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Federal Judge Rules Against Intelligent Design
evil agent writes "CNN is reporting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that Intelligent Design cannot be discussed in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. Dover Area School Board members had previously mandated that Intelligent Design be included in the biology curriculum. According to the judge, 'our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'" Update: 12/20 23:40 GMT by J : eSkeptic has a look back at the trial and what led to it. And the Discovery Institute has issued a press release.
Intelligent design isn't science, therefore it doesn't belong in a science room.
Thank God for that!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the almighty spaghetti monster for all that He has done for me.
Not only has He used divine intervention in Dover but He has shown me the way! I await his presence in pirate heaven with the stripper factory and beer volcano.
Believe.
My work here is dung.
Lots of additional coverage on this decision is available at The National Center for Science Education and The Panda's Thumb, and the full text of the decision can be found here (PDF warning).
From the decision: Damn...what a smackdown.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Something that the CNN article doesn't mention is that one of the judge's findings is that ID does not meet the criteria to be considered science.
From a Bloomberg article: In his opinion, Jones said the key issue is ``whether Intelligent Design is science,'' and said, ``we have concluded that it is not.''
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
The fossil record provides overwhelming evidence of the the great tre of life Darwin described. Pick up a science book. To say there is no evidence of Darwinism is nothing other than total willfull ignorance.
ID isn't a theory though, it's dogma. We don't teach dogma in science class for the simple reason that it is not science. It's like complaining that students aren't getting equal time for Aztek cooking in their Asian studies class.
I read the internet for the articles.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted Pasta out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His noodly forgivness because he might not be there.
You quote out of context, and you should be ashamed of yourself for being so dishonest. The judge said that he is not discouraging those people who study ID, and he says they have deep beliefs in what they are doing. But, this is the most important thing, he says that ID is *not science* and therefore *should not be taught in a science class*.
Stop spinning things by taking it out of context, and be honest for once.
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.
The link to the NY Times article
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
Thank goodness.
And I know I'm feeding the trolls, but I'm sorry, but the comment "It's not any less scientific than evolution" is a fascinating one to me.
Let's break down the scientific method:
1. Observation
2. Hypothesis
3. Experiment
4. Results, start over at 1.
Evolution we know happens (see the changing patterns of moths around pollution, etc). However, the Theory of Evolution as originally put forth by Darwin is based on the idea of "survival of the fittest": those species who have a mutation that enables them to survive better than their competitors will breed and pass along that mutation to their descendants, who will then continue the process.
How did Darwin come up with this theory?
1. He observed the various species on the islands, and how they were all similar (birds, I believe) and how each was best fit to his environment.
2. He hypothesized that this condition arose because of his theory (see above).
3. The experiment (mainly carried out by other folks looking at fossils): See if similar species have changed over time due to environment and had mutations that allowed them to survive. Usually this "experiment" involves saying "All right, we have Fossil A which we know to be 100,000,000 years old, and we have Fossil C which is 25,000,000 years old. Fossil C shows a better ability to survive the environment, and is the same kind of creature as A except for the mutations observed. Therefore, there should be Fossil B that is like Fossil A, only it includes some of the mutations of C but not all of them as the species adapted to better fit the environment. This fossil should be between 100,000,000 and 25,000,000 years old. If we find it, then we know we're right. If we don't, then either we need a better theory or need to keep looking." (For nit pickers who will say this is not a true "experiment", you are right - but these kind of "observational experiments" are perfectly valid when talking about cosmological experiments, such as testing the Theory of Relativity or the Big Bang Theory).
4. Results: Over time, thousands of fossil records and observations of species has held up the Theory of Evolution. Adaptations have come into play (such as the "Survival of the Fittest and the Luckiest", which holds that sometimes pure chance comes into play of wiping out a dominant species, such as an asteroid, but when equilibrium is reached Survival of the Fittest is shown to work again).
This leads to a "theory": a set of rules that *currently* work in explaining a phenomena. The Theory of Relativity has been held up by experiment (such as "can we find bended light around a large gravity source. Answer: Yes.). As long as no one comes up with a better scientifically proved theory, the theory is held up.
