Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

snood wrote:

What "appears' is that xprmntr2 found several quotes from people generally considered to be pretty smart who thought there was some organizing principle in the universe. "Intelligent design" has become a meaningless buzzword, used much like "liberal" by those who seek to minimalize an opposing viewpoint.

Those who support the "intelligent design" viewpoint have coined the term themselves.

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Setanta wrote:

snood wrote:
What "appears' is that xprmntr2 found several quotes from people generally considered to be pretty smart who thought there was some organizing principle in the universe. "Intelligent design" has become a meaningless buzzword, used much like "liberal" by those who seek to minimalize an opposing viewpoint.

Those who support the "intelligent design" viewpoint have coined the term themselves.

I never said otherwise - liberals may have coined their own moniker, as well. But no one intellectually honest would dispute that certain terms are used with perjorative undertones. And, just so my original point doesn't get buried beneath a buncha meaningless hooey - xprmnpr2 simply posted evidence that some not-so-lightweight intellects have concluded that there is intelligent design, and from that you somehow got that he holds the idea of intelligent design as more religion than science. You were jumping to non sequitur conclusions; I was stating a fact.
When I said (and I hold this to be pretty self-evident) that some folks use the term "intelligent design" in a purposely denigrating context, you replied with something so irrelevant that it almost begs a question as to whether you're intentionally obfuscating. Try to follow what's actually being said, oh thou of olympian wisdom.

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Intelligent Design = Creator.
There is no way to measure ID.

Evolution can be observed and measured.

ID is an assumption based on unknowns.
ID = Unkown.

Just because there are many things about our environment we don't still understand, that doesn't mean all things will remian a mystery forever.

We have barely touched on observing other planets. With advances in technology, more will become known.

Why jump to ID at this juncture? We still don't understand gravity or electricity. Maybe science will be able to provide an answer. What's the rush?

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snood wrote:

Setanta wrote:
Those who support the "intelligent design" viewpoint have coined the term themselves.

I never said otherwise - liberals may have coined their own moniker, as well. But no one intellectually honest would dispute that certain terms are used with perjorative undertones.

I dispute it immediately. Those who are not fooled that "intelligent design" is creationism wrapped in different garb scorn contentions to the contrary. That in no way authorizes a contention that "intelligent design" is used as a pejorative, which is precisely why i have pointed out that the expression was coined by those who subscribe to the idea.

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And, just so my original point doesn't get buried beneath a buncha meaningless hooey

Your point with that nasty little swipe is to demonstrate your superior debating technique? Or to demonstrate your superior moral position? Perhaps to demonstrate that your vision is clear, unlike those with whom you disagree? I submit it was just nastiness, to no purpose.

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- xprmnpr2 simply posted evidence that some not-so-lightweight intellects have concluded that there is intelligent design, and from that you somehow got that he holds the idea of intelligent design as more religion than science.

What xprmntr2 has in fact done is take remarks from some individuals who have never been known to support a contention of intelligent design in the debate about evolution, taken the remarks out of context, to suggest that these people support an intelligent design model, when in fact that cannot be said with certainty. Other of the quotes which xprmntr2 used were from those who have created the "intelligent design" dodge in an attempt to revive the creationist assault on evolutionary theory.

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You were jumping to non sequitur conclusions; I was stating a fact.

Once again, how superior your vision. The conclusion at which i arrived is based upon xprmntr2's consistent responses in this and other threads based upon a dogmatic religious point of view. Quoting people who are not known to support "intelligent design" in the context of evolutionary research as though those individuals did in fact support such a contention is an exercise in propagandizing for religious purposes. Your contention that my response is a non sequitur does not on the face of it make that so, and it ignores the larger context of the contributions xprmntr2 has made to this thread and these fora, such as the pointless remarks made above about atheists.

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When I said (and I hold this to be pretty self-evident) that some folks use the term "intelligent design" in a purposely denigrating context, you replied with something so irrelevant that it almost begs a question as to whether you're intentionally obfuscating.

When you contend that "intelligent design" is used a pejorative, but there is no evidence that this is so other than your bald assertion to that effect, it is not at all inappropriate to point out that those who believe that angle have created the term. It isn't irrelevant, it is very much to the point. If you think that i am engaged in obfuscation of some vital point, have the courtesy to explain exactly how that works in this exchange. I don't think we have any evidence that intelligent design is used as a denigrating term on any other basis than your assertion to that effect. Were it true, it could only have resulted from the proponents thereof having made a sufficient hash of their efforts as to have brought their own proposition into disrepute.

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Try to follow what's actually being said, oh thou of olympian
wisdom.

