Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

"Moreover it is increasingly in the grip of modern secular zealots who morph their opposition to ANY questioning of evolutionary THEORY to a broad and implicit rejection of any admission of the possibility of a creator and the false proposition that science precludes any such possibility."

Show us where science or scientists precludes the possibility of a creator?

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Thomas, I'm not sure I completely understand your position.

How do you reconcile the notion that government should not whield influence over what is taught in schools with the notion that education should be funded by government? Surely government would have to define education in order to fund it, leaving proponents of 'non education' carrying an opportunity cost equal to government funding of education. Or do you propose the funding of education on a per subject basis, reducing the opportunity costs of opting out of science as defined by the public to the public level of funding for science?

Do you think that the teaching of ID deserves public funding, and if so, what do you consider the purpouse of public education, and how would this purpouse be served by the teaching of ID?

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georgeob1 wrote:

Bottom line is we have an increasingly authoritarian and compulsory educational system that is less and less attentive to the wants of the parents of the children they pretend to serve. Moreover it is increasingly in the grip of modern secular zealots who morph their opposition to ANY questioning of evolutionary THEORY to a broad and implicit rejection of any admission of the possibility of a creator and the false proposition that science precludes any such possibility. This is not education, and it is not science either.

Your cherished bête noire notwithstanding, what it is not is true.

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georgeob-your capitolization of theory has me a bit flumoxed. You write it as though it is an Achilles heel of evolution, I did accept that you at least understand the power of theory in science..
You totally misquoted my use of "ravaged". I said that My dog in this fight is to protect the public school system from being ravaged by the consequences of an outcome that allows ID to be taught as science. PERIOD.I never said anything about vouchers and ravaging. The fact is, however, that vouchers WILL be subtracted from the budget base that supports the public school, student for student , and that this will have a negative effect in the areas that can least afford to lose revenue. That is a fact. Consequently, should a large emigration from public schools occur (especially since , that in the time between the 1940s and today therehas been a consolidation of school districts from about 150000 to about 14000, nationwide) . This consolidation has resulted in the investment in large fixed facilities and has been responsible for the increase id standardization. What the vouchers system is attempting to do is to discredit the public school system and offer a poorly thought out alternative. This alternative is one that is , of course, popular among the conservatives. AND, like many other of their solutions, its only partly worked out, is based upon a series of shibboleths that those "of the body" usually buy into unquestioningly.
Your extension of the word"ravage" into your pet areas of vouchers etc is a bit disengenuous by the way. I found it kind of amusing, like I must have hit a nerve there. ne?

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spent today at a subcommittee debate on Intelligent Design legislation. There were some really great questions that the sponsors of the bills were just left disarmed. The session has till Thursday , I hope. I dont think its going to come out of committee to be a major force to the Dover court case.

I quoted a post by farmerman from another thread. Please tell us more, farmerman!

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farmerman wrote:

georgeob-your capitolization of theory has me a bit flumoxed. You write it as though it is an Achilles heel of evolution, I did accept that you at least understand the power of theory in science..

My intent was to emphasize the operational scientific definition of the word - a well-developed, self-consistent hypothesis that is consistent with known data and of demonstrated utility in advancing predictions, one that, based on these factors, has properly displaced all alternate hypotheses for the process in question. However new information and new syntheses of other processes could require a modification - just as Maxwell's equations spelled the ultimate end of Newtonian Mechanics, and discovery of the background radiation altered the "Big Bang" model; of cosmology. The quantatative elements of Evolution are - of necessity - less precise than those of physics and mechanics. The question of available time and the relative complexity of species are still not firmly closed. Absolute insistence on this theory in defiance of possibilities that may yet arise would be as unscientific as absolute insistence on ID of species.

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You totally misquoted my use of "ravaged". I said that My dog in this fight is to protect the public school system from being ravaged by the consequences of an outcome that allows ID to be taught as science. PERIOD I never said anything about vouchers and ravaging.

If so, then I wrongfully seized on the word to make my point. I've done it before and can't deny the fault.

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The fact is, however, that vouchers WILL be subtracted from the budget base that supports the public school, student for student , and that this will have a negative effect in the areas that can least afford to lose revenue. That is a fact.

