Intelligent Design struck down in Federal Court

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

I think you are missing the point I have been making for a long time.

I don't want ID taught in schools, and I also don't want non-ID taught in public schools to students.

However, if the "scientists" demand that they have to offer up their theory and explanations of life, then to be fair ID should have as much of a chance to present their case.

I prefer, have preferred, and will prefer that only facts be taught in school, fact that would lead no one to any particular conclusion on their own.

It is the conclusive agenda of the current group of scientists who seek to lead school children to a non God atheistic view of the world (theirs) that I protest against.

I see harm in only offering one possible explanation and theory. I see no harm in providing school children that if they are forced by curriculum to be exposed and or indoctrinated into to speculative theories, that an alternate point of view and theory be provided.

The people as a whole are clearly rejecting the grip of the scientific community and their attempting to legislate their world view onto students in public schools.

The strong resistance expressed here at ET by the atheistic ET community for ID theory to be offered in biology as a possible alternative to evolutionary theory, i.e. Darwinism in science classes confirms my suspicions that there is a control issue at work.

I firmly believe the atheistic community seeks to program children with the belief systems they have adopted, and this is 100% political in nature.

The way this has been handled by the ID community, which unfortunately is largely known as and supported by fundamentalist Christians.

I personally am not a Christian and would hate to have the Bible used as some foundation for the teaching of ID.

My ID view is much broader and not defined in any particular "designer" or particular embodiment of the power of design and guidance.

It could be a big computer running the entire show that is fully lifeless but was programmed incalculable years ago to plan and organize life as it has unfolded to its present state.

My issue with evolution is the preference to random ignorant chance, when in fact there is no way to determine probabilistically that living beings are more likely to have been a product of ignorant chance than by intelligent design.

The door to ID needs to be kept wide open so that students minds are kept wide open. Eliminating a genuine possibility or perhaps by my thinking a probability makes no sense, and demonstrates a closed minded group who isn't really seeking truth, but rather gathering data to support a preconceived theory or conclusion.

Quote from kjkent1:

I see. You can't prove ID is true by any scientific method, so you will resort to simply proclaiming it to be true based on the weight of your empirical observations of nature and your belief in what those observations reveal.

And, you want your "scientific explanation" taught as science.

Go to http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/ and read.

Now, you can choose to go with what you believe to be true, i.e., that based upon your personal observation of the world, order can only develop as the result of the purposeful acts of an intelligent designer, or you can accept the fact Dr. Thomas Schneider of the National Institute of Health has scientifically proven, that random mutation can produce an ordered system from disordered base chemical constituents.

If you do not accept the proof of Schneider's work, then it's up to you to show why it is false. If you succeed, then you will have achieved what neither Michael Behe or William Dembski have been able to do.

Schneider's work falsifies Behe's and Dembski's and proves evolution is a mathematically sound proposition.

You challenged me earlier in the thread to disprove intelligent design. As I have pointed out, that is an impossibility, because proof of God is not possible by any natural methodology.

However, Schneider's work scientifically proves that evolution can do what you claim only an intelligent designer can do, i.e., produce order from chaos.

So, now I challenge you to scientifically prove that either (1) Schneider's work is incorrect, or (2) that an intelligent designer exists.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:


I personally am not a Christian and would hate to have the Bible used as some foundation for the teaching of ID.

.

what you cant seem to grasp is that id is code for "the christian god created man from clay 6000 years ago just as it says in the bible".

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20...XU2H178B2YD;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

'Intelligent design': What do scientists fear?

Thu Dec 1, 6:41 AM ET

The issue: Should public schools teach "intelligent design," the theory that the universe and its life forms are so complex that a higher cause must have been involved in making them? (Related: Read previous columns)

Bob: Cal, I'm going to stray from the consensus liberal line on the issue of intelligent design. The Dover, Pa., school board had a good reason to allow the teaching of intelligent design as a scientific alternative to Darwinism in the school system's science classes. Despite the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that evolution is the sole explanation for all living things, these scientists have yet to prove the theory conclusively. Not only are there still gaping holes in the evolutionary chain from single cells to man, the science crowd hasn't come close to explaining why only man among all living things has a conscience, a moral framework and a free will.

Cal: What I find curious about this debate, not only in Pennsylvania, but in Kansas and throughout the country, is that so many scientists and educators are behaving like fundamentalist secularists. Only they will define science. They alone will decide which scientific theories and information will be taught to students. That sounds like mind control to me, Bob. If their science is so strong on the issue of origins, why not let the arguments supporting intelligent design into the classroom where it can be debunked if it can't be defended? You liberals are always accusing us conservatives of censorship. It sounds like your side has picked up the disease on this one.

Bob: One reason is that your side insists on making this debate about religion. I believe there is a good science debate here. Many people believe that the Christian community is using intelligent design as a backdoor for teaching creationism. If not, this issue would not be in the federal courts in a constitutional argument over separation of church and state. But there are a number of serious scientists who believe in intelligent design as a theory of evolution based on scientific argument.

