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

[The_Barbarian]

Mendel was a creationist.

In the sense Darwin was. But he was quite interested in, and wrote about different theories of evolution.

**Mendel’s attraction to research was based on his love of nature. He was not only interested in plants, but also in meteorology and theories of evolution. Mendel often wondered how plants obtained atypical characteristics. On one of his frequent walks around the monastery, he found an atypical variety of an ornamental plant. He took it and planted it next to the typical variety. He grew their progeny side by side to see if there would be any approximation of the traits passed on to the next generation. **
accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Gregor_Mendel.php

He believed God spoke the world into existence and formed man from the dust of the earth.

So did Darwin. The difference is, Mendel and Darwin were willing to let God do it His way. You should, too.

When I say evolution I mean common ancestor theory and unlike you do not equivocate to deceive and misrepresent.

I can see you’re upset and angry, and I forgive you for your false accusations. You should ask God to forgive you as well. I never write anything here that I don’t believe to be true.

Stalin murdered all of his geneticist who followed Mendel precisely because Mendel was a creationist,

You’ve been lied to about that, also. Stalin murdered Darwinians, because Darwinism was declared to be anti-socialist. Stalin sided with Trofim Lysenko, who denounced Darwin. Before long Darwinists were rounded up and imprisoned or shot.

Lysenko’s hatred for Darwin seems to have been a mixture of professional jealousy over more prominent scientists, along with a strong tinge of Marxist ideology.

Soviet Agriculture was badly damaged, and Soviet Biology is yet to fully recover.

your knowledge of history is a joke sir.

I know I have more Russian and European history to my credit than you do. For obvious reasons. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Millions starved because of Stalins promotion of Darwinism .

Quite the contrary. It was because of Trofim Lysenko, and his Marxist-Lamarkan beliefs. Darwinists were officially suppressed in Stalin’s state.

Not only did he murder the geneticist and replaced them with Darwinists which led to to starvation of millions of Russians it gave him an outlook on human life that murdering millions was of no more moral consequence than “mowing the grass” .

Perhaps you can name the “Darwinists” who did this. By the time Stalin was in power, Darwinists and Geneticists like Morgan had forged the Modern Synthesis of Darwinism and Genetics. Geneticists were almost entirely Darwinists, as they are today.

If I was an evolutionists and wanted to lie about a creationist it would not be Mendel.

My guess is that you merely the victim of whoever fed you that story, rather than a liar. But you need to learn a little caution about accusing others.

Evolutionary science? There is no such branch of science. Where does one go to get a job as an evolutionists? What would he or she do?

Study the radiation of species of primates in the Pliocene. Study bacteria in specific environments to predict new forms of antibiotic resistance and develop strategies for them.
Learn about the transitions between whales and other ungulates. Examine the evolutionary pressures leading to extinction to estimate the effective sizes of preserves capable of sustaining various populations. Things of that sort.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela
*
I’m sure that you see evidence of God’s intelligence everywhere. If God exists, and the universe is his creation, then everything is evidence of God’s intelligence. Unless you are saying that some things are the result of God’s direct intervention and other things are not, and that we can recognize God’s intervention. Even if you could come up with a method for recognizing the difference, that recognition would be an observation, not a hypothesis or a theory, so it is no alternative to Darwinism to be taught in schools in its place.
*

We have a problem here. We teach in science classes that the earth revolves around the sun. That is an observation, not a theory. Should it not be taught because it is not a hypothesis or a theory?

Likewise, we can teach Intelligent Design as an observation, because we can see that nature is not chaotic and follows clearly or unclearly delineated rules everywhere.

 

[The_Barbarian]

We have a problem here. We teach in science classes that the earth revolves around the sun. That is an observation, not a theory. Should it not be taught because it is not a hypothesis or a theory?

Likewise, we can teach Intelligent Design as an observation, because we can see that nature is not chaotic and follows clearly or unclearly delineated rules everywhere.

ID, being a religion, cannot be taught in science classes, but in classes on philosophy or comparative religions, it would be legal.

 

[lavalamp]

I think we could say that creatures appear to be designed, which pretty much goes without saying. I don’t know how we could ever say that we know that creatures actually are designed.

Given an object (a book, rock, arrow head, life, etc), we can evaluate the hypothesis that it was designed by comparing the statistical likelihood of it naturally occurring with the likelihood of a designer designing and making it. We need to know both numbers (or at least their relative sizes) to decide. For most things, it is easy, we know the common forms that natural things take, and what kinds of things people design and make.