I can follow these things at least as well as you do, and your snotty tone and puerile attempts to insult do you a disservice, while they have no effect on me. I am disgusted by the pathetic attempt, however, as i have, heretofore, always treated your posts with a courteous respect, despite the knowledge that we disagree on some basic questions. If you continue in this vein, i will conclude that treating you with courtesy is not worth the effort.

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As Setanta pointed out, the group of quotes provided by xprmntr are outside the context of the evolution debate. The specific issue here is "intelligent design" versus "natural selection" as explanations of evolutionary development.

The excerpt below from a USA Today editorial summarizes the issues we have been discussing on this thread:

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Kansas' Board of Education is busy this summer rewriting the state's biology curriculum standards to accommodate the demands of intelligent-design advocates. Ohio took similar action last year. School districts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are requiring the teaching of what they call alternative theories of evolution, regardless of whether they have scientific validity.
With more creativity and less obstinacy, reasonable compromises might be found for school children to discuss conflicts between science and faith. But the subject is treated more as a game of capture the flag. Children and science teachers are made into political pawns of those with religious agendas.
Nearly one-third of teachers responding to a National Science Teachers Association survey this year said they felt pressured to include creationism, or its various political offspring, in their teaching about life's origins. The National Academy of Sciences says efforts to discredit evolution or push it out of the classroom are going on in at least 40 states. If those efforts succeed, many students will get a seriously distorted science education.
Evolution, associated with 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin, is the concept that the diversity among plants and animals is attributable to genetic mutation and natural selection over the generations. It is the cornerstone of modern biology. Though there are various "missing links" in the evolutionary chain, it has never been refuted on a scientific basis.
Today's more sophisticated critics cite the unanswered questions and assert that many cellular structures, including humans, are too complex to have evolved over time and thus must be the creatures of an intelligent design by some higher power.
Backers of intelligent design ask for equal time in science classrooms for their concept. President Bush voiced support for the idea last week. The catch is that their theory isn't science. It can't be tested with rigorous experimentation. It is at best a philosophical concept, or a matter of faith.
That's not to be trivialized or disrespected. And there certainly is a place in education - a history class, a philosophy class, a study of comparative religions - for a discussion of the ways various cultures have attempted to explain the miracle of life on earth. It's appropriate for teachers to note that though nearly all scholars and researchers accept evolution, it has been and remains controversial.
But creationism, by whatever name, doesn't belong in a science class.

(emphasis mine)

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You are beating a straw man. I expect everyone on this thread recognizes the operation of natural selection in the evolution of species of plants and animals. That is not, and has not been the issue (on this thread at least). The problem here is that "creationism" is argued down based on a refutation of a literal Biblical interpretation of the history of the world, but later used to explicitly deny the possibility of any involvement of a creator or intelligence in the origin and operation of the universe. That is a very different matter.

I and others have argued here that in effect the leap of faith from the point of contemporary scientific understanding to the affirmation that there is no God, no creator of the universe - is far greater than the leap required to the belief that such a creator or designer exists. Even the knowledge we have from science, ranging from the tuning of the values of the basic physical constants to the contemporary models for the origin of the cosmos, all strongly suggest this. The various quotes offered above - all by men of science - are illustrative of this proposition.

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georgeob,

I still feel that issues of faith should be kept separate from issues of science.

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georgeob, ID/creationism is not argued down because of the bible. It's argued down, because there is no way to prove it; to observe and measure it. It's only argument for creationism is that science has still not proved everything about our environment. It's a fall-off argument - not worth the time of day.

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I agree that faith and science should be treated separately insofar as public functions go. Thinking individuals, however, inevitably come to grips with the intersections of these essentially arbitrary categories of thought within their conscious minds.

There is no reason for science or scientists to reach beyond the limits of experiment and tested theory, and there is no reason for theologians (or doctrinaire atheists) to reach beyond their beliefs into the verifiable realms of science. That notwithstanding, there are numerous examples of both excesses on this thread.

Cicerone, please consider this -- there is no way to scientifically prove that the universe does not have a creator. Based on the logic you propose here, you should abandon your previously expressed belief that it does not have one.

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georgeob, why is it even necessary to inoculate your work in science with a preconceived outcome that it prove or disprove a deity? Your data is what it is. I find no connection thats valid.Its all just because one can neither prove nor disprove the entire proposal.
When you go home at night, then you can bring out and practice your personal convictions.However, They have no place in a lab or a field station, if you bring a religious worldview into the lab, you may invalidate anything youre doing.
You may expound on your philosophy of Origins and publish them, however, they aint science. I think thats the summary point of this thread

.