Intelligent Design doesn't follow these rules. It goes like this:
1. Observation: There's a lot of different species out there.
2. Hypothesis: Some "intelligent designer" must of altered the species to allow them to survive in their environment.
3. Ummmm....
The "step 3" is important. With Intelligent Design, you *can't test it*. Actually, let me back up: you're not allowed to test it. The only way to prove/disprove Intelligent Design is to find a tablet between 100,000,000 and 25,000,000 million years old that says "Note to self: change DNA of duck billed platypus to make it better to survive. Love, ID."
If you do bring up a changing fossil record and say "Look, we have a changing species over time", the ID'er will say "Ah, see - the designer changed the species". Again, no proof, no experiment needed.
This is why ID is not science, or even a theory: it's a belief. It's a nice belief. Do I believe some God/Goddess/Higher Being made the Universe? Sure. Do I think that They put a hand in everything?
Who cares? Until such a being gets on the Megaphone of the Cosmos and says "Hey, dudes - check out Chromosome #15 where I spelled out 'Jesus if fucking metal", I'll trust that They wrote the universe so that we could
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I am thrilled ecstatic over this decision. This judge clearly has brains and a willingness to use them. I am going to be happy.
I am not, not going to assume that the fight is over. Keep in mind that it was a loss in the Scopes Monkey Trial that galvanized scientists to fight ever harder for strong science (read no religion) in the biology classroom, and the school as a whole.
While I as a scientist am thrilled by this I also know that the people who oppose science are right now doing 2 things: 1) pasting this decision into a circular or 2 along with the choice words "activist judge" to raise more money/attention/support for their 'cause', and 2) digging in for another, longer fight.
I will celebrate this, and keep vigilant at the same time.
It belongs in Philosophy.
What?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
This case won't be appealed. The school board that introduced Intelligent Design in Dover was unceremoniously dumped on its ass at the last election, and the incoming board has made it clear that it would not appeal a ruling in the ACLU's favor.
Nor, for that matter, would the main ID advocates want this case appealed. The Discovery Institute pulled its support early on, for instance. Sophisticated ID advocacy requires that the public face of the movement be very quiet about its religious motivations, for fear of exactly what happened in Kitzmiller. The old Dover school board was unsophisticated, and much too blatant about its purely religious motivations.
ID advocates have seen Kitzmiller as a disastrous airing of their dirty laundry from fairly early on; the only thing surprising about this ruling is its refreshing breadth, depth, and clarity.
Uh... you realize that Footloose was a fictional movie, right?
He also said it doesn't belong in science class - it's fine in comparative religion.
Oh there won't be an appeal - the parents are happy with the decision, and the NEW SCHOOL BOARD is too - the legal counsel for the school board cannot appeal without their client's consent and who their client is changed - 8 of 9 members were up for reelection last month, they all got canned and replaced with people who said ID doesn't belong in science class (but it's fine in comparative religion)
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
> Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?
Not legally, since it's in a different federal district.
If Kansas goes to court the judge may or may not look to the Dover case for precedent. Fairly often we get conflicting rulings on an issue in different districts, and no one knows where things stand until the supreme court takes a side on it.
OTOH, I'm sure this will "affect" Kansas to the extent of having the creationists on the state board of education call a strategy meeting...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wrong. Darwin's theory essentially predicts that the leaves on a given branch of the "tree of life" (your analogy, not mine, but anyway...) will change in response to outside influences such as survival of the fittest, et al. and these influences seem to account for micro-evolution 100%.
What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection. Having not followed this very closely in the last 10 or so years, I may be out of date, but this is the missing link that would confirm all of the Origin of Species theory, and to my knowledge this link has never been found. In fact, the closest approximations to this have only occurred in laboratory settings where very intelligent designers have preset up the conditions for it, and manipulated a whole lot of variables to keep the randomness of nature from interfering and ruining the experiment(s). Which I think would constitute an "intelligent design" of a sort, though I am not embracing the whole ID philosophy by saying so.
Let me (and the rest of the /. universe) in on the secret if you have reference to any verified scientific publication that purports otherwise, would you?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species.
My kingdom is not of this world; (John 18:36)
isn't clear?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Nothing as long as you don't try to disguise it as science. Scientific theories can be tested. Intelligent design can't.
I might as well tell you that elephants can fly. The fact you can't prove me wrong doesn't make my "theory" science.
