Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

The Logical extension of that principle is that anything in nature which is beyond our ability to understand at the moment, must therefor be the result of Intelligent Design.

spendi, There will probably be some day in the future when man is able to identify the source of life on earth (other than hokus pokus). What will you do then?

Senate sends Jindal bill on evolution
(By WILL SENTELL, Advocate Capitol News Bureau, Jun 17, 2008)

A bill to overhaul the way evolution is taught in Louisiana public schools easily cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday despite threats of a lawsuit.

Opponents, mostly outside the State Capitol, contend the legislation would inject creationism and other religious themes into public schools.

However, the Senate voted 36-0 without debate to go along with the same version of the proposal that the House passed last week 94-3.

The measure, Senate Bill 733, now goes to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is expected to sign it.

Backers said the bill is needed to give science teachers more freedom to hold discussions that challenge traditional theories, including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"It provides assurances to both teachers and students that academic inquiries are welcome and appropriate in the science classroom," said Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum.

Mills' group touts itself as one that promotes traditional family values. It was called an influential mover behind the bill.

However, officials of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., said the bill represents an intrusion of religion into public schools that may warrant a lawsuit.

"It is the ACLU's position that we intend to do whatever is necessary to keep religion out of our science classrooms." said Marjorie R. Esman, executive director of the group in New Orleans.

The legislation is called the Louisiana Science Education Act.

It would allow science teachers to use supplemental materials, in addition to state-issued textbooks, on issues like evolution, global warming and human cloning.

The aim of such materials, the bill says, is to promote "critical thinking skills, logical analysis and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied," including evolution.

"I just believe that it is important that supplemental scientific information be able to be brought into the school system," state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa and sponsor of the bill, said after the vote.

Nevers said that, despite the rapid pace of changes in science, textbooks are only updated every seven years.

Critics said DVDs and other supplemental materials with religious themes will be added to classrooms to try to undercut widely accepted scientific views.

The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle in less than five minutes.

Nevers noted that the key change made in the House would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to toss out science supplemental materials that it considers inappropriate.

Opponents contend the bill is a bid to allow the teaching of creationism and intelligent design. Christian creationism is the view that life began 6,000 years ago in a process described in the Bible's Book of Genesis.

Intelligent design advocates believe that the universe stems from an intelligent designer rather than chance.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a prepared statement that the bill "is clearly designed to smuggle religion into the science classroom, and that's unwise and unconstitutional." Joe Conn, a spokesman for the group, said attorneys will review the bill.

Lynn's group calls itself a national watchdog organization to prevent government-backed religious teaching.

Barbara Forrest, of Holden, a member of the group's board of trustees and a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, also criticized passage of the measure.

"I think what the Legislature has done is an embarrassment to the state in the eyes of the entire country," Forrest said.

Nevers downplayed talk of legal action against his bill.

"I don't think any lawsuits will be brought because of this act," he said.

Mills predicted that the bill will survive any legal challenge.

In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 state law that required equal time on creationism when evolution was taught in public schools.

Provide the three sentences and I'll explain what I meant.

But if you fetch up in the psychomatic realm you have to face up to those strange effects, not mentioned in Origins although Darwin became fascinated later with monkeys smiling, which religious experiences cause, it is claimed, here too, and whether or not they are beneficial and whether to the individual or the society: society seen as a series of concentric circles with the individual at the centre.

And this is the age old problem. We try to solve it as best we can. Balancing the benefits and the losses to both all the time. It's moving. It's what all the argy-bargying is about. It really is quite complex. Looking at it is, as fm often says, like looking up your butt. We elect bastards to do it for us. What's the use of sending Ann of Green Gables to Washington to arrange the pork distribution. And we make 'em prove they are bastards by making 'em fight it out. Unto the uttermost shreds of their pride.

Suppose Easter Services when the cherry blossoms are all waving in the warm breeze and the songbirds are calling to each other and the organ has swollen to a grand finale in mounting crescendoes has a psychosomatic effect upon a young lady which might cause her to offer a lift into the village to the handsome, well-bred, he claims, young verger, in her carriage and to pull up near a copse and invite him to "view the Hall from here" after tying the horse to a bush and possibly cause, unconsciously, an effect, for good or ill, on the Late Autumn Regiment. Her giggling or swooning at the crucial moment is the sort of thing I have in mind.

One might compare it to the career lady who after studying her diary for weeks on end finally goes to the sperm bank to have a Nobel Prize winner do the business with a syringe, vicariously so to speak, containing the thawed out essence which had been the last fifteen years at minus 200 and something. A temperature at which Pawnbroker's balls disintegrate.



