ID is not a valid scientific hypothesis, so ID should not be taught in science class

[Charlemagne_II]

The purpose of science is to inquire, and we inquire because it serves our human purposes to do so and may be a human purpose in and of itself.

ricmat raises an interesting point

Why can humans see purposes in the things they do (science, for example) but then evade the purpose for which they themselves exist, preferring to see themselves as purposeless (atheism) in the grand scheme of things?

This reduction to purposelessness comes about through science ultimately, because science refuses to confront any possibility of metaphysical realities, so infatuated with itself that only science matters … not anything else.

Einstein’s theory of relativity was true (and respected enough to be published in academic journals) even before he was able to verify it by the fulfillment of predictions based on it.

Why couldn’t Intelligent Design be accorded some scientific respectability on the basis of fixed natural laws by which we can predict many things about the behavior of the universe (for example that some day this planet will perish)?

Nicolaus Copernicus: “The universe has been wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator.”

Johannes Kepler: “[May] God who is most admirable in his works … deign to grant us the grace to bring to light and illuminate the profundity of his wisdom in the visible (and accordingly intelligible) creation of this world.”

Galileo Galilei: “The Holy Bible and the phenomenon of nature proceed alike from the divine Word.”

Isaac Newton: “This most beautiful system [the universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton

 

[edwest2]

Gravity and electricity are not theories. Neither is evolution. It is an observation. But there are theories about these things. Design is an observation, but we have no theory of design, no testable hypothesis concerning design. Except, perhaps, for the claim that abiogensis is natuarlly impossible, which is falsifiable and yet to be falsified. But abiogensis is not really part of evolutionary theory.

Human beings are constantly designing things. The computer you are using was designed by an intelligence. It could not have come into existence on its own.

A living cell is very complex and could not have come into existence on its own. Intelligence is required to make purposeful artifacts, whether it is called art, a computer or an automobile. Purposeful artifacts are only made by an intelligence. Many books have been written about design; design created by an intelligence. Wherever you are, you are surrounding by artifacts designed by an intelligence.

Peace,
Ed

 

[leeanne]

Instead of teaching one or the other I think it would be more illuminating if schools taught the current controversy in evolution and the 4 schools of thought. At least students would learn 1. enough to discuss this intelligently and 2. something about how science and religion determine what is and isn’t valid. I think this article does a good job of exploring this and could certainly be a starting point. It explores the status of ID in relation to the other 3 schools of Neo-Darwinism, Meta-Darwinism and Creationism. The article can be found here: catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8796

 

[The_Barbarian]

Instead of teaching one or the other I think it would be more illuminating if schools taught the current controversy in evolution and the 4 schools of thought. At least students would learn 1. enough to discuss this intelligently and 2. something about how science and religion determine what is and isn’t valid. I think this article does a good job of exploring this and could certainly be a starting point. It explores the status of ID in relation to the other 3 schools of Neo-Darwinism, Meta-Darwinism and Creationism. The article can be found here: catholicculture.org/cult…fm?recnum=8796

With the exception of neo-Darwinism, they could be properly taught in philosophy or religion classes. Neo-Darwinism, being a scientific theory, might not fit so well there.

 

[penguinatheart]

This question is incredibly simple. ID / creationism is not a scientific hypothesis, because it cannot be proven through experimentation. The Catholic Church accepts this. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Science does not claim to be able to prove or disprove the existence of a higher power, precisely because those things cannot be experimented with. Catholic schools have for a while now taught evolution in science and creationism in religion. The two are different wordings for the same phenomenon, as explained by two different disciplines.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I think a great deal of trouble about the need to teach Intelligent Design could be avoided, and would be avoided, if publishers of high school biology texts would preface or end the chapter on evolution with the following quote from the concluding chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

 

[paxromana]

I think a great deal of trouble about the need to teach Intelligent Design could be avoided, and would be avoided, if publishers of high school biology texts would preface or end the chapter on evolution with the following quote from the concluding chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

I like the quote.