Remember, "science" is not a synonim of "truth". In fact, no-one is saying ID can't be true. Simply that it's not science.
diegoT
Not only is the eye not irreducibly complex, but there are many different kinds of eyes in animals today and in the fossil record. The eye most definately evolved.
Oh please. There are examples of intermediary steps in eye development throughout the animal kingdom, from simple eye spots all the way to mammalian eyes. Each step is fully functional and does what the organism possessing it requires it to do.
Here's a couple of questions for you:
If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot? Nerves in the mammalian eye actually lie on top of the retina, and where they gather together and plunge through the back of the eye to form the optic nerve, no light can be sensed. This is a design flaw any fallible human engineer would catch and correct...so what does this say about the superhuman Designer of ID fame? (And before you maintain that the eye needs to be designed in this manner, consider the eye of the octopus and squid, which is actually designed correctly (nerves lie under the retina, avoiding the problem of the blind spot).
Cats have eyes that can see clearly in what we perceive to be total darkness. Some squid have twelve different types of color sensing cells (as opposed to our three). Eagles have acuity of vision undreamt of by man. Bees and some birds can see into the ultraviolet. Pit vipers can see into the infrared by virtue of their pits (infrared-sensitive eye pits). Before you ask 'what good is half an eye, consider what good your eyes are to you, deficient as they are.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
> Show me evidence that I evolved from a fish or a single celled animal.
Ask your librarian for a first year biology textbook.
> You can't, therefor evolution isn't science.
Maybe you should back up and tell us what definition of 'science' you're using.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You see? If you'd had a better grounding in science, you wouldn't be confused about this. EVERYTHING isn't taught in science class... SCIENCE is taught there-- natural explanations supported by evidence using the scientific method!
I sure didn't have a problem in high school learning about "what a majority of people in the USA believe"... when I took a *comparitive religions* course.
A majority of people also believe that George Washington was our nation's first president... oddly, I don't recall ever learning that in my science class.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
Classic mistake.... the 'I don't know how so it is impossible without devine intervention' excuse.
Science has already demonstrated that you need only a few modifications to allow normal brain tissue to become light sensitive.
And an eye with a few components still can give you an advantage over others that don't have it:
-Take out the muscles that move it around, you would have to turn your head to look at different things, but it would still be usefull.
-Take out the focussing stuff, you would only see a few things really clear, but when a large blob comes at you at high speed you might step aside while someone without this less usefull eye would get hit/eaten.
-Take out color, black and white tigers still look dangerous enough without the yellow.
-Take out the transparent stuff and place a thing layer of skin in its place, you would get even worse focusing but one could still see blobs moving around.
-Remove the fluid stuff and place the retina close to the skin, you could still detect sudden changes in the lighting.
Do them all and you are very close to the simple lightsensitive braincell.
I am not saying that is the way it happened, but I could think a possible path up in a few seconds without the need to drag some higher being into the picture.
The whole 'irreducibly complex' stuff is a joke, the being that is supposed to do that sort of stuff would need to be even more complex...
I don't disbelieve evolution but neither do I blindly believe everything the scientists tell me is fact That's rather the basis of science.
As an aside: did you consider that God could, by definition he's omnipotent afterall, have forged the fossil record? I think most Christians believe he's not like that and so didn't.
Don't try to use logic and omnipotent gods in the same sentence, its to easy to logically disprove an omnipotent god....
Besides the world was created last week including evidence, such as your memories, of the past.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I find it much easier to believe in evolution than to believe that God went through this elaborate lie to trick us. I mean faking a fossil record is one thing but creating the universe with light already in transit so the stars would look like they're been there for billions of years?? Or creating the image of a supernova such that we would think that it exploded billions of years ago but didn't really?
Come on. Get a grip. I believe in God but I cant believe he's a coniving trickster that the fundamentalists seem to think he must be.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The only thing a science teacher is forbidden from doing in the classroom is exactly what the decision says: presenting Intelligent Design as an alternative [explanatory framework] to evolution.
1. This particular "activist judge" was appointed by President G.W. Bush in 2002.
n .debate.ap/index.html).
2. It's unlikely that the current Dover school board will appeal the decision, making it unlikely that this particular case will ever get to the Supreme Court.
