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Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design
An anonymous reader writes "The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science." From the release: "[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.'"
AAAS has long held that students are ill-served by any effort in science classrooms to blur the distinction between science and other ways of knowing, including those concerned with the supernatural.
Note that ID's notions don't necessarily rely on the supernatural. We may be able to create life ourselves someday in the lab, and this does not make us supernatural (even if our creations think so).
Of course this does not answer the issue of where the original creator(s) came from, but that may not be an issue. For example, if time travel is possible (nobody knows right now), then one can simply go back into the past to insert themselves. A recursive creation has not been ruled out.
My point being that if the attacks on ID depend on supernaturalness, then such may backfire in court.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm a Christian, and I have no problem with creationism as science, if you do, you probably don't understand the term "science"
Mind explaining for us "ignorant" folks how a supernatural supposition is compatable with a methodology that can only make meaningful statements and conclusions about the natural universe?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
You miss the point.
It is to raise the profile of the KBSE : gain some much needed media-time to point some fingers. And threaten the whole state of Kansas with the stigma of pariah-dom with the rest of the US.
Sure, Kansas can still teach what their KBSE call "Science". But without the endorsement of these two bodies, they will have a harder time convincing the rest of the world that they are teaching "science". This has nothing to do with scientific process, it has everything to do with playing politics. Okay, scientists suck at politics, but well, they don't always have to be. Think Huxley.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
" Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but this scenario seems more to side with ID than evolution..."
I think you missed the overall point that ID supporters tend to ignore mountains of scientific evidence for the flimsy psuedo-science they try to fool people with. The clubber obviously wrecked the guy's knee, but as long as he can spout enough BS, there'll be some people who will doubt he was the clubber. After all, if there were an Intelligent Designer intervening in life, He broke the ID guy's knee.
Did you miss the sarcasm of the whole thing?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
As for your other points: here's what Wiki says about Satanism. "Satanism is a religious, semi-religious and/or philosophical movement whose adherents recognize Satan as an archetype, pre-cosmic force, or some aspect of human nature. Although named for Satan, a name associated with evil and temptation, Satanism is more commonly the name given to certain spiritual paths which emphasize the Left-Hand Path, as opposed to the much more common Right-Hand Path. Left-Handers believe in spiritual enrichment through their own work on themselves, and that ultimately they are answerable only to themselves, while Right-Handers believe in spiritual enrichment through the dissolution or submission of the self to (or into) something greater. Many Satanists do not in fact worship a deity called Satan, or necessarily any other deity, nor do they follow a principle of evil. This aspect of their beliefs is very commonly misunderstood."
Most Satanists, in fact, deny the existence of both God and Satan, which is why my original comment (snide as it was) is applicable.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
"He who brings into existence whatever exists" does not exist. That has something of a Buddhist taste to it.
"He who is" does not exist. That is just funky...
Maybe because how the world came about has no relation to 80% of modern science (chem, physics, and molecular/cellular level bio)?
Are you saying that existing hypothesis on how the world came about don't actually tie into the fundamentals of chemistry or physics (biology doesn't enter into it until you start looking at the first life forms)? If so, you're woefully out of touch with reality.
While there is definately disagreement in the area of ID, we can at least teach the facts everyone agrees on (I haven't heard many religious challenges to F=ma, Maxwell's equations, Bohr's model of the atom, or microbiology recently).
So we should limit science to nothing but equations, and ignore things that might offend people's religious sensibilities, no matter how solid the evidence is for them?
And how does this make creationism scientific? That was my question, why did you completely ignore it?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Ah, yes. Because nothing says educating the masses like a satire that insults their beliefs.
You say "insults", I would replace that with "shows the folly of"
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Deny access to Intelligent Design idiots of any product, medicine or otherwise, that was arrived at through evolution or science. Since there are so many "problems" with evolution, why trust medical breakthroughs based on it? Why not just pray to this intelligent creator to drop down on Earth cures to all common ailments.
