Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

spendi, your wish that important, topical, relevant points raised by you be addressed substantively is perfectly understandable and fully justified. Rest assured that should you ever raise any such point, same will be addressed substantively. Meanwhile, pending your raising of an important, topical, relevant point, you comfortably may expect that your contributions to these discussions will continue to be regarded and dealt with as they merit.

The membership of the coalition supporting anti-ID for seperate reasons is not of interest is it not?

What a ridiculous idea it is to brush that under the rug. It is all this debate is about. ID is not science OKAY? I never said it was. Courts are not involved when social consequences are not a consideration. The debate is about nothing else and least of all about offering you lot opportunities to parade your narrow learning and expertise with grunting.

You are the expert on American politics. What is the coalition of interests coalescing around the anti-ID banner. It looks megalapolitan for a start. I know Gay Rights is one. I know Feminism is another. I know lawyers are another. Pro-abortionists. Eugenicists. Euthenasists. Media. I can explain what each of them are after but it would take too long. It's obvious they are after something. There's no smoke without fire and there's plenty of smoke. They are not in to fight for any silly principles. It's lucre. Every Yank knows that. (A bit of fast Veblen.)

X effect=Y lucre

A effect=B lucre

What business are we in? Which benefits our lucre pot? We benefit from X effect. Go get it.

Still lost the election though. And looks banjaxed to me for the next one. Probably unstoppable I'll admit.

Like Bob said- "We're goin' all the way till the wheels fall off and burn."

Acceptance. Resigned. Your poet.

I'm a European. We have poets too.

Wandel, I called one of my studets who is planning to do a thesis on "suture patterns in Moszoic and Cenozoic nautiloids" She was applying for a number of grants . Im going to see whether we have any SMART Grant applications in applied or field studies.

Im not surprised , as I said before, the National Academy has been really wimping out on its published standards for COLLEGE LEVEL coursework in evolution.

The crackers of the fundamentalist hue have really made some inroads in legitamate science education even though they never prevail in court. I guess its going to take a complete regime change or else, were it me< Id resign from the NAt ACademy in front of news reporters . I think that all the members are more agrreable with the "bogus prestige", like being poet laureate.

farmerman,

I was sure you would know someone who might be affected by that puzzling decision on grants!

Came across this;


SOURCE

There was a college biology textbook in the news that a Virginia biology professor criticized for including information on intelligent design while omitting important information concerning evolutionary theory.

fm wrote-

.

Bollocks. You get a firkin of ale and to write a poem on the Queen's birthday which is read out on telly.

That's not prestige?? Blimey-you must be good over there.

wandel. Funding has dried up in many areas of science since the salad days of the 80's. Its as it should be , because theres no reason for NSF or GSA or WRC to fund someones research where the abstracts and the proposals arent thought out well enough to point out the goals.

I still sit on one Federal agencies R/D committee for GIAfor research on environmental applications in nuclear science. We are quite critical of consultants and National Labs who merely wish to extend their "overhead" on to our back. Weve been tight with a buck , but show us something really sweet and I can guarantee that well fund it and ask them fr more in a year.

We demand results and since its not our money (well it is, but proportionately divided its a silt grain), we ask for the moon with one way tickets and if they dont produce as promised, dzott, no more cash, and the memory banks recall taht wed been scammed once.


Now, take the Discovery Institute,(please) which poses as ID's "legitimate" arm of science . Their funding is never in question, all they have to do is please a couple of wealthy, born twice screwballs, who are looking for the grand cosmic Chef. The Discovery Institute will get more and more money as they split up their attacks into the local schools and funding "science Ministri es" and hiring full-time internet personnae who will spend time posting to boards and blogs about ID and all the while denying their association with Creationism. It is interesting that the funding
of the ICR also gets fed over to the Discovery Institute.
They get millions per year but never have they done any science! Nary a lab journal that we can find.

Good work if you can get it, Bubba . . . you have to at least give them a grudging respect for that . . .

fm wrote-



What's up with extending the overheads. It makes the money go round.

I knew fm was a puritan.There's nothing like a parsimonious puritan to gum up the works.

And here he is using "something really sweet" to mean what he thinks is something really sweet as if him saying it is "really sweet" magically transforms it by the miracle of a committee man's assertion into being actually really sweet and so say all of us.