3. That leaves the "sticker" case in Georgia, with it's more narrowly expressed disapproval of evolution as the case most likely to get to the Supremes. At last report, it appeared the appeals court might be inclined to overturn the Federal court decision against the stickers (http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/16/evolutio
4. Some ID proponents advised against the former Dover school board pressing this case, as they felt it didn't have a good chance. Other school boards, however, will now simply become more careful about how they attempt to introduce ID into the classroom.
While Dover was a slam dunk for science, this particular fight is far from over.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
By the eye, what do you mean? A device to detect light? Or a device with an iris, cornea and retina? Light-sensitive cells exist in many simple forms and have evolved to more and more efficient versions of vision. There exist forms of life with simple and complex vision today. See this article about a PBS show on the subject. "The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."
Here is more at this press release about the evolution of the human eye. '"It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity," explains Wittbrodt. "Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision."'
And lots more links here. so please let's stop using the eye as an example. What next, bacterial flagella? That one is explained too. Next question?
Is it all figured out? No, but in science when we don't know it all we say that we are still looking, we don't say things we don't know must be explained by supernatural means, which is what ID does. It cops out with, "it must be something intelligent that designed it" instead of trying to understand the real reasons. Science may never find all the answers, it doesn't promise that it will but at least it doesn't have the answers BEFORE it has the QUESTIONS.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
I invite you to help yourself to last year's flu vaccine.
Why should someones belief in a supernatural being be included in a science class? If they mention God (a Christion god) why not mention Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, etc? Science isn't about beliefs, it's about testing the natural world.
People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years.
And the Earth has been in existence for what, 4.5 billion years? Besides, what does Christ have to do with it? Christ isn't God (at least not from what I remember of my catechism classes).
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created.
Whoa! Hold on thar pardner. You just made a huge leap of false logic. First you say that many people believe that God created everything yet provide no evidence for this belief. Then you suggest that we are trying to measure what he created. If you haven't provided any evidence to further the claim that God exists how can you say that God created everything?
Also, who says God is a he? Why not a she? Why not an it? A supernatural being able to create matter from nothing most likely doesn't have a gender.
Many people believe in lots of things. Some people even believe they are Jesus. That doesn't mean they are correct.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We both permit and support the education our children receive in our area's public school system. IMHO, they're doing a pretty fair job.
We both teach our children what we believe. Our children know that we're speaking about our beliefs, even when we speak of them as facts.
We made sure our kids were capable of critical thought, judgement and self-determination in the area of beliefs. They have their own (for the record, two have ended up Catholic, one agnostic, one athiest - the jury's still out on the youngest two, but they're leaning toward agnostic and Jewish).
If I believe a thing to be true, wouldn't not sharing that with my children be abuse?
This has been observed, e.g. several new mosquito species have evolved in the London subway.
see here for more info.
Indeed it is.
There are no facts when it comes to how the universe was created.
Well, we're talking about evolution here, not cosmology; even if that weren't the case, while we obviously don't know how the universe started, empirical observations which can give us insight into the beginning of the universe, such as the cosmic background radiation, are facts.
Why can't a teacher tell his students that many people believe God created the universe?
Because it isn't a scientific belief. This isn't a matter of teaching about how people believed in geocentrism, or phlogiston, or the ether; it is a non-falsifiable claim.
This is not like telling students some new theory that someone thought up 5 minutes ago. People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years. It seems like it should be mentioned in the biology class.
You're right; it isn't some new theory. It isn't even a theory at all; it's an untestable model.
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created. I'm not advocating replacing science text books with the bible. But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
What people believe is a subject for an anthropology class, not a science class.
English is easier said than done.
Physical property X can vary from Y to Z but it doesn't. Slightest variation in X would preclude life.
Ex: Boiling point of water, melting point of ice, enzymatic reactions, patterns of moulcules and crystals, etc....
2. Hypothesis
Possibly, some external stimulus is arranging the observed phenomena to ensure a suitable environment to enable life to exist.
3. Experiment
Like gravity, we are still looking for answers on how it works at the physical level and how to verify.
4. Results
...see 3.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I've said it before and I'll say it again, science doesn't give a rat's ass about truth. Science is about seeking out explanation, understanding, and prediction. A scientific theory can simultaneously be absolutely wrong (e.g., classical physics) but entirely usefull if it allows one to make predictions and explain behavior reproducibly.