Of course that The Creator breathed life in to one or more species long ago is not a scientific explanation and that Homo Sapiens evolved from that first species is not very Christian.

 

[edwest2]

This question is incredibly simple. ID / creationism is not a scientific hypothesis, because it cannot be proven through experimentation. The Catholic Church accepts this. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Science does not claim to be able to prove or disprove the existence of a higher power, precisely because those things cannot be experimented with. Catholic schools have for a while now taught evolution in science and creationism in religion. The two are different wordings for the same phenomenon, as explained by two different disciplines.

The only thing wrong with Intelligent Design, for some, is their fear that it could point to God. Both John Paul II and Cardinal Schoenborn have recognized design in nature (see Finding Design in Nature by Cardinal Schoenborn, New York Times). This is why they bring this up. Now, if a scientist proposed the idea that mortal alien beings made man, that would please them. The idea that God made them does not. It’s threatening.

How much experimentation is required to prove that a shard of clay dug from the ground is A) A piece of hardened clay, or B) A fragment of an ancient clay pot with intelligible markings on it?

Intelligent Design simply means that living biological beings did not spontaneously come to existence or life.

Peace,
Ed

 

[JuneBug72]

The above being stipulated to, I would at least like moronic science teachers to not delve into what they have limited knowledge of - like theology, religion and philosophy - and work so hard to undermine them. Just teach science.

Relativity, evolution, evolutionary biology, quantum physics, general science, chemistry, p-chem, physiology, and so on. Go for it! Teach them all.

Leela, I would think you might agree with this, no?

jd

I think scientific community in many cases is reacting to theologians attempting to undermine science…

 

[JDaniel]

I think scientific community in many cases is reacting to theologians attempting to undermine science…

Maybe, but they started it! :whacky: :crying:

jd

 

[Henry_Green]

Um, “evolutionism”, like Creationism/ID, aren’t really philosophies. They are simply weird misunderstandings about evolutionary theory (evolutionism) and God (Creationism/ID)

I find evolutionists who have convinced themselves those of us who do not choose to believe in spontaneous generation and transformism just don’t understand evolution uninteresting people.

Who decides weird?

Apparently your philosophy is everyone is a potential screwball and a screwball is anyone who disagrees with you.

BTW since you are an “expert” how did a afarensis twice make footprints indistinguishable from human with very greatly curved fingers and toes and the exaggerated side to side gait of an ape? Magic?

 

[Henry_Green]

Maybe, but they started it! :whacky: :crying:

jd

Below is a list of every law of science and major branch of science started by evolutionists.

 

[Henry_Green]

I think a great deal of trouble about the need to teach Intelligent Design could be avoided, and would be avoided, if publishers of high school biology texts would preface or end the chapter on evolution with the following quote from the concluding chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

 

[Henry_Green]

I think a great deal of trouble about the need to teach Intelligent Design could be avoided, and would be avoided, if publishers of high school biology texts would preface or end the chapter on evolution with the following quote from the concluding chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

Trying to paint Darwin as anything but a materialist would be deceptive. We know from his private writings he said those things about a creator for his wife’s benefit. No one was a greater expert on Darwin that Steven Gould and he agreed that Darwin was a materialist, a atheist.

The whole point of Darwinism is a pitiless universe without reason or purpose.
He was a bitter man who lost his child and had decided that Genesis was not true because of long since refuted interpretations of the geology of S.A. and the teachings of the anti-Christian lawyer Charles Lyell.

In Darwin’s account, evolutionary change was largely the result of the random, ultimately purposeless process of natural selection. This suggests a thoroughly materialist picture of the world that banishes vital forces and preordained purposes from nature, and which implies that mental phenomena emerge when matter is arranged in complex ways.

Such ideas undermine not only traditional religious views of divine creation, but also versions of theism [deism actually}, which claim that God works through evolution.