This assertion habit is something really quite ingrained. It isn't even noticed. It has to be pointed out.

He holds the strings and he funds what he likes after knocking off his overhead along the smooth passage.

What's new?

I always give them the respect one gives a hungry tiger, if Im present in his cage.
Ahmanson and others have done a really good job of extracting themselves from Creationism to such an extent that real scientists like behe can state with a straight face that the two worldviews are not genetically related.

Ive thought about this a lot and Ive come to a conclusion that the sciences have a million things on their "to-do" lists. The Discovery Institute and ID in general, have only one. Its much easier when you can get your arms around your entire debate strategy.

fm-

You have blown your cover. Fancy admitting on what I thought was an intellectual thread that you decide who gets what funds on the basis of what you think is "really sweet". That's Stalinism in a nutshell.

Hey-mate-I know that stuff like I know the lumps in my mattress.

"Something really sweet" my arse. Who do you think you are kidding? It can only be yourself. Everybody knows the bullshit content of that. It's easy to remember. It's 100%.No trapped air bubbles or undigested tomato skins.

I feel your concern spendi. However, I dont give a ****. Perhaps if you sought professional help you could get to the bottom of it all. Now dont run with the scissors pointing outward.

fm, calling Behe a "real scientist" is a lot like calling Ralph Nader a "real politician".

It's not as bad as calling a parsimonious, puritan, placeman who decides on who gets funds on the basis of what he thinks is "really sweet" an intellectual.

And I never run.



I defined "scientist" way back for you and its the opposite of that. "Goals" don't come into it. Darwin would never have got a grant out of that committee.

Saying that "proposals arent thought out well enough" is another assertion from the oracle of wisdom. I have to add fm's committee to my list of vested interests which makes up the anti-ID lobby.



That's business technology.



How nice. It's not our money--well it is. Wonderful.



Bradley Hardacre thought like that. It is attitudes like that that encourage the figures to be economical with the truth.

Here's a compound assertion-



All you need for a "lab journal" is printing costs agreed by fm's committee and a creative editor.



Oh well- that's alright then. We don't want anybody disbursing tax dollars giving a ****. That would never do.



Smears added for colour and texture. You forgot that I should get a life.

Reading it all again it adds up to one long assertion pinned on fm's natural superiority and intolerance of any view he doesn't agree with.

And the kids have vanished again.

timber- don't forget that fm has met Mr Behe. Possibly had drinks together.Need a bit of comprobatio to balance the diasymus you know.

An assumption without proof. Furthermore, if I blame the problems on others, what if it really is because the problem is with others? You talk of personal responsibility, but what about the personal responsibility of the laymen?



What makes you think anti-ID would remove religion? Are you stating that ID is a religious movement and that it isn't sound science? ID isn't even social science, spendi, which is why I kept saying it was bad science.

How is it social science? It makes no case for how we should live. It states there is a god but proves no such contention. It fails to prove that anything it states is true. How is it good science? How is it good social science?

ID isn't anything but a load of assertions without proof. The fact that you don't give any proof is testament to that. Hey, I've even got a better idea. Why don't you prove that ID is social science and that it will fix all of the society's problems which you delusionally associate with anti-ID?

You can't.

All you do is flail emotionally, linking everything you dislike with the anti-ID position without giving any real proof that the anti-ID position is to blame. You think everyone thinks its obvious, but you're wrong.

What makes ID so good, Spendius? The fact that it mentions some kind of god-like being?

Well, guess what? Theistic evolution does the same. It doesn't go so far as to state that God is responsible for helping evolution along. People who believe in theistic evolution and have ID explained to them properly will also be anti-ID, yet they will still hold a belief in God and follow the rules laid out in the Bible.



It will be one where students don't have their minds polluted with bad science. It will be one where science graduates will be able to do good science without making bold assertions without proof, like "the eye is too complicated to have developed through evolution, so God did it".

Hey, you remember that study I kept linking to?

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

You keep ignoring that one, don't you? The study which shows that an acceptance of Evolution, a rejection of ID and Creationism, does not lead to moral decay? That does not lead to increased crime rates?