A simple google search for "evidence evolution" yields numerous pages. From the very first one (I'm feeling lucky!)
m l has eight fruity fly speciation events. Most interesting to me is the Apple Maggot fly, which originally fed on hawthorn trees, but is speciating at this very moment; there are now two different races of the fly, one of which feeds on apples and other rosacea and one on thornapples. They mature at different rates and due to this do not interbreed even though they are still able to hybridize.
Link 1: Observed Evidence of Speciation http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.ht
Link 2: 29 evidences for macroevolution http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ This is the one I was looking for. If you read and understand this and fail to accept that evolution is occuring and can account for the diversity of species on earth then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Acy
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
If it fits anywhere is in a class of religious studies. When I was at school I had class by this name, and it taught about all religions and did not try proving that one religion was better than another. It was more about trying to provide intellectual insight into the basis and beliefs of each religion.
The other places that would be suitable for teaching this is bible school, church or even private Christian schools.
BTW Don't forget that even the Catholic Church recently came out and declared their support for evolution.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"because I lack the ability to understand an evolutionary system of a grand scale, I have therefore conclusive proof that God must have created the world... After all, everything too complicated for me to understand is just God's miracles"
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The gist of the problem is, ID is unscientific more because it *poses* no questions than because it answers none.
The M.O. of Intelligent Design's advocates forever now has been to go to the edges of what science knows and identify something out there that hasn't been fully explained yet. They then claim the as-yet-unexplained area is evidence of things being so complicated there can be no explanation except a godlike "designer." When science figures out the supposedly irreducible complexity of whatever the example was, the IDers just move the goalposts to whatever's on the edge now.
Michael Behe -- author of "Darwin's Black Box" -- for example, started out talking about fossil whales. Why weren't there intermediary whale forms between mesonychids and true whales? Oops -- over the next 20 years many, many steps in between turned up. "Black Box" is the same watch-watchmaker argument, only about subcellular structures like cilia. The logic's flawed in the same way, and his book is out-of-date in several of its claims. Don't worry, ID types will move the terms of the debate out somewhere else. We're never going to be omniscient, so they'll always have something to seize on.
The trick is, if the ID vision of the universe being so complex it can't be explained by anything but a God was accepted, nobody would ever have asked *any* questions about how things work. In these people's minds, every- every- everything is so infinitely complex that the only possible response to the world is to worship its creator. They've been making this argument since well before Darwin was around, it's not specific to evolution.
It's not just that their idea doesn't answer any questions. No questions would even get asked , if these people ran the world, or your school system.
(And of course that would suit them just fine, because their religious views are about preserving their authority, not about explaining the world or helping anyone lead a moral life.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
> What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.
No modern biologist thinks evolution is purely a matter of natural selection. If you knew the subject matter at the freshman level you'd know that lots of other stuff, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect, also have influence on what evolution produces.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You are wrong. One of the things learned as a child was that I had the choice, and I make the choice. Infact, one of the things taught in Christianity is Freewill. How could I be accountable if I was never making a choice.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Every change had to confer a survival advantage
Why?
All that needs to happen is for a change not to cause the organism to die before it can pass its genes on. If there is a mutation, even a harmless or slightly detrimental one, so long as the organism still successfully reproduces, then it passed its genes on. Its unmutated counterparts may still reproduce at a better rate, causing its own numbers to diminish relatively.
But if that disadvantage then mutates again to something that is then a great advantage, then this organism can regain its losses and procreate even faster than its nonmutated counterparts.
Sometimes to reach a gloablly optimal path, you have to take a locally suboptimal path. So long as one mutation doesn't completely destroy an organism, the mutation, even if immediately unhelpful, can serve as a stepping stone to future, more helpful mutations or advantages in changing environments.
Imagine it like this. Suppose a mutation makes a human very nerdy looking. Girls don't like that. Their chances of reproduction drop sharply. The occasional nerd of the opposite sex may come along allowing this breed to trickle on. Then computers are invented and these nerds have anew environment in which to flourish. Their nerdy traits make them very successful, which in turns attracts a large number of mates, allowing what was a negative mutation to carry on in greater numbers!
