Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

That was before Morse. Im never gonna be accused of having a lick of legal sense but, I was much more certain that the UC case had actual merit last year because it didnt so much surround itself with the establishemnet clause.
Im now more inclined to let everything play out, including all this viewpoint discrimination crap.

Many colleges have, since Dover "watered down" their curricula. Im familiar with the new road that Penn State has taken in sciences that surround evolution , and its a clear sign that they dont wish to deal with the hard evidence that is evolutionary synthesis. Theyve taken a firm step backward into realms of ludicrididity Cool

. Here , in the US , where grad schools are grand glorified "ticket punching institutions" use mostly to confer minimum cred in career choice, Penn State has invested a section for "museum curatory" studies, just so they can have an obudsman address in . which to take all the ISD heat from the religious coneheads . D'OH,
How many museum curator positions come up in the entire country each year? 5? 10?. Here theyve begun a program to a PHd with as many as 25 students.That provides us with Lots of new well educated Burger King employees. Meanwhile, the strong discipline oriented geosci programs like geophysics and geochem and economic geology quietly slip along without drawing fire. I think its kind of a joke

However, as I begin to feel really depressed on one side, I see that the another ed center , the Jackson Geosciences school at U of Texas at AUstin , is recruiting for tenure track profs to help develop a firm geoscience teaching certificate for SECONDARY educators. (Ive always felt that, our crop of oil field geologists should be more broadly educated in other skills and the Teaching certificate is just a ticket. Here you have a multi disciplined track where professional geoscienticts are able to get teaching certificates (and IMHO), only by having well rounded scientists teaching our K-12 ers will we renounce the victorian mindset and confusion re: the roles of acience in schools and we can hope to reinforce our kids understandings about the silliness and lint dwelling that is ID or Creationism.

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fm wrote-

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its a clear sign that they dont wish to deal with the hard evidence that is evolutionary synthesis.

I can understand that. Most of them are probably married and have daughters.

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.That provides us with Lots of new well educated Burger King employees.

Well- we do need BK employees and they might be better being well educated.

Do you think fm that they are less important people than "tenure track profs"?

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only by having well rounded scientists teaching our K-12 ers will we renounce the victorian mindset and confusion re: the roles of acience in schools and we can hope to reinforce our kids understandings about the silliness and lint dwelling that is ID or Creationism.

What's a "well rounded scientist" ?

I sense a note of defeatism.

I think that the anti-ID side pushed the boat out too far at Dover. There's more than one way to skin a rabbit.

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Spendis about as predictable as sunrise, and, as such, has spent his allotment of polite response.

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I am, I'm afraid, one of Mr Joyce's "unfortunate wretches" and it is true that we are predictable.

He said that he was tryng "to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure and spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own . . . for their mental, moral and spiritual uplift."

To give the two or three unfortunate wretches who may eventually read him his sense of the significance of ordinary things. The extraordinary wonders of the specialised research departments of "science", and useful though they are, are worth little when the sense of the significance of ordinary things gets withered or, perish the thought, dies.

***************

Ever since the scientific revolution got rolling the search was on for the Holy Grail; the perpetuum mobile .

It struck me that within the world of ID/Anti-ID this has been achieved simply by arguing about something with no possibility of resolution.

The energy source for this machine, which is as out of mind as the sun's energy usually is, is outside this charmed circle for obvious reasons. When it is played onto a defraction grating it can be analysed into dollarons, checkons, subprimons, gougons, approvons, suckons, blowons and seeons. No doubt further research will add to this admittedly crude list much as Citizen Mendeleyev's first table of the elements has been.

Such a predictable wretch I am that I would not dream of putting finger to key with anything other in mind than Silly Jimmy's objectives.

The indignant, self-righteous, beetle-browed, glowering, dias-whacking, Calvinistic scientific methodologist stands in need of having his leg pulled from time to time if only to render him a more amenable companion to those within his range whose sufferings from the constant hammerings of assertions deserve some relief.

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"Atlas of Creation" Update

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Islamic creationist group launches glitzy, global blitz
(By Yigal Schleifer, The Christian Science Monitor, August 3, 2007)

On a recent afternoon inside Istanbul's busiest subway station, a young man beckoned commuters into a subterranean "fossil exhibit" full of skulls and insects dating back millions of years.

But this was no mainstream scientific display. One colorful poster advertised the "myth" of the evolution of the horse. Another, displaying a flying pterodactyl, denounced the evolution of birds as "fake."