I don't agree. The consolidation and standardization to which you referred should reduce the proportion of fixed, inelastic costs, enabling the system to reduce its costs in proportion to the impact of the vouchers. The demand for facilities will not be reduced by vouchers, and shrinking school districts can sell them to successful proivate operators - just as occurs in industry. Because vouchers (under all extant proposals) are valued at a good deal less than the per pupil cost of the public school system, the school districts will enjoy the acility to sustain an increased per pupil cost.

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Your extension of the word"ravage" into your pet areas of vouchers etc is a bit disengenuous by the way. I found it kind of amusing, like I must have hit a nerve there. ne?

You've hit more than one, Yes the rhetorical spirit was with me. However, I'll recover and so will you. Smile

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My intent was to emphasize the operational scientific definition of the word - a well-developed, self-consistent hypothesis that is consistent with known data and of demonstrated utility in advancing predictions, one that, based on these factors, has properly displaced all alternate hypotheses for the process in question.

What you mean is all evidence supports and no evidence refutes a theory. The key is, of course, evidence, something which is glaringly lacking in either Creationist or ID thinking. BUT, thats a small point when these big issues are under scrutiny

Pa's Charter schools, a model for the voucher concept, has all the state funding portion going to the Charter school for each student taken out of the public system. The public school still retains the local portion and, in effect enjoys a 1.5 times per capita revenue increase. The Charter school is supposed to get the same job done on only the states portion, which in Pa, is based upon a sliding scale depending on some metric like TEST SCORES.
Should vouchers take effect, both the state and local portions would be diverted from the public schools to fund whatever charter or private school thats been founded.
In my township, we have 7 Charter schools and 3 more planned (I sit on our planning commission and we have the responsiblity to assure conformance to multi use standards and that all zoning items are met). These schools are growing like weeds and are mostly founded because the "home school" movement feels that they can do a better job.As Ive said before, the jury' s still out because there's been a lot of hanky panky thats gone on as this type of schooling is maturing.

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wandeljw, as Ive been at the committee hearings, I shall post a summary of what I believe has happened , sometime next wee if thats ok. Now Im trying to stay afloat as the ID proponents and their legislators are presenting a lot of coded positions (not much evidence) and there are lots of quotes and refs that Ive gotta seek out.
They are pretty much acting like Creationists and have spilt beans concerning "Christian ideals" etc. oooops

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For those of us who wonder about the pros and cons of charter schools, the following link provides them. http://www.libraryreference.org/charter.html

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Show us where science or scientists precludes the possibility of a creator

William Provine, for one:

"Modern Science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable. The frequently made assertion that modern biology and the assumptions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are fully compatible is false. Evolutionary Progress (1988) p. 65

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address

"My observation is that the great majority of modern evolutionary biologists now are atheists or something very close to that. Yet prominent atheistic or agnostic scientists publicly deny that there is any conflict between science and religion. Rather than simple intellectual dishonesty, this position is pragmatic. In the United States, elected members of Congress all proclaim to be religious; many scientists believe that funding for science might suffer if the atheistic implications of modern science were widely understood." Academe January 1987 p. 52

"Of course, it is still possible to believe in both modern evolutionary biology and a purposive force, even the Judeo-Christian God. One can suppose that God started the whole universe or works through the laws of nature (or both). There is no contradiction between this or similar views of God and natural selection. But this view of God is also worthless. Called Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and considered equivalent to atheism then, it is no different now. A God or purposive force that merely starts the universe or works thought the laws of nature has nothing to do with human morals, answers no prayers, gives no life everlasting, in fact does nothing whatsoever that is detectable. In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and indeed all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism. " Academe January 1987 pp.51-52

Provine is one of very few evolutionists who's gutsy enough to call a spade a spade. The rest of them are dissemblers.

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Suppose you have a graduate student who comes in with the results of an experiment and a series of alternative explanations for the observed data. If one of the explanations is "god did it," you will reject it on the grounds that there is no evidence, and on the basis of the fact that it is no explanation at all. In other words, it is a characteristic of the scientific method to reject explanations based on unnecessary hypotheses, as well as hypotheses which carry no explanatory power. That does not equate to say that there is no god. It simply means that your provisional model of the universe is consistent with the idea that there is no god, and you will go with that for now. Should new evidence emerge, a true scientist would reconsider his working mmodel and, if so compelled by the nature of reality, would change it accordingly.