Sigh. "Satanism" as you're definining it is "gothic satanism" - you know, the baby-eating, virgin-sacrificing type of Satanism that doesn't actually exist. Look up Satanism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica if you don't believe me, or any other reputable source; the Wiki was handy, which is why I used it.
"Satanism" as you describe it doesn't exist outside of fiction. I'm not terribly surprised that you have no idea what I'm talking about, but before continuing this conversation, why don't you look it up for yourself?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Just as we must constantly update students' computers and books, updating science and core academic curriculum is essential. Keeping them in the dark with an antiquated, unproven teaching theory is impractical and unhealthy. The theory of evolution remains simply that, a theory...A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design.
Yes, but science isn't about "balance", it's about trying to find the best explanations for reality. If a view doesn't explain observable reality very well then science has little interest in trying to strike a balance with that view, it simply want to find a better explanation.
Intelligent design is not creationism or naturalism; it simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads.
The issue, really, is "what is the empirical evidence of design" because that is really the heart of the matter. In practice it amounts to "these are things which are not yet explained in the current theory". They are not, per se, things that are contrary to the current theory, just points that haven't yet been heavily scrutinised and explanations provided. How exactly do you know something was designed? Effectively you simply say "I cannot see how this could have evolved". That's not really the same thing as saying it can't have evolved - that is, saying that evolutionary theory specifically predicts such a thing cannot exist. It is not a falsification, but merely a lack of explanation.
It is actually surprisingly easy to take this same method of argument, of pointing to the gaps where explanation hasn't yet reached, and create a similar theory to Intelligent Design for any subject area in science - there's always something that has yet to be fully explained. Take, for instance, gravity. You can construct a reasonable sounding argument using exactly the same techniques as Intelligent Design and end up with a theory that, I'm quite sure, you could get not insignificant support for from various religious groups.
Intelligent design is accepted by religious and nonreligious academics and scientists; supported by microbiologists and mathematics. In a Natural History Magazine study, three proponents of intelligent design summarize their findings this way:
* Every living cell contains many ultra-sophisticated molecular machines.
* Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
* Darwin's finches and four-winged fruit fly theories cannot account for all features of living things.
And the "Uncaused Force" theory is supported by physics and mathematics (just check those journal articles cited in the essay: they are all real, and say exactly what the essay claims they do). You could summarise "Uncaused Force" findings this way:
* At various scale levels there are observable forces that have no observable cause.
* Interaction in our universe by somethign external to our universe leaves behind observable signatures.
* Einstein's relativity cannot account for the observed forces.
It's all just the same argument, so why do you not accept "Uncaused Force"?
You can't falsify a theory by noting that it hasn't yet explained something - it is interesting to note, but it is not a falsification. Claiming that a theory is flawed is not evidence for an alternate theory.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
"What evidence proves that ID is incorrect?"
:-)
Every person I've heard supporting ID uses a provably false reason why "evolution is wrong". This leads me to conclude that if only morons support ID, then ID is a moronic hoax
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
What about the archaopteryx? Assuming this is what you mean by a half-mutated species, it is in many ways half-way between a dinosaur and a bird.
The only "ideology" I see is your ludicrous statement "[The right to abortion] IS an ideological issue, especially since the law was illegally created by the Supreme Court and not the representative branch of the US government."
The Supreme Court didn't create any law. They reviewed a law and found it was at odds with the Constitution and the greater body of law governing this nation.
Now, if you want to take issue with the entire concept of Judicial Review, then you might have an argument. Unfortunately you're 200 years too late.
A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design. It studies the science of intelligence or intelligent life.
This his simply a lie, and I thought Christians were not allowed to lie. Intelligent Design doesn't study anything, ID has postulated a set of theories that are beyond study and therefore not scientific, even if, by an astonishing miracle ID was a correct description of the world, it would be wrong to teach it in science class.
Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically.
