Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection amid an explosion of controversy. Like the work of Copernicus...

p.s. forgive me if quoting a member to formulate my own point is against board etiquette.

A cybernetic parasitic being has invaded Spendi's body, recognizable by a small gill flap on the back of the neck. It's an open question whether this represents an evolutionary change in the sense of fitness, or a random outside influence destined for unknowable realms.

Are you then saying that femoral intercourse (if argued as evolutionarily beneficial to Homo sapiens sapiens) would be more a question of fitness or of random event?

... You said; "But we have tried to illustrate all points of view on this subject." Also, "questions about evolutionary theory have been answered in detail".
Why then the redundancy of your recent post above?

"Because materialism represents common sense, enthrones it actually, it has found itself having to try to ignore the uncertainties of modern physics..." and thus has "become embedded in cultures through such things as beliefs, customs, traditions, habits of thought and action and taboos and the more so as the culture is successful and thus reinforcing of them."

State board to revisit science, sex education

This process is clearly broken

One presumes that the students who left in 1991, 2001 and 2005 are now mixing together at work and in other meeting places and are at sixes and sevens with each other

I didn't actually say that Joe.

I don't think that cutting and pasting two separate segments of my post and linking them with an addition of your own which is included in a quote you ascribe to me is quite the accepted thing.

It wasn't materialism that embedded in our culture the beliefs, customs, traditions, habits of thought and action and taboos I was referring to. Quite the opposite in fact. Had it been materialism I don't think we would be anywhere near where we now are.

On to other things, I'm sure spendi appreciates the fan mail, and will be delighted to learn someone might find it desirable to plagiarize something he'd authored. And I imagine he'd be more than thrilled to have an ally. I wish the two of you the very best.

Science reversal set in motion

New state board tackles evolution immediately

Story by Scott Rothschild

1:46 p.m. Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Just minutes after a new moderate majority took control of the State Board of Education today, the issue of evolution came back up.

The board voted to hear about proposed science standards that support evolution later in the day with a possible decision on them next month.

The issue produced a long line of speakers both for and against evolution during a public comment period.

Doug Kaufman, a physician's assistant and pastor from Leavenworth, told the board that evolution "doesn't stand up to real science."

But supporters of evolution urged the board to change the current standards that include criticism of evolution and were put together by proponents of intelligent design.

Those standards were adopted by the 6-4 conservative majority in 2005. Now the board has a 6-4 moderate majority.

In other action, board members elected Bill Wagnon, a Democrat from Topeka, as their new chairman.

Carol Rupe, a Republican from Wichita, was voted vice chair, and Sue Gamble, a Republican from Shawnee, was elected legislative coordinator. All three are considered moderates.

After taking the chair, Wagnon urged members on the often contentious board to work together to improve the public school system.

"There are ways of promoting effective change without undermining confidence in it," Wagnon said.

John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design network and an architect of controversial changes made to the Kansas standards, said state board members should stick to the current document to avoid indoctrinating schoolchildren with a materialistic view.

I know which tent flap they are trying to get their noses under.........

You must have consulted an old book Chum.

ID needs to offer a competing theory
(COMMENTARY By Kenneth Pidcock, Centre Daily, January 10, 2007)

In books and articles written for a socially conservative readership, it is suggested that American scientists are failing to act in good faith by refusing to accept intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory.

This lack of respect, among scientists, for intelligent design is attributed to metaphysical bias and hostility to religious faith arising from a sort of default materialism among members of the scientific community.

To the extent that the accusation is legitimate (and there may be an extent to which it is), it must be taken seriously. Scientists are supported in their research and teaching with an understanding that they will offer an unbiased account of nature.

If philosophical bias leads them to privilege some explanations over others, they have failed in their responsibility to the public and should be held accountable.

It is appropriate to ask scientists to explain what, absent philosophical bias, accounts for their lack of respect for the theory of intelligent design. I would like to offer my own explanation: There is no theory of intelligent design.

To understand how this is, it helps to start with something on which all parties, from Richard Dawkins to William Dembski, agree: Microevolutionary change within species is an outcome of natural selection.

When we learn that drug-resistant mycobacteria are hampering control of tuberculosis, both Darwinian evolutionary biologists and supporters of intelligent design understand that the environment has selected drug-resistant mycobacterial mutants.

Where they differ is on what accounts for macroevolutionary change, the appearance of new species. Supporters of what is called the neo-Darwinian synthesis -- the principal target of the intelligent design community -- contend that microevolutionary change over time, with continued selection and reproductive isolation, leads to speciation. They test their theories against evidence from the fossil record, biogeography and comparative genomics.

Supporters of intelligent design focus their scholarship on challenging the assumptions of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, particularly with respect to whether undirected mutation and recombination can lead to speciation. Much of their argument rests on information and probability theory. However, they do not offer an alternative theory that can be tested against available evidence for how speciation occurs.

The molecular nature of a design event, and how it differs from undirected mutation and recombination, has never been proposed. ("Specified complexity" is an outcome, not a mechanism.)

The absence of any proposed mechanism for speciation is a fundamental deficiency for any scientific explanation for evolution, and accounts for why intelligent design is not taken seriously within the scientific community.

Intelligent design supporters are not alone in their critique of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Biologist Lynn Margulis and others likewise question neo-Darwinian assumptions, using some of the same arguments from probability as the intelligent design community. They differ, categorically, from the intelligent design community in that they offer an alternative theory -- symbiogenesis -- in which illegitimate (the word does not convey value) recombination among disparate genomes accounts for speciation.

Having an actual theory allows supporters of symbiogenesis to test that theory against evidence provided by the fossil record and extant genomes, which has provided some interesting insight into the evolutionary process.

Symbiogenesis as a major mechanism for speciation is not widely supported within the scientific community, but its supporters receive much greater respect than do supporters of intelligent design. In fact, Margulis has served as president of Sigma Xi, a scientific research society. This is not because neo-Darwinians are more comfortable metaphysically with symbiogenesis. It is because symbiogenesis offers a testable scientific theory.

Supporters of intelligent design promote "teaching the controversy" but, in doing so, they misrepresent what controversy means in the context of scientific deliberation.

Real scientific controversy entails discussion among competing, testable theories. The controversy between neo-Darwinian theory and symbiogenesis is very real and, if I may speak as an amateur scientist, quite enjoyable.

Intelligent design proponents claim that they are being excluded from the discussion because of philosophical bias, but that is not true. They are being excluded from the discussion because, for whatever reason, they have chosen to offer no competing theory. Until they do, it is they who are failing to act in good faith, and scientists should not feel pressure to pretend otherwise.

(Kenneth Pidcock, Ph.D., is an associate professor of biology at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.)