Justus For All

ID is religion however. It is a christian agenda. Do you really think that ID folks will accept that a time traveling human or an alien species did this? They say Intelligent Creator and they mean God. If they were really just about the I in ID, then they should not be opposed to folks including Hopi, Celtic, Hindu and other creation mythos, as well as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Aliens and Time Travelers. They have no more evidence that God created the world then adherents of these other fables.

“The religion isn’t in the claims of intelligent design themselves. Rather, the religion is in the motivation for pushing a poor account of the natural world into the science curriculum.”

Motivations yes. Specific claims no.

Do you have any evidence that ID proponants have opposed folks who believe that their particular diety or weird belief is the I in ID? I haven’t seen such a thing.

FSM of course is merely an attempt to mock.

Peronally, I am routing for the Alien theory I don’t believe it happened, but I think it would be really really cool if an alien race seeded the galaxy with life. Assuming that it hasn’t happened previously, I certainly hope that it will happen in the future and we will be the ones to do it.

If we can get the whole immortality thing going soon enough, I vow to make the pre-cambrian rabbit and really screw up the poor future evolutionists

LOL… I prefer the mind-bendingingness of ourselves having done it via time travel just before the universe snuffs out.

I agree that the motivation is there - but when you have accounts of ID meetings w/folks referring to their bibles… um… I just think that’s pushing it

Quantum Physics seems to say that the time travel method is possible. Can’t say I can wrap my brain around it though

If someone were to believe in Evolution, and quote their Bible when advocating ID not be taught in schools, would that mean you would then opposed evolution being taught?

Motivations may be interesting, but they cannot be dispositive in something like this.

For example, I want American History taught in schools because I am an fundamentalist and want the seperation of church and state to be treated in similar ways as it was in the 1800s because of my religious motivations does that make teaching American history unconstitutional? Or if I valued my Muslim heritage and religion and advocated more history that focused on the Muslim world would that make teaching that history unconstitutional?

Hardly.

If someone were to believe in Evolution, and quote their Bible when advocating ID not be taught in schools, would that mean you would then opposed evolution being taught

Totally different. ID is a metaphysics disguised as science, and Evolution is science disguised as metaphysics Just because it is championed by Christians and ‘Bible Toting Folks” does not make it wrong, it simply shows that it’s not a unreligious thing. If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, and totes a parcel of feathers, it’s probably a duck.

I have never been, nor will I ever be against the teaching of ID in school. I think that it should not be treated as a science unless it passes the muster of science however. I think that a good place to teach it would be in metaphysics.

Deciding to arrange things into categories of ’science’ and ‘non-science’ strikes me as dangerous precedent.

I’d like to hear you expand upon this a little more before I register my vehement disagreement. There is very definitely a way to discriminate science from non-science.

I’ve listened to many arguments about Intelligent Design, none of them have convinced me that it is a viable scientific alternative to teaching Evolution in schools because its core foundation is based around the concept that there is something that we do not understand going on in our natural world. It asks that we simply accept that we don’t understand it, rather than try to grasp the knowledge in our hands.

ID is based on faith, be it Christian or otherwise, it’s based on faith. In order for ID to work, you must first believe that there is a higher power that could have intelligently designed life.

Science is all about the search for truth and the seeking of knowledge. Any “scientific” theory that inherently disallows the search for evidence to support it, is undeniably lacking in science as a basis and has no place in a science classroom.

Bingo! Spot on! Pip Pip!

I have never heard of ID disallowing the search for evidence to support it. I would say that disallowing of the search for evidence to support ID is done primarily by the mainstream scientific establishment who insist, as a matter of faith, that biological evolution can only have been influence by random, natural forces and not by and intelligent intervention.

Positive evidence of design in living systems consists of the semantic, meaningful or functional nature of biological information, the lack of any known law that can explain the sequence of symbols that carry the “messages,” and statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation.

–Intelligent Design Network - Front Page

Lack of any known law to me means look for that law - not assume that some one done it. That seems to be bad science to me. If the guys who developed the Quantum Physics had just said “There is a lack of any known law to explain this, so it must be some intelligent force at work”, headed to the pub and had a frosty cold beverage, where would we be now? We sure would not have Quantum Mechanics, would we?

statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation. Tends? If there is a .0001% chance of something happening, there there is a chance. Honestly, if there was a .0001% of life developing, and we were asking these questions, well, I guess we made that skill check, eh?

