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Powerman said:I have provided evidence that ID is not science. If it is science then there must be some accredited universities that are teaching it. So I propose a homework assignment for you guys. Find me an accredited college that teached ID as part of a science curriculum.
*Note this is not another evolution thread. It's just an experiment I'm concocting here.
GunnyL said:Here's one for you ...... please provide evidence that anyone in any of your myriad, anti-religion threads has claimed that ID is science.
It is fact that ID is NOT accepted by the sceintific community in favor of their own mythology, and I haven't seen anyone post otherwise.
moreIf you are in ninth grade and live in Dover, Pennsylvania, you are learning things in your biology class that differ considerably from what your peers just a few miles away are learning. In particular, you are learning that Darwins theory of evolution provides just one possible explanation of life, and that another is provided by something called intelligent design. You are being taught this not because of a recent breakthrough in some scientists laboratory but because the Dover Area School Districts board mandates it. In October, 2004, the board decreed that students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwins theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.
While the events in Dover have received a good deal of attention as a sign of the political times, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the science thats said to underlie the theory of intelligent design, often called I.D. Many scientists avoid discussing I.D. for strategic reasons. If a scientific claim can be loosely defined as one that scientists take seriously enough to debate, then engaging the intelligent-design movement on scientific grounds, they worry, cedes what it most desires: recognition that its claims are legitimate scientific ones.
Meanwhile, proposals hostile to evolution are being considered in more than twenty states; earlier this month, a bill was introduced into the New York State Assembly calling for instruction in intelligent design for all public-school students. The Kansas State Board of Education is weighing new standards, drafted by supporters of intelligent design, that would encourage schoolteachers to challenge Darwinism. Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, has argued that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes. An I.D.-friendly amendment that he sponsored to the No Child Left Behind Actrequiring public schools to help students understand why evolution generates so much continuing controversywas overwhelmingly approved in the Senate. (The amendment was not included in the version of the bill that was signed into law, but similar language did appear in a conference report that accompanied it.) In the past few years, college students across the country have formed Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness chapters. Clearly, a policy of limited scientific engagement has failed. So just what is this movement?
First of all, intelligent design is not what people often assume it is. For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism. Unlike earlier generations of creationiststhe so-called Young Earthers and scientific creationistsproponents of intelligent design do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noahs flood. (Indeed, they shun the label creationism altogether.) Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth. Although the movement is loosely allied with, and heavily funded by, various conservative Christian groupsand although I.D. plainly maintains that life was createdit is generally silent about the identity of the creator.
The movements main positive claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that, in any other context, we would attribute to intelligence. Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any naturalor, more precisely, by any mindlessprocess. Instead, the design inherent in organisms can be accounted for only by invoking a designer, and one who is very, very smart.
All of which puts I.D. squarely at odds with Darwin. Darwins theory of evolution was meant to show how the fantastically complex features of organismseyes, beaks, brainscould arise without the intervention of a designing mind. According to Darwinism, evolution largely reflects the combined action of random mutation and natural selection. A random mutation in an organism, like a random change in any finely tuned machine, is almost always bad. Thats why you dont, screwdriver in hand, make arbitrary changes to the insides of your television. But, once in a great while, a random mutation in the DNA that makes up an organisms genes slightly improves the function of some organ and thus the survival of the organism. In a species whose eye amounts to nothing more than a primitive patch of light-sensitive cells, a mutation that causes this patch to fold into a cup shape might have a survival advantage. While the old type of organism can tell only if the lights are on, the new type can detect the direction of any source of light or shadow. Since shadows sometimes mean predators, that can be valuable information. The new, improved type of organism will, therefore, be more common in the next generation. Thats natural selection. Repeated over billions of years, this process of incremental improvement should allow for the gradual emergence of organisms that are exquisitely adapted to their environments and that look for all the world as though they were designed. By 1870, about a decade after The Origin of Species was published, nearly all biologists agreed that life had evolved, and by 1940 or so most agreed that natural selection was a key force driving this evolution.
Advocates of intelligent design point to two developments that in their view undermine Darwinism. The first is the molecular revolution in biology. Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, molecular biologists revealed a staggering and unsuspected degree of complexity within the cells that make up all life. This complexity, I.D.s defenders argue, lies beyond the abilities of Darwinism to explain. Second, they claim that new mathematical findings cast doubt on the power of natural selection. Selection may play a role in evolution, but it cannot accomplish what biologists suppose it can.
