Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Mississippi's Mike Lott seems to think a half dozen consecutive Mississippi legislative defeats of similar bills and a solid, nation-wide body of case law reversing every previous attempt to enact similar legislation don't mean anything. What is it they say of continuing a consistently failed course of action in expectation of improved result through repetition? And these folks get upset when they're termed "ID-iots"

I see similarities between Bush's candor and arrogance of not listening to the American People (75%) or the Iraqi People (80%) about his plan for a surge in Iraq. The voice of the people matters not when they have but one goal in mind.

The voice of the people matters not when they have but one goal in mind.

Intelligent Design
Humans, Cockroaches, and the Laws of Physics
Copyright © 1997 by Victor J. Stenger

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html

As the bankruptcy of creation "science" becomes increasingly recognized, a new catch phrase, intelligent design, has been adopted by those who persist in their attempts to inject creationism into the science curriculum

Survival of the thickest
(Simon Underdown, The Guardian, January 24, 2007)

Evolution is a subject that elicits a wide range of responses: simple denial by the religious fundamentalist to demi-worship in the occasional scientist. However, the most common response, and the one that is most overlooked in this most crystallised of debates, is that of confusion. Although everyone has at least heard of Darwin, and probably have the phrase "survival of the fittest" somewhere in the back of their minds (a term, in fact, coined not by Darwin but by Herbert Spencer, in 1864), there does seem to be widespread public misunderstanding about evolution and the mechanisms by which it operates (for example, the oft-repeated question: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"). This problem can only be exacerbated by the announcement by the QCA that Intelligent Design (ID or "Creationism Lite") will be taught in Religious Education lessons in England.

Intelligent Design - the idea that organisms of great complexity cannot have evolved by natural selection and that a creator or God is therefore responsible for all or some life as we know it - is not a science, as it cannot be scientifically tested, as evolution continues to be. There is no debate among serious scientists beyond bemused amazement that small groups persist in holding ID up as a genuine alternative to Darwinian evolution.

Yet, even though the debate will take place in the RE classroom, the reverberations will be felt, not just in the science class but also across the educational sector as a whole. The decision to include ID in school curricula will give the impression that ID is a worthy alternative to evolution. This move by the QCA has the potential to do one of two things, depending on how it is taught: either show Intelligent Design for what it really is (empty waffle based on the creation myth) or to muddy the already murky waters of public understanding of Darwinian evolution.

We have come to a fork in the road. ID can be embraced as part of the curriculum (and, surely, that way madness lies) or it can be cast out into the wilderness; an historical footnote comparable with that written on the authorities who confidently opposed universal suffrage on "scientific grounds". ID is not science and, despite the increasingly vocal objections of a small minority, has yet even to fire a shot across the bows of Darwinian evolution. As a human evolutionary biologist, the thought of having to spend time explaining the glaring errors of ID to undergraduates at the expense of more worthy material fills me with dread.

What's next on the creationist agenda? Is it Teach the Controversy?

We have come to a fork in the road. ID can be embraced as part of the curriculum (and, surely, that way madness lies) or it can be cast out into the wilderness; an historical footnote comparable with that written on the authorities who confidently opposed universal suffrage on "scientific grounds". ID is not science and, despite the increasingly vocal objections of a small minority, has yet even to fire a shot across the bows of Darwinian evolution. As a human evolutionary biologist, the thought of having to spend time explaining the glaring errors of ID to undergraduates at the expense of more worthy material fills me with dread.

Intelligent Design - the idea that organisms of great complexity cannot have evolved by natural selection and that a creator or God is therefore responsible for all or some life as we know it - is not a science, as it cannot be scientifically tested, as evolution continues to be. There is no debate among serious scientists beyond bemused amazement that small groups persist in holding ID up as a genuine alternative to Darwinian evolution.

ImAGINE , OUR VERY OWN HOOD ORNAMENT, A CLOSET IDer.

..i LIKE THE END WHERE a teacher shudders at the cost in time that he must make to shoot down the framework of ID before he can go on to teach something useful to his biology class.

Basler chair defends scientific method

Visiting professor discusses intelligent design and evolution
Guy Kramer
Posted: 1/25/07

Science has been forced into a defensive position according to visiting professor and Basler Chair Dr. George Kampis. "What we need in science now is an offensive that is not offensive," he said during a lecture given Monday evening in the D.P. Culp auditorium.

Kampis' lecture, titled "Intelligent Design Theory and the Poverty of Anti-Science Thought", focused on the debate between supporters of evolution and those who insist that living things were created by an Intelligent Designer.
The Intelligent Design movement holds that living organisms are too complex to have arisen through random mutation and natural selection, and therefore must have been designed by some outside entity.

