Should ID be taught in public schools?

[Dirty Penguin]

A well-thought out evaluation of the current condition.

One thing I would like to say, however, on behalf of creationists (of which I continue to include myself, and not, in my opinion, to be standing in contradiction to science yet).

Perhaps people would be more open to the theory of evolution as a science if it were not already so convinced that it was right. It seems to me to be common practice for proponents of evolution to act as if there IS no logical reason to doubt evolution. Well, excuse me if I don't respectfully disagree. If there is anything that is consistent about science, it is the mystery of science and the abundance of LACK of knowledge. We do our best, of course, to try to make sense of what we have gathered. So it is no wonder that the scientific community holds evolution as its best-effort.

HOWEVER, in my experience, I have found that the common man's belief in evolution to be nothing short of religious. There ARE criticisms of current evolution theory, and they are scientific (and in the scientific community!). The idea that there is no debate is an exercise in willful ignorance.

I see where you are coming from. I understand....but...ToE in no way rules out your god(s).....It is an observation as to how species changed over a long period of time. So far I have seen no theory of evolution that says a god could not be responsible for the origins of man. Evolution is not about the beginnings rather the gradual changes. If you think that the theories are incorrect then take the available testable data..rework it to present your theory. At the present time there is no testable data for an invisible sky-daddy.....

Were you aware of the criticisms of carbon-dating? Of course, if the ideas of the Cretaceous and Jurassic are so ingrained in your understanding of the universe, maybe you can understand exactly what a Christian goes through when they are told that Jesus never existed...

Is Carbon Dating Accurate?
The method

But the difference here is that we have that method and a few others to test against a particular object. We have nothing other than a book that confirms the existence of Yeshua or a handfull of writings by peope who seem to have never actually met the man....It's as though he is as elusive as his father.....

IMO.....

 

[Dirty Penguin]

how so, Phil? I see it as a decent standard of theology - of course, i'm talking about the theological justifications for the existence of God which infer that said God is the architect of the world as we perceive it.

Then we have to credit any and all gods that in our history has been acknowledged for being the creator(s) of heaven, earth, fire, water, wind....etc....

ID stemmed from the religious...particularly those who believe is a sole creator. Can you imagine the churches, synagouges, mosques teaching that the universe, the planet earth and man was created by any one of these so called gods or aliens....?....you know...the ones "they" regard as myths and false gods??

IMO...ID is not science but an attempt to teach the students mythology as fact.

IMO.......

 

[Mike182]

Then you should have paid greater attention. Inferring God is not the same as demonstrating ID, nor is positing a goal-driven quality to natural processes.

i disagree. to use teleological arguments (arguments form design) for example, they infer the existence of a God from postulations about the nature and order of the universe. This necessarily creates a direct correlation between the proposed creation and the proposed creator, inferring intelligence (among others) as a property or characteristic of the creator and, yes, positing a goal-driven quality to the world and universe around us, or at least a goal-driven quality at the beginning of the creation.

these things are discussed and debated in philosophy/theology classes, ID is not out of place.

Yet the proponents of ID make no claim to it being a religion. Interesting ...

ID doesn't have to be a religion, in the same way that readers of Tarot cards don't claim Tarot reading to be a religion. reading Tarot cards is something people who have a certain cosmological view do, the Tarot cards don't form the basis of that cosmological view but the cosmological view supports a belief in Tarot cards as a tool for divination. thus Tarot cards are distinctively a part of their religion, despite the fact that Tarot cards on their own do not form a religion. My point here is ID can be covered in a world religion class without being a world religion, because it is distinctively a part of some world religions. the fact that ID is not a religion in and of itself does not mean it is out of place in a world religion class.

 

[Mike182]

Then we have to credit any and all gods that in our history has been acknowledged for being the creator(s) of heaven, earth, fire, water, wind....etc....

why do we? inferring that A God created the universe does not infer that every story of creation is true. It just infers that one of them could be true. what i'm trying to say is that, it justifies a creationist belief, but it doesn't give an account or justification to an account of exactly how the creation happened.

ID stemmed from the religious...particularly those who believe is a sole creator. Can you imagine the churches, synagouges, mosques teaching that the universe, the planet earth and man was created by any one of these so called gods or aliens....?....you know...the ones "they" regard as myths and false gods??

no, i can see them proselytising for their own God over the others - so what's new?