I had better not get into that just yet.

You don't wish to be tested then? What limit of age or intellectual capacity do you fix on for me to be coherent.

There's nothing for me to add on that. And I have not cried foul. Why do you make up things?

A different situation exists in schools where the consumers are kids and have no choices and they are having evolution theory (puritan version) shoved up them on the specious argument that evolution can be studied in labs, which it can't, and that it is necessary for biological work which it isn't. And the communities in which it is proposed to do this vary from cities where anonymity, atheism, absence of settled tradition, changing populations etc are the normal order of things accompanied by the usual social problems and rural communities in places such as Montana and Louisiana where social activity is completely different and many say far more satisfactory.

Perhaps urban angst is jealous of rural bliss and wishes to get everybody down into the hole that it's in.

It isn't as if the Biologic people have a monopoly on silliness.

I don't know but I daresay that all the organisations promoting atheism, such as the NCSE and the ACLU, ( as if they are interested in liberty), are megalopolitan in their location and in their staff and are attempting to force city notions onto the food growing regions where biology is a day to day, taken for granted, experience. Darwin joined working class pigeon racing clubs because he valued the insights of men who only knew science without the esoteric labels which are embraced with enthusiasm for reasons that have nothing to do with science and more to do with domination displays in social settings.

Do you even advocate anything related to ID?

Teleological explanations, especially in biology, and more especially in evolution theory, explain causes from effects and are thus a fruitful field for speculation, self-justification if some aspects are ignored, grant-aided largesse, work avoidance and photo-ops.

Actually S. I find your posts Double Dutch but I will concede that it might be my fault. The one I'm trying to reply to now is incoherent here but I feel sure it is perfectly reasonable to you. We seem to speak a different language using the same word store.

That is one of the things that fascinates me about this thread. I have read a great deal of American literature, and I mean a great deal, and it was all perfectly clear. You lot are nothing like any of that. I've never come across discourse like I see on here from AIDsers in my entire life and I've been around a lot. It's like Stanley Unwin but knowing each word as it passes. I read your replies, and those of your claque, and I think "Sheesh! what can anybody make of that?" I doubt you could talk to each other with mutual understanding on anything you disagreed about. It's only having me uniting you that holds you together.

Maybe I'm a one man dating agency. Let's face it--if homosexuality is not immoral what's your argument against T.S. Eliot and Joey Gallo about not knowing whether you would like it until you've tried it. It's cost effective I presume which heterosexuality is not. One can easily see it becoming more common once it's no longer immoral. As in Classical times.

I'll accept that my attitude to homosexuality was conditioned but it could only be by people who thought it immoral. Those damn priests have cost me a fortune. I could have cruised Clapham Common, been quids in and approved of by Elton John but for the twisted logic they filled my little innocent head with. I could have worked for the BBC.

(see if you can spot the fallacy in that?)

The Classical world's exposing infants to the weather is really a form of abortion. You have abortion morphing into infanticide at some arbitary time point of your own choosing. Some legal smooch which they didn't bother with, not being Christians. Their time point was 9 months + 1day. (Maybe more). Officially. And we have too.

All their names signed on the bottom.

Backers said the bill is needed to give science teachers more freedom to hold discussions that challenge traditional theories, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Lynn's group calls itself a national watchdog organization to prevent government-backed religious teaching

Now ask the person: what was your point?

Do I need to explain your lack of literary talent again?

Believe it or not I don't like needing to insult your abilities.

you parade them about and claim superiority, all the while merely confusing others and making them think you aren't worth the time.

Is that not supposed to depict something unfair? Rural kids having "evolution theory" "shoved up them"?

I assure you I understand what everyone else says quite well, with the possible exception of Francis sometimes. Again, if you're having trouble understanding something, just ask.

Uh, congratulations on relevancy? This is a perfect example of the random deviations I've been talking about. Perhaps you have trouble understanding my points because you so quickly forget what you yourself have written and how little it often has to do with the topic?

Wait, are these random deviations supposed to be your attempt at picking a topic to actually discuss? If so, you're not doing too great - you've already deviated from the first one!

but it has almost nothing to do with my position on abortion, as it is obviously not something I even come close to advocating. That's just another one of your rather dishonest and insulting insinuations.

Louisiana Coalition for Science
June 16, 2008

Honorable Bobby Jindal
Baton Rouge, LA 70802

Re: Veto of SB 733

Dear Governor Jindal:

SB 733, recently passed by both houses of the legislature, purports to enable teachers to help students "develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues." This is a seemingly noble-sounding but deceptive goal.

