Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

spendius wrote:

The attraction of evolution for teachers is that it is dead easy and provides a suitable vehicle for people of average intelligence to pose as having a scientific mindset.

Here we go again. "People of average intelligence posing as having a scientific mindset." You're a piece of work Spendi.

Here's a more likely possibility, that evolution is the most comprehensive and revealing scientific theory available to explain the natural biological world, and THAT's why teachers like it.

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Nah,nah ros.A kid can understand it.It isn't real biology by modern standards.Hasn't been for donkey's years.It's pop biology.A big bang for little effort.Like a drum.It's a bit like when they used to depict electrons with an x going round a circle.It passes the time.And it's all about dead forms.Bring on the dancing girls.

"See them kid's faces smile
Up and down the midway aisle
From following the dusty old fairgrounds a callin".

Dress,as opposed to clothes,might be likened to coloured wings and you can watch fashion evolve right in front of your eyes.Selection.Fashion conscious mothers produce fashion conscious daughters.

Don't all rivers take the line of least resistance on their way downhill? You have a river of teachers.
Combine a random distribution curve of IQ with a salary grading by profession and see what you get.

Follow the money.

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spendius wrote:

Nah,nah ros.A kid can understand it.

Of course. The basic theory is very simple, and undeniable. But that doesn't invalidate it, and doesn't diminish the value of teaching it.

But that's just the basic theory. The details are more complex, and it takes a pretty good understanding of the scientic method to avoid assumptions about the process which are more subtle.

spendius wrote:

Combine a random distribution curve of IQ with a salary grading by profession and see what you get.

What's your point with that statement. Just come right out and say it. You keep dropping these little innuendo bombs into your posts, but they just lay there like duds. Set one off. Let's hear it.

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spendius,

It seems that you are the only one involved in a "follow the money" approach. If, instead, you follow the science you would see that evolution is more than what you call "pop" science.

Dr. Kenneth Miller on the practical applications of evolutionary theory:

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Any therapy for infectious diseases is predicated on a profound understanding of the evolutionary processes by which the bacteria or viruses acquire resistance to the agents that are used against them. And if one doesn't understand the evolution of resistance, one is not going to be a very effective physician.

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ros wrote-

Quote:

Of course. The basic theory is very simple, and undeniable. But that doesn't invalidate it, and doesn't diminish the value of teaching it.

That applies to the multiplication tables.Evolution is a simple subject which can easily be mystified to allow those teaching selected little bits to sound a lot more scientific than they actually are to the uninitiated.It empowers them.

Type D.J.Aidley into Google and see some real biological science and figure how many kids are going to go into anything like that rather than be truck drivers and shop assistants and building workers and hairdressers.And then think synergetically.

A pretty good understanding of scientific method is no good.It's a full-blown mental state.You either have it or you don't.You apply it to everything or you might as well not bother.Hence the appellation "mad scientist".

Science has transcended the normal I'm afraid to say.

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Occam's Razor

Rap

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ros wrote-

Quote:

Let's hear it.

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An IQ of 120 implies that the testee is brighter than about 91% of the population, while 130 puts a person ahead of 98% of people.

120 is no good for modern science and maybe 130 isn't much use either for real science as opposed to technology.

In the former case where are teacher's salaries.If there's more than 9% earning more than teachers you can bet,leaving out idealistic oddballs,that there are very few teachers at 120.I would guess not that many above 110.

The problem is the number of teachers required.You must have approx 50 million in schools and at 30 to a class you must have 1.5 million teachers.

I'm not knocking teachers here.I'm just being realistic.I can see a way where half-backed scientific thinking might even be detrimental to a budding scientific mind.And we have ample proof that a religious schooling didn't slow down the scientists of the past most of whom had a severe religious schooling.

Would there be a difference of approach to the teaching of the "survival of the fittest" between a teacher who is a bit unfit and and one who is a fine specimen of humanity?

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rap wrote-

Quote:

Occam's Razor

More or less.If you hear hoofbeats,think horses,not zebras.

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wande-

50,000 plus eh?Not bad.The subject must interest people.I keep hoping a structuralist/functionalist will come on.I'm no expert.I'm only a second.One of them will wipe the floor with the SDers on here.Any one of them.