Cal: Exactly right, Bob. And many of them have advanced degrees from the same universities from which the evolutionary scientists have graduated. And what about some of the greatest names in science - men like Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Johannes Kepler and Galileo? Charles Darwin was a devout Christian as a young man, but his religious views - like his scientific ones - "evolved" as he got older. By the time he wrote The Origin of Species, he was as good a practical secularist as any non-believer. Was the later Darwin smarter than the combined wisdom of those scientists who believed the universe did not come into existence by chance but had a creator behind it? Readers can Google "scientists and intelligent design" for the names of many more scientists who believed someone was behind what we see in the sky with our eyes and beyond through a telescopic eye.

Bob: Good, now you're talking science, not theology.

Cal: But I doubt the secular fundamentalists and their judicial friends will ever allow this debate to occur. That's why I support, for this reason and many others, pulling conservative and Christian kids out of public schools and placing them in private or home-school environments where they can get a real and truthful education.

Bob: Cal, if you encourage Christian believers to take their kids out of public schools, then it's likely intelligent design will never get a fair hearing and forever be seen as Biblical creation only. That's not fair to those who want competing theories to Darwin introduced as a scientific debate, not a theological food fight.

Cal: Fair point, Bob, but the primary responsibility of parents is to their children. If they are teaching them one thing at home and in their place of worship, and they are subsidizing with their taxes the teaching of conflicting views - which are taught as truth in the government schools - they are undermining the very things in which they believe. School choice would settle a lot of this, but those politically beholden to the National Education Association aren't about to allow parents the freedom to choose where to educate their kids.

Bob: Some public school systems may well be hostile to Christian dogma, but most are looking at intelligent design as a church-state issue, and until told otherwise by the federal courts will continue to keep the debate out of science classes. You can't blame them. Nearly the entire school board in Dover was defeated over this very issue in the last election. Pulling Christian kids from public schools only helps the "Darwin only" science crowd.

Cal: Scientists have accepted theories in the past that proved to be wrong. Science is supposed to be about openness to competing ideas. But the very people who want to impose evolution as the only scientific explanation for life on the planet violate this basic tenet of science when it comes to intelligent design.

Bob: True, but these scientists will say the overwhelming body of evidence supports evolution, and no other theory comes close. Well, of course it doesn't because no other theory has been studied seriously. This crowd has a vested interest in proving Darwin correct, and anything else is dismissed out of hand. This from the same scientific community that for years believed the universe was shrinking. They have since discovered the Big Bang and now believe the universe is expanding.

Cal: You're making my point, Bob. Science advances by considering all theories and evidence, not by conspiring to teach only one to the exclusion of others. This is Flat Earth Society thinking.

Bob: But if this debate continues to be viewed as an attempt by fundamentalist Christians to get their beliefs into the public schools, then intelligent design will never get a fair hearing, and it deserves one. The scientists who view intelligent design as a science, not a dogma, believe that the smallest building blocks of life are so complex that they couldn't simply evolve from amoebas. That's about as far as I can go in my understanding of all this.

Cal: What has been set up is a false premise: that the Bible and science are in conflict and that nothing in Scripture can be tested scientifically. That is just not true. But when God asks Job - "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?" - the question should make scientists humble about their certainties concerning the origins of the earth and of human life.

Bob: There you go again mixing science with the Bible. We both want to see intelligent design introduced into the scientific debate. Can't we leave the Bible out of this while we're trying to convince the public that this is a debate about science? It's a means-ends issue, Cal.

Cal: Some Christians are trying to water down what they really believe for the wrong reasons. It would be better for them to exit the government schools so they can teach their beliefs without compromise. For those who remain - like you - and want intelligent design taught alongside evolution, why not have a series of televised debates so the public could make up its own mind?

Bob: That's a start. The scientific community has gone out of its way to depict intelligent design as a religious view. Most people have no idea that serious scientists believe there is a strong case for intelligent design. These scientists have been denied a forum, and a series of public debates would be educational and give the intelligent design researchers a chance to tell their side.

Cal: Surely C-SPAN would carry the debate if the scientists were prominent enough. Anyone opposing the debate would be rightly labeled a censor and anti-academic freedom. That should make the liberals choke. Sound like a good idea to you, Bob (except the part about choking liberals)?

Bob: I'm all for it. I just wonder if the Darwinists will show up.

Cal: Maybe we can offer them some bananas as an incentive. As they eat them, they can contemplate their heritage.

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckelis a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.

 

[kjkent1]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

I think you are missing the point I have been making for a long time.

I don't want ID taught in schools, and I also don't want non-ID taught in public schools to students.

However, if the "scientists" demand that they have to offer up their theory and explanations of life, then to be fair ID should have as much of a chance to present their case.

I prefer, have preferred, and will prefer that only facts be taught in school, fact that would lead no one to any particular conclusion on their own.

It is the conclusive agenda of the current group of scientists who seek to lead school children to a non God atheistic view of the world (theirs) that I protest against.

I see harm in only offering one possible explanation and theory. I see no harm in providing school children that if they are forced by curriculum to be exposed and or indoctrinated into to speculative theories, that an alternate point of view and theory be provided.

The people as a whole are clearly rejecting the grip of the scientific community and their attempting to legislate their world view onto students in public schools.