This is another lie, the Christian is really going at it today. ID has never been tested simply because it is not testable. Also, the sentence above shows with utter clarity why you are so amazingly wrong, you are just ignorant. Science, outside of a rather narrow field, doesn't deal with proving things much, it deals with falsifying things, and the difference is enormous.
Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
This could probably said to be true, close to the first true sentence in your posting. There is a huge problem with it though, there is no characteristic signature in life that would imply intelligent design.
I propose the followers if the ID ideology change the name of it to BSD. The Theory of Bloody Stupid Design. You see, in all the life we see around us there is evidence after evidence of a Bloody Stupid Designer, if you look. A few examples:
The list goes on and on. There is no trace of any intelligence whatsoever in our design, but there is a lot of traces of random changes, adaptation of body-parts to jobs they are not particularly well suited for etc. If there was someone behind the design of humans, he would fail Human Design 101. Bloody Stupid Johnson.
Half way mutated is very open to interpretation of course. However one example that I've always felt was fairly compelling are the feathered and flying dinosaurs. They've always come across as a fairly good bit of evidence to support the theory that some dinosaurs developed into what we call birds today. I do haev to wonder though. Since you're making a distinction between micro and macro evolution, how to you explain new species showing up in the fossil record at all? I mean it seems to just make sense that over time small changes are enough to result in something new. It's a much more compelling and scientific conclusion than "Well, a designer put them there then." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaurs
Then you would be sadly mistaken. The fact that people do argue that we are not designed is why this debate is occuring at all. The idea that we are "intelligently designed" is certainly debatable, since there are many features of the human body that are rather idiotically "designed" (one such example being the use of the same passage for the ingestion of both air and food - which makes choking a serious hazard; I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples if you try).
Students can make up their own minds or develop their own opinions about who they believe the "Creator" is.And where exactly did this "creator" come from? Is he/she/it not "irreducibly complex" as well? If not, did he/she/it "evolve"? If so, who designed the creator?
How did we come into being before we changed?
And how did the agent responsible for both creation and change come into being?
Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically
Please provide links to this scientific proof.
Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
Really? And what exactly is this "characteristic signature"?
Science class, where a completely unproven theory with zero supporting evidence is given credibility alongside rigorously proven theories.
The difference between a theorem and a theory is that one cannot "prove" a theory with mathematical rigor but only demonstrate that it's unlikely to be falsified by observations in the near future. As for your claim that creation has "zero supporting evidence", have you read AIG's questions and answers about creation and the science behind it?
You're welcome. But you're employing sophistry when you say because our current knowledge of the mechanics of DNA mutation cannot predict exactly when "macro-evolution" (do you mean speciation?) will occur, therefore a 100% faith based theory is equivalent to one that provides an accurate statistical prediction in short-life-spanned creatures, and can be used to produce repeatable results and explain the rate of fossil change over time.
Look, you're welcome to your faith, and should I see you proselytizing in the airport I wouldn't bother you (unless you get in my face like a Hairy Fishnut). But, this slashdot article is about the attempt to use the apparatus of Kansas government to force the teaching of a faith-based theory in science class, to the children of those who have no use for it. Even if no direct harm is done to the kids (such as making them ineligible for med school or life sciences research), the time given to the teaching of ID comes at the expense of something useful that could be taught.
You're welcome to screw up your own kids. Don't fuck with mine.
Remain calm! All is well!
The EVIDENCE for the flying spaghetti monster, as a material entity, is just as sound as the evidence for JHVH as a material entity. And his moral character seems better, if less survival oriented.
This doesn't speak to their religious validity. I happen to believe that religious validity comes from a match between the meanings and the deep structures of the human mind, but I have no firm evidence for this. (I.e., the evidence that I have is seen as evidence only by those already predisposed to such an assumption.)