Throwing up our hands and saying ‘It’s too hard, we should just assume that some one did it’ is not productive. ID proponents say:

In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose.

OK, that’s fine. If they want to fund and carry out their research, let them. However before they can present it as science in a high school setting, let’s have them at least present some evidence more compelling then “the lack of any known law“.

Is the belief that since there are not any known laws that explain what is observed there must be an unknown law any less faith based then believing in intelligent design?

Strangely enough, Quantum Physics with it’s determination that everything is merely potential until observed demands an ‘observer.’ Ironically there is far better ‘proof’ there of an unknown intelligence effecting the universe than Intelligent Design has.

We know, with certainty, that intelligence exists. We know, with certainty, that intelligence can cause things that would otherwise be impossible to occur. In that sense, invoking intelligent intervention as an explanation for unexplainable events is at least as grounded and realistic as invoking long odds and saying ‘we just got lucky.’ Randomness can explain anything. There is a finite chance that the heads on Easter Island ‘just happened’ to form that way on their own. However, that would not be the best explanation for them. Intelligence is far more likely.

Obviously, if one wants to consider intelligence as a possible factor in human evolution one has to consider the possibility of non-human intelligence. To demand that their is a chance humans could evolve naturally predicates the possibility that non-human intelligence could exist as well.

We must therefore except the possibility that intelligence has effected human evolution. What remains is to analyze whether our particular evolutionary history displays any evidence of tampering or if it can be explained with known causitive effects.

My view is that we do not have any definate evidence of tampering but we also have areas that cannot be explained with known phenomena. I think any disinterested person would conclude that at this point the most likely explanation for human life is natural occuring evolution without any intelligent intervention.

That doesn’t mean though that the quest for evidence of intelligent tampering should be abandoned. First off, although I judge it unlikely, it may yet be correct. Second, the search, and trying to determine what ‘intelligence’ would look like in a background of random mutation is a valuable exercise in and of itself. Third, looking for evidence of intelligence will naturally shine a light on where holes exist in our knowledge of natural evolution and speed up discovery of unknown laws.

Saying ‘if they want to fund and carry out their research let them’ is insufficient. It is demanding that they be sidelined and anything they do observe must not be taken seriously. Let them look, but we won’t consider anything they find or discuss and we won’t publish any of their papers or review them. We will also of course use lack of peer reviewed papers as evidence that they discipline itself is ‘not science’ and use the contention that it is ‘not science’ to justify not publishing any papers.

The question of whether intelligent design should be taught in a high school setting is complex. There is the question of who should decide such a thing. There is the question of is it contitutionally legal to teach such a thing. Then there is the question of what benefits and detriments it would have on students. All three of these questions require serious, and seperate, consideration. From my perspective, these questions are usually muddled together in an incomprehensible format to get an answer that the proponants of either side desire.

For example, when asked if it is legal, sometimes assertions of it being beneficial or detrimental are used as an answer, which is interesting, but irrelevant to the question of is it legal.

Saying ‘if they want to fund and carry out their research let them’ is insufficient. It is demanding that they be sidelined and anything they do observe must not be taken seriously. Let them look, but we won’t consider anything they find or discuss and we won’t publish any of their papers or review them. We will also of course use lack of peer reviewed papers as evidence that they discipline itself is ‘not science’ and use the contention that it is ‘not science’ to justify not publishing any papers.

I never said that they should be shunned. I just said - let them do their research. They talk about ‘design detection’. When they have good evidence of design detected - then let them submit it. I will read it with gusto.

Until then, it’s just a hypothesis - and an flimsy one as well.

To demand that their is a chance humans could evolve naturally predicates the possibility that non-human intelligence could exist as well.

And the reverse is true - to say that life could not evolve on it’s own runs smack into the problem of the first cause. Who created the creator(s)?

ID’s major problem (in my eyes) is that they have not met the burden of proof. They have made some large claims, and expect to be treated on par with an established part of science, with out the time, evidence and work that has been put into the established science.

When they are not allowed to play, they cry persecution. That’s not the way to win the hearts and minds of the Science community.

