn't mean it's because something other than God made it that way." It leaves no room for falsification so it's annulled as a debate point in that it cannot be argued against, though one should not take this to mean that it is the correct viewpoint as there is a lack of unbiased evidence to support it (ie, simply saying "the earth exists so it must have been God who created it" is not evidence of ID).

The anti-IDers can just keep saying "well, just because we don't know how something works NOW doesn't mean we never will. We'll figure everything out eventually, and we don't need God to do it" and this is fallacy as it's based on the assumption that just because something can be understood by us humans that it means that God didn't make it that way.

You should also note that unlike many people believe abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of evolution. The explanation of how the first living cell came to be is not a part of evolutionary theory.

Aye, straw man arguements abound on both sides. One sides says "A is true" and the other side says "No you silly maggot, stop saying B is true when it's clearly not! C is true and you should look at that" and the first side says "You apes! D isn't true! How can you even think that? It's A!". A and C may both be true, but if people are arguing against B and D rather than A and C, which I've often seen, then the debate goes nowhere.


It just goes round and round, everyone trying to be right by biasing the evidence towards their beliefs, and so many missing the actual evidence for what it is without trying to bias it into what it isn't.

Based on the actual evidence, there is no conclusion to the debate, so it's rather pointless to debate it until further evidence is discovered.

I personally think that ID should not be taught in school but that the facts and evidence relating to the debate should be emphasised so that kids understand the basis of such a largely debated issue.

~kakkarot

[Jonathan]

oi vey, the entire debate about evolution vs science is fundamentally flawed anyway, on both sides.

I think you meant evolutionary science vs. religion.

The anti-IDers can just keep saying "well, just because we don't know how something works NOW doesn't mean we never will.

This is a valid point to make.  Another valid point to make is that just because we don't know EVERYTHING does not mean we don't know ANYTHING.  There are some things which we can already account for and there's no need to ignore the evidence for those things because we haven't figured out all there is to know about biology.  We have ample evidence for natural descent; that is that all species on this planet came from a a common ancestor.  Macroevolution is natural descent plus mechanisms of change.  The mechanisms of change we have already discovered are natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, neutral evolution, and various theories of speciation.  

no_leaf_clover wrote:

Fossils can provide evidence for micro-evolution.

I think you're confused on this as microevolution can be directly observed without the need for fossil records.  The fossil records on the geologic column is used to establish macroevolution (the change in organism at the species level and above).  Change within a species can be observed in as little as a few months for certain fast breeding organisms.  

Macroevolution was very well established (before the discovery of DNA) by the fossil record which established the connection between all the major taxas and kingdoms; though certainly we have not, and I dare say we will never have, a direct connecting line at the species level for all living and extinct organisms.  We also had evidence of macroevolution by observing vestigial structures in modern and extinct organisms.  Vestiges are structures that are either useless or overly complex and specialize for a certain function while only performing a different and simplistic one.

Of course now we also have molecular evidence in the form of molecular vestiges as well as many similarities that were predicted by common descent.  If we do come from the same original living cell then there are certain things that even evolution cannot change that have to be the same for every living thing like the amino acids used, which are 22 for all living organisms.  We also have that the energy production mechanism which powers all functions, including mutation leading to evolution, has to be almost identical since anything other than minor variations on it are highly improbable.  

These are the ones I remember of the top of my head, if you want a more detailed and comprehensive explanation of this go to:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Note that the above link is very extensive and although well written in understandable language it will probably take a couple of days to read through it.

PirateBoB wrote:

Aye, straw man arguements abound on both sides.

I don't think scientist or pro-evolution supported have every used straw-men arguments.  I am very familiar with many of such arguments that have been used by creationists and ID supporters.  I mentioned one of them in a previous post in this thread; the one about Williams Demsky.  

PirateBoB wrote:

I personally think that ID should not be taught in school but that the facts and evidence relating to the debate should be emphasised so that kids understand the basis of such a largely debated issue.

On the main issues being debated like natural selection and common descent there is no scientific controversy to be taught.  The sociological implication on the ongoing ideological debate may have a place in a the history classroom or another non-science class but not in a biology class.  There is some dispute on some of the finer points of evolution such as the relative contributions of sympatric versus allopatric speciation but this is a graduate level topic not something suited for a high-school biology class.  The debate is a religion vs. science topic.  It would have to be treated with care even in history classes.  As for teaching the facts, well as I already pointed out common descent is a fact and I doubt creationist approve of this particular fact being taught in schools.  They've been trying to introduce bad science not facts.

I must repeat what I've said before, no serious scientist will try to promote his theory in a high-school science class.  If anyone wants to give credibility to a particular scientific theory they publish in scientific journals etc.  When the theory is accepted as a valid one in scientific circles then the school boards may consider putting it into the curriculum.  ID proponents are trying to convince children to scientists.  That in itself shows their true agenda.

[PirateBoB]

I think you meant evolutionary science vs. religion.

LOL XD Yes, yes I did ^_^;

ID proponents are trying to convince children

Aye, that is yet another thing I abhor about christians today, they indoctrinate their children towards certain beliefs because they read in the bible that they're supposed to "bring your children up in the ways of the LORD" but fail to realize that statement is talking about teaching kids morality, caring for other people, and DOing good things for others rather than just sitting around "wanting to do" for good things others.

~kakkarot

[Sasuke]

I don't really understand why they have to be exclusive from each other. =\

I mean, who says God didn't just start or guide evolution? Does it have to be all or nothing? Seriously.

[no_leaf_clover]

I think you're confused on this as microevolution can be directly observed without the need for fossil records.

Glance to what I was responding.

Macroevolution was very well established (before the discovery of DNA) by the fossil record which established the connection between all the major taxas and kingdoms; though certainly we have not, and I dare say we will never have, a direct connecting line at the species level for all living and extinct organisms.

This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I posted. It's impractical if not impossible to prove macro-evolution when there are so many fossils missing to illustrate so many assumed links. Now, I'm far from a creationist. I don't have any problems with the idea that organisms evolve. There are some things, like the appearance of modern man, and the domestication of certain animals, that come with conventional "scientific" views that don't sit right with me, but those are different issues and not related to the evolution-in-schools thing.

These religious talking-point issues, like the made-up "war on christmas" and teaching creationism and all that b.s., are all geared towards making the US an even more Christian country, and for no good reason. It's a psychological thing. Associate the state with your religion and you're that more compliant and trusting of them, and they're thereby allowed that much more power to do controversial things. Not to mention all the propoganda based around religion they can then drum up so easily, but we've already seen some of that with Bush's "God told me to" war justifications.

[MindFreak]

I dont like his god