Despite the fact that, hey, according to the natural selection part of evolution, the fittest survive to pass on genes. Those that aren't fit, do not. So that would mean homosexuals aren't fit and that would mean according to natural selection, we're inferior.

Yeah... Homosexuals support a pro-Evolution ideal because it labels them inferior. Understood.

My support of Evolution, has more to do with my science background than it has to do with my sexuality. Even when I thought I was straight, I supported Evolution, Spendi.



Yes, but a science class is meant to teach good science. If it has to teach ID, it must teach students why it is bad science. It must teach students that it argues only from incredulity, it argues its point from lack of evidence, that many of its points cannot be tested empirically.

That is the anti-ID position.

Why must students be taught bad science and then be told its an alternative viewpoint?



How? ID doesn't teach morals. It doesn't actively teach there is a Christian God. It states only that evolution is how we came about, but somethings are so complicated that evolution alone couldn't have developed them so an intelligent designer must have created them.

How does that teach morals, Spendius? How does that prevent moral decay?

For all we know, the Intelligent Designer is a sadistic bastard that likes the moral decay of society. He could be a masturbating, snake that loves to eat the bodies of dead children but not before having sex with them. He could be the Flying Spaghetti Monster or an Invisible Pink Unicorn.

How is ID social science, Spendius? Hm? It doesn't tell us how to live. It doesn't tell us anything about how societies are organised, should be organised or could be organised.

In terms of stating what type of behaviour is better than another, it's no different from Evolution. All it does, is introduce the concept of a god-figure, which has no place in science, just as knowing about the rock cycle has no business in an English literature class discussing the merits of Shakespeare.

You want to teach about ethical behaviour in science, fair enough, but ID doesn't do that. It teaches there's a god-figure. And god has no place in science. Ethics, yes. Morals, yes. God? No.

Oh and Spendi, when a scientist says they were shown something really sweet, that generally means something that provides nice results, even if those results disprove something they once believed in. Either that or they were shown some actual sweets, but that's generally limited to people who aren't on committees.

Wolf wrote-



You'll have to suck it and see then.



I don't think it possible to do that but from what anti-IDers have said about it it must be their obvious aim.

We are going around in circles I'm afraid. Subjectivity always does.

There's no chance of ever fixing society's problems. You are focussed on trivia. Science has no room for democracy or freedom.

You're too young Wolf and you haven't followed the thread. fm would have you as a secretary on his committee. You don't need vetting. I would be thrown out. But I wouldn't blame him for that. It's just the way it is. We probably need these committees. There are thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. There are plenty of other things to do with one's precious time.



Jokerman --Bob Dylan.

In case no one has popped this item in yet...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24evo.html

Hi Bernie.

How's it going?

Anything interesting happening?

How's Lola?

Have you heard Working Man's Blues yet?

blatham we did discuss this briefly and I have contacted our College of A/ S to get a feeling on these START grants in the related sciences. I have one grad student who's doing an MS on a related subject but she got her funding through a scientific foundation. Most grad grants of 4K wont go very far without several of them stuck together. Some of our fellowships are in the 30K level,

Timber-whether you like it or not ,Michael Behe is a molecular biologist whose done some important work. His works on enzyme reactions actually preceeds his stand on ID. In fact, many would say, that his entire ID celebretyhood was a consequence of his work on enzyme reactions, supported by a strong belief in Catholic teachings.

Nowadays, however .most of his published material is devoted to non peer reviewed or self published or ID "peer reviewed" "ozocerous crap" that has removed much of his credibility.

I still stand by his status as a worker in the field , he is trained,has experience, and knows of what he speaks (in cases where he doesnt jump off the wagon led by his religious convictions) So, in that hes a bit unlike Ralphie. He is a fellow in a number of scientific organizations so, is that disengenuous? or has he arrived at his conclusions later in his life as a scientist. Hes never really answered that to my satisfaction (and Ive asked).


Spendi, Ive decided that Im not going to respond to you until you practice a bit of "roping in" of your fevered mind. If you wish to stay on topic, fine. ALl you are doing is taking your contrarian attributes and are playing a game of ping pong positions to see who you can get angry. Thats kind of sick and I dont really have any interest in reading the "thoughts"that you coggle . They are usually (although not always,) just a melange of peat breccia.