You have advocated that Intelligent Design be taught as only as mythology or philosophy. If that isn’t arguing that it should be shunned by the scientific community I don’t know what is. Claiming that it intrinsically is Intelligent Design is not science, rather than claiming it does not yet have enough evidence to be regarded as scientific theory (which I would agree with) is in fact demanding that it be shunned.

The reversal you stated, is a false negative. Other than perhaps with initial generation of life neither Intelligent Design nor purely naturalistic evolution can claim any insights into the development of life anywhere other than earth. We have no data to support it. As to the initial generation of life, that is largely a mystery unexplained by anything. Therefore, one could certianly say that the evolution of life on Earth was not natural without of necessity demanding that intelligence cannot evolve in a natural manner.

Saying that our evolutionary history was not natural does not imply that their is no natural evolutionary history anymore then saying the characterics of a domestic dog were influence by intelligent breeding means that intelligence influenced the characteristic of a wolf.

Further, that whole line of arguement, Intelligent Design cannot be true because it means that we are stuck with a ‘turtles all the way down’ scenario is an arguement from consequences, a logical fallacy.

Do ID proponants claim persecution unjustly or are they in fact persecuted? Probably some of both. I would agree that from all I have seen Intelligent Design is an interesting hypothesis but does not have enough backing to be considered a theory. Naturalistic evolution has a better track record, and certainly some things that were thought ‘impossible’ by natural means have turned out to be entirely likely. It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of speciation and the features of life are a result of natural processes rather than intelligent interference. Despite that though, I don’t think that the scientific community as a whole has handled the conflict well and some ‘persecution’ has indeed occured.

You have advocated that Intelligent Design be taught as only as mythology or philosophy. If that isn’t arguing that it should be shunned by the scientific community I don’t know what is.

I still do - never stopped. If folks want to teach it, it should be as metaphysics at this time.

met·a·phys·ics (mĕt’ə-fĭz’ĭks) pronunciation
n.

1. (used with a sing. verb) Philosophy. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
2. (used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.
3. (used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
4. (used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning

ID certainly meets #1 - at this time, and there is a good argument for it meeting #2.

When (and if) it meets the requirements to be defined as a science, then I will advocate it being taught as such. If folks want to do the leg work to get it accepted as a science, more power to them.

I guess that I simply draw the line at teaching of things that are not accepted as science as science. It gives them a legitimacy that is not warranted.

ID might or might not have merits - that is not under discussion. ID certainly can be taught. What is at stake is if ID gets put on the same level as an established science, with out being first established.

Please - Teach ID. In it’s proper class - metaphysics. Not biology.

Umm… not #2 - #3

Fingers got ahead of me

By that definition, I think all science should be taught as metaphysics.

Here is the thing. At the university level, teaching and research are mingled together, and a whole lot of our scientific research is done at universities. Saying that something can’t be taught as science is therefore synonymous to saying it can’t be researched.

This argument is absurd. The fundamental difference between science and Intelligent Design is that ID starts from a conclusion and then tries to construct a theoretical edifice to justify the conclusion. It is teleological.

Scientific disciplines are open-ended. Conclusions are reached only after testable hypotheses have been proven true. If subsequent testing disproves theories THEY ARE DISCARDED. Do you believe that proponents of ID would at any time allow themselves to discard ID if it is someday disproved?

Note: Science in no way excludes the existence of a creator god; it just hasn’t been proven yet. So ID remains an unproven, untestable, and perhaps unprovable system which at present bears no resemblance to science whatsoever.

I would say that disallowing of the search for evidence to support ID is done primarily by the mainstream scientific establishment who insist, as a matter of faith, that biological evolution can only have been influence by random, natural forces and not by and intelligent intervention.

Dave, there are several problems with the above assertion. First, the “disallowing” part. Research, to be “disallowed” by the “scientific mainstream”, would have to be denied two things: funding and publication in peer-reviewed literature. Most scientific research in the U.S. is funded by the government, but private foundations can also do it. It would be impossible for a scientific mainstream to deny funding for ID research for the simple fact that private donors could be found.

Next: denial of publication. Although this might happen, can you cite me a specific example of a ID “scientific” paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal that was rejected? Let’s start there, and then we can review the actual merits of the paper as science once you find me one.

