Intelligent Design pushed by anti-science exremists
The president this week let us know which direction we're headed. Responding to questions, he said that Intelligent Design - warmed-over creationism - should be taught in science classes alongside evolution. His reasoning, if you know nothing about the issue, might sound reasonable: Give kids a chance to weigh both options and let them make up their minds. As if science classes are the right place for popularity contests. It isn't conservative-liberal politics. Prominent conservatives have harshly criticized Intelligent Design. Uberhawk Charles Krauthammer condemned it in a Time Magazine column earlier this week, adding that any creationism-based ridicule heaped upon religion wasn't just expected, but earned. It's also not a traditional conflict between the godless and the religious. Scientists of all disciplines and all faiths jibe beliefs in creation and scientific fact. Of course evolution is a theory. Scientific theories are carefully built on hypothesis, testing, observation, and coming to a conclusion best fitting the facts. They also get reviewed by peers, many times over. Theories are explanations of facts, and it takes longer than a morning cup of coffee to produce one. Intelligent Design can't be tested in the lab, so it's not even a hypothesis.
posted by Unknown @ 4:09 PM
13 Comments:
Well, the theory about evolution can very simple be tested in controlled conditions and be supported by the results. The theory about intelligent design cannot! Intelligent design is pure guessing and has NOTHING to do with science. Dark ages is when religion is to overrule what can be empiricaly supported.
Intelligent design is as much science as when I state that I am the the last decendant from the great GEUYUÅW and should be worshipped as a god. It's goddamned bullshit!!
Panteren, what's to live for? The only purpose in life is to die at the end of your time, so why work? Is the purpose of life to have a statue built that you won't have the awareness to contemplate after death? It appears that you've lost before you started. Oh well.
panteren, "...the theory about evolution can very simple be tested in controlled conditions and be supported by the results."
If you're right, what's the fuss? Can you point me to the simple tests and supporting results? I'd like to be enlightened. And, I agree with you that you're not the last descendant from the great GEUYUÅW and should be worshipped as a god. You see, that's me.
Science is verifiable. Faith is not. Whether there has been some such "intervention", be it from God or aliens, is immaterial. There will always be a subset of people who need an "overseer" of some sort to help them make logical sense of this world. This is how I view religion. The ancient writings were at a time when there needed to be an explanation for the unexplainable(for the time). Religion fit that bill. It is difficult for people to come to grips with the possibility that we are merely star dust and once we expire, we become part of the enormous circle of life, yet again.
Space is enormous and one needs to be familiar with a certain degree of higher level mathematics to understand the enormity of space. Mathematically, there are enough stars and planetoid bodies in space to make it possible of having life on other planets, and even similar to ourselves. Mathematically, it is even possible of having multiple universes with a planet and people who are EXACTLY like us, including another fjordman and ethnocentrist writing on a blog such as this. Mathematics tells us this is a possibility. Mathematics has yet to tell us that God exists, however.
For the reverse, if one was so inclined to believe such things, the phenomenon of deja vu could be thought of as our "spirit" remembering a previous life. I've thought about this for a while and it may be a possibility. Though scientifically it could be explained as neurochemical changes in our brains that cause us to have these visions or sensations. Why do we have them is an even more apropos question.
Just getting back to the ID topic. I have no problem of it being introduced and discussed, however these faith subjects grow and morph into things we do not necessarily want. Evolution is the primary focus and is verifiable for the most part. ID should be treated as an interesting alternative to the more accepted ideology. They should NOT be given equal weight.
Mike H. What to live for? Guess we decide that for our selves. Who else could?
linearthinker. Evolution understood as adaptation to surroundings or survival of the fittest can very easily be proven. You can take bacteria’s; simple creatures and the like, everything that has a short lifespan and subdue them too for example poison and see what happen. Voila, quite quickly you have a lot of poison resistant organisms. Well as long as you don’t kill them all of course :)
Ole. It is still called the theory of relativity although every experiment made has supported it. You can’t prove things in science, only make them more and more supported by empirically evidence. I’m not saying that Darwinism is perfect, there seems to be underlying subsystems we are yet to explain.