With life, it is tricky to determine its likelihood of naturally occurring (Darwinism) because we only have one sample biogenesis. It is also tricky to determine the likelihood of somebody designing life (ID) because we don’t know by whom or how or why life could have been designed.

I hope you are with me so far.

What ID says is that we can infer design or lack or design by looking at the distribution of patterns that define an object’s form and compare this distribution with the distribution of patterns found in objects know to be naturally occurring and looking for a difference.

For example, if you see a rock with a set of scratches on it, the scratches could be from the rock just rolling around, and be pretty randomly distributed, or they could be a tic-tac-toe game, which would show order like this: #

The theory of ID seeks to do this in a mathematically rigorous way with life. Needless to say, there is a whole lot of work that needs to go into this kind of thing, so it shouldn’t be surprising that little progress has been made so far.

The reason that this is interesting as science, is that, intuitively, life has all sorts of patterns in it that we don’t see elsewhere in nature. These may be just emergent phenomena ( indeed surely some patterns, like bilateral symmetry, are), but we just don’t know.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The Barbarian

ID, being a religion, cannot be taught in science classes, but in classes on philosophy or comparative religions, it would be legal.

Who says ID is a religion? Michael Behe? I don’t think so. If I saw a watch on the desert floor and examined its works, I would conclude that it had been intelligently designed. I would not conclude that I needed to worship the designer. Einstein thought of God as a mysterious Force, not as a personal being to be worshiped. I don’t think Einstein worshiped this force so much as that he admitted its inexplicable existence and that its existence was enough to humble him greatly.

I think Dawkins has the same reverence for Evolution without worshiping the process.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
ID, being a religion, cannot be taught in science classes, but in classes on philosophy or comparative religions, it would be legal.

Who says ID is a religion?

The guys who invented it.

The self-admitted “governing goals” of IDers:
**Governing Goals

* To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
* To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.**

Michael Behe?

No, he said it was like astrology. He so testified at the Dover Trial:

**Q Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that – which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other – many other theories as well.

Q The ether theory of light has been discarded, correct?

A That is correct.

Q But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?

A Yes, that’s correct. **

(“A” is Behe’s responses to questions)

I don’t think so. If I saw a watch on the desert floor and examined its works, I would conclude that it had been intelligently designed.

Me too. Artifacts are designed. You used an artifact as your example, because if you had used something natural, no one would see it as designed.

I would not conclude that I needed to worship the designer.

IDers, as you see above, do.

 

[Leela]

Leela
*
I’m sure that you see evidence of God’s intelligence everywhere. If God exists, and the universe is his creation, then everything is evidence of God’s intelligence. Unless you are saying that some things are the result of God’s direct intervention and other things are not, and that we can recognize God’s intervention. Even if you could come up with a method for recognizing the difference, that recognition would be an observation, not a hypothesis or a theory, so it is no alternative to Darwinism to be taught in schools in its place.
*

We have a problem here. We teach in science classes that the earth revolves around the sun. That is an observation, not a theory. Should it not be taught because it is not a hypothesis or a theory?

Likewise, we can teach Intelligent Design as an observation, because we can see that nature is not chaotic and follows clearly or unclearly delineated rules everywhere.

There is no problem. I have said that I can imagine nothing wrong with discussing how things in nature have the appearance of design, in fact, to discuss Darwinism it would seem necessary to do so, because it is this appearance of design in nature that Darwinism tries to explain. It is the idea that ID is a theory that is somehow an alternative scientific theory to Darwinism that I have a problem with. ID can’t be a compteting theory, since it is not a scientific theory.

best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Given an object (a book, rock, arrow head, life, etc), we can evaluate the hypothesis that it was designed by comparing the statistical likelihood of it naturally occurring with the likelihood of a designer designing and making it. We need to know both numbers (or at least their relative sizes) to decide. For most things, it is easy, we know the common forms that natural things take, and what kinds of things people design and make.

With life, it is tricky to determine its likelihood of naturally occurring (Darwinism) because we only have one sample biogenesis. It is also tricky to determine the likelihood of somebody designing life (ID) because we don’t know by whom or how or why life could have been designed.

I hope you are with me so far.