Lastly, “matter of faith”. There is no such faith within science. There is only absence of proof of a more productive paradigm. What cannot be proven is excluded. Science is a process, not a product. Knowledge generated by this process is the legitimate province of a “science class”.

First I will address the denial of publication question. It is of course difficult to evaluate that which is not published simply because it is not published. This article, from NPR, gives an account of what happened to someone who DID publish a peer reviewed ID article.

Sternberg was the editor of an obscure scientific journal loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, where he is also a research associate. Last year, he published in the journal a peer-reviewed article by Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design, an idea which Sternberg himself believes is fatally flawed.

“Why publish it?” Sternberg says. “Because evolutionary biologists are thinking about this. So I thought that by putting this on the table, there could be some reasoned discourse. That’s what I thought, and I was dead wrong.”

At first he heard rumblings of discontent but thought it would blow over. Sternberg says his colleagues and supervisors at the Smithsonian were furious. He says — and an independent report backs him up — that colleagues accused him of fraud, saying they did not believe the Meyer article was really peer reviewed. It was.

Eventually, Sternberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from reprisals. The office launched an investigation. Ultimately, it could not take action, because Sternberg is not an employee of the Smithsonian.

But Sternberg says before closing the case, the special counsel, James McVay, called him with an update. “As he related to me, ‘the Smithsonian Institution’s reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined,’” Sternberg says.

McVay declined an interview. But in a letter to Sternberg, he wrote that officials at the Smithsonian worked with the National Center for Science Education — a group that opposes intelligent design — and outlined “a strategy to have you investigated and discredited.” Retaliation came in many forms, the letter said. They took away his master key and access to research materials. They spread rumors that Sternberg was not really a scientist. He has two Ph.D.’s in biology — from Binghamton University and Florida International University. In short, McVay found a hostile work environment based on religious and political discrimination.

This happened to someone who didn’t advocate ID himself, merely was willing to publish a peer reviewed article on it. Perhaps this is a single isolated case. However, it looks like more than that to me, and it probable that this sort of behavior can indeed chill any attempts to publish.

I think in general you have a romaticized and idealistic view of the objectivity of scientitst. It is always difficult for new theories to gain acceptance, even when data is clear. The controversy over continental drift, which only gained acceptance after the old guard had died out is a good example of this. Another example, this year the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to two Austalian scientists who discovered that ulcers were caused by bacterium, rather than stress.

The two men made their discovery in the early 1980s, but it took a long time to convince the medical community, who viewed them as eccentric.

“The idea of stress and things like that [as the cause of ulcers] was just so entrenched nobody could really believe that it was a bacteria,” Dr Marshall told the Associated Press.

“It had to come from some weird place like Perth, Western Australia, because I think nobody else would have even considered it,” he said.

Scientists are, before anything else, human. They have their blindspots, prejudices and deeply cherished fallacies.

No, Dave, I do not have a romanticized view of scientists. I have been one. I know the process pretty well and would never claim that it is not subject to politics, careerism, etc. We were talking about science, here, not scientists.

Whether it takes one year or several decades for a new idea to be accepted is not the point. New ideas are naturally greeted with skepticism, and rightly so. It is a romantic and idealistic idea that a groundbreaking insight (such as your helicobacter pylori example) would be instantly recognized as such and greeted with accolades and a ticker tape parade.

The scientific method is a reality-testing methodology, nothing more. Those who call themselves scientists must be constantly on guard against individuals or ideas seeking the mantle of legitimacy science can confer. This does not mean that no “bad science” exists. There is a hierarchy of credibility within the scientific community for journals, awards, grants, etc.

I must credit you with quickly finding the weakest point of my earlier post and hammering it, but I am actually more interested in this Meyer article from an “obscure journal loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian.” Remember, we were going to discuss the merits.

You have left untouched my more substantive criticism of ID reaching its conclusions before accumulating its evidence. That alone excludes ID from consideration as science. That is not to say ID doesn’t have merits on its own. Even Junk Science has merits, to certain members of your profession….

I am not sure what you think my profession is, I am a computer programmer.

I don’t know that I agree with the blanket statement that ‘new ideas are treated with skepticism.’ I expect that depends greatly on whether the new ideas match existing expectations or not. One has to wonder, in the above example, whether the notion that stress causes ulcers was treated with proper skepticism in the first place.