Sissyblue. Well I agree that there are things about the evolution of life that we are yet to understand. But to say it is god or some other intelligence which is responsible for those things cannot be supported by empirically evidence nor can it be tested (well, at least I can’t think of any way. You have a suggestion how to?) That we can change our selves don’t solve the problem about how we developed to what we are. The worst part about intelligent design is that you explain it by some
divine interception. What if Newton or any other mayor scientist had just dropped all thinking and explained for example the fall of the apple with the will of god? It leads no were.
About not teaching theories, you have to remember ALL science are theories, you can’t prove things in science, only support them empirically until a degree were they are more or less accepted as being right.
Tim. In which way does Darwinism contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics? As that law is the most widely accepted law among scientist, I’ll doubt that there is a contradiction. Well, at least it would be very strange with the massive support there is for Darwinism. Evolution isn’t intelligent, it’s brutal and wasteful.
noille. Thanks, yes I fully agree with you, but then again it doesn’t mean that everything is equal and holds the same value or “truth”, which some people seem to imply.
Sissyblue. Einstein was Jew and religious, remember his famous „Gott würfelt nicht”, “God does not play dice” quote, Bohr was also Jew but gradually adopted Taoism. Yes, many of the very greatest scientists have been deeply religious, but: What is your point? They never sat down and just said: “well, I don’t understand that” and explained what they saw as gods will, which is what ID is in essence. They developed their own theories based on the reality they experienced.
panteren, 2 comments.
1. Thanks for the example. I don't think the adaptation of bacteria you noted is sufficient to discredit the challenges made by the ID proponents, but I'll grant you adaptation is real. I'm an engineer, not a biologist, and therefore am cautious making sweeping claims beyond my competency, except of course to note that "I am the the last decendant from the great GEUYUÅW."
2. I perceive an order in the physical and mathematical universe that must be operative for even the mechanisms of evolution, and your example of adaptation, to function. Where do you suppose this order derives? I confess I don't know. But I suggest that the heavy handed dismissal of any alternative ideas by the proponents of Darwinism and evolution is unscientific and will likely lead to their eventual embarassment. I invite you to read David Berlinski on this subject. One of his points, as I recall, is that evolution as presented is seriously flawed, not that this necessarily leads to God as an alternative (although you're free to draw your own conclusions). Just keep an open mind. Sissyblue, ethnocentrist and Tim all make good sense in their comments.
Simply put the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics establishes that everything wears out (entropy) and loses energy; becomes less complex. Darwinism posits the precise opposite - that over time life becomes increasingly complex.
Tim, the two are not mutually exclusive. One is stating that disorder is the eventual end to all as energy dissipates IF left alone. The other states through long periods of time, things that had a better chance of survival, DID, and continued to do so. Despite this "creation" of more efficient entities, the second still applied to them.
A perfect example to evolution is the dinosaurs. If they did not become extinct, man would have had little chance to evolve. There is an example of how one event affected another in a greatly positive way, while keeping the second law intact.
Tim,
Can you clarify which aspect of my example is supposition? I'm unsure exactly where you have a problem with it or whether it is the whole thing you have a problem with.
Tim. I’ll get back to you. I don’t think there is any contradiction between the two theories, but I’ll look at it.
linearthinker. Well, I don’t think that anyone will seriously argue that Darwinism is perfect. Not at all, it got mayor flaws, but that has been known for years, and is not something the ID makers have discovered. Adaptation can hardly explain how a bat developed organs to make the high pitch sound, the organs to hear the sound and the brainpower to process the sound into a picture of the surroundings. To develop one of these things would be nothing strange, but all three at the same time is remarkable. Darwinism got flaws no doubt about that. But, the reason why I speak so badly about the ID theory, is that it don’t fulfil the requirements for a scientific theory as it got no hypothesis which can be tested. That it talks about interception of some intelligence don’t make it unscientific, even if this intelligence should be god. But when you can’t test the claim, well then we can’t talk about science. As an idea it is good, it broadens the debate and perhaps gives some researchers an idea which can be tested, but to call it as good as Darwinism and say it should have the same status in school is not defensible from a scientific point of view.
sissyblue. Have you seen the termitaries of the African termite? They are extremely complex, but I can’t see how that makes a termite intelligent.