OK, that one was a stretch :)
Its simple really, if I want my kid to learn religion in school then I will send him to a religious school, catholic or otherwise. Faith is based on a belief, not facts, and that is not science. Since this was tought in a science class it is a just decision and our kids will be better for it.
For those that believe ID is anything but a dressed up creationist view masquerading as a science of any kind, think again. Most people capable of critical thinking aren't fooled and thankfully neither was the judge.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
The opposite of "a religious person" is not "an atheist".
What makes someone religious is their blind acceptance of some dogma. Faith defines religion - belief without or even contrary to evidence or reason. Many Buddhists are atheists and yet still religious people because they follow the doctrine of their religion without question.
What makes someone atheist is not believing in God(s). As it happens this is the default position of someone who is not religious, as without observed evidence of logical proof, it is irrational to believe in God(s). I myself held this position for the majority of my life. But it's possible to be a non-religious theist, if you've got a sound argument for the existence of God.
Myself, I find that speaking of God makes perfect sense if you see it as speaking of the universe anthropomorphically. My beliefs are not fundamentally different from an atheist's, but suddenly I can understand theists statements about God in a way which not only means something, but quite often produces true statements on the theists parts. Seen in this way, a proof of God's existence is just a proof of the universe's existence, which is trivial as the universe is "all that which exists".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The examples proffered by ID advocates are certainly interesting examples, but the problem is their lack of integrity in assuming they can "prove" natural selection did not cause them. That lack of integrity threatens science by letting all sorts of sloppy discourse into the pool of scientific ideas.
They set up some arbitrary criterion (like "irreducible complexity"), claim a particular example meets that criterion, then claim that supports their alternative theory.
The flaw is that "irreducible complexity" does not imply "could not have arised by natural selection", just "could not have arisen through some *straightforward* process of evolution."
Nature is big enough and has been around long enough that there is a good likelihood that some things will exist that have not left enough evidence behind to determine their natural origins. The fact that we don't have, for instance, hard evidence of the genealogy of the Japanese emperors does not mean we accept that they arose from the Sun god. We might be able to figure out that they came from Korea because of similar customs, or whatever, but we also might never figure it out.
In a similar way, we might NEVER figure out, for example, exactly how DNA became the genetic material of choice. That's not evidence in favor of ID or against evolution, its a lack of evidence for anything. We can HOPE to get enough indirect evidence to make a compelling case, but we might not get what we want.
If a person is raised as an atheist, they cannot chose to be an atheist as an adult but they can chose to believe in religion? That is essentially what you are implying, that a person can only make a choice to go against their upbringing and cannot make a conscience choice to continue the beliefs of their parents. This simply is not true.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Evolution is provable/disprovable. ID is not.
ID doesn't meet the rigorous scientific standards to be called a "theory".
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Just because something is explainable or natural does not remove it from being a miracle.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As has the spelling of "definitely".
Because the fossil record does not show "bigger and bigger life forms" in the upper layers - it shows newer ones!. In fact, your theory would require large dinosaur bones to be on the top layer of everything instead of in the middle layer - as they are.
The obnoxious sticker said: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered".
Now you can read it in two ways:
a) The word "theory" here means exactly what it means in Science. In this case, all textbooks should have hundreds of similar stickers as in "This textbook contains material on inertia. Inertia is a theory, not a fact, regarding the way bodies upon which no external force is acting behave. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered".
b) The word "theory" here is being used with its layman meaning, as in the song "I have a theory" in Buffy's Musical Episode. "I have theory, it could be bunnies". In this case the sentence is not only wrong, it is a blatant religious statement. That was found to be the case, and then the judge nixed it.
It posits a God with a sense of aesthetics.
This God finds the idea of presto! creation cheap and unattractive.
Any child can fashion a man from mud and then breathe on it. Even though this is the medium he must work in, he does what he can to imply the possibility of something much more elegant. A creative process which starts with molecular seeds, an intricate plan, and a dream.
Perhaps this is that God's way of telling us he, too believes in God. A God who created him/her but remains hidden.