Personally, I would as soon see religion taught in physics or biology class as I would see cosmology (big bang vs. the branes) taught in religion class. They really are, or OUGHT to be talking about two different kinds of thing. (And I consider those who can't see this to be hyped up chimpanzees...they make the same kind of mistake that chimps make when you teach them to drive a car and obey the traffic signals [as reported for an experiment done in a psych lab: You can teach them that red means stop, and green means go, but then they'll stop and go in response to the lights, whether their passage is blocked or not].)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ironically, one of the reasons I've sent my daughter to a Catholic school here is that they teach evolution. They also mention that people who view the bible literally don't believe in evolution; but evolution is taught in the science class as science. Being a Catholic school gives them the freedom to make the simple statement about the literalists without there being a problem with the separation of church and state.
If, however, there had been no school in our area that taught evolution, I would have taught it to her myself. After all, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Any idiot can make sandwiches. It's times like these when you get a chance to actually parent.
There's an important point that the creationists miss in all of that. Kids will still be taught evolution regardless of whether or not they get their way with the standards. 99 percent of the parents in this state will tell their kids that evolution is fact. Some of the rest will find themselves explaining evolution simply to inform their kids about the debate. Still more kids will simply hear it from eachother or from media, the internet, etc.
Everybody will hear or learn about evolution, and the standards won't change which side of the debate people fall on. This whole thing about changing the standards is not only idealogically questionable, it's not practical or effective. They're achieving nothing but ridicule.
I for one hope that the board members continue to vocally extoll their positions and beliefs here; because the more they talk, the more unreasonable they sound. Like most of the ultra-conservative movement in this nation, the Kansas Creationists are running headlong for a backlash.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
>>This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no problem with it.
Actually the large majority of Christians (aka Roman Catholics) have no problem with macro evolution. It's official doctrine. It's based in the ancient Christian belief that the understanding the Universe is one of the best ways of understanding the God who created it. The idea that the workings of the world itself is as much a testament to God's will as the Bible. It's the minority of hardcore evangelicals (who somehow seem to have a strangehold on middle America) who prefer to believe that hard evidence must always give way to their fixed, particular interpretation of scripture.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
There is a very powerful and positive reason to keep ID and Evoluton in the curriculum - depending on your point of view, neither may be good pure science, but both cause students and even grown up scientists asking very fundamental and serious questions. The kind of questions that lead some to dedicate their lives to finding answers that benefit all of us.
Questions like where did we come from. How do we explain major changes in speciation? Why are things the way there are? How did they become that way? How do things change? Why is there shuch diversity in life? Is there a God, flying spaghetti monster, higher power, or not?
Science fails when people stop asking questions - and when ideas are supressed by political means, questions that need to be explored are never asked. Even if you do not believe in god, or if you do, there is one thing about the evolution debate I've come to appreciate: real scientific discovery and real leaps in human knowledge only occur when people are allowed to question established beliefs. At present, evolution is an incumbent, accepted scientific belief, and as such should be questioned intensely. As the universe being created in seven days was before that. And the world being flat before that.
There is a reason that science is at a low point in America, and is has absolutely nothing to do with ID vs. evolution. Politics and patents have replaced discovery as the highest order of value for the professional scientist. That ID vs. Evolution is being debated in government halls instead of academic halls is a tradgedy of epic proportions.
-- $G
Ah yes, spoken like a real ... MORON.
Do please point out a current science book that lists java/piltdown/nebraska man as a real find or -proof- of evolution. Well?
You know how those hoaxes were discovered? SCIENCE. Radiocarbon & flourine dating, along with comparisons with the fossil records - 'piltdown man' for instance didn't fit into the fossil record at all, that's one of the main reasons they began to look at it as a fraud.
How many hoaxes has religion managed to discern on its own? Would you like to buy a holy relic? An actual nail from the One True Cross!
If it weren't for SCIENCE, you wouldn't know there had been any hoaxes. Religion didn't offer any means of discovering the truth about them, that's for sure! It took science to discover the hoax, and THAT'S HOW SCIENCE WORKS. No hoax will stand up to rigorous peer review and study for long, totally unlike how long religious myths can continue unchecked.