SB 733 is a thinly disguised attempt to advance the "Wedge Strategy" of the Discovery Institute (DI), a creationist think tank that is collaborating with the LA Family Forum to get intelligent design (ID) creationism into LA public school science classes. John West, associate director of DI's Center for Science and Culture, has even presumed to interpret SB 733 on DI's website so as to favor his group's agenda. (See West's "Questions and Answers About the Proposed Louisiana Science Education Act.") Within minutes of the Senate's passage of the bill on June 16, West posted the news of Louisiana's passage of the "landmark" LA Science Education Act on DI's website. According to one Louisiana news account, West indicated that DI hopes to see its own creationist textbook, the deceptively titled Explore Evolution, used in our science classes as one of the supplements that SB 733 will permit teachers to use (Opelousas Daily World, 6/16/08). DI apparently has a financial as well as a religious and political interest in this legislation.

Creationism, which includes both young-earth creationism and ID, is not science but a sectarian view based on the Bible. Young-earth creationism is based on Genesis, and ID is based on the Gospel of John, as was established in federal court in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005). The Bible was never intended to be a science textbook. Evolution has long been accepted by the Catholic Church and most other mainstream churches. The late Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that "new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis." (Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, October 22, 1996) As the pope recognized and other mainstream religions also recognize, there is no conflict between teaching children the scientific fact of evolution in school and providing religious instruction at home and in church. Millions of Americans lead committed religious lives while fully accepting modern science.

Since you hold a biology degree from Brown University, one of the nation's most prestigious schools, you certainly appreciate Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous insight, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." You also surely understand that there is no scientific controversy over the fact of evolution. The current controversy is a political one, manufactured nationally by the Discovery Institute and here in Louisiana by the LA Family Forum, which does not represent the majority of Louisiana's citizens but would impose its agenda on our entire state, even our children.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is violated when the government endorses a sectarian doctrine, as SB 733 would do, despite denials by the bill's supporters. The section of SB 733 stipulating that the bill "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion" actually comes from the DI's own model academic freedom act. If SB 733 were truly about teaching science, no such disclaimer would be needed.

If SB 733 becomes law, we can anticipate the embarrassment it will bring to the state, not to mention the prospect of spending millions of taxpayer dollars defending the inevitable federal court challenge. Consider also that federal courts have uniformly invalidated every effort to attack the teaching of evolution in public schools, including, among others, (1) Edwards v. Aguillard, a 1987 case that Louisiana lost in the U.S. Supreme Court; and (2) Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (pdf), a 2005 Pennsylvania federal court case in which a conservative Republican judge appointed by Pres. George W. Bush thoroughly examined and rejected a school board policy that presented ID to students as an alternative to evolution.

With our state still recovering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, does Louisiana need the expense and embarrassment of defending - and losing - another lawsuit in federal court? What image will this legislation convey to high-tech companies and skilled individuals who might consider locating here? On your "Workforce Development" website, where you tell readers that "I am asking you to once again believe in Louisiana," you acknowledge that because of a "skills gap," the "training and education of our citizens does not meet the requirements of available jobs." You state that "the lack of economic mobility discourages many Louisianans, including thousands of young people who have left our state in search of greater opportunities." You also highlight Louisiana's low educational ranking as one cause of the "workforce crisis in LA": "In a 2007 national Chance-for-Success Index, Louisiana ranks #49 in the nation based on 13 indicators that highlight whether young children get off to a good start, succeed in elementary and secondary school, and hit crucial educational and economic benchmarks as adults." SB 733 will degrade the quality of science education just when the state is so working hard to improve public schools.

Surely you agree that SB 733 sends the wrong message to the nation if we want to develop additional high tech companies such as the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LIGO, and other research universities and centers across the state. SB 733 will sacrifice the education of our children to further the political and religious aims of the LA Family Forum and the Discovery Institute, an out-of-state creationist think tank whose only interest in Louisiana is promoting their agenda at the expense of our children.

You have repeatedly stressed your commitment to making Louisiana a place where our young people can build families and careers. You can help to make Louisiana that place by proving that you support the hundreds of science teachers and thousands of students in the public schools and universities across the state. You can demonstrate your commitment to improving both Louisiana's image and our educational system by vetoing SB 733. The state and the nation are watching.

We call upon you to veto SB 733 in the best interests of our children and to protect the reputation of our state.

Sincerely,
Louisiana Coalition for Science

That's an easy one S. They would say that I think the world has gone off its head.

