Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

wande quoted-

Quote:

We, the undersigned American citizens, urge the adoption of policies by our nation's academic institutions to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution.

That's funny. It is not that many hours since I posted a few lines of Mr Darwin's very own words on this thread and nobody has seen fit to make mention of my act of selfless devotion to academic freedom or deal with the questions Mr Darwin's words beg. And the AIDs-ers on here are not under any threat of anything.

We have returned to the same old story. Academic freedom is to be defined by AIDs-ers.

In February 2008, the Discovery Institute announced the Academic Freedom Petition campaign, which it is conducting with assistance from Brian Gage Design who provides the Discovery Institute graphic design professional services. The petition states:

We, the undersigned American citizens, urge the adoption of policies by our nation's academic institutions to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. Teachers should be protected from being fired, harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for objectively presenting the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory. Students should be protected from being harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for expressing their views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory in an appropriate manner.

Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at Discovery Institute, is the contact person for the campaign's Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.On 29 February 2008, Senator Ronda Storms introduced an Academic Freedom bill in the Florida Senate targeting teaching of evolution, which was described by the Panda's Thumb blog as "remarkably similar" to this model statute. Its sponsor in the Florida House of Representatives is Representative Alan Hays, who arranged for a private screening of the intelligent design promotion film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for Florida legislators who are to vote on the bill. Hays claims that the bill is simply drafted to allow teachers and students to discuss "the full range" of problems and ideas surrounding Darwin's theory without fear of punishment, but he and Storms were both unable to name any teachers in Florida who have been disciplined for being critical of evolution in the science classroom. Luskin's statement that, in his personal opinion, Intelligent Design constitutes "scientific information" (which the bill explicitly permits) was taken by the Miami Herald as an admission that "Intelligent Design could more easily be brought up in public-school science classrooms" under the proposed law.

Source: Wikipedia

The definition is given by ID proponents, not anti- ID people. You may have misread my post, spendi. Here it is again

SHould a kid ask a question (loaded or unloaded with ID dreck), no teacher is punished for answering the questions. The demands for the content of science programs are defined by state boards and other superpositionary assemblies and a teachers own civil rights are being stomped should he/she be muzzled by beaurocrats of whatever stripe. So my feeling is that, like agenda driven polls, the position statement is full of half ass clauses that are untrue.

The DI are not remotely IDers and if you continue thinking they are you will get confused in the context of a science thread

ID is not that things are so complex there must have been a designer.

How many more times?

Everybody has to make a living fm and it is a core principle of evolutionary theory that if there's a niche in which an organism can make a living there will be an organism in it and ready to defend its territory.

You should try be more understanding.

Hey--did you notice how easy it was to goad Ash into dropping that resigned gentle attitude that the Buddhists preach.

He even insulted all our viewers.

Thats what all the IDesr would have us accept , meanwhile, their "flagship" publishes their agenda and its clearly stated.

That they are the "flagship" is another strawman of your own invention. Like the priests have their fingers up the choir boy's bum, Mr Bush is out to enrich his mates and when the court official says you may kiss the bride you can shag her for the next X years without needing to perform any feats of bravery or excellence.

So, pray tell, to what do you align your personal position? not only are you obscure in your position, you are rather "BRownian" in your ping-ponging about.

Your own fractured logic mirrors that of Mike Behe (whether you wish to acknowledge him or not, he IS the present scientific GURU of ID). Behe says in a recent on-line debate

"I dispute the mechanism of natural selection, not common descent". When you can make some sense out of that statement, then Ill try to pay closer attention to your psycho-babble.

Spendi English is your own equivalent to our Hillbilly phrases wherein you really have to be from the hills of West Virginia to properly understand. Since West Virginia, like Britain , is a tiny section of our entire country, we just listen and smile

Read the article. Then read the thread on Politics about the Spitzer case entitled Have Any Of The A2K Men Ever Received This Look.

Then imagine an election on the matter with an electorate consisting of Ms Marin and the posters there (exclude me of course).

Ms Marin is trashed in such a vote. And she does not go as far as I would go if I had written the article. Maybe she could have done but her editor was in the way, or, more likely, it is her residual Christianity that is in the way. A scientist, ignoring sociological considerations, would laugh that there is even a discussion going on about Mr Spitzer and the fact that there is is proof of a Christian base to our psychology.