“Love of the deity effect of organization [of the brain], oh you materialist!” he wrote privately in the late 1830s. “Why is thought being a secretion of brain more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? It is our arrogance, our admiration of ourselves.”

If science is the absolute truth then what good is Catholicism? Anyone who ever read the Nicene Creed knows that evolution is anti-God.

All Catholics were young earth creationist as far back as Augustine right up to the 9th century . Has the Bible changed? Is God no longer the creator? Are not all things made through Christ Jesus?

Is Wikipedia a higher authority that the Almighty? Wikipedia is a joke, is your god a joke?

How absurd for any Christian to be pro evolution. If science is the ultimate authority I hate to inform you that any scientist, evolutionists. creationist, or ID theorists will tell you that virgins don’t give birth or lead sinless lives , they don’t ascend in to heaven and people don’t walk on water or rise from the dead either.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Trying to paint Darwin as anything but a materialist would be deceptive.

The most egregious deception would be to say, “sure he wrote a lot of things, but he didn’t mean them.”

No one was a greater expert on Darwin that Steven Gould and he agreed that Darwin was a materialist, a atheist.

Actually, Gould was familiar with Darwin’s theory, and had incidentally studied some aspects of his life, but was certainly no expert on Darwin’s life. Here’s a scholar who actually has studied the life of Darwin:

**Nick Spencer, director of studies at Theos, and co-author of the report, said: “The problem is that evolution has become mixed up with all sorts of ideas - like the belief that there is no God, or no purpose or no absolute morality in life - which people find very difficult to accept. The tragedy is that this was never Darwin’s position.”

Paul Woolley, director of Theos, added: "Darwin was a truly great natural scientist - not a theologian or a philosopher. Both his theory and the tragic loss of his favourite daughter played a role in his own loss of Christian faith. But, by his own admission, even in his wildest fluctuations, he was never an atheist.

"Unfortunately, he is being used by certain atheists today (Tuesday, 03 February) to promote their cause.

“Darwin is caught in the crossfire between creationists on one side and certain public atheists on the other. It’s a battle in which everybody suffers.”

Dr John van Wyhe, a science historian at Cambridge University and expert on Darwin, said: "I have long made it a point, when I talk about Darwin, to stress that Darwin often said you could believe in God and evolution.

"I am no less an atheist than Richard Dawkins, but the historical evidence about Darwin’s beliefs is undeniable.**
cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_cambridge/displayarticle.asp?id=386858

The whole point of Darwinism is a pitiless universe without reason or purpose.

No. There is nothing whatever in Darwinian theory that says anything at all like that. It’s a total fabrication.

In Darwin’s account, evolutionary change was largely the result of the random, ultimately purposeless process of natural selection.

Unfortunately, someone lied to you about that. Darwin’s discovery was that it wasn’t random.

If science is the absolute truth then what good is Catholicism? Anyone who ever read the Nicene Creed knows that evolution is anti-God.

You think the Pope is anti-God? He has called common descent by evolution “virtually certain.”

All Catholics were young earth creationist as far back as Augustine right up to the 9th century .

YE creationism was invented by the Seventh-Day Adventists in the last century. Augustine thought that a form of evolution produced many things.

How absurd for any Christian to be pro evolution. If science is the ultimate authority I hate to inform you that any scientist, evolutionists. creationist, or ID theorists will tell you that virgins don’t give birth or lead sinless lives , they don’t ascend in to heaven and people don’t walk on water or rise from the dead either.

This scientist does. You apparently don’t know many scientists, um? If you did, you’d know that virtually all scientists admit that science can’t rule out God or miracles.

And try to be a little more respectful to the Church and your Pope.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Below is a list of every law of science and major branch of science started by evolutionists.

Some Major Branches of Science founded by “evolutionists:”

Genetics - Gregor Mendel

Evolutionary science - Charles Darwin

Population Biology - J.B.S. Haldane

Statistical Thermodynamics - Boltzmann

Want to learn about some laws?