‘Science’ is not something that has properties seperate from the properties of those who practice it in anything other than a platonic universe. In the real world, the two are so connected that the limitations of one are part and parcel of the other.

This is not to say that I do not approve of or appreciate scientists. I do and very much, but I don’t think that the process of how science happens is nearly as pure in reality as it should be in theory.

That relates to your contention that ID is not science because the proponants of ID have preconcieved conclusions.

I didn’t address this because honestly, I don’t think it worthy of being addressed. At the bottom level, it is an argument that has been made many times against all sorts of theories, some indeed crackpot theories and others that did in fact turn out to be true. It is saying that only a fool or an ‘eccentric’ would believe such a thing. It of course cannot be proved that those who believe a theory all had a preconcieved notion of the outcome. Some advocates of ID at least claim to have been lead there by the evidence from different beliefs.

Can any scientist ‘prove’ that they didn’t have a preconcieved notion that led them to develop their theory? I doubt it. I expect in fact in many cases preconcieved notions did lead them to their theories.

Einstein famously did not like his quantum theory because it did not match his preconcieved notions, “God does not play dice with the universe.’ He spent considerable effort trying to disprove it himself because of that.

It is nonsensical to imagine that preconcieved notions of how things work are not part of science, yes a good scientist should attempt to be as objective as possible and follow the data whereever it leads, but preconcieved notions are present to some extent regardless.

‘Science’ is not something that has properties seperate from the properties of those who practice it in anything other than a platonic universe. In the real world, the two are so connected that the limitations of one are part and parcel of the other.

I couldn’t agree with you less. Science is a product of scientists, much like a car is a product of an automotive worker. Now, an automotive worker can be slovenly, careless, incompetent, etc., but that does not mean that he should follow knowingly flawed designs (”theories”, if you will). Nor should a design engineer submit a flawed design, resigned to the fact that the automotive worker will muck it up anyway. In the real world, a car is readily separable from those who construct it.

Do theories exist in a “Platonic Universe”? I submit they do, since theories are, um, theoretical. So althought the process of constructing theories is subject to all human frailties, the theory itself should be minimally adulterated by these frailties. In theory. But then, we were talking about theories, weren’t we? And it is inexplicable to me why anyone would advocate introducing known sources of imprecision (such as religion) into a field such as science.

I didn’t address this because honestly, I don’t think it worthy of being addressed. At the bottom level, it is an argument that has been made many times against all sorts of theories, some indeed crackpot theories and others that did in fact turn out to be true. It is saying that only a fool or an ‘eccentric’ would believe such a thing. It of course cannot be proved that those who believe a theory all had a preconcieved notion of the outcome. Some advocates of ID at least claim to have been lead there by the evidence from different beliefs.

This specious paragraph ranks among one of the worst arguments I have ever seen in print. It is ridden with the type of logical fallacies and rhetorical excesses you rarely allow others to get away with on your blog, Dave.

Naturally, in designing a study, a scientist works off of a “hunch”. He formulates a provable/disprovable hypothesis, and does not do so randomly. You may erroneously identify this as a “preconceived notion” but it is much more than that. Whether this hypothesis comports with a pet theory of the scientist or not, it is his ethical imperative to design a study that can either disprove it or fail to disprove it. If he chooses to advocate for it after it is disproven, that’s his choice if he wishes to squander his career. If he falsifies the data, he will likely be found out if no one can replicate the study (one of the first collective reactions to a novel theory is to attempt to achieve the same results in a different laboratory using identical methods).

A theory is a large construct made up of undisproven hypotheses. The hypotheses must be statistically proven and corroborated in independent laboratories. Until ID reaches this threshold, it cannot even be called a theory. This is qualitatively different from saying “only a fool or eccentric would believe such a thing”, and if you can’t see the difference I cannot help you.

Einstein famously did not like his quantum theory because it did not match his preconcieved notions, “God does not play dice with the universe.’ He spent considerable effort trying to disprove it himself because of that.

This supports my points more than it does yours.

BTW, no offense, but I thought you were in the legal profession!

