Slashdot Mirror
The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design
Mime Narrator writes "An article over at Kuro5hin discusses the controvery over the Intelligent Design movement. The Dover, Pennsylvania school board recently adopted a policy requiring that high school science teachers teaching evolution tell their students that evolutionary theory, a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again, is flawed, and that intelligent design is a valid alternative. The ACLU, along with the AUSCS (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), and 11 parents, are suing the school board, accusing the board of violating the separation of church and state. "
By this, I mean that the process of evolution is a thinking intelligent process. Or to state it another way: Evolution is intelligent.
This means that all signs of evolution also will be signs of intelligent design, simply because evolution is a form of intelligence.
So, instead of the intelligence reciding in the metaphysical head of a super
natural being called God, it resides in DNA and their interactions with the
world through life and death.
All this according to the Kolmogorov Complexity definition of intelligence.
Intelligence is the process of rationally building and testing theories about
the world, and then using those theories for useful stuff. DNA is mutated,
recombined, merged through sex, and otherwise changed. These changes are
hypotheses about the world, in the form of new life forms trying to survive
there. Thus life forms which do not reproduce are falsified hypotheses. The
useful stuff is survival.
As for those people preaching intelligent design:
They are all religious, and do not know what theories or evolution are. They
just pretend and believe they know. Remembering this, they are easily exposed,
as long as you yourself really know what theories and evoution are.
Kim0
Nah. ID parallels creationism's key flaws - it moves the action from that which can be examined to that which can not. Philosophically, and scientifically, we don't know what intelligence is. The definition of it shifts from person to person. There is no way we can test for it, no way we can measure it, no way we can explain it. In fact, there is no way we can even prove that intelligence by any definition actually exists. (especially not in other people) What ID does is to assume that certain aspects of life are tied up in the big black box of 'intelligent designer', and so can never be questioned. That's when the whole nontheory loses all scientific credibility.
As a fundimentalist I think perhaps my views could be valuable. First, intellegent design does not contradict evolution. Intellegent design does not support evolution. It simply states that there probably was some intellegence involved in this phenominon we call "life." It does not go so far as to state where the intellegence resides, whether it is in God or mice.
Secondly, regarding God needing a creator. Most fundimentalists consider God to be even outside time. Unchanging, simply existing. In fact the name given by God, which Israel was to refer to him by means something similar to "He who exists." This name is often times refered to as the tetragrammon, which is often times translated as Yahweh or Yehovah(YHWH), but no one really knows how it should be translated. Anyway, the point is that a God which simply exists, which is timeless and unchanging could not be created. Since the term "created" implies both change and some dependence on time. God therefore could not "spring" into existance, because "springing" implies some sort of change and dependence on time. He simply exists, timeless and unchanging.
I would also like to address the issue of fossils. It's wrong to suppose that God created fossils to test men's faith. God is not cruel or deceptive. Many fundimentalists do not understand the nature of God as described in the scriptures, but rather the nature of God as described by poorly trained teachers. God is described as providing plenty of evidence for his existance, such that no man is without excuse to be without faith(Romans 1). Therefore, God's nature is quite the opposite. He is revealing the truth of himself, which men choose to ignore. We are the ones who are deceptive. God tests men's hearts by providing every reason to believe.
I hope this clears things up a bit. My purpose was not to argue or refute anyone, but simply to provide an accurate understanding of what Christian Fundimentalists believe.