taking sides: Creationism v. Intelligent Design

There is no way to compare the two subjects or even to take sides, so lock thread please.

; )

OTM.

ID relies on the idea that some things are "irreducibly complex". The classic example is the eye - it's a very complicated device, and ID people say "half an eye wouldn't be any use". However, that's plainly not true.

(also no, it isnt the same thing as creationism really - its for xians who want to say "see! I like science too! But God Did It!" argh).

Also, havent we already done this?

but it was actually "designing intelligent agents". it was fun actually you kind of feel like god because it involved building software/hardware agents that have to adapt into an environment

well who do you think you're talking to, beanz?

There was a brilliant bit of satire in Viz of all places where they said it was discovered that 75% of Britons believe that 8 x 7 = 62 and that there was a lobby within parliament to start teaching this alternate theory in schools and colleges. George Bush is quoted as saying "Nobody even knows whether an eight times table exists and if there was one then I'm sure they'd have dug one up by now".

Today seems to be the day for posting links to the guardian. That one's Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne explaining why it makes no goddam sense at all.

-god say abortion is wrong
-god irrigates -- it; gets messy
-god say relax, the market will provide

*mostly because it isn't a fully formed theory. I don't think Alchemy or magic should be taught in school either.

but yes of course the goddity omg absolute truth thing is dumb too obv.

Where by "comment on" I mean "condemn".

intelligent design was much more in style around the early nineties. its founder, phillip johnson (i think that was his name), a former lawyer who lost everything in a divorce from his wife, became born again and eventually helped start the discovery institute, a intelligent design institute. all of the scientists (and there are very very few) are mostly born agains themselves. michael behe, a professor in cell biology, is a major proponent and often seen on TV arguing in favor of ID. it should be noted that he has never EVER submitted any of his ID findings to a scientific journal for review.

anyway, all of this is probably on the various links here. but this isn't: http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

this is what is known as the wedge document. it was circulated around the discovery institute (and then leaked to media, and the discovery institute then admitted it was a true memo) as a plan: first get ID accepted in public schools, then reinstitute faith and moral based education. its quite a document.

which you have to pay for :-( so here is an extract from it pasted from a blog on ID:

The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a “controversy” to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. “Smith’s work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat,” you say, misrepresenting Smith’s work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: “See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms.” And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

[...]

It’s worth pointing out that there are plenty of substantive scientific controversies in biology that are not yet in the textbooks or the classrooms. The scientific participants in these arguments vie for acceptance among the relevant expert communities in peer-reviewed journals, and the writers and editors of textbooks grapple with judgments about which findings have risen to the level of acceptance - not yet truth - to make them worth serious consideration by undergraduates and high school students.

yeah he wrote 'darwin on trial' in 1991, THE book that started this.

Of course the fundamentalists have to come up with something else because they continue to ignore Thomas Aquinas and try to mix the unmixable - spiritual matters, of faith and belief and worldly matters, of science and observation.

There was actually a good thread on this that I can't find. Oh well.

with that said:

-Literal interpretation of the Bible is impossible, but those who call for it are either being deliberately dishonest or lack the skills to recognize that they are wrong. "God is my shepherd" is not literally true, because you are a homo sapien, not a wooly ovis aries off in a field somewhere munching grass.

-they've now framed ID as "teach the controversy" and that "other points of view should be heard", which is of course disingenious and one would think that Tom Cruise would be excited to start getting in some 9th grade biology classrooms.

-what we're seeing is the exact same process that the conservative thinktank groups are did for global warming; come up with enough dishonest reasonings that superficially sound valid(but fall apart on analysis) and flood every media outlet possible. Coming up with stuff like "oh look, see? we have the Discovery Institute on our side, and they have a coupla scientists, so, like, we're scientifically valid" and newspaper reports(like in the recent series of the NYT) will be all "we should cover all sides of the issue, yet never call bullshit on a single thing).

the fact that too many reporters are apparently uncomfortable in really getting into the facts & mechanics of religion and science means that shit just gets reported unquestioned.

no no, there was some chick in the Land of Nod, east of Eden, that Cain found. nobody knows how she got there.

gogogo

oh, it's easy for the fundy freaks to ignore aquinas -- b/c he's catholic, see, and the catholic church is the Whore of Babylon and catholics aren't even christian as far as they're concerned.

HA! That is still making me laugh, 5 minutes later!

could it have been ... SATAN?!?

according to the Bible, this is indeed hw the human race propagated.

http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/0a/24/b831448c2b1dcaccc5075b49081ea67a.jpg

i used to be an anti-pastifarian before i became a pastafarian

Ok, let the teachers teach about evolution but there needs to be an equality so there should be classes about creationism as well and BOTH must be taught as theory only, and that must be enforced somehow. I don't know how tho.

Both batshit, neither more reasonable than the other, really, but creationism is one large system of belief / blind faith, and that appeals to me more than a scientific theory full of inconsistencies and unanswered questions. Does that at least make some sort of sense to the more secular among you?

Seriously. I think we can live without another thread about this.

...But he looks so hungry, poor dear.

if someone has chosen to study the subject

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ..."

im all for tolerance, but ID just doesn't compete with science! it doesnt use the process of provable theories through hypothesis testing.

that said, i understand that evolution isn't *law*, but just because we can't prove the theory yet doesnt mean we should do away with a hundred years of scientific research. and that is exactly what the discovery institute is trying to do

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

i post the url again, just so anyone new to the argument can see that the discovery institute has a very clear and very scary agenda.

http://www.pulpithelps.com/images/photos/Darwin_Truth_de8885_ee119d.jpg

is this saying that evolution is part of the truth? or is that a stupid reading of this?
personally, i do prefer ID, but i have never really had a probelm with things not matching up to the scientific method. i mean, if i'm some crazy guy who believes in miracles and shit anyway, is this so far fetched?
i do think it's sad the way the argument is made on my side though... there's nothing wrong with teaching both, even in science, i think, but i think that perhaps there should maybe be an elective unit that expounds upon the ID theory instead of the systematic replacement that they seem to have in mind. i think the important parts, scholastically, are the evolution parts. anyone who is christian or whathaveyou is not lacking in opportunities to learn/discuss these or other alternative scenarios.

that being sad, i find it deeply disturbing the way that the guardian's article is so cruel in tone. and the scientific community in general. i expect this from zealots on the ID side, it's part of the fundamentalist mentality and to be expected, but i guess i just expect the science people to be above name calling for some reason.

yep

: /

It could make a huge difference because the belief that people are created and watched by an omnipotent diety (true or not) gives a greater moral compass to people as a whole than the belief that we're all just animals and ethics and truth are just situational. It is a much greater incentive to behave.

I don't know why some are slamming any belief in the supernatural as "unscientific" when the scientific method was created by Francis Bacon, who would probably be considered a rightwingchristianfundie if alive today.

The inhabitants of Magrathea to thread!

the scientific method was created by Francis Bacon, who would probably be considered a rightwingchristianfundie if alive today.

I don't think you can say that the scientific method was created by one single person like that.

there needs to be an equality so there should be classes about creationism as well and BOTH must be taught as theory only, and that must be enforced somehow.

You can't have equality, though, between a theory with lots of strong evidence behind it, and a hypothesis with none at all.

At least he knew what to do with chickens.

Creationism could be taught in religious education classes, as Dawkins suggests. Along with the case for atheism, which never seems to be taught.

And it killed him!!!