The strong resistance expressed here at ET by the atheistic ET community for ID theory to be offered in biology as a possible alternative to evolutionary theory, i.e. Darwinism in science classes confirms my suspicions that there is a control issue at work.

I firmly believe the atheistic community seeks to program children with the belief systems they have adopted, and this is 100% political in nature.

The way this has been handled by the ID community, which unfortunately is largely known as and supported by fundamentalist Christians.

I personally am not a Christian and would hate to have the Bible used as some foundation for the teaching of ID.

My ID view is much broader and not defined in any particular "designer" or particular embodiment of the power of design and guidance.

It could be a big computer running the entire show that is fully lifeless but was programmed incalculable years ago to plan and organize life as it has unfolded to its present state.

My issue with evolution is the preference to random ignorant chance, when in fact there is no way to determine probabilistically that living beings are more likely to have been a product of ignorant chance than by intelligent design.

The door to ID needs to be kept wide open so that students minds are kept wide open. Eliminating a genuine possibility or perhaps by my thinking a probability makes no sense, and demonstrates a closed minded group who isn't really seeking truth, but rather gathering data to support a preconceived theory or conclusion.

I'm not missing anything. You avoided my challenge and then you state as if it were self evident that "there is no way to determine probabilistically that living beings are more likely to have been a product of ignorant chance than by intelligent design."

And, you did this immediately after I pointed you to a site where there exists a scientific proof that living beings can be produced by what you always describe as "random ignorant chance."

So, on one side of the scale we have a scientific proof of the capability of evoltion to deliver the very thing that you state is impossible, i.e., complexity from disorder, and on the other side we have you and the other proponents of ID proclaiming that it is not possible, but providing no scientific proof, and merely basing their proclamation on the weight of their respective personal experiences and belief systems.

Evolution works and produces the desired result. Could God have started the process? Of course, and there's no reason why this can't be stated as an unknowable possibility.

But, that unknowable possibility does not discredit evolution, because evolution is scientifically proven to work as proposed.

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

That is the same thing as saying the word God is necessarily related to and owned by Christians.

I support the generic principle of life as a product of intelligent design over the concept of life as a product of random chance.

Any particular religious belief or dogma has nothing at all to do with this.

This is why the debate needs to advance beyond the grip of fundamentalist Christians to broaden the base to include any and/or all religious beliefs.

I don't have any conflict at all with science. There is nothing that has been discovered by scientists that conflicts with anything at all in my own theology.

Quote from vhehn:

what you cant seem to grasp is that id is code for "the christian god created man from clay 6000 years ago just as it says in the bible".

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

That is the same thing as saying the word God is necessarily related to and owned by Christians.

I support the generic principle of life as a product of intelligent design over the concept of life as a product of random chance.

Any particular religious belief or dogma has nothing at all to do with this.

This is why the debate needs to advance beyond the grip of fundamentalist Christians to broaden the base to include any and/or all religious beliefs.

I don't have any conflict at all with science. There is nothing that has been discovered by scientists that conflicts with anything at all in my own theology.

do you think christians support id because they want to expand id to include all religions? get real.

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

I don't care about their concept of ID.

I am discussing something quite different than they are. I am sure many would reject what I am talking about when it comes to an ID theory.

To me this is much bigger than the anti Christians versus the Christians.

Quote from vhehn:

do you think christians support id because they want to expand id to include all religions? get real.

 

[energytraderus]

Postors here continue to miss the point: whether ID explains life is a matter of opinion; for those here dull, even top scientists disagree on the nature of mutation. The point here is why a federal court heard this case and--even more inportantly--why the media gave this obscure issue so much coverage. For those dull, note the chief instigator is a Jew named Rothschild. The attack on ID is a direct attack by Jews on Christian fundamentalists.

The lack of any discrenment among so many traders here brilliantly illustrates why so many quants and economists lose in markets. Warren Buffet continues to beat his head against a wall having painstakingly examined months of current account and TICS data while his long forex positions continue to lose hugely. Warren evidently never considered that now speculators might be focusing on other factors than the obvious ones. Likewise, postors here haven't considered that a federal court's decision to hear ID had nothing to do with whether ID is "scientific" or not.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

I don't care about their concept of ID.

I am discussing something quite different than they are. I am sure many would reject what I am talking about when it comes to an ID theory.

To me this is much bigger than the anti Christians versus the Christians.

well it that case it will never be taught anyplace. the only supporters of id, besides you, are christians who think they can use it to sneak belief in creation by the christian god back into the schools. once it becomes apparent to them that it might teach something besides biblical creationism they will drop it and that leaves no support at all.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from energytraderus:

Postors here continue to miss the point: whether ID explains life is a matter of opinion; for those here dull, even top scientists disagree on the nature of mutation. The point here is why a federal court heard this case and--even more inportantly--why the media gave this obscure issue so much coverage. For those dull, note the chief instigator is a Jew named Rothschild. The attack on ID is a direct attack by Jews on Christian fundamentalists.

those of us who use evidence as our guide don't need a bunch of jews telling us what to think. we reject biblical fables on the evidence.
in case you are unaware the biblical creation story is in the old testament. the old testament is a jewish document.