The display is one of many traveling shows put on by the Foundation for Scientific Research, an Islamic creationist group that has become a household name in Turkey. Now, the groups says it is distributing its books - published in 59 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Swahili, and Polish - to 80 countries.

"Turkey is now the headquarters of creationism in the Islamic World. This is no longer only Turkey's problem, it is now the problem of the whole civilized world," says Haluk Ertan, a professor of molecular biology at Istanbul University. He's one of a handful of Turkish scientists who have been working to counter creationism's spread in the country.

Emboldened by its success at home over the past decade, the foundation, known by its Turkish acronym BAV (for Bilim Arastirma Vakfi), is now aggressively trying to export its unique brand of Islamic creationism well beyond the borders of Turkey to the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States.

In the past year, BAV has blanketed several European countries and the US with its glossy "Atlas of Creation," a lavish 768-page tome weighing more than 13 pounds, sending it to scientists, professors, journalists, and schoolteachers.

One member of the organization estimates that it distributed well over 20,000 copies of the "Atlas," which, like all of the group's books, is written under the name of Harun Yahya. Amazon.com hosts a virtual bookstore that sells "Atlas" ($99) and other Yahya books, and booksellers across Europe have it on their shelves.

"Every Islamic bookshop I know of stocks Harun Yahya's material. It is so glossily produced. It is very attractive and very colorful and outclasses everything else," says Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim British Council, speaking by phone from London.

"It is having an effect. Even among Muslim medical students there are a number now who are speaking out against Darwin."

In France, the Harun Yahya book offensive led the government to issue a warning for schools to be on the look out for the "Atlas" before it makes it into their classrooms. Meanwhile, the increasing European activity of the BAV, as well as of Christian creationist groups, recently prompted a committee of the Council of Europe - a 47-nation group that acts as a kind of continental watchdog - to issue a report strongly warning about its dangers to education.

"Today, creationists of all faiths are trying to get their ideas accepted in Europe. As a result, we have seen several initiatives from these various movements on the Eurasian continent in the last few years, with schools apparently the main target," the report, released in June, said.

In real life, Harun Yahya is a 51-year-old former interior-design student named Adnan Oktar. Since founding the BAV in 1990, Mr. Oktar has been responsible for ushering more than 250 books into print, though many observers agree he serves more as the chief overseer of a group of writers rather than as a solo author. The series includes titles such as "The Dark Spell of Darwinism" and "Why Darwinism is Incompatible with the Koran."

Oktar's brand of creationism is not only religious, but also political and even messianic, seeing most of the world's ills - terrorism and fascism among them - as stemming from Darwin's theory of evolution.

"Hitler, Mao, and Lenin were Darwinists. At the root of wild capitalism is also Darwinism. I think if we no longer believe in Darwinism, people will no longer be conditioned to believe in those things," the normally reclusive Oktar said during a recent press conference, held aboard a hired yacht cruising Istanbul's Bosphorus strait.

"Folks, there is no such thing as what you call evolution. If there was, it would be in the Holy Bible or the Koran," added Oktar, dressed in an ivory-white raw silk suit and wearing gold cufflinks and a matching gold belt buckle with Arabic inscriptions on them.

"The sweet dream of the Darwinists and the world is to ban my books," Oktar said, sipping glass after glass of sour cherry juice. "What I'm saying is true. They cannot disprove it."

Unlike fundamentalist Christian creationists, Oktar does not claim the earth was created only a few thousand years ago. Instead, he argues that fossils show that creatures from millions of years ago looked just like the creatures of today, thus disproving evolution.

While giving creationism a scientific veneer, "Scientifically speaking, the whole Harun Yahya corpus is a bunch of nonsense, but it is unfortunately very popular," says Taner Edis, a Turkish physicist who teaches at Truman State University in Missouri.

Professor Edis says the success of the Harun Yahya books, at least in the Islamic world, can be attributed to a need for harmonizing modern life with traditional Islamic beliefs.

"Something has to reconcile these two things and it becomes very attractive when someone comes out with a well-packaged message, that they can have both - be fully modern and at the same have science affirm most of their very deeply held religious and ethical perceptions," says Edis, whose "An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam" was published by Prometheus Books this spring.

"That's a pretty attractive package and that's mostly what the Harun Yahya material provides," he says.

In Turkey, Oktar and his books certainly appear to be having an impact. When Science magazine conducted a survey of 34 countries last August, Turkey had the second-lowest acceptance rate of the theory of evolution (the United States had the lowest).

Creationism has actually been a part of the Turkish science curriculum since 1985, when it was added by government order, and many scientists now fear that it will soon be too hard to uproot.