Do theories exist in a “Platonic Universe”? I submit they do, since theories are, um, theoretical. So althought the process of constructing theories is subject to all human frailties, the theory itself should be minimally adulterated by these frailties. In theory. But then, we were talking about theories, weren’t we? And it is inexplicable to me why anyone would advocate introducing known sources of imprecision (such as religion) into a field such as science.

A “Platonic Universe” is comprised of the Real of which our material universe is a mere shadow or copy. As such there is no room for theory only Reality.

Platonic idealism is a crock.

For example, if you have a car - we know what that is. If you take parts off the car when does it stop being a car? What if you take the doors off? The engine out? The wheels off? What part of it makes it a car? What if you take it apart?

When you are left with a pile of scrap parts, what happened to it’s car-ness? Is there some ‘car’ in the sky that defines all cars? There are in fact no cars - cars are not real. Car is a made up term to describe an object.

I would say not. A car is a car because we all agree that it’s a car. Science is science becuase we agree on the definition of the term. A theory is just a real as a car.

I see ID as nothing less then an attempt to change the accepted definition of Science to include the unknowable and unknown.

It must be pick on Dave Day, can I tag in?

The question of whether intelligent design should be taught in a high school setting is complex.

Seems rather simple to me… Yes it COULD be (not necessarily SHOULD be), just not as science.

There is the question of who should decide such a thing.

If this is something trying to be forced into public schools, here’s how I see it. ID is essentially faith-based, regardless of the direction the faith is coming from. The Federal Government should decide whether or not it should be taught because they are upholding the Constitutionality of preventing religion from sneaking into our public schools, regardless of the “sheep’s clothing” it is dressed in.

There is the question of is it contitutionally legal to teach such a thing.

The answer to your first question encompasses your second question. If it is not Constitutionally legal to teach ID as science, then who decides whether or not it should be taught is rather obvious. Who decides whether anything is Constitutionally legal or not? The Federal Government.

Then there is the question of what benefits and detriments it would have on students.

I can see some benefit to a student learning about the possibility of ID along the same lines as learning about Greek and Roman mythology, with a little native American lore sprinkled in as well. It would serve to have them expand their knowledge as to the belief systems of a variety of cultures.

The detriment of teaching this in a science class as scientific fact is obvious. You will confuse students by showing them that you can make up anything and call it science. Enter, FSMism here…

Claiming that it intrinsically is Intelligent Design is not science, rather than claiming it does not yet have enough evidence to be regarded as scientific theory (which I would agree with) is in fact demanding that it be shunned.

Dave, you state here that you “agree that ID does not yet have enough evidence to be regarded as scientific theory”, so what exactly is your stance on it being taught in a science class?

You go on to say that,

I would agree that from all I have seen Intelligent Design is an interesting hypothesis but does not have enough backing to be considered a theory. Naturalistic evolution has a better track record, and certainly some things that were thought ‘impossible’ by natural means have turned out to be entirely likely. It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of speciation and the features of life are a result of natural processes rather than intelligent interference.

All I have to say is, WTF?

As a proponent for the defense of ID your are, at best, confused yourself. I have found over years of discussing ID and/or religion with folks I have run into many who believe as they do merely because they have grown up all their lives being methodically “brain-washed” to think that something “other-worldly” had their hand in creating this planet and all life as we know it. Because of this lifetime of imprinting they cannot consider that they are seeing the world from a fictitious point of view regardless how silly they sound defending their position.

My wife and I get into these types of discussions all of the time. Back to Tsykoduk’s dredging up of the old cliché “If it smells like a duck…”, people will still argue to their death that they swear that the duck is really a FSM!

Can a group of slovenly poorly educated builders of cars produce a good car? I highly doubt it.

I certainly don’t want to come across and anti-science. I am not and I do think that the process as a whole does wonders in granting us more knowledge about the universe. I think it hubris though to believe that what we ‘know’ to be true now is anywhere near complete, and hubris to believe that just because the community as a whole passionately believes something that makes it correct.

Let me also restate that I highly doubt that intelligenct design is correct. I firmly expect that in time naturalistic evolution will be able to expand and account for the unknowns currently present in evolution. Naturalistic evolution will doubtless have to expand in many ways to do so, integrating things that are probably much more fanciful in some ways than intelligent design is.

I do not object to the beliefs of those who advocate naturalistic evolution. I object to their tactics in addressing this controversy.