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farmerman wrote:

georgeob, why is it even necessary to inoculate your work in science with a preconceived outcome that it prove or disprove a deity? Your data is what it is. I find no connection thats valid.Its all just because one can neither prove nor disprove the entire proposal.

I agree. We have no disagreement on this point.

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When you go home at night, then you can bring out and practice your personal convictions.However, They have no place in a lab or a field station, if you bring a religious worldview into the lab, you may invalidate anything youre doing.

Scientists are (mostly) real huiman beings, who bring personality and all kinds of other human predispositions with them into the lab & field station. However they practice the scientific method which involves verifiable or refutable hypotheses and reproducable experiment to guide and limit their thoughts and the concepts they put together. Anything that distracts from the use of that method is liable to "invalidate" what they do. Either a religious or an anti religious world view is liable to corrupt the process if the scientific method is not followed. Religion is but one of many extraneous potential distractions, and it is a distortion of truth to suggest otherwise.

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You may expound on your philosophy of Origins and publish them, however, they aint science. I think thats the summary point of this thread

Relativistic quantum theory and cosmology confront us with the possibility of either a designer or a multiplicity of universes, presumably each flowing from individual bifurcations (or double slit experiments). Shall I forbid a consideration of the former as "religious based" while accepting the latter as "scientific speculation"?

.[/quote]

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georgeob1 wrote:

Relativistic quantum theory and cosmology confront us with the possibility of either a designer or a multiplicity of universes, presumably each flowing from individual bifurcations (or double slit experiments). Shall I forbid a consideration of the former as "religious based" while accepting the latter as "scientific speculation"?

You should believe what hard evidence and direct calculation indicate, and what can be repeatably verified by experiment, and not one bit more. The rest is fuzzy thinking. If you want to make the case that some observable phenomena indicate intentional design, then make it, and stop making vague references to it.

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Well modern physics confronts us with the choice I indicated above. There is no data or scientific theory on which one can discriminate between the two. If science is taught in a way that presupposes the multiverse option and excludes a creator then I'm sure you will agree it is going beyond its appointed limits. Same goes for the alternative. My point was that many here implicitly accept one excess, while excluding the other. This is illogical and unscientifisc behavior.

However individual people, scientists and otherwise to think about these questions. You define them as "fuzzy". Others do not. The quotes from scientists cited a couple of pages back express their views on the dilemma, "fuzzy" as they may be.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Well modern physics confronts us with the choice I indicated above. There is no data or scientific theory on which one can discriminate between the two. If science is taught in a way that presupposes the multiverse option and excludes a creator then I'm sure you will agree it is going beyond its appointed limits. Same goes for the alternative. My point was that many here implicitly accept one excess, while excluding the other. This is illogical and unscientifisc behavior.

However individual people, scientists and otherwise to think about these questions. You define them as "fuzzy". Others do not. The quotes from scientists cited a couple of pages back express their views on the dilemma, "fuzzy" as they may be.

No conclusion that is not based in some sort of deduction or induction is relevant, and none of that nonsense should be brought into a laboratory or a science paper or book. As for the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, it explains all observed phenomena as well as the Copenhagen Interpretation, and so is a valid model. If there is scientific evidence for preferring the Many Worlds model, then such evidence can be taken into account. To my knowledge, the only reason yet discovered for preferring it over the Copenhagen Interpretation is that it avoids the "collapse of the wavefunction."

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I thought ID was more a faith system trying to legitimise itself by some proponents using psuedo-science to boslter its credibility.

Its proponents frequently clash with evolution - for reasons that aren't immediately apparent to me.

I think it should be taught in schools; as either a creationist's faith system of beliefs (along with the other 5,000 active religious systems in the world today) or in Philosophy as why people believe and why and how they try to justify certain concepts.

It seems that folk in the scientific community take umberage when ID tries to infer it is a science, rather than say we are everything at the borders of science heading into the unknown, but rather than postulate a scientific theory of how the unknown works - simply label it God's grand Intelligent Design which is at present beyond our science's ken. Any God will do for the sake of this definition, the key point is there are unknowns but by faith we will call them a God (or God/s) ID. The umbrage arises when psuedo-science (generally very illogical and poorly framed psuedo-science) is used to try and impress non-scientists how scientific ID appears. ID is clearly not a science - it hypothesis test nothing, it predicts nothing, it scientifically discredits nothing, it is not based on models and hard data statistically analysed. It simply argues God exists as a creator and what we don't yet understand he does.