While ID supporters have long sought to have their theory taught in higher education, Kampis believes the science classroom is the last place ID should appear.
"ID pretends to be an alternative form of science, but to me is really a combination of creation theories," Kampis said. "Supporters of Intelligent Design don't take the normal route to creating a theory. They don't write peer reviewed papers or present research at scientific seminars."

Kampis, who readily admits Charles Darwin is one of his lifetime heroes, was critical of the methods used by ID supporters. "When they can't explain a phenomenon they immediately claim that it must be the work of God. This is just giving in," he said.
Kampis briefly described the main supporters of the Intelligent Design movement.
Dr. Phillip Johnson, ID founder and longtime critic of Charles Darwin, rejects the concept of natural selection and has referred to evolution as "the creation myth of the modern age."

"The first thing I noticed about it is that it contradicts the book of Genesis. It actually contradicts a whole lot more than that because, as the scientists define evolution, it is inherently a purposeless, mindless process that produced human beings as an accident," Johnson wrote in a recent article.

Johnson co-founded the Discovery Institute, a think tank that promotes the teaching of ID in the science classroom. According to the institutes "wedge" document, "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

Proponents of ID point to the irreducible complexity of organisms as evidence of design. Irreducibly complex organisms are "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning," stated ID advocate Michael Behe in his 1996 book, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.

Kampis argued that evolutionary theory is well grounded in facts and cited Darwin's own observations as evidence for evolution.
In 1831, Darwin began a five year journey on the HMS Beagle. He spent time in the Galapagos Archipelago and noticed minute differences in the individual species he examined as he travelled from one island to the next. The further he traveled, the more modification he observed. Darwin argued that those changes could be explained by gradual migration of a species and that migration and variation went hand in hand.
"This is the biggest discovery Darwin made on his voyage. The variation of species observed was like a memory of how the animal changed through time," Kampis said.

Kampis, who heads the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Eötvös University in Hungary, was invited to ETSU through the Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence program. The Basler program invites professors to teach at ETSU in order "to bridge the gap that exists in academia between the sciences and the arts and humanities disciplines."

Kampis' lecture generated a diverse range of viewpoints. "It was very informative," said senior pre-med student Maleka Khambaty. "We were introduced to a little bit of Intelligent Design in one of my classes and he raised a good point when he said Intelligent Design wasn't science," she said.

While senior Carla Thompson believes teaching ID in a science classroom would cause minor chaos, she does think students should be free to learn about it. "I believe students should at least be informed within the classroom that Intelligent Design does exist as a serious alternative to evolution. They should also be given information on places where they can go to learn about these ideas" she said. "I do not see why a church would not welcome the questions of an inquisitive college student."

Philosophy professor Dr. David Harker questioned the effectiveness of debating supporters of Intelligent Design. "I think it's a hot topic right now," Harker said, "but to engage in the debate seems to fuel it. When eminent scientists respond to ID supporters, it provides them with a platform and a sense of credibility."
"Though science doesn't really ever prove its theories, many theories are well supported. In virtue of the way science works, you're never going to prove anything. However, if you insist a theory should be proven before being taught, then all of science will go by the wayside," Harker said.

Though Harker asserted that ID didn't belong in the science classroom, he did support bringing ID into higher education. "I think many of the issues ID raises should be discussed," Harker said, adding that those topics would fit into a philosophy of science class.
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© Copyright 2007 East Tennessean

What we need in science now is an offensive that is not offensive,"

..i LIKE THE END WHERE a teacher shudders at the cost in time that he must make to shoot down the framework of ID before he can go on to teach something useful to his biology class.

The ID movement is only linked to Creationism by those who do not wish to debate these matters in a modern adult fashion and a general feature of such types is to sulk when they are not getting all their own way and to ignominiously retreat into a little stockade where they can pat each other on the back and keep each other's spirits up.

"Devastating" early drafts of a controversial book recommended as reading at a US high school reveal how the word "creationism" had been later swapped for "intelligent design", a landmark US trial scrutinising the teaching of ID heard on Wednesday.
The early drafts of the book Of Pandas and People, were used as evidence to link the book to creationism, which it is illegal to teach in government-funded US schools.
"ID proponents have said for years that they are not creationists," says Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which is advising 11 parents who are suing the school board of Dover High School in Pennsylvania for incorporating ID into the science curriculum. "This proves beyond a doubt that this is simply a new name for creationism."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8061