That is not to say that the tactics of those who advocate ID are necessarily pure either, but do to their minority status less harmful to the ‘institution of science.’

I am concerned that should this sort of tactic prevail in this debate, it will also prevail in later debates, slowing the advance of science.

I acknowledge that the paragraph above which you described as ’specious’ is poorly written. Let me try again to be clear at what I meant, perhaps our disagreement will be lessened.

When you make a charge that something exists only because of pre-concieved conclusions you are engaging in an irrelevant aspect of the debate. To arrive at that conclusion, you must first demonstrate conclusively that the notion is wrong, and obviously wrong. Once you have done that, the motivations behind it become irrellevant. If you have not done that, you are simply making an appeal to motive, a logical fallacy.

One of the problems with an appeal to motive is that it is nearly impossible to disprove. Additionally of course, even with a motive one’s actions may turn out to be correct.

I would say that you take this fallacy even further in your follow up comments by implying that the misguided motives of the advocates of Intelligent Design have automatically resulted in the falsification of data or advocating hypothesis that had been disproved. Certainly I will not contest that motivations can have this effect, the recent South Korean stem cell cloning issue is a dramatic illustration of that, but to transform from can have and effect to either must have that effect or did have that effect requires greater evidence.

I am not sure how much I agree with this statement of yours

A theory is a large construct made up of undisproven hypotheses. The hypotheses must be statistically proven and corroborated in independent laboratories. Until ID reaches this threshold, it cannot even be called a theory.

Is it possible in this definition to have two competing theories in any discipline of science, or must one of them not be a theory yet until such time as the other is displaced?

For clarity, Dave is apparently a new commenter (welcome!) and not another login of mine.

The post above was made in response to K. Pablo, but I think it addresses Mystic confusion about where I stand and why. I will at some other time address the issues further of teaching Intelligent Design as Science in a science class, probably in a different post.

A theory is a large construct made up of undisproven hypotheses. The hypotheses must be statistically proven and corroborated in independent laboratories. Until ID reaches this threshold, it cannot even be called a theory.

and

Is it possible in this definition to have two competing theories in any discipline of science, or must one of them not be a theory yet until such time as the other is displaced?

No. You can have several hypotheses that all explain the same thing, and have none of them disproven yet. Even competing theories - take General Relitivity, Quantium Mechanics and String Theory.

Let’s look at the car that does not exist

I see a Black SUV in my driveway - I have several hypotheses - 1) Justus is over visiting, 2) My Wife bought a new SUV, 3) Some one that I do not know is stealing things.

I can call a freind, and find that he has a strange car in his driveway, and find that he comes to the same conclusions.

When I enter my house and see my wife beaming with new keys, then next hypotheis will be how dranied my bank account is.

Dave (Justus), it isn’t a question of motivations. It is a question of process, and of evidence.

Please note also that within scientific discourse the meaning of the word “theory” is quite different than in other contexts. It means a testable model of reality that coherently and meaningfully organizes a set of hypotheses (this is my definition, a paraphrase of a better one, no doubt). Yes, two non-contradictory theories can co-exist and are often subsumed by a later theory which better accounts for observations and/or apparent contradictions. Science is a product, but never a finished product.

ID is not even remotely close enough to being labeled as science for me to consider it worthy of teaching. It’s too new, too un-tested and too well-backed by religious zealots who are looking for an opportunity to jump on to anything that is not Evolution. Talk to me about teaching kids ID again in ten years, if ID is still a viable topic of conversation.

That is what many of the commenters here are trying to say to you Dave J… in a nutshell. You are getting far too wrapped up in the nuances of what ID could be and the idealism of what ID could do for our world. All I can say to you Dave is that it’s a nice idea. But it’s not science, and won’t be for at least another ten years. This is the way it should be. Theories should be poked full of holes until they fall apart or stand on their own. That is the essence of the scientific method and that is what we should be teaching our children in school.

I guess the Christian will speak up now…. and possibly get slammed, but, I don’t care, it’s my belief and I will stand by my belief.

ID is a theory that science has yet to prove nor disprove, along with evolution. Granted, and this is debatable, there is more “scientific” evidence to prove evolution than there is ID. However, have not humans evolved throughout time? Still, evolution does not answer the question of where humans came from..there are only theories.

