Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

I take it you are no longer asserting that random chance is the sole motor of mutations fm

And I cannot speak for Creationists but a real IDjit doesn't plead for anything except to keep an influx of atheist militants from preaching their "one shot" doctrines in classrooms. Real ID is pluralistic. It gives parents a choice. How can science have choices. It only deals in facts.

Well-fm- it means that if a school wishes to do voodoo or headhunting real IDers have no objection. We are happy to leave it to the parents. It's this sticking to the facts we don't much care for.

AN ASSISTANT at the Wadleigh Memorial Library in Milford has come under fire for her cute idea to use Valentine's Day to draw disaffected teenagers to the library for some fun and learning. The idea? Valentine's voodoo dolls.

...

Some were not amused.

"Coming from a Christian perspective, it scares the life out of me that anyone would want to tamper with voodoo in the name of fun," Lorna Willette said.

Complaints led the library to cancel the program...
Lorna Willette, Manchester (NH) Union Leader [Comments (50)] [2008-Apr-10]
http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/default.aspx?date=2008/04&page=2

First Witch

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

It is not really a question of what Darwin said. It is a question of the possible misapplication of his theories and the eugenics movement, elitist to the core, is the best known example. I am suggesting that teaching Darwin in classrooms where there are students with IQs higher that those he shows is a potentially dangerous experiment. The President and his/her advisors of, say, 2040 are now in those classrooms. As are the CEOs of the future.

I am also suggesting that these matters are far too complex to be understood by members of school boards, journalists and most politicians as well as posters on here, myself included. Hence the oversimplifications. At least I am aware of my ignorance which does not seem to be the case with AIDs-ers and especially not with those who presume out of some fancy of their own that the term AIDs-er refers to a disease rather than to Artificial Insemination by Donor which is a nice metaphor for what AIDs-ers are seeking to do with the kid's heads.

The great series of scientific discoveries which made it possible were due, to a quite preponderating extent to the white race, whose original home had been in Western Europe. However, this race proved unequal to its own greatness. Success sapped its energies and killed its spirit of adventure. They could not believe that the harder world, which we know, would be tolerable. They could not believe, as we know, that happiness has little relation to comfort or luxury. Consequently, they started to limit the numbers of their families in the fruitless expectation that in this way they would restrain the multiplication of the human race. Their numbers started to decrease at first relatively to the other races, and then absolutely; their peoples gradually faded away, and this once great race now survives precariously in a few of the less accessible parts of the earth.

Summary Judgment in the California Creationist Case: The Lawyers for the Creationists Argue Like Creationists
(by Mike Dunford, ScienceBlogs.com, April 1, 2008)

If you read Judge Otero's ruling on the summary judgment motions in the California Creationist Case, you'll see that he discovered something that most of us already know: if you're looking for dubious argument tactics, you'll almost always find them when you're reading things written by professional creationists. In the case of the California lawsuit, the Christian schools are being represented by the law firm of Wendell Bird. Bird is no stranger to creationism battles - he served as the general counsel for the young-earth creationist Institute of Creation Research, threw a wrench into Arkansas' efforts to defend it's pro-creationism policies in the McLean v. Arkansas case, and represented Louisiana's interest in promoting religion during the Edwards v. Aguillard case. After so much time spent working on behalf of creationist groups, it probably shouldn't be surprising that Judge Otero spotted many of the same argument tactics in the Christian schools' legal filings that we see when we look at the day to day output of anti-evolution groups such as the Discovery Institute.

There are some real gems scattered through the ruling. I'm just going to hit on a few of the high points.

Let's start with that most common of creationist techniques: the quote mine. Quote mining, if you're not familiar with the term, refers to the practice of hunting through volumes of documentation in search of a few words that, if taken out of context, might appear to support your argument.