I think that part of the problem resides in a matter of semantics. When a scientist says "there is no Santa Clause" s/he doesn?t mean that s/he has exhaustively searched the entire universe to incontrovertibly verify that fact. The sentence just means that we assume there is no Santa Clause because we have a better explanation (model) of how toys are made and distributed world-wide. There is always the possibility that we will observe flying reindeers on the next 24th of December. Until then, I bet on Provine, dollar to doughnut.

This was from a debate between Provine and Eugenie Scott

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William Provine also said, "The question comes down to naturalism versus supernaturalism. I started from supernaturalism. I studied modern science, and that's what turned me into a naturalist. It's not as if I didn't fully consider the problem of supernaturalism. I clung to supernaturalism because I wanted it to be true. But in studying evolutionary biology, I found I simply couldn't hold to my belief because the evidences for naturalism were too great."

I also agree that evidence for "naturlism" are too great. However, he leaps from there to " There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable." Just because he doesn't see any designing forces, doesn't make him right. What he fails to say is the limits of humans to perceive what our "reality" is. On that basis, the agnostics have it closer to the truth. There is no way William Provine can prove otherwise - with or without his expertise in biological science.

I'm an atheist, because I don't need to know or believe if there might be a "designing force." On the topic of god, it doesn't make any difference to my life, so whether there is or not isn't important.

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Evidently, this disappeared from somebody's screen:

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent." Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address

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"1) No gods worth having exist;..." Here again, Darwin makes an assumption without providing evidence for his claim. His perception of "god" is a human perception. Darwin is not the ultimate knower of such things. There is not enough science today to determine that "god" does not exist. For me, the human creation of god(s) does not exist. I cannot prove there is no god.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

"There is not enough science today to determine that "god" does not exist. For me, the human creation of god(s) does not exist. I cannot prove there is no god.

Right, CI! But the Provine quotes were in response to your challenge, "Show us where science or scientists precludes the possibility of a creator?"

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That's the reason I'm challenging their claims. There are scientists who can make claims, but cannot support with evidence.

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Science claims without observable evidence is not science.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Science claims without observable evidence is not science.

Bull'sEye, CI! Very Happy

Yet it goes on all the time, and THAT is the source of frustration to conservative parents (and other conservatives). It is not that conservatives want to "foist their religion" on society (as their dissembling detractors constantly spout), but rather that SECULARISM has been foisted on kids/society for decades.

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diagknowz wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
Science claims without observable evidence is not science.

Bull'sEye, CI! Yet it goes on all the time, and THAT is the source of frustration to conservative parents (and other conservatives). It is not that conservatives want to "foist their religion" on society (as their dissembling detractors constantly spout), but rather that SECULARISM has been foisted on kids/society for decades.

You're just pulling the same ole trick.......defining secularism as a religion and then saying it's not fair, creationism deserves equal time. But secularism is not a religion. Secularism means not having to do with religion. Any person is free to draw what ever conclusion they choose about what started time, matter and space, or if it has always simply been, but such conclusions are personal and religious in nature. What we can observe and measure on a consistently repeated basis is science and that's all, it's that simple. Only a person insecure in their religious beliefs need find this to be threatening to their faith.

Faith and creationism belong in church or at the family dinner table, not in school or in the science textbook. And all the dirty little tricks of language will not change the fact that faith has nothing to do with science. Science is about observable data.

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Very well said -- both of you,

Science has done virtually nothing to explain the mystery of the origin of the cosmos or of our existence as self-conscious, thinking, speaking (as in the Greek, 'logos)' creatures. It has, however, managed to piece together a remarkable, but imperfectly consistent picture of many intermediate steps. Provine calls this "naturalism" and proclaims that it overwhelms everything else. A remarkable achievement, to be sure, but it hasn't dented the still unexplained mystery.

He goes on to proclaim that what is left leaves room only for a "worthless view of god", a creator. A remarkable bit of sophistry in view of the relatively trivial achievements of "naturalism" relative to what remains unexplained.

It suits the complacent advocates of this kind of thinking to paint those who do not hold to their views as bible-thumping rednecks who don't think tadpoles become frogs. The facts are otherwise. People understand this, often beyond their ability - or willingness to expend the required energy required - to articulate it.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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