In that train of thought, both ID and evolution should not be considered science, they are philosophies and thus should be taught as such.

ID should not be shunned, it should be considered just like evolution, but neither should be taught as the be all to end all. That should be left to the minds absorbing the information to decide for themselves.

As a Christian, I do believe that a higher power created man. It is beyond my comprehension how (and yes, I’ll say it) God did it all. I just have faith that He did. Just like those who believe in evolution have faith that it exists.

Belief is fantastic, and can be a good thing. Believing in ID does not make it science. It makes it metaphysics, spirituality or religion. If we followed the belief makes it science train of thought, we would be studying how Apollo manages to cart the sun around the earth.

A theory, in this science thing that ID wants to be part of, is very narrowly defined. ID does not meet that definition yet.

This does not, in any way, make is something to be shunned.

Calling ID science is like calling a mountain a car. There are parts of that mountain that might well become a car, however at this juncture ID is not science. It needs more time bubbling in the vat before it matures.

As far as having ‘faith’ in evolution - actually I do not. I see the evidence, and accept it. If ID ever garners more, or more compelling, evidence I will be more then happy to start to study it.

Science is not really predicated on faith. It’s predicated on observation of natural events that can be replicated at will.

Pamela,

Evolution is a science that has many pieces of evidence to back it up, ID does not.

Believing in evolution does not answer the question of where humans came from either. Science is merely studying evolution in all its various forms and if they stumble on some branch of our family tree that links us to something evolutionary, then that’s great.

Evolution is a science, ID is not.

The strength of your faith and belief is great, but has no traction in providing supporting documentation for ID being science.

Many cultures throughout our history believed in sacrafices to their gods to improve their crops and weather, yet we now know these are just a primative way to try and explain the mysterious world of nature. Should we also be teaching the sacraficing of animals and virgins as science to our children just in case it could be true?

I think that Pam is arguing that evolution and ID are on the same page. I may be wrong, but what she said seems to imply that Evolution is no more scientifically founded than ID and as such, you can leave them both out of a science class, or leave them both in.

I disagree with that because Evolution has been tested by the scientific method for 148 years. ID is the new kid on the block at just 22 years old. The theory was first discussed in scientific circles (according to ID supporters) in 1967, though it looks like that was just an idea by a single scientist that was picked up by another scientist in 1984, which further fleshes out the idea of Intelligent Design and actually posits that it could be a contender to topple Evolution as the reigning theory of human developement. Twenty-two years is not enough time for a theory to be tested in a scientific venue IMO, particularly when many biologists reject the theory as a new set of clothing for creationism.

It took nearly 75 years for Evolution to become accepted by scientists enough for it to be taught in public schools. Evolution was first suggested in 1858, and was not taught in school science classes until the 1920’s. ID’s got a long way to go to measure up to Evolution in terms of being tested by scientific method.

You can’t reasonably apply a time parameter to an idea to qualify it as theory. If so, many of the “theories” brought about space exploration and genetics to name but two areas would not qualify using the same rule.

Nevertheless the concept of complexity in the universe requiring intelligence has existed for millenia. The teleological arguement eventually gave rise to natural theology, the search for God in nature, which in itself was what fuelled Darwin to take a trip on the Beagle. However, I think it is a moot point.

Variability within a population in an environment which is in a constant state of change would indeed be an “intelligent design” feature if one were to assume a Creator and such variability is crucial to natural selection, which is at the core of modern evolution (vs. Lamarckian evolution for example).

The idea of evolution (seen as an ongoing process) and the idea of creation (as a possible beginning for that process) can go hand in hand. There is no necessary conflict.

What is the real question here?

Should intelligent design be taught in the schools? If so, should it be taught as religion? folklore? science? philosophy? ancient mythology? history (of science)?

[…] My last ID post has generated numerous comments, as is usually the case. As is also not uncommon in this debate, a portion of the comments has revolved around whether ID is science or not, and what a theory means from a scientific viewpoint. Clearly, a scientific theory is not just a ‘guess’ or a ‘belief’ in something. Accepted scientific theories have lots of data to back them up, and even theories that are disputed (not yet accepted) should be different in structure than a theory that is not scientific in nature. A quick web search terms up these definitions for theory and these definitions for scientific theory. […]