These claims have been championed by a tireless group of writers, most of them associated with the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that sponsors projects in science, religion, and national defense, among other areas. The centers fellows and advisersincluding the emeritus law professor Phillip E. Johnson, the philosopher Stephen C. Meyer, and the biologist Jonathan Wellshave published an astonishing number of articles and books that decry the ostensibly sad state of Darwinism and extoll the virtues of the design alternative. But Johnson, Meyer, and Wells, while highly visible, are mainly strategists and popularizers. The scientific leaders of the design movement are two scholars, one a biochemist and the other a mathematician. To assess intelligent design is to assess their arguments.
Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University (and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute), is a biochemist who writes technical papers on the structure of DNA. He is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known. His book Darwins Black Box (1996) was a surprise best-seller and was named by National Review as one of the hundred best nonfiction books of the twentieth century. (A little calibration may be useful here; The Starr Report also made the list.)
Not surprisingly, Behes doubts about Darwinism begin with biochemistry. Fifty years ago, he says, any biologist could tell stories like the one about the eyes evolution. But such stories, Behe notes, invariably began with cells, whose own evolutionary origins were essentially left unexplained. This was harmless enough as long as cells werent qualitatively more complex than the larger, more visible aspects of the eye. Yet when biochemists began to dissect the inner workings of the cell, what they found floored them. A cell is packed full of exceedingly complex structureshundreds of microscopic machines, each performing a specific job. The Give me a cell and Ill give you an eye story told by Darwinists, he says, began to seem suspect: starting with a cell was starting ninety per cent of the way to the finish line.
Kathianne said:Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but seldom are universities the 'cutting edge' of anything not off the mainstream. They follow the trends.
For me, that does not mean they should be introing ID, I don't believe it now belongs in science, in any sense. I do believe it should be a footnote however, in higher level science classes and definately in theology university classes.
GunnyL said:I don't particularly believe ID belongs in science class with one exception: IF science teaches theories of origin, then they should either teach ALL theories of origin, or point out the fact that scientific theory is no more supported by fact/evidence than any other theory of origin; which, I'd bet the farm they don't.
Kathianne said:Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but seldom are universities the 'cutting edge' of anything not off the mainstream. They follow the trends.
Powerman said:Yeah....that's why the govt. gives grants to universities so they can do absolutely nothing with all the research money. That is just not a factual statement and you know it. Universities are always doing research. Maybe you went to a smaller university where they didn't have much funding but where I go to school there is plenty of cutting edge research going on and not all of it is mainstream.
Here is an example
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LIGO_web/sidebar/employment.html
We also have the 4th most powerful computer in the world on our campus. Dare I say cutting edge?
We also have a guy that has successfully cloned goats in the Ag department and have one of the best robotics research facilities in the country. I would hardly consider any of this mainsteam stuff. People at universities are ALWAYS doing research for new things. That's what universities do in addition to educating people.
Powerman said:We also have a guy that has successfully cloned goats in the Ag department and have one of the best robotics research facilities in the country. I would hardly consider any of this mainsteam stuff. People at universities are ALWAYS doing research for new things. That's what universities do in addition to educating people.
Powerman said:This is one of those if the shoe fits things...I do believe that no1tovote4 or something to that effect tried to tell me about 50 times that intelligent design is science when in fact only small portions of it are science and ID as a whole is pseudoscience.
Kathianne said:Here's the difference, evolution does have 'some' albeit, a small amount of physical evidence to back it up-fossils that show progression towards development. ID has none. At the same time the theory of ID explains some of the 'holes' in evolution, where the development skipped or did not evolve. Yet there is no a 'whiff' of physical evidence, perhaps never can be.
For me, it explains some of the jumps and dregs. For others, not.
GunnyL said:I don't disagree. I was speaking solely of theories of origin, not evolution.
Kathianne said:Now you are joining into the 'Catholic view' which we teach. Evolution explains species. Taught in science. Where 'it' all started? Could be 'Big Bang'-science/religion. Could be 'creationism' religion.
As for further science on origins, kids are given projects to research and report to class on.
But yes, I;ve tried to explain that point of view to P-Man throughout about 6 threads and countless posts.
GunnyL said:Interesting. I'm Southern Baptist.
Kathianne said:You and me both. :duh3: For some reason, I get the feeling he doesn't want to hear.