IMO...ID is not science but an attempt to teach the students mythology as fact.

IMO.......

like i said, ID doesn't give justification to any account or mythology, so i disagree with you here. i agree that many people do use it to try and push their mythology as fact, but the truth is they have no justification for this.

 

[camanintx]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to being described as "observing it happening" when it comes to evolution. I've seen a handful of graphs and world full of unexplained mysteries.

Maybe you haven't been looking in the right places.

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab - life - 09 June 2008 - New Scientist

 

[rocketman]

No! The so called “Center for Science and Culture” is not out to help any people. This article was not written for the purpose of helping people understand. At best it is written to prevent people from sounding stupid, but not to actually educate them...

Talk about pedantic overeaction. Like it or not, that webpage does help people who have issues with TOE phrase their words correctly, nothing more or nothing less. If a secular site was available that explains to skeptics of TOE how to phrase their words I would have quoted it. If you are worried that people are going to run off and become IDers after reading that webpage then I would say don't worry about it, it'd take more than that page.

 

[Autodidact]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to being described as "observing it happening" when it comes to evolution. I've seen a handful of graphs and world full of unexplained mysteries.

Actual new species have been observed to evolve in the lab; I can give you cites if you like. But the grand ToE is something that happens over millions of years; can't be observed in a single lifetime, so no one is going to observe that any more than you can observe the earth slowing down; but it's still happening.

 

[Autodidact]

A well-thought out evaluation of the current condition.

One thing I would like to say, however, on behalf of creationists (of which I continue to include myself, and not, in my opinion, to be standing in contradiction to science yet).

If you're a Young Earth Creationist, then you stand in contradiction of virtually all of modern science.

Perhaps people would be more open to the theory of evolution as a science if it were not already so convinced that it was right.

?!?! People oppose ToE being taught as science because science is certain it's correct? What should we teach, crackpot ideas that we're not sure of? Biology teaches ToE because it is our current understanding of the truth, upon which all of Biology is based.

It seems to me to be common practice for proponents of evolution to act as if there IS no logical reason to doubt evolution. Well, excuse me if I don't respectfully disagree. If there is anything that is consistent about science, it is the mystery of science and the abundance of LACK of knowledge. We do our best, of course, to try to make sense of what we have gathered. So it is no wonder that the scientific community holds evolution as its best-effort.

Yeah, that's cuz evolution is science, and subject to the same level of doubt and uncertainty as heliocentrism and electricity. Should we stop teaching that too?

HOWEVER, in my experience, I have found that the common man's belief in evolution to be nothing short of religious. There ARE criticisms of current evolution theory, and they are scientific (and in the scientific community!). The idea that there is no debate is an exercise in willful ignorance.

NO, there aren't.

Were you aware of the criticisms of carbon-dating? Of course, if the ideas of the Cretaceous and Jurassic are so ingrained in your understanding of the universe, maybe you can understand exactly what a Christian goes through when they are told that Jesus never existed...

Is Carbon Dating Accurate?
The method

There are no current scientific criticisms of radio-metric dating in the world physics community, only a manufactered and utterly ridiculous but half-way sciencey sounding baloney from the liars at AIG and the like.

btw, why are you focused on carbon dating only?

 

[rocketman]

If you're a Young Earth Creationist, then you stand in contradiction of virtually all of modern science.

"All of modern science" is an enormously vast and diverse phenomenon. While I agree with your statement to a point I think you should adjust it to suit the reality of the situation. The reality is that YECers accept all of the basic laws of particle physics, chemistry, wave theory, quantum mechanics, gravity, observed evolution etc etc. Where they stand in contradiction to (some, nowhere near all) of modern science is when they disagree with assumptions and interpretaions of what may have happened in the past.

They do not dispute, say for example, that a certain number may show up on an instrument that is measuring K-Ar radiometric decay. But they will ask what causes anomolous readings, they may ask why one type of dating gives very different results compared to another, and they will often ask if the assumptions on which the instrument are calibrated are true, with the response being of-course that the assumptions that are used by modern science relating to the distant past are 'warranted'. They are allowed to question things: that hardly puts them in contradiction of "virtually all of modern science." I'm talking about the sane majority, not the crazy fringe.

At any rate, one can be an old-earth creationist and probably have no more issues with 'modern' science than some scientists themselves do with their differing opinions.