"The general state of science education is very bad in the sense that evolution and creationism are taught together, and they can't be taught together. If they are, no scientific thinking can be established in these students," says Aykut Kence, a professor of biology at Ankara's Middle East Technical University.

"We are going to fall behind the modern countries in terms of development, economy, culture. Everything."

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That's the reason the christian right wants to teach creationism with science; to destroy our economy more - and bring us back to the stone age.

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That's as maybe. Seems a bit extreme to me. It depends how fast it goes I suppose. One feels that if it unravelled at the speed it was ravelled nobody would really notice it happening. We might even be able to stop it in the fifties and that wouldn't be so bad.

Doing an eight-hour shift and coming home to the little woman and a steak and kidney pie in the oven and a nice clean apron and her liking nothing better than you to show your appreciation and then out on the porch in the rocking chair with a cigar and Johnny Ray on the gramaphone. One might jazz that up a bit if it wasn't that it is pub time.

But your opponents have too much "Uuuumph" for you I think.

When you are going to have answer the kid's question about where Grandpa has gone by saying the smelting down plant rather than to Heaven you do need to display some "Uuuumph".

And they have you whacked at that. You're too diffused. Like an oil slick on the wet road.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

That's the reason the christian right wants to teach creationism with science; to destroy our economy more - and bring us back to the stone age.

That is the same idea as the Christians defining masturbation, fornication, and dancing etc. as sins and then setting up a business absolving people of sin :wink: .

Do not underestimate them, they are clever buggers.(in all senses) They don't run the largest entertainment business in the world by being stupid.

Back to the thread---

Concluding that we apparently are unable to find evidence of an Intelligent Design in human societies either so I must conclude that for now ID has all the trappings of religion. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck; then it's probably a duck :wink:

I have also noted though, that there are some scientific types here who treat science so much like a religion that I wonder Confused

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Keep wondering mate.

If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck; then it's probably a duck and you should keep your hand on your wallet.

You could get creamed if you think it's an angel.

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mechsmith said

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Concluding that we apparently are unable to find evidence of an Intelligent Design in human societies either so I must conclude that for now ID has all the trappings of religion. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck; then it's probably a duck [Wink]

.

BY reading some of the key points of the Discovery Institutes "wedge Document", Id agree that, by their own schedule, they are at lest 5 years behind with no expectation of any closure dates on key components

, such as

!Initiate a major public debate on design theory by 2003

2Prepare over 100 technical articles by our fellows(maybe they include pamphlets)

3Significant media xcoverage (such as NOVA) by 2004)

4 10 States begin to rectify ideological imbalance to include design theory

5Legal reform movements base legislative proposals on design theory

This was published in 1999 as a 5 year program. Not much has really been accomplished

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I have also noted though, that there are some scientific types here who treat science so much like a religion that I wonder [Confused]

HOW SO?. Art is a passion pursued with discipline while science is a discipline pursued with passion. Perhaps youre confusing passion based upon evidence?
Any scientist worth their canollis would eagerly drop a "pet" theory in favor of another competing theory, should the bulk of evidence show that the new theory is a world beater.

There are so many scientists in so many discipline that no one person can be a "brick in the road' and be "standpattist" about old junk.

Look at how String Theory has been pulled down from its priesthood in the last few years , by many of the same guys whove been its biggest champions. I was in college in the days when continental drift was piling up data and evidence tocounter the prevailing "geosynclinal theory" that was the dogma of the day.any scientists refused to buy it till the last moment and then, meekly, went out to the field and began remapping their very own areas of concentration. No religion involved there. Inerrancy isnt a word that is favored by most scientists.

Of course a bug is a bug, and anyone whose life is merely the "stamp collecting" of taxonomy has only to worry about whether they can spell Coleoptera correctly.
Im in the applied science field and Im very risk averse until Ive been shown that a new technique has the ability to allow us to do things better, faster, or cheaper. So we give theoretical findings a real "road test" in our field. No room for "fogma". Dogma costs money and lots of money is always at stake.

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Quote:

Former NASA engineer touts creationism

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fm wrote-

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Art is a passion pursued with discipline while science is a discipline pursued with passion.

A mere platitude. A self-congratulatory one no doubt.

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apendius said

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A mere platitude. A self-congratulatory one no doubt.

. Merely masturbatory, self gratification is all that spenid has.

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wande quoted-

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how we believe the world came to be it is important

I presume he means for social consequences.

But who is this "we"? And what beliefs are they?