For example, Plaintiffs cite the deposition of Defendants' government expert as evidence that "UC follows the policy of rejecting any course in any subject, even if it teaches standard content, if it adds teaching of the school's religious viewpoint." The actual deposition testimony illustrates Plaintiff's error. ...
(page 8)

In addition, the power of Plaintiff's quotation is tempered by their omission of the words "radical" and "fundamentalist." These adjectives suggest the Board's "feelings" concerned extreme views inconsistent with knowledge generally accepted in the relevant academic community rather than antagonism toward religion.
(page 26)

This conclusion is supported by the Broadrick passage from which Plaintiffs selectively quote; it discusses prior restraints. ... Moreover, the four cases the Supreme Court cites in support of Plaintiffs' selective quotation from the Broaderick opinion all involved licensing statutes.
...
The correct interpretation of the Plaintiff's Broadrick quote is not that standardless discretionary power creates a prior restraint, but that standardless discretionary power makes existing prior restraints "virtually unreviewable."
(page 30)

This sort of thing really makes you wonder what Bird and his people were thinking. Have they really failed to figure out that smart people - a group that, popular perception notwithstanding, includes the bulk of the Federal Bench - check the references?

Moving along, we come to another perpetual creationist favorite: the straw man. Although it could reasonably be argued that the whole of the Christian schools' position falls into this category, there was one particular instance that caught the judge's eye:

Plaintiffs spend much of their briefing setting up a "viewpoint discrimination" straw man. But, the analysis in this case is not as simple as Plaintiffs' proffered syllogism: "Viewpoint discrimination is unconstitutional and UC discriminates based on viewpoint, therefore UC's actions are unconstitutional." Accordingly, Plaintiffs' "resounding" success in tearing this straw man down rings hollow. (See Pls.' Reply 3 ("UC's silence is resounding on our 22 pages of facts and argument showing that UC policies . . . discriminate by viewpoint and are content-based in regulation.").)
(page 12, footnote 8)

That last quote is actually almost a buy-one-get-one-free example of bad argument techniques. Besides the strawman, it also contains the "lots of bad arguments must add up to something good" line of defective reasoning.

Bird's crew wasn't content to stop with merely bad tactics. They apparently decided that it was a good to bring the paranoia to the party.
The first example of paranoiac tendencies showed up early on, when the judge noted that Bird and his colleagues seemed to be suggesting that there was an organized conspiracy against them:

Plaintiffs allege that Defendants, in applying the A-G Guidelines, have established a set of binding "A-G Policies" that are used to routinely deny courses submitted by religious high schools. The official-sounding term "A-G Policies" is a label Plaintiffs created to describe what they believe are secret rules by which Defendants deny Plaintiff's courses. (Pls.' Opp.n 3.) The extent to which these "A-G Policies" exist is discussed in Part II.A of this Order.
(page 3).

The judge found that none of the three specific policies that the Christian schools alleged were being used against them actually existed.

The second instance of paranoiac tendencies is a bit more troublesome. The Plaintiffs appear to believe that not being Christian is evidence that you are biased against Christians. They submitted a list of actions and beliefs that they allege demonstrate that UC disapproved of their religion. One of the items that they included as evidence of the official state bias against them is that:

(5) "The senior reviewer is Buddhist, and the reviewer who handled religious school science courses and drafted most policies is Jewish..."
(page 44.)

Asserting that non-Christian religious beliefs is evidence of hostility toward Christianity is quite simply wrong-headed. It relies on the assumption that everyone has the same hostile attitude toward other religious beliefs that they seem to consistently exhibit. It also relies on the assumption that they can only receive a fair hearing from like-minded people. The judge handled that last bit quite well:

Additionally, allegation (5) cannot support a hostility claim. UC is under no duty to employ only those individuals whose religious beliefs coincide with Plaintiffs.

It's fun to look at the logical fallacies that Bird and his colleagues attempted to slip past the judge, but this really isn't all fun and games. It's important that we keep in mind that the more paranoid aspects of the Christian schools' argument probably aren't being advanced purely as a way to push their own views. There are a lot of people out there who really do believe that it is not merely unreasonable for us to insist that they not use the government to push their views on us, but that our attempt to preserve our own religious freedom is an attempt to persecute them. Their viewpoint is so divergent from ours that there is simply no way that this conflict is going to end soon, or nicely.

as we say in thye land that sent the British packing in 1782

That's just a facile sound bite.

If you teach kids that sort of history you just do their heads in. Who exactly is this "we"? Sucking the glory out of other men's efforts is pathetic.

Didn't you think that the Darwin quote highlighted the pessimism of his general position. And no wonder after him throwing away the very best years of a young man's life on what could only have been a very prolonged nightmare.

You just can't see "the bloke" in these guys. You see but a status symbol.

You might be right fm if we leave out the creativity.

Interesting viewpoint. Please explain in more detail