I’m not with you, because if we include the possibility that the designer is supernatural, then whatever we observe, we could say that it was designed to be that way. There are no things that we could ever say are unlikely to be designed, e.g. whether the rock has scratches in it or not. The scratches would be the easy part anyway.

Best,
Leela

 

[buffalo]

**Let Science Be Science and Faith Be Faith - last weeks conference

…**Is it too much to ask our schools to teach science, and science alone, in the science classroom? I don’t think so. Religion is only worthwhile if it is based in truth. And truth is something we should never be afraid of.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela
*
ID can’t be a compteting theory, since it is not a scientific theory.*

It isn’t a competing theory because its an observation, not a theory. As pointed out earlier, we see the earth is round. No theory needed. We teach that it is round. No theory competes with an observation.

The universe was from the start fine-tuned for life. Intelligent Design, period. Even Einstein could see that. And it doesn’t take an Einstein to see it. Thomas Jefferson saw it more than two hundred years ago, and he didn’t need a theory.

“I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and infinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, the generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.” excerpt from a letter to John Adams

 

[Leela]

Let Science Be Science and Faith Be Faith - last weeks conference

…Is it too much to ask our schools to teach science, and science alone, in the science classroom? I don’t think so. Religion is only worthwhile if it is based in truth. And truth is something we should never be afraid of.

Do you really agree with this article? It says that ID was deliberately (implied rightly) snubbed by the Vatican in the conference for being a conflation of science and religion. It says we should teach science in science class, which means teaching Darwinism, but do not teach that Darwisms is disproof of religion, which pretty much no one claims it to be.

Based on every article I’ve read on this conference including this one, the Catholic Church opposes the ID movement to have ID taught in schools and supports Darwinism theory as the currently prevailing science…

Best,
Leela

 

[Yoeman65]

Several people have touched on this: Scientests are teaching science as if it were faith. They say you believe it or you are ignorant. What is funny is that “Science keeps changing its mind”. Remember when we couldn’t clone, didn’t have microwaves, couldn’t reach the stars? We continually make hypothesis’ but they tend to get modified as we find more info. The bottom line is there is and has to be an “Unmoved first mover”. Big bang be damed. The only Big bang came from the creator and there IS NO way to disprove that because “Truth cannot contridict truth”.

Remember the Church has long taught that the writers of the Old testement wrote in Literal terms not literalist terms. Look at the two stories of creation in the old testemant. If you are a literalist, you have to say the the Bible contadicts itself. No fundamentalist would go that far. Neither does the Church.

The Bible and Sacred Tradition are infallible and science proves that daily. It is the scientists that fail to accept that fact. Oh and by the way, the Church has led the way in science for many years and the vatican even has its own science department. Look it up.

 

[buffalo]

Do you really agree with this article? It says that ID was deliberately (implied rightly) snubbed by the Vatican in the conference for being a conflation of science and religion. It says we should teach science in science class, which means teaching Darwinism, but do not teach that Darwisms is disproof of religion, which pretty much no one claims it to be.

Based on every article I’ve read on this conference including this one, the Catholic Church opposes the ID movement to have ID taught in schools and supports Darwinism theory as the currently prevailing science…

Best,
Leela

I agree with only teaching empirical science in the classroom.

I also quoted in an earlier post about the Vatican being in “fruitful” dialogue with the ID’ers. Actually, the Church is not against design. It has understood God to be intelligent from the beginning. It agrees that we are not the product of an undirected process.

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

**WHY HUMAN EVOLUTION CAN NEVER BECOME PART OF THE DEPOSIT **
OF FAITH

 

[Leela]

Leela
*
ID can’t be a compteting theory, since it is not a scientific theory.*

It isn’t a competing theory because its an observation, not a theory. As pointed out earlier, we see the earth is round. No theory needed. We teach that it is round. No theory competes with an observation.

Exactly, so what are we arguing about? If everything about science and every other aspect of life points to design as in your Jefferson quote, why would we have to make any special effort to point out the appearance of design when we want to about evolution? Remember that this whole ID thing only comes up in the context of people being uncomfortable with evolutionary theory, and people want ID taught in place of evolutionary theory or as an alternative theory to evolutionary theory. Based on the above, you seem to be agreeing that ID can’t take the place of or be in competetion with evolutionary theory, since ID is not a theory. It is an observation. Biological nature appears to be designed. And here comes Darwin to explain design in nature through natural processes. Does that dispove the existence of God? Of course not. Is there any other competing theory to natural selection to explain the appearance of design in nature? NO!!! ID is not a theory, it is just the observation that things appear to be designed.