Anyway-congrats.

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Quote:

Quote:
Any therapy for infectious diseases is predicated on a profound understanding of the evolutionary processes by which the bacteria or viruses acquire resistance to the agents that are used against them. And if one doesn't understand the evolution of resistance, one is not going to be a very effective physician.

For sure but using the "suck it and see" method which isn't real science and if you suck it and get deaded you can't give evidence.You can find the aces in a deck of cards blindfold by that procedure.

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The survival of the fittest is a suck it and see process isn't it.Then brute nature is scientific and science is about devising hypotheses and that takes intelligence.

Hence Intelligent Design.We're still testing.SDers have a tendency to think they are the finished product.

Get out of that.

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spendius,

What are the tests for intelligent design?

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Our very presence and our fantabulous acheivements.Do you know what it takes for 280 million to all get up between 7.30 and 8.30 and expect the toaster to work and the shower to run.And if they don't the boss gets pluckered off.
Have you read Yellow Pages recently.And that's crumbs compared to Google.

Monkeys we ain't.

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spendius wrote:

Our very presence and our fantabulous acheivements.Do you know what it takes for 280 million to all get up between 7.30 and 8.30 and expect the toaster to work and the shower to run.And if they don't the boss gets pluckered off.
Have you read Yellow Pages recently.And that's crumbs compared to Google.

Monkeys we ain't.

How do you propose to teach this in a science class?

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You get get a toaster and a slice of bread.

You could connect a display meter up so the class could see the power used to toast one slice of bread medium brown.You could get the results of a survey which revealed how many of the millions of slices of bread get toasted every day.You could get the class to work out how much power national toasting took and see which power supply,gas,oil,coal,water,nuclear was cheapest.
You could spend a whole year on that toaster man and the kids would have more idea which way up they were than if they had had some zinger looking for a second income explaining how a bat evolved so it could catch insects using radar in a church tower with the bells ringing to announce evensong.

Of course I realise that a teacher with that approach would be very bad news for the school equipment supply industries but I can't help that.They could be redeployed to scrub the graffiti off the walls which their current teaching methods seem to have produced.

I'd do showers the year after.

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spendius wrote:

Science has transcended the normal I'm afraid to say.

That's quite a pedestal you've built for scientists to stand on.

Since science itself grew from a less enlightened time, I see no reason to assume that the general aptitude of the current population is any less capable of advancing scientific knowledge.

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ros wrote-

Quote:

That's quite a pedestal you've built for scientists to stand on.

Since science itself grew from a less enlightened time, I see no reason to assume that the general aptitude of the current population is any less capable of advancing scientific knowledge.

Yes I know and it gets higher every day.

I don't agree with "general aptitude" except maybe if you've used the phrase in a very refined way.The general aptitude I come across is no further on than the ancient Greeks and a fair proportion from long before that.A majority in the last hour in the pub when the alcohol levels have caused the real thing to show through.

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spendius wrote:

You could connect a display meter up so the class could see the power used to toast one slice of bread medium brown.You could get the results of a survey which revealed how many of the millions of slices of bread get toasted every day.You could get the class to work out how much power national toasting took and see which power supply, gas, oil, coal, water, nuclear was cheapest.

That's more economics than science.

What about teaching them how electricity works. Doesn't that matter?

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spendius wrote:

I don't agree with "general aptitude" except maybe if you've used the phrase in a very refined way.The general aptitude I come across is no further on than the ancient Greeks and a fair proportion from long before that.

The basic intellectual capacity of human beings has not changed since before recorded history. Only our knowledge has grown. But I don't believe that the general capacity to understand science, or the knowledge it reveals has changed much at all.

Science continues to advance, and in those places where access to education is efficient, kids learn science just as effectively as they ever did before, maybe even better.

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Yes ros.Obviously.Many aspects of science could be drawn out of that toaster although I don't think anybody yet knows how electricity works.There's an irreducible complexity there as well.We know how to generate it and how it can be used and all that could come into the course on the toaster.

Very few of the class are going to be scientists.Possibly,in most classes,none.

You grow knowledge upwards like the kids are growing.Evolution starts at the top and works backwards.

As Huxley said when he first heard Darwin's big idea-"Why didn't I think of that?" slapping his knee.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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