 

[Sunstone]

of course, i'm talking about the theological justifications for the existence of God which infer that said God is the architect of the world as we perceive it.

I certainly agree the great arguments for and against the existence of god should be taught in philosophy and/or theology courses. But ID, as its being pushed in the States, is a different animal. It is essentially an attack on evolution. A dishonest attack at that.

So, for instance, ID is a non-falsifiable speculation posing as a scientific theory -- which is quite distinct, when you think about it, from, say, the teleological argument for the existence of deity.

 

[Sunstone]

Talk about pedantic overeaction.

A pedantic overreaction? The Discovery Organization's website is extremely well known as very often a source of exaggerations, misinformation and lies. What's pedantic about pointing that out?

 

[Kcnorwood]

If I'm not mistaken there are people who believe that ID teaches that the Judeo- Christian God created the universe, so what would be the difference in just teaching religion period?

 

[blackout]

First thank you (camanantx & 9-10ths)
for explaining the nuance of the word "theory" to me
as it applies to science.

But now I wonder.....
Is there ANY way that science could test the *theory that the Universe is intelligent?
(and designed itself intelligently?)

(Rocketman, I'm not clicking unknown links right now,
but will check yours out at a later date.)

 

[rocketman]

A pedantic overreaction? The Discovery Organization's website is extremely well known as very often a source of exaggerations, misinformation and lies. What's pedantic about pointing that out?

I wasn't steering UV towards any of their other material, Sunstone.

I said upfront that it was an ID site.

I was trying to help.

Nothing on the webpage I linked to was untoward.

If there is a better webpage for people who have doubts and aren't sure how to phrase their words then show me the link.

 

[rocketman]

But now I wonder.....
Is there ANY way that science could test the *theory that the Universe is intelligent?
(and designed itself intelligently?)

This would for all intents and purposes be indistunguishable from a test for an intelligent designer imo, so the answer is no.

(Rocketman, I'm not clicking unknown links right now,
but will check yours out at a later date.)

It's ok, the others seem to have better known what you were after.

 

[blackout]

This would for all intents and purposes be indistunguishable from a test for an intelligent designer imo, so the answer is no.

Well, for me, the UniVerse itself IS "God".
How could you ever begin to test or prove that it intelligently designs itself, or not?

 

[rocketman]

Well, for me, the UniVerse itself IS "God".

Sweet.

How could you ever begin to test or prove that it intelligently designs itself, or not?

Exactly.

Perhaps there would be a logical clue that can only have been left by a designer, but I don't see how a scientific test could be framed to find it without knowing what it is.

 

[kai]

I'm not really sure it should. I honestly don't know much about arguments for ID, but it seems, on the surface, to simply desire to insert a religious perspective alongside a scientific one.

I understand the concept, that everything did not come from nothing, necessarily from something. But should that be taught alongside evolution? They are not really related. If anything, it is an idea that belongs in either philosophy or some more complicated science like quantum physics. Doesn't intelligent design accept evolution? Wouldn't it then be unnecessary to teach it as an alternative to evolution?

Honestly, I don't think it is a school's responsibility to make children aware of religious beliefs. That's why we have religion. If parents are so upset about this stuff, that's what bible schools are for, right? We do have private schools.

Intelligent Design isn't science, in my opinion. It is a perspective on science. Should students be made aware that this perspective exists? I'm not sure. What do you think? We teach the histories of religions in schools, don't we? Comparative religions?

why not? but it should be taught in religious education classes,

 

[blackout]

Science by it's very nature can only test for certain things then.
(please someone correct me if I'm wrong)

It certainly seems unfair to simply "dismiss" ideas
just because the medium of Science is not equipt to test and measure those ideas.

I might also add, that I really have no vested opinion/knowledge
about either evolution or ID. ie, I am not "defending" anything here.
Just probing a bit.

 

[rocketman]

Science by it's very nature can only test for certain things then.
(please someone correct me if I'm wrong)

You are correct.

It certainly seems unfair to simply "dismiss" ideas
just because the medium of Science is not equipt to test and measure those ideas.

Right. But we must be careful not to allow the scientific method to become diluted.

I might also add, that I really have no vested opinion/knowledge
about either evolution or ID. ie, I am not "defending" anything here.
Just probing a bit.

Nothing wrong with that.