 

[The_Barbarian]

I find evolutionists who have convinced themselves those of us who do not choose to believe in spontaneous generation and transformism just don’t understand evolution uninteresting people.

I would think so. Such people don’t exist. You actually think evolution is about spontaneous generation?

Apparently your philosophy is everyone is a potential screwball and a screwball is anyone who disagrees with you.

So you think inventing ideas for me and insisting that I must believe them is a good way to communicate?

BTW since you are an “expert” how did a afarensis twice make footprints indistinguishable from human with very greatly curved fingers and toes and the exaggerated side to side gait of an ape? Magic?

The footprints in the news recently were apparently made by H. ergaster, an early version of H. erectus, who was essentially like modern humans below the neck.

However, A. afarensis did not have an apelike gait. The repositioning of the gluteus maximus and other muscles in the pelvis would have made that difficult or impossible.

Computer simulations using dynamic modelling of the skeleton’s inertial properties and kinematics have indicated that A. afarensis was able to walk in the same way modern humans walk, with a normal erect gait or with bent hips and knees, but could not walk in the same way as chimpanzees. The upright gait would have been much more efficient than the bent knee and hip walking, which would have taken twice as much energy. It appears probable that A. afarensis was quite an efficient bipedal walker over short distances, and the spacing of the footprints at Laetoli indicates that they were walking at 1.0 m/s or above, which matches human small-town walking speeds.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

Apparently, the creatures who made the prints were transitional between human and apes in some respects:

**We compared Laetoli footprints (G1/35-36-37, G3/26) with modern humans (62 footprints), and a chimpanzee walking bipedally (five footprints). Video cameras allowed us to capture walking parameters on a wet clay walkway, and the Procrustes method was used to analyze the footprint shape (outlines and centres of pressure). Like humans, Laetoli hominids walked with small feet gap, and probably low velocity (they used heels as brakes). They preserved certain ape-like traits (foot proportions, roll-off). They also possessed more marked human-like traits (small vault, metatarsal pressure, similar toe-off). Like humans walking on a soft ground, they flexed toes at ground contact, and then propelled themselves by pushing on the ball of the foot and on digits (hallux and lateral toes acting together). The hypothesis of permanently flexed, or curled-underneath, digits was not retained by comparison with the chimpanzee. **
Christine Bergea, Xavier Peninb and Éric Pelléa
New interpretation of Laetoli footprints using an experimental approach and Procrustes analysis: Preliminary results
Comptes Rendus Palevol
Volume 5, Issues 3-4, March-April 2006, Pages 561-569
Cent ans après Marey : Aspects de la morphologie fontionnelle aujourd’hui

 

[Leela]

Leela

*It’s not that design has been discredited. It never could be proven wrong. It’s just that design is not a scientific theory. *

How is it that the power to design can be attributed to humans as a fact (example, I just designed this sentence), not a theory, but that it cannot be attributed as fact or theory to the creation of the universe?

If design exists in the universe through the mind of a human being, why is it improbable (or why is it not possible, even probable) that it should exist in the universe at large?

I’ve been saying over and over that design CAN be believed as a fact. Everything we observe is entirely consistent with design. It just isn’t a scientific theory for the reasons I’ve been giving. Facts aren’t the same things as scientific theories which try to explain facts and predict new observations.

 

[Leela]

So what do you believe is the purpose of humans?

Everything that has a use has a purpose. The broadest statement I could make is that I use my life to pursue happiness. Humans have all sorts of purposes for their lives. What are some of the purposes of your life?

 

[Leela]

This question is incredibly simple. ID / creationism is not a scientific hypothesis, because it cannot be proven through experimentation. The Catholic Church accepts this. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Science does not claim to be able to prove or disprove the existence of a higher power, precisely because those things cannot be experimented with. Catholic schools have for a while now taught evolution in science and creationism in religion. The two are different wordings for the same phenomenon, as explained by two different disciplines.

Sounds good to me.