Tim. I had to find my quantum mechanics notes, couldn’t remember the definitions. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, state that in a closed system the entropy is increasing or constant. Macroscopic entropy change is given by ΔS = ΔE /T where ΔS is the entropy change, ΔE is the added energy and T is the systems absolute temperature. As all life requires to be added energy and thereby increases the entropy, I really don’t see how Darwinism and this law should interfere
If you would like some clarity in the history of sciences, get a hold of "A Short History of Nearly Everything".
Except for the rant at the end by the author how evolution is the only way, the book is facinating in it's accounts of how "we" developed and evolved our sciences over the ages. There is example after example of one belief being struck down by a more correct one, which in turn was set aside when either an expedition, or new testing/measurement technology came into the equation. Why is Darwin's theory the only way? Do a little googling on Galleio and the Spanish Inquistiton.
Actually, I think it's mildly comical that it used to be the Church shoving science down the world's throats, now when the Church poses a theory, science is calling the Church "heretics." Don't you see the cosmic irony in all of this?
I found it really interesting how the first use of "tectonic plates" was in 1968. Today, it's just common knowledge. Not all that long ago, we didn't even conceive of these plates "floating" around the planet, and thought the ocean basins were flat and deep, and just filled up with the sediment coming off the land. My, my, my, how things have changed in less than 50 years....
Science is about observation and analysis. To close one's mind, just to hang onto your beliefs is a limitation that is bad for humanity, as well as rejecting the very tennants of what we commissioned scientists to do in society. They are the "scouts" on the fontiers, telling us what is out there, not a group cloistered in an ivory tower, too lazy to venture out and content in repeating the one bit of understanding they got from a few controlled experiments.
I am a Biology major, and I believe in ID. My professional life has made me an engineer, mechanically and in software/systems, and I see intelligent design in all man has done, and the work I had to do to create programs...little "stubs" of code to prove a lower level, to be later included fuction for the end product, to fully integrated testing. It had to be planned. If my cat has a kidney, and I have a kidney, I just think God is the ultimate recycler (and I've worked in that the recycling business, too). What's not to like about that? Greenpeace, I'm sure, would have to buy in...
I spent years as an agnostic, and, with of my scientific training, I could see the incredible intracasies of organisms, so something told me not to let go of those observations.......I've looked to the stars from the open ocean, and used them to navigate by. I have studied astronomy, oceanography, meterology, marine biology. I no longer can submit to a theory (which, is still what it is called) that accounts for all of this because of Brownian motion (which has been clearly demonstrated time and time again in labs). I also believe God is using evolution as part of the design work. My personal understanding of this is evidenced in my software and systems work, which, I will admit, are not my methods, but those of many smart people before me, and accepted industry processes. The projects begin in little pieces and grow, and grow, and grow, and sometimes (well, almost all the time) change along the way, because we realized our design was flawed.
Actually, I see ID not as "creationism warmed over," but reference to that all that is around us had a design to put it in place. Creationism is the concept that God just spoke Adam and Eve into life. Two different issues, yet the "how" they got here part is still in the debate arena of "evolved" or "merely appeared." ID is not how they got here, but whether or not their bodies were designed by a higher intelligence.
If you pull back from your fear of God for a moment, Darwin's theory is one of design, too. In this case, it's a plan to improve the existing. This debate is whether something is behind that, or it just happens. If you're going to add a wing to the hospital, I would hope you'd have an architect plan it first, before you just turn the first shovel of dirt. You may still get the wing on, but it won't propbably meet code, let alone provide the very things you needed it to do. ID points "up" to something far greater than we humans who can't get along more than a few years of time without having significant conflict (which certainly is a plug for entropy), let alone being able to hang the stars in the sky and also design DNA.
When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask to see the engineering library....In the meantime, I think we haven't mastered the book on relationships, so He certainly isn't going to waste His time on us squabbling over building and design codes and procedures He has already worked out....
"If we humans, as logical creatures, can not be open minded enough to exam all theories, then our civilization is doomed and we're heading towards another "dark age" where certain ideas we don't like aren't talked about." - sissyblue
As it was said in the 70s...sissyblue, Right On!
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