On the wit I can't be expected to compete with fm altering somebody's username like he did. A verger being invited to "view the Hall from here" is all I can manage.

Shirakawasuna wrote:

Do I need to explain your lack of literary talent again?

You most certainly don't.

I did ask what limit of age or intellectual capacity do you fix on for me to be coherent. Which others have you in mind? I have already explained that I am resigned to you being confused just as I am with your stuff.

Believe it or not I don't like needing to insult your abilities, but you really leave me no choice as you parade them about and claim superiority, all the while merely confusing others and making them think you aren't worth the time.

Well- just try making school voluntary. You'll soon see how unfair the kids think that sort of thing is.

Hmm, in the interests of this thread I'll pick something related to ID and antievolution. How about your repeated insistance that evolution should not be taught in local areas where it is opposed (you cry foul)? Do you even advocate anything related to ID?

There's nothing for me to add on that. And I have not cried foul. Why do you make up things?

Invariably when I read one of your posts I am at a loss where to start or what to ask. A bit like a fat ladies tag mud wrestling must be for the referee.

I take it you couldn't spot the fallacy then?

A good example of mud wrestling. I was obviously trying to get you to provide a justification for declaring a mite legally killable at a point you have chosen for reasons having nothing to do with the mite.

You have passed by the challenge and offered meaningless drivel as an alternative.

"And we have too" was a little clumsy. I meant we in England do the same. They say 24 weeks which is not very scientific now is it? Profitable maybe.

I never said you did advocate exposing infants.

The Classical world's exposing infants to the weather is really a form of abortion. You have abortion morphing into infanticide at some arbitary time point of your own choosing. Some legal smooch which they didn't bother with, not being Christians. Their time point was 9 months + 1day.

I was asking you to work backwards from such a point to where you think it okay to kill the mite and then justify it. That's all. It isn't too difficult. You have the USSC on your side. I had no intention of insulting or being dishonest.

I think you do both those things to the mite.

I don't give a shite about you insulting me or being dishonest.

I know you can't answer the question which means that you're being dishonest with yourself.

It's dead simple what to do if you don't want to have babies.

I know professed atheists who are just as appalled at abortion as I am. The matter has nothing to do with religion.

When Corinna told Ovid she had procured one he just said-"Don't ever do that again." And he was a serious panatheist. He had never heard of Christianity.

spendius wrote:

That's an easy one S. They would say that I think the world has gone off its head.

lol, you're really not getting this, are you? Someone else is supposed to be testing this, not you. I fully expect that you know what you're intending to say beneath all the verbiage

spendius wrote:
On the wit I can't be expected to compete with fm altering somebody's username like he did. A verger being invited to "view the Hall from here" is all I can manage.


Sure, but even with that kind of silliness we can still get fm's presumed actual opinions, tease them out, and see the relevance to conversation. They don't impede all of those things, like yours.

spendius wrote:

I did ask what limit of age or intellectual capacity do you fix on for me to be coherent. Which others have you in mind? I have already explained that I am resigned to you being confused just as I am with your stuff.


I don't understand the question. My point has nothing to do with age unless you're using specific references that were relevant 50-30 years ago. My point also has nothing to do with intellectual capacity. It simply is what it is, so I'll repeat it: Shirakawasuna wrote:
Believe it or not I don't like needing to insult your abilities, but you really leave me no choice as you parade them about and claim superiority, all the while merely confusing others and making them think you aren't worth the time.


Now, the "them" is clearly your abilities, in which I'm referring to your "literary" deviations, in case you're still confused.

Now, what is it about my points that you are confused about? You haven't brought any of that up until the last couple of posts so far as I can tell. I'll gladly reexplain if you're interested.

Do you even advocate anything related to ID?

Point something out, I'll explain it. If you didn't understand them to begin with, you should've pointed it out. Personally, I suspect you've brought this up primarily because you're sick of getting criticized yourself.

I didn't even attempt to figure out that irrelevant paragraph. A waste of time.

spendius wrote:

A good example of mud wrestling. I was obviously trying to get you to provide a justification for declaring a mite legally killable at a point you have chosen for reasons having nothing to do with the mite.


When have I claimed this to be my position? I'll ask that you quote me: I do it for you

spendius wrote:
"And we have too" was a little clumsy. I meant we in England do the same. They say 24 weeks which is not very scientific now is it? Profitable maybe.


This is not a merely scientific issue, but it is good to be informed by science when addressing it.

