Intelligent Design is not science!!!

[Jonathan]

t's impractical if not impossible to prove macro-evolution when there are so many fossils missing to illustrate so many assumed links.

There is no need to link every species that has ever existed in order to establish that common descent is a fact.  We simply have to establish a pattern.  Gravity pulls all things in the surface of the earth towards it's core (down), physicist have not accounted for every object that has existed on this planet.  It would be unresonable to think they had to in order to understand Gravity.  You also have to remember the other evidence besides the fossil record.  All living things in this planet use the same amino acids.  Organisms are basically made up of amino acids (proteins), water and some vitamins and minerals sprinkled over.  The building blocks of life, amino acids, are 22 for all organism out of 320 naturally occurring ones that have been discovered.  There is no reason for all organism to be made up of only those 22 aminos unless common descent is true.  There is no other scientific theory that makes this prediction.  There is no other theory that accounts for the striking DNA similarities in organisms either and there is plenty of evidence to support common descent besides  the links in the fossil record.  

The most important fact to remember in all of this is that biologist consider macro-evolution to be a fact.  If there wasn't sufficient evidence to support this they would be the first ones to tell us this.  Why would they  say this if it wasn't true?  Are they lying to us? Remember that biologists come in all different religious flavors; atheists, catholics, jews, hindus etc.  It is difficult to believe that they're all in it together to deceive us.  It is also difficult to believe that people such as myself would be in a better position to judge the validity of macro-evolution than someone who studied biology for 8 years in school and spends their whole life studying it afterward.  This goes to the heart of my original intent in this topic, perhaps I should have explained it sooner.  The question before the court was should ID be taught in school IN THE BIOLOGY CLASSROOM (not in history or another non-science class).  I think, although anyone is certainly free to hold any philosophical and religious beliefs as this is the basis of our democracy, biologists should decide what biology is.  I don't think this is a radical or unreasonable assertion.

[Jonathan]

I dont like his god

I don't like him  

[PirateBoB]

by the way, someone said they didn't know of any straw man arguements used against pro-IDers, but one example is in treating ID through the evolution vs creationism theories of life debate.

Intelligent Design doesn't only refer to the idea of an intelligent being having created life, but at least partially also refers to the idea that an intelligent being created the non-living universe around us. To support their arguement they say that it's silly to believe the universe just kind of randomly "fell into" the order that it exists within, and that it's highly improbable that the "rules" by which the universe works so fluidly just spontaneously emerged from .... what? the big bang? (yes, in a previous post I talked about chaos->order->chaos-etc but is such an idea true of vast time expances and vast distance expanses as well?)

They go a more theoretical route that isn't really science in that it's not discovery of nature, but so far much of what is labelled science regarding the "origins of the universe" is theory as well. But the point of this post was simply to say that the anti-IDers also attack incorrect arguements or ignore arguements made by their opposition.

~kakkarot

[Jonathan]

Intelligent Design doesn't only refer to the idea of an intelligent being having created life, but at least partially also refers to the idea that an intelligent being created the non-living universe around us.

To my knowledge ID proponents have not tried to pass legislation to introduce ID in physics or astronomy classes; only in biology.  Biologist have repeatedly stated ( mostly in debates ) that evolution does not include abiogenesis ( how the first living cell came about).  This is not a straw-men argument, this is a fact.  If there is a portion of ID that deals with how life originated then that particular point is not in opposition to evolution; it opposes abiogenesis, which is a separate scientific theory.  If they want to oppose the standing scientific idea of how the universe was created (big bag) then it is cosmology they have a problem with ( or the big bang theory) but not with evolution.  Creationist are specially fond of trying to throw all of this into the same bag to confuse the issues at hand.

[dirty_blonde]

I must say Johnathon, i have heard both sides of this debate more than times then i care to remember, but you have done a very good job of breaking the issue down in a easy, understandable way.  

I think i can sum this up rather quickly. ID isn't science, its a philosophy regarding science. That's all there is to it. It doesn't belong in science class, it belongs in philosophy class or some other non-science class, as Johnathon has pointed out.  I think anyone who has put forth an honest effort to understand both sides of of the issue realize this point.

[Jonathan]

I must say Johnathon, i have heard both sides of this debate more than times then i care to remember, but you have done a very good job of breaking the issue down in a easy, understandable way.

thx