But the article is a small example of the workings of the ID/anti-ID perpetual motion machine. Mr Cousins and others are, in fact, receiving dollarons and checkons and the other components of the energy source I referred to recently as I also presume Mr Henderson to be. A little like sunbathing really when you study the level of passionate application involved in producing such pointless and drearily repetitive shite.

The post could easily have been on the first page of this thread. It is as if all this effort we have put in is running on the spot. I find it inconceivable that viewers are visiting this thread to go over those intellectual fossils for the umpteenth time whatever the residents of Galveston County might think. If the Lincoln County newspaper decides to reapply, with some slight adjustments one hopes,the drivel one gets the impression wande will regale us with that as well. How many local newspapers are there in the US?

It's actually a bunch of lazy, idle good-for nothings having a bask at our expense.

One might think that anti-IDers would prefer articles relating to the range of sexual perversions as they cannot possibly have any objection to them being out in the open because they are axiomatically meaningless in a meaningless world in the same way that tales of virtue and honour are.

Oliver St John Gogarty, after meditating upon 20 centuries of codology, mystification, snake oil, mumbo-jumbo and the like, realised that he would simply have to "grin and bear it".

What's your problem with following his example. I hardly think the Stone Age beckons if you do. To suggest it does is scaremongering and anyone reduced to that tactic is out of the loop of grown up discourse.

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fm-

Explain your proposition that-

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Art is a passion pursued with discipline while science is a discipline pursued with passion.

Without an explanation the statement is objectively masturbatory self gratification.

One should try not to project so obviously.

I think the viewers are quite capable of deciding for themselves what "spendi has". I don't think they need guidance.

Some of them might be waiting for anti-IDers to answer the many questions they have been repeatedly asked rather than being in need of guidance on my remarks.

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spendius wrote:

fm-

Explain your proposition that-

Quote:
Art is a passion pursued with discipline while science is a discipline pursued with passion.

Without an explanation the statement is objectively masturbatory self gratification.

One should try not to project so obviously.

I think the viewers are quite capable of deciding for themselves what "spendi has". I don't think they need guidance.

Some of them might be waiting for anti-IDers to answer the many questions they have been repeatedly asked rather than being in need of guidance on my remarks.

y'know, I'm not aware of any serious questions that have been asked. Please advise before you judge.

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Quote:

Explain your proposition that-

Quote:
Art is a passion pursued with discipline while science is a discipline pursued with passion.

Without an explanation the statement is objectively masturbatory self gratification.

That was asking fm to explain what he meant.

Perhaps you will explain it for us. I haven't the slightest idea what it means. No doubt fm knows what it means as one would expect with a self-gratifying statement of such a nature which may well carry intonations of dignity and authority in some settings but not, I'm afraid, on an international forum.

If you care to examine the thread you will find that fm has employed the metaphor on a good few occasions, as if it is one he is focussed on a lot, and I have never done so unless I knew it stood up to the test as it did in the post you quoted unless an explanation is forthcoming.

Which it won't be on known form.

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I believe he's pointing out that many Scientists have a passion for what they do, and that often times that passion gets in the way of scientific progress. In the context I saw him use it in, he was explaining how scientists can seem to have an almost religious devotion to their pet theories even though it may not be in their best interest, a very literal interperetation of the word passion from passio which I believe means suffering.

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cheesh. The quote was by Arthur Sackler, well known American surgeon and art collector.

His statement starts with"Art and science are two sides of the same coin" (blah blah blah) , And ive had fun doing both.

I believe both spendi and vengorap know what the quote said. By playing dumb we wish to extract somethingn to extract some of spendis favorite critiques like
"what is the "a" of which you refer?" or "How can there be a diiscipline and passion"?
yawn.

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Vengo-

In fm's resplendent epigram, and in your explanation of it, there are so many vague terms that it is obvious that there is very little, if any, passion for a scientific approach to communication.

Passion means an intense emotion of grief or rage or desire such that the sufferer loses conscious control of his or her self. A madness as the ancients used to say.

The word "scientist" is often used on this thread to designate people who have 9 to 5 jobs in the general scientific field and are in it for the money. I hardly think they are passionate. The occasional mad scientist, such as Copernicus, and the mad artist like van Gogh, may well have exhibited a passion for their calling but to associate the scientists quoted on here with such a word devalues it. Turns it into a cliche. Suitable for use in self-serving assertions. Obviously anti-scientific.

Once that is done the word becomes relativistic as, indeed, does a word like discipline, and allows anyone to praise whatever he wants to praise and if he himself is included in the praise it resolves itself into a form of self pleasuring.

One thing is for sure and it is that humility has no role in those circumstances.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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