I tend to approve of the trimester system based on the development of the embryo: for the first trimester, especially the first two months, I think there should be no legal barriers. It gets a lot more complicated in the transition from first trimester to second, but by the third I'm fairly strongly in the 'only in instances of significant health threats to the mother' camp. This might seem contradictory to the implicit arguments (one would argue that sacrificing the unborn for the mother would be a form of murder), but it's not: I do not consider a newborn infant to be equivalent to an adult human. That doesn't mean I advocate killing them, but merely that in this case I am quite sympathetic to late-term abortion when it saves the mother's life.

What things? Do you mean I am insulting and dishonest to zygotes/blastocysts/embryos/fetuses?

in the hopes that you'll be more reasonable in discussion

I guess you've also claimed that I was making things up, which could be interpreted as a claim of dishonesty, but that turned out to be untrue, didn't it?

More likely, though, you're trying to say that you don't mind such things so I shouldn't, either. Sorry, but I do, mostly the bit about dishonesty, as I get tired of misrepresentations very quickly. I also dislike insults which are uncalled for, in general, directed towards anyone, in the context of an argument.

spendius wrote:
I know you can't answer the question which means that you're being dishonest with yourself.


lol, I like how you wrap it up by lying about my position, or maybe you really just are that irrational in your certainty. I've already answered your question.

As I don't see anything wrong with an unintentional pregnancy both existing and then ending in an early-term abortion, it doesn't apply.

spendius wrote:
I know professed atheists who are just as appalled at abortion as I am. The matter has nothing to do with religion.


That's a non-sequitur if those are supposed to be connected (they obviously are). I know many atheists who are "pro-life". That doesn't mean the issue has "nothing" to do with religion, though. Most of the opposition is religiously-based, especially the inflation of importance of the zygote/blastocyst/embryo.

Legislating religion
(TOM TEEPEN, Cox News Service, June 19, 2008)

When Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Connecticut Baptist Convention in Danbury in 1802, he championed the "wall of separation" which the new republic's Constitution had erected between government and religion.

The wall has been under attack off and on ever since, but rarely more percussively or with greater connivance than in the years since 1954 when Congress stuck "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. In the hyper anti-communism of the era, that was supposed to show "godless communism" a thing or two.

Christians who would have government do their work for them continue with cussed persistence trying to squeeze their proselytizing through that little crack.

So South Carolina is on its way to issuing optional automobile license plates that declare "I Believe," with illustrations of a cross and a stained glass window.

Legislation authorizing the plates was part of a package of Christian enthusiasm that gripped the state legislature this election year. The lawmakers also approved posting the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments in public buildings and immunized preachers from any legal comeback for preaching hortative and vividly sectarian prayers at government-sponsored events.

All of these doings have been held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court has been twisted rightward by President Bush, and state and local legislators are taking a new run at it.

In Texas, the state Board of Education is once again embroiled in an anti-evolution push, pressed to require that public-school science classes take a "strengths and weakness" approach to biology instruction. S-and-W is the latest dodgy version of "creationism," which became "creation science," which became "intelligent design."

The approach is billed as even-handed, but it is just one more rhetorical beard to disguise bootlegged bible teaching.

South Carolina's lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, a big champion of the I Believe plates, says he's just a fan of free speech. Uh-huh. Try petitioning for a "God Sucks" license plate.

Nor is the strengths-and-weaknesses crowd clamoring for Texas to take the same approach to teaching the theory of gravity or atomic theory. Yes, the apple never fails to bonk Isaac Newton and if you set off an atomic bomb it is surely going to make one hellacious noise.

Both phenomena, in science, are nonetheless still theories in the same way evolution is.

The Founding Fathers were dead serious about this stuff. The 1779 Virginia statute on religious freedom, which Jefferson wrote with James Madison, in effect was a detailed, before-the-fact explication of the First Amendment's condensed "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?"

When Jefferson wrote to the Connecticut Baptists, it was to reassure them that religion would be safe from government under the First Amendment. It is difficult to imagine now, but in the colonies and the new nation, Baptists were the most ardent advocates of church-state separation.

Maybe some day the folks who want to put government's shoulder to religion's wheel will finally catch on that religion flourishes in this country, as it does these days in no other Western nation, not in defiance of our church-state separation but thanks to it.

Some day but obviously no day soon. Of course, that's just a theory.

Quote:

Legislating religion
(TOM TEEPEN, Cox News Service, June 19, 2008)

South Carolina's lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, a big champion of the I Believe plates, says he's just a fan of free speech. Uh-huh. Try petitioning for a "God Sucks" license plate.