Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

tkess wrote-
Not at all. The paragraph said something quite different. I meant that in the absence of anything definitive in terms of origins of the universe, life and human life human intelligence and emotional need will, as a matter of course, seek to fill the gap by inventing a range of explanations, none of which are in any way scientific, and these will be tested over time by their capacity to satisfy human needs and to facilitate organisation of society in some way. There is no question of stating that there IS a designer because that is just as unscientific as stating that there ISN'T.

With no possibility of arriving at a scientific conclusion the field is open to the play of various other forces in human life and the question becomes one of functionality.

I am not proposing the existence of a designer. I am simply prepared to allow those who do propose that to test themselves against the market of public demand taking into account local, economic and traditional differences.

It isn't ridiculous for an engineer to say that a motor car is just a collection of metallic and plastic junk or an architect to say that a house is a contrivance to stop the papers blowing away or a publisher to say that a book or a newspaper is just flattened out wood pulp with ink inserts.

I would argue that the ability to reason, love and make art does differentiate us from animals objectively.

I agree. Not only hard but impossible. And thus daft. Even if an explanation was found, which it never will be, it could not be explained to the public in a way that would satisfy them. They would say that it was a weaving of the winds in the interests of the weavers.

That is an assertion. They may be said to "claim" to deal with the origins of emotion which is not the same at all. What they do deal with is jobs and status posited on psuedo-scientific jargon as a mystifying agent.

As it has happened to many humans that is impossible. The fact that many humans don't have this ability is a cultural phenomenum. We obviously have the capacity and it seems confined to those with a Christian education. But no other life form has this ability, a function of self consciousness and education, and it is impossible to imagine any of those forms ever achieving it.

That statement suggests a lack of appreciation of modern science. I recommend a close reading of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West or even, if light reading is more to your taste, Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class which provides a narrow economic appraisal of civilised behaviour patterns similar to the biologist's narrow appraisal of the human organism.

I would say that the SM is a purely Christian endevour-yes.

If one saw a black sheep in Scotland one might think there was a degree of probability that all sheep were black. When I was a kid I saw a blue/grey elephant in a circus and whenever I read about elephants in various places I did assume they were blue/grey in colour but had I then seen one that was yellow polka dot on a red background I can't say I would have been astounded.

Stating that there isn't a designer is, at the least, backed up by the scientific notion of parsimony: for all intents and purposes, lack of proof is proof of lack.

The truth is not an issue of functionality. Even if it were, science is still more useful than ID/creationism.

Humans do not have a "function",

That's metaphysics, not biology, unless there's some profound biological difference between us and the other animals which is a difference of kind, not degree.

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I agree. Not only hard but impossible. And thus daft. Even if an explanation was found, which it never will be, it could not be explained to the public in a way that would satisfy them. They would say that it was a weaving of the winds in the interests of the weavers.


Got evidence to suggest it won't ever be?

I'm still not seeing how Christianity is the sole environment under which this can come to pass

I'm familiar with Veblen's work. It's completely irrelevant to my claim, though, which is that there are many non-Christian locations with decidedly scientific groundings.

We still have a long way to go

The latest Newsweek poll included a variety of interesting questions about Americans and religious matters, including the not-surprising fact that 91% of the public say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Although one in ten (10%) of Americans identify themselves as having "no religion," only 6% said they don't believe in a God at all. (Even fewer still, 3%, are self-identified atheists.)

But perhaps more importantly, Newsweek also asked poll respondents about modern biology.

Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

This is not at all encouraging. These poll results come just a few months after an international study was conducted to measure which countries were the most accepting on evolutionary biology. Of the 34 countries involved, the United States ranked 33rd. Only Turkey ranked lower.

Researchers cited poor science education, the politicization of science in the U.S., and American religiosity for the poor showing. "American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close," said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.

Even fewer still, 3%, are self-identified atheists.

The oft quoted Gallup Poll of 2005 had revealed that 53 % of American adults believe that a God "created humans in their present form just as the Bible describes"
However , only 13%, according to the same poll, ascribe to a non-supernatural means of human development through time, namely evolution. More importantly, that 13 percent makes up the great majority of American scientists as well as , what Jon Alston says, is a "ridiculously vast majority" of our biologists

Then again, my granddaughter (who does know and accepts the Theory of Evolution with my blessings) asked me recently, "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?"