Thank you, DO try again..
Rightly so: some day the shoe may be on the other foot.
(And in the interests of disclosure, I'll point out that I am a Christian, and a creationist.)
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
>>> "Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for thousands of years. You can explore the idea that the earth is flat too if you want. Just because some people are exploring it doesn't mean we need to start teaching that to children in science class. Teach that myth the same place we teach the other myths - in religion or humanities classes or the like."
...]
....
... which I find hilarious. What's doubly funny is that a lot of people arguing against a creator argue for a big bang whilst cosmologist are moving towards alternate theories. And to cap it all the big-bang was proposed by a Belgian priest (LeMaitre) - I'd like to think that his faith inspired him at least in part.
...
/ sc0022.htm
[Here's a Christian idea
The big bang? Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for tens of years. You can explore the idea that the Earth is flat too if you want
The big-bang, incidentally is an untestable event as by definition the established principles of physical science break down at the singularity (and how would we observe, a temporal action, before time existed). So, it becomes a matter of faith as to whether there were a big bang or a re-expansion or some other creative event [or none! like Newton, Maxwell, Einstein et al. thought]
I guess the big-bang is probably still the standard model. But every standard model I ever studied was proven to be inconsistent with observations
Oh well.
LeMaitre - http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science
Does no one ask why Intelligent Design proponents are not clamoring to get their views into Chemistry, Physics, and other science classes besides biology? After all, every science has gaps in understanding or evidence. They all use theories, and since ID'ers like to trivialize the word theory with air quotes, why don't they feel their "theory" (which is actually a hypothesis or less) of an intelligent designer doesn't have a place in the other sciences?
This is obviously a rhetorical question - but I feel it is a clear example of the fact that the ID movement is totally an ideological, and political, movement bent on removing evolution from the classroom, and a dishonest movement as well. Their egotism concerning human origins is intense, so while an ID'er can ignore teaching physics students "some scientists believe the laws of physics were designed and put into place by an intelligent force", they cannot stomach a branch of science that to them makes humans less than the image of a god. Since they can't teach their Sunday School lessons in science class, they wrap it up to look vaguely like science, use a bunch of smoke and mirrors arguments, and get god into school that way.
As a matter of fact, Darwin's theory of evolution is falsifiable. And here is one reason why it is false:
Darwinian evolution asserts that evolution occurs through the accumulation of minuscule random changes to the genome. If this were the case, there would be so many connecting species that the fossil record would be virtually a continuum.
What the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E shows, is that the fossil record is nothing like a continuum. Of the millions upon million of fossils which have been recovered, all of them fit nicely within a handful of phyla. Even fossils from Cambrian times already are separated into distinct phyla.
For Darwinian evolution to be true, the fossil record should resemble a conic section, starting from a point and spreading out evenly in all directions. There should literally be thousands upon thousands of connecting fossils which connect fossils to a whole host of predecessors and successors.
The real fossil record is nothing like that. Virtually fossils from the earliest times are segregated into phyla. Not only are there no connections between phyla, there are virtually no connections (links) supporting the major asserted jumps in evolution. Fishes eventually became amphibians, right? How many fossils support this conclusion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. A single questionable fossil is the only link between fish and amphibians.
Men evolved from primates, right? How many fossils support this assertion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. Less than a dozen fossils (fragments is a better term) support the assertion that primates evolved into men.
Evolutionists live in a fantasy world all their own where the lack of millions of connecting fossils is not an important issue. And the presence of a single questionable fossil establishes the "fact" that fishes evolved into amphibians. And less than a dozen fragments "proves" that primates evolved into man.
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions stated that "that enterprise [of science within an established paradigm] seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies."
Evolutionists have fashioned for themselves a fantasy box in which they force nature into their inflexible fantasy, irrespective of the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. They are so scared that their precious box is about to split open that they can't even engage in rational discussions and acknowlegde the incredible weaknesses of their theory which is driving many to look more deeply and question (scientifically) all that is assumed to be true.