ID uses bad psuedo-science convincingly well! E.g. - discredit evolution which perhaps to the lay person (not me, I view God designed evolution as a very elegant way to get where he wanted things to go in a consistent manner) appears to make a God figure less likely to exist. The argument for example could be blood clotting (BC). For BC to evolve 18 complex and non-irreducible enymes and independent checmical reactions had to spontaneously evolve in a synchronised manner; statistically this should not occur within the current estimated age and size of our Universe. ID conclusion reached in this thinking is evolution is wrong or only partially correct and the creation mechanism was a God action. Trouble is this is not a scientific mechanism, its another way of saying we don't know, but hey God did it so case closed, move on, mothing to see here folks - just our science is wrong; rather than correctly say we don't know but let the faithful take it on faith their God did in a manner unknown to our scientists today.

To me the best opportunity for a scientific argument to say a directed intelligence underlies our reality and existence probably lies in looking at the fine tuning problem. That the universe exists with us in it capable of observing it with concious self awareness and intelligence requires the critical physical constants (speed of light, mass of a proton and electron etc) to be extremely well defined - to like 120 decimal points after the zero of accuracy. Nothing in nature approaches that level of precision, so there is a defining question to investigate.

So I hold there is likely to be a directed intelligence rather than massive luck or infinite realities involved - but its a faith not scientific call on my individual part. And for me ID is faith and science is science. You are better directed observing over time where does the border between science and faith lie today and how is it changing over time? In my mind they can co-exist - its just a leap of faith. But science works by hypothesis, model, test data, possibility distribution, statistical tests of standard deviations of confidence intervals to assess likeihood of confirmation of theories and model. ID is about faith - it should not pretend to be a scientific theory.

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"My point was that many here implicitly accept one excess, while excluding the other."

The "one excess" we accept is science, because it is a system that provides us with observation and measurement. If a scientific theory is subsequently deemed to be in error, it is then corrected. ID does not provide those checks and balances, and is based on "religious faith."

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Quote:

The argument for example could be blood clotting (BC). For BC to evolve 18 complex and non-irreducible enymes and independent checmical reactions had to spontaneously evolve in a synchronised manner;

Youre merely parroting Mike Behes own argument and his supposed takeoff on Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous organization". However, it can be seen that the "18 coenzyme reactions" can happen by mere substitution. The chemistry isnt a s complex as Behe wants us to believe.
The alternate is that specific enzymes already were used in other reactions since the Haem group is only a requirement of certain vertebrates and not all living animals. Here Behe misses the entire boat because he starts at the top of the chain and doesnt concern himself with the circulatory systems and chemistry of lower animals.

What is a "non-irreducible " chemical? In reality almost everything is a polymer. This is BEhe at his best. Use a little linguistic slight of hand and hope nobody's listening

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DOVER PENNSYLVANIA UPDATE

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Depositions refer to creationism
Dover officials testified that religious research was involved, court filings show.
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Wednesday, August 10, 2005

While members of the Dover Area School Board didn't speak publicly about creationism until June 2004, private conversations about incorporating it into the biology curriculum started much earlier, according to documents filed in federal court this week.
In late 2002 or early 2003, when Bertha Spahr, head of Dover's high-school science department, requested a new biology textbook, she was told that a board member wanted half the evolution unit devoted to "creationism."
Spahr's remarks about the creationism requests for biology class were part of her sworn testimony in depositions taken this spring.
In other depositions cited in court documents, school board member Bill Buckingham said he helped raise money to buy the district copies of the pro-intelligent design textbook "Of Pandas and People" by soliciting contributions through his church.
Dover Supt. Richard Nilsen said in his deposition that, in the search for a new biology textbook, Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa gathered information from parochial schools but not other public schools. Baksa said in deposition that, in his research, he reviewed information from the Bob Jones University publication "Biology for Christians."
Bob Jones University's official creed proclaims a belief in "the creation of man by the direct act of God."
************************************************************
The references to depositions were part of an opposition petition filed Monday by the parents' attorneys. The petition had been filed in response to the district's July 13 request for the case to be dismissed.
Judge John E. Jones III is expected to rule soon on the district's request that the case be dismissed.

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I was testing the children in my Sunday school class to see if they
understood the concept of getting to heaven. I asked them, "If I sold my
house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church,
Would that get me into Heaven?"

"NO!" the children answered. "If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the
yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?" ;
Again, the answer was, "NO!" By now I was starting to smile. Hey, this was
fun! "Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the
children, and loved my husband, would that get me into Heaven?"

I asked them again. Again, they all answered, "NO!" I was just bursting with
pride for them. Well, I continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?"

A five-year-old boy shouted out, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD."

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true story, c.i.?

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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