I had no answer for her.
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Bernie quoted-

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Even fewer still, 3%, are self-identified atheists.

Cripes- I've been arguing with a few cranks.

And they call me a contrarian. So much for assertions.

I'd bet there's more than 3% Satanists.

(Hi Bernie- Lola looked nice in the latest photo.)

Foxfyre wrote:

Then again, my granddaughter (who does know and accepts the Theory of Evolution with my blessings) asked me recently, "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?"

I had no answer for her.
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Give her a phone call. Remind her of the question. Then ask her if french poodles and wolves exist contemporaneously. She'll probably be able to figure this out even if her grandmother cannot.

I think most religious have no problem with or quarrel with science and the only thing that makes them different from the Atheists is that they accept God as the author of science.

The misunderstanding of the concept and mechanisms of "common ancestry" are topics that I blame squarely on the teachers. I sometimes team-
teach an NSF summer school for biology and earth science teachers. Im always amazed at the level of ignorance in basic sciences in our K-12 teachers.

Foxy-Have your granddaughter read chapter 5 of Sean Carrolls book, "The Making of the Fittest". Its probably in your library system. Its a well written ,accessible, and non- pompous piece of work that assumes the reader is unaware of all recent advances in applied genomics.
It develops the concept of "fossil genes" in a comfortable and understandable fashion.

BTW, the concept of "if X elvoved from Y, why does Y still exist"?contains a basic forensic fallacy and is a pier - stone of many Creationist arguments. I hear it often, but only from the ID/Creation crowd, (or kids whove been taught by closet Creationist teachers).

foxy

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I think most religious have no problem with or quarrel with science and the only thing that makes them different from the Atheists is that they accept God as the author of science.

. Thats nice, but is irrelevant to the workings of science. I undertand that there are many scientists who have reconciled their "childhood beliefs" with their work . I get a kick out of guys like Ken Miller who embrace a rather circular argument so as not to lose any sleep over the issue. Meaning no disrespect, I just dont buy the entire spectrum from ID to theistic evolution.
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People like Ken Miller and other Christian scientists are mystified how Atheists who so value science can so completely close their minds to anything other than what they already know. [Smile]

She knows the theory that dogs descend from wolves and also knows of studies that suggest that while wolves and dogs may have shared a common ancester at some point, dogs have not descended from wolves but have emerged as their own thing.

Foxy

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People like Ken Miller and other Christian scientists are mystified how Atheists who so value science can so completely close their minds to anything other than what they already know. [Smile]

. Dr Miller isnt "mystified" as you state. He merely reconciles his own "comfort zone " from his Roman Catholic upbringing. The Catholic Church, since Vatican II has dropped the concept of pecial evolution for humans and has adopted a more "hands off" deity .
Miller is smart enougn to realize that the "timetable" of evolution fairly completely follows the geologic column occurences in earth tectonics, vulcanism, cosmic "visitors" and gaseous contaminants in the atmosphere. In order to "buy" the whole shebang of "thesitic evolution" as he does, Id have to abandon my own underatandings in the unpredictable patterns displayed by the above earth forces. The coming together of all the scientific disciplines have, unfortunately, painted a God into a corner.

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She knows the theory that dogs descend from wolves and also knows of studies that suggest that while wolves and dogs may have shared a common ancester at some point, dogs have not descended from wolves but have emerged as their own thing.

And what problem does she envision from that? Thats the concept of common ancestry. There used to be an ole chestnut from Ehrlich that said"contemporaneity precludes common ancestry". He said that before we undesrtood the mechanisms of budding v splitting.

It is the proponents of ID who are far more likely to allow for many more possibilities and opportunities than those afforded by those who tend to reject anything that they have not been taught at this point in time.

I think it is those who prefer to omit ID or a Creator from the equation are the ones who paint God into a corner

She finds the subject fascinating. So do I. And I think she isn't wrong in suggesting that Homo Sapiens and apes probably share a common ancester, but one did not descend from the other.

Then again, my granddaughter (who does know and accepts the Theory of Evolution with my blessings) asked me recently, "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?"