There is a scientific revolution coming, and the evolutionists are going to be on the wrong side of history.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
If I understand ID correctly, then any obviously complex system implies the presence of a designer. Such a designer, would themselves be reasonably complex. So, then who designed the designer? And who designed the designer's designer? Ad infinitum...
Why introduce layers of unneeded abstraction? I don't see how ID gets us any closer to understanding the universe around us. If anything it discourages investigating the tough issues -- it's too complicated for us mere humans to understand the will of the great designer.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
This entire issue is not about science or religion - just follow the money. As Molly Ivans the journalist suggests - there are always two groups of people in any issue - those being screwed and those doing the screwing. What better way to make money screwing people - who will give away their money and/or time to religious institutions - who in turn are told that they (the donors) now can go screw someone because.... . Well because - this is where religions are "wonderful" - just make up any bullshit - to fit the situation and away you go - "bullshit always baffles brains". This is what muslim jihads are all about - not about religion - its power and/or money. What i find interesting - is that the folks in white lab coats have kept quite about this issue until recently - they may have to start justifying the $300,000 grants from the NIH and other tax based grants. We just may find out that the folks in white lab coats have been screwing us too.
> Fact: Slashdot readers love copyright.
:) here, let me clue you in to xenu.net where you can read up on what they do. Based on how Scientologists and Scientology-affiliated organizations have behaved (e.g. "Operation Snow White") I think they're evil crackpots, but they do *everything* they can with those copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and patents to silence their critics as far as I can see. How many religions own their own law firm, after all?
No I don't. I hate it.
[Rant]
I want the Public Domain back sometime in my lifetime. The GPL is a means to that end, using copyright against itself, but if copyright were abolished, that would be a *good* thing to me. Yes, good. As RMS was recently quoted on Slashdot in a story about GPL version 3, the GPL derives its legal authority from copyrights, but its moral authority from the rights of the people. You lose only the right to restrict others by accident or design if you distribute or merge my source with your own (mere use of my work is explicitly *not* covered by the GPL). You remain free to make your own damn software if you don't like the conditions I and other GPL software copyright holders put on our work.
[End Rant]
And for the record, I give my own work away freely.
> I don't hear anybody "wailing" about the Church of Scientology's copyrights, either.
Then you aren't listening. Just in case you've been living in a cave (or basement?
Frankly, this strikes me as a publicity-whoring move by ID opponents. Whatever. I'll go with the science of evolution for myself, but I don't have either the time or the vitriol to tell every poor sod I can find on the Internet something like "OMG!!! YOU ARE A STUPED MORNO WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SCIENCE IS!!!!! DIE!!@#~!#!@#!" for daring even to ask a question, when I myself can barely explain what ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means, or whether or not it is outdated.
I've agreed that we've failed. But not for the reasons you're stating.
I am not a creationist. And I'm not sure that ID is the best response to the evolution issue. But here are the reasons why I am skeptical about the evolution hypothesis:
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
It's funny, but this has been cropping up on Slashdot for ages now, and I haven't heard anyone mention surrealist arguments (this may not be the commonly accepted term - it's a while since I took the paper, and wikipedia doesn't know what I'm talking about).
A surrealist argument (iirc) is one that tries to explain some phenomenon by appeal to an undetectable power or state, e.g. the moon is moved in its orbit by invisible angels. The angels are completely undetectable (apart from their effect on the moon, of course), but they're there. Really. I swear. We can never see them, but they're there.
The problem with surrealist arguments is that they're not disprovable (they never make falsifiable predictions, which is something that DOES get mentioned in these discussions) and unfortunately defences against them usually have to be about lack of explanatory power... but that's another big can of worms. It could be that the moon really is moved in its orbit by invisible angels, but that state cannot be distinguished from the accepted scientific state by any experiment.