The KGB once secretly filmed President Sukharno engaged in orgies on a visit to Moscow. When they tried to blackmail him with the thing he asked them for a 1,000 copies so he could distribute them around his friends. He would have laughed at the Spitzer story. So would Nero. And many others. Even a bunch of actors would laugh at the twee Christian sensibilities the story exposes to view.

It isn't a question of "To say that something is not what it is, even though the rest of the world is in full agreement , is an idiotic position that you attempt to occupy" because you are choosing unemotive "somethings" on which to base it and nobody is disagreeing with you about any of them. Not on here. Not me at least. Not the Vatican.

You are well on the way to stealing the traditional Sunday from us. So we get unbroken views of ladies in jeans and baggy shirts with various things printed on the front. At least they looked pretty once a week in the old days and probably still do in religious communities. Who cares about chiclid blood clotting by the side of that. Or horrible fossils.

When do you propose to eradicate Easter? One day is the same as another to an atheist. Don't we need a touch of magic? How is an atheist going to deliver that?

Turn your microscope outwards for a change and look at the life going on all around you.

The pure science position does not stand up to that sort of scrutiny no matter how true it is. It would be voted down were it fully explained to subjective voters. As a scientific fact under present conditions. It could only prevail by dictat. Conditions may change of course but as things are arranged now under the Christian dispensation, to which you owe everything, that is a long way off. The public does not have the stereotype of the Mad Scientist for nothing.

Subjectivity rules. A sociological fact. And sociology is a science.

An atheist has nothing to align his personal position to except his own biological urges. If that's not "sad" I don't know what is.

A late night quick one
(by PZ Myers, ScienceBlogs.com, March 21, 2008)

People are asking me to tell them more about the movie, Expelled. I can't! I was thrown out!

Let me clarify a few things. This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn't record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included. There was no attempt to "sneak in", although apparently the producer, Mark Mathis, accused me of doing so in the Q&A afterwards (Mathis, of course, is a contemptible liar). We followed the procedures they set up, every step of the way, and were completely above board in all our dealings.

Mark Mathis was there at the screening, and apparently spotted me and gave instructions to the guard to throw me out. I asked the guard why I was being evicted, and he explained directly that the producer had given him that instruction.

They were well within their rights to exclude anyone. When I was told I would not be allowed in and threatened with arrest, I told the security guard that I would not cause any trouble. I stopped to talk with my family when they came over with a theater manager to evict me; again, I left peacefully. Apparently, the guards were talking about carrying out further measures when they saw me standing outside the theater, and speculated that I was going to harass other attendees. This was not true; I'd just had to leave my friends and family behind, and all I really wanted to do was tell them where I'd be. The last thing I wanted to do was spend two hours hanging around a movie theater.

This account is a complete fabrication. I was not disturbing anyone, was not trying to make a scene, and was only standing quietly in line. When I was taken aside by the guard, it was a complete surprise.

I was the only person evicted. The people I was with, which included my wife, my daughter Skatje, her boyfriend Collin, Richard Dawkins, and the entire staff of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, were overlooked. I was the lucky one.

Afterwards, we went out to eat and have a beer or two, which is why I didn't give you all a more complete summary right away. We laughed over the movie, which I hear is not only boring and poorly made, but is ludicrous in its dishonesty. Apparently, a standard tactic is to do lots of fast cuts between biologists like me or Dawkins or Eugenie Scott and shots of Nazi atrocities. It's all very ham-handed. The audience apparently ate it up, though. Figures. Christians have a growing reputation for their appreciation of dishonesty.

There are plans afoot for rebuttals. It's hard to come up with much motivation to do so after discovering how bad this movie is, but yeah, both NCSE and the RDF will be doing something. Dawkins is going to mention it at least briefly in his talk tomorrow. He may write up a review, too, although I don't think he considers it a high priority (did I mention what a piece of dreck this movie is?).

The RDF crew are a fine bunch of people and we had a good time after the crappy movie. Which I have not seen. Apparently, I've been given a fair amount of time in the movie, too.

This outcome so far has been absolutely perfect, as far as I'm concerned. The hypocrisy of the Expelled makers has been exposed by their expulsion of one of the people they filmed (final lovely irony: I'm also thanked for my contributions in the credits), they've revealed their incompetence by throwing me out when Richard Dawkins was right next to me, and I didn't have to waste two hours on a bad movie.

I've also got a story to tell: when the creationists saw me and Dawkins in a lineup, I am the one that had them so frightened that they had to call for the guards. I feel mighty.