Best,
Leela

 

[buffalo]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory?
Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

 

[Leela]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory?

                                      Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).

I’m not sure how you can measure this “CSI”, but okay.

Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.

Okay, again, but what we really need to make the question of a particular thing being designed a testable claim is the assumption that things that are not designed will not contain high levels of CSI. What would be the basis for that claim? You’ve assumed in advance what you need to prove, i.e. that high levels of CSI exist in nature but are impossible without design. This isn’t a scientific hypothesis, this is just question begging.

Best,
Leela

 

[buffalo]

I’m not sure how you can measure this “CSI”, but okay.

Okay, again, but what we really need to make the question of a particular thing being designed a testable claim is the assumption that things that are not designed will not contain high levels of CSI. What would be the basis for that claim? You’ve assumed in advance what you need to prove, i.e. that high levels of CSI exist in nature but are impossible without design. This isn’t a scientific hypothesis, this is just question begging.

Best,
Leela

We could start with the computer monitor that you are using. What features does it have that would rule out nature?

Shape, color, styling, function, purpose, components are a few.

How do we put that into an equation? I do not yet know.

But we could start with some logic statements.

If it is square or rectangular then we could assign some value to that. Perhaps a scale of 1 to 10. If enough of these are ranked high enough for CSI we can begin to see the odds are high that it is designed.

Then we have to try to apply to living systems.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

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

Newton, like Jefferson, was only stating an observation based on self-evident facts. There is intelligent design behind the universe. Atheists can hide their heads in the sand all they want, but they won’t overcome the fact that the universe clearly appears to be a product of intelligent design. Why that should be concealed from a science class on physics or biology is beyond me. It could at least be mentioned in passing, and a direct quote from Newton would suffice. This observation competes with no other theory … including evolution … so why is a threat to evolutionists? Because too many of them are atheists and can’t abide what has been self-evident for a long time to any person of real intellect.

 

[Leela]

We could start with the computer monitor that you are using. What features does it have that would rule out nature?

Shape, color, styling, function, purpose, components are a few.

How do we put that into an equation? I do not yet know.

But we could start with some logic statements.

If it is square or rectangular then we could assign some value to that. Perhaps a scale of 1 to 10. If enough of these are ranked high enough for CSI we can begin to see the odds are high that it is designed.

Then we have to try to apply to living systems.

This is a way of defining or measuring specified complexity, but it has nothing to do with distinguishing what is designed from what is not designed. So there is no testable hypothesis here.

This whole ID CSI business starts with the assumption that high levels of CSI only occur in things that are designed, which is really the question at hand, isn’t it? Is it possible for nature to evolve complex specificity? That’s the question. The method of ID that you describe is to assume the answer to this question is “no,” only intelligently designed things have specified complexity. But how do we know that? Isn’t the whole debate between Darwinism and ID about whether or not specified complexity can emerge through natural processes? So your premise, which is that only designed things have specified complexity, is as questionable as your conclusion, which is that some things in nature are intelligently designed. This is an example of the logical fallacy called “begging the question.”

Best,
Leela

 

[edwest2]

Let Science Be Science and Faith Be Faith - last weeks conference

…Is it too much to ask our schools to teach science, and science alone, in the science classroom? I don’t think so. Religion is only worthwhile if it is based in truth. And truth is something we should never be afraid of.

Religion… based on truth? What is the reason for doing science? A way to while away the hours between life and death? Most science is about getting out product and bringing in profits, whether it’s new drugs, chemicals for industry or devices to make our lives lazier.

Nope. People, religious and not, need to realize that our lives are not our own. That teachers who teach “science” are only part of the picture. When the kids go home, they need the bread of Life and the Water of life. Man does not live by bread alone.

But the fear here is the hatred of God and the fear of the whisper of God. A word that if a student heard it, might lead to God.

So, while they continue to kick the Ten Commandments out of “public” buildings and tear down Crosses, they are at war with God. ‘Keep your God out of my science classroom. Keep him in your Church building and don’t you dare mention His name in public.’

Science is just people observing, researching and publishing, followed by making product and making money. This life ends in corruption of the body and we will take nothing with us when we die. Nothing.

So put on incorruption. Set your heart and mind on God. And remember, science is meant to be a servant to man, not his Lord.

Peace,
Ed