Now back to the topic at hand... Pretty much any argument that 'God did it' is a surrealist argument. If you don't want to accept the fossil record you can claim that God rigged to look like that, and the earth is really only 6000 years old. That state is is not experimentally distinguishable from the accepted scientific state.
Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster arguments are both surrealist too. The most important thing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that the logical arguments for his existence are exactly as compelling as for ID or the Christian God. The Noodly One is inherently ridiculous which helps reveal the flaws in arguments for His existence, but also unfortunately leads to people misinterpreting the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a parody in poor (or possibly tomatoey) taste.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Well, one reason Christians as a whole are accumulating some blame might be that there are so many One True Christian Religions. To those of us who don't believe in the supernatural in the first place, keeping them all sorted is a lot of overhead. We're supposed to somehow know that Church Foo believes in evolution, while Church Bar believes in creationism, and remain current about the various splinter groups, arguments about the meanings of passages in the Bible, etc. I'd venture to guess that the number of Christians who are familiar with all the various Budhist sects isn't large. Some will be deeply knowledgable, out of intellectual curiosity, but there's simply no real driver for it. The ID in schools issue might then be seen as yet more generic supernaturalist weirdness, and people might then react against the entire indecipherable mess. There's probably no avoiding getting caught by some of the backlash.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Perhaps I should qualify my own remarks by saying that the Mormon achievement in Utah is remarkable. But, as someone who studied sociology of religion, I see Mormonism itself as a unifying system intended to give a sense of social coherence to people from disparate backgrounds. The parallels with the origins of Islam are striking, so much so that students of such things classify both Islam and Mormonism as schisms of Christianity, though I'm not competent to comment on that.
I won't be around in a thousand years time to see if Mormonism has resulted in the explosion of achievement in science, architecture and civilisation that followed the establishment of Islam, but I do think the recently reported fact that Mormons no longer constitute a majority in Salt Lake City is a dead giveaway.
And in answer to your last question - I am not an atheist. However, I do not believe in any kind of afterlife, and I can point to this position being supported at many points in the Bible. I won't bore you with my own theological beliefs, but whether or not you believe in a Creator God the idea that God would create the entire universe just as a kind of juvenile training system for a part of the human race to go on to another, invisible universe for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever - well, it's not worth spending time on. However, people who do believe it are extremely dangerous because they have no vested interest in preserving our planet. I would rather be governed by atheists who believe that this is what we have and therefore we need to look after it, than by people who think that if WW3 happens tomorrow, they will be sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
Pining for the fjords
There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.
"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.
Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.
Examples: Salamanders, greenish warblers.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
I've always seen it as a story, much like a television series with a fictional family. We've got the man who was created first (because that's how society at the time worked - man = important), and a woman "created from his rib". The created from him thing is showing that the wife is a "part of" the husband; that she needs to be respected and cared for because she's basically "from the same mold". Then there's the devil masquerading as a snake, tempting the good folks to break the law. They're happy and carefree - efectively in Heaven (some theologists beleive that Eden wasn't actually on Earth, but rather a place between Heaven and Earth) - prior to breaking the law, and then after they break the law they know fear and shame, are kicked out of Eden and an angel with a flaming sword prevents return access until Jesus is born etc. So, episode two's moral is "obey the law, or you'll be punished". It's also a convenient way to introduce the concept that people are inherently bad until they've received permission from the giver of religion to be accepted into heaven, but we'll let that slide for now. After they're expelled, the series continues with the birth of Cain, Abel, and Seth - along with several other more minor characters, including the two daughters who Cain and Abel marry. These provide a background for other stories about being willing to sacrifice everything for God, not being jealous, leaving for a better place without "looking back", etc.
Adam was supposed to have lived for 930 years or so, which in itself seems rather unexplainable withouth presuming that he's a metaphor for the "source" of human life in the middle east (which is often cited as the origin of humans who eventually migrated all over the place)...