But, that's not what is happening. Evolution, because it threatens fundamentalists, has been singled out as an idea worthy of questioning separating the theory from other scientific theories. Not all ideas are equal and it's been 'polite tyranny' that forces us to consider the laughable science of ID as equal to the well-tested, falsifiable, predictable ideas that make up evolutionary theory.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Well put. Intelligent design might be summed up as the idea that "natural processes alone cannot explain the complexity of higher life forms." I do object to it being taught but for reasons other than what most people say here.
The problem with intelligent design is that it is not testable. I think the scientific term might be "interpretation" rather than "theory." In other words, it has little predictive value and is a bit more of a "here is what I think this information means" rather than "here is a theory we can use to predict such and such."
Other "interpretations" in Science include, notably, the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of Quantum Physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation is the idea that "for the purposes of quantum experiments, observation can be thought of as the force that defines a quantum event to a specific manifestation, i.e. the collapse of a specific wave." Like Intelligent Design it is probably untestable. After all, how do you test the effect of observation on quantum phenomina? Certainly not by comparing it in an observed vs. a non-observed state.... In essence the Copenhagen Interpretation really is a "useful way of thinking about" the experimental data in quantum physics. But the fact is, it has no more predictive value than other interpretations, and when you compare the writings of Schroedinger and Heisenberg, one hardly even sees a common interpretation there. I.e. Schroedinger seems to think that the state really is undefined, while Heisenberg thinks it is defined yet unknowable for the non-omnicient. I.e. to Heisenberg, it is not that the velocity and position of an electron are mutually undefined on a physical level, but rather than measuring one prevents measuring the other accurately without simultaniously measuring every other quantum event in the universe. In this view the electron has a distinct position and a distinct velocity, but we can't measure them simultaniously. In this view, these properties exist *indepentant* of observation, while to Schroedinger, they don't.
The problem of interpretations of theory and in fact scientific theory itself is well summed up by Heisenberg in "Physics and Philosophy" where he discusses the fact that data does not imply theory, and that interpreting any set of data (in order to create a theory) necessarily requires bringing in additional assumptions, and that these assumptions may or may not be testible. While Heisenberg doesn't discuss Occam's Razor, it is noteworthy that when you have competing theories, the less complex one is usually assumed to be the most useful. Hence we use a heliocentric rather than geocentric model of the solar system because it is easier to get the motions accurate with less work even though one can mathematically transpose one system into the other with a bit of work.
The apparent problem with Intelligent Design as an interpretation of evolutionary theory is that it appears to most of us to be conclusion ("There is a Creator God") in search of a proof. For this reason, it doesn't seem to fit well with the scientific Principle of Parsimony, a.k.a. Occam's Razor ("One Should Not Needlessly Multiply Entites"). In essence ID requires more work to get the same result as evolutionary biology would. So from a rigid scientific view, ID is a bit like arguing that Saturn moves around the Earth. Yes, you can make it work, but there really is no reason to do so when you have a simpler heliocentric model to work with.
Our current evolutionary theory is fairly incomplete and is still being actively developed. Indeed evolutionary theory is as flawed as the ID people say it is but that is largely because there are missing pieces which are still being worked out. For example, there isn't really a solid understanding as to why populations diverge so quickly when the biodiversity is low,* but the answers to these questions will, I think, better answer the shortcomings of evolutionary theory than ID does today.
* I would say we are about 80% there but this is a very complicated pr
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Which big band was it that we started with? Benny Goodman? Count Basie?
"thought to be the precursor to the eye" and "could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue" are not very scientific statements. As stated before. THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE WAS A POOL OF GOO THAT EVOLVED INTO WHAT IT IS TODAY.
Well lets consider glaciers. It is "thought" that the sun evaporated water from the ocean. And it is "thought" that that water fell as snow at the poles. And that snow "could have" built up over thousands of years into very deep glaciers.
And there are layers of dust and pollen and volcanic ash that are "thought" to have settled out of the atmosphere and that the layered of such particles "could have" arisen from seasonal snowfall cycles over tens of thousands of years.
And it is "thought" that the pattern and composition of volcanic dust in the glacier happens to exactly match up with the historical and prehistorical records of major volcanic eruptions becuase that dust *did* come from those volcanoes and laid down over tens of thousands of years. And it is "thought" that the patterns of pollen match up with other global records over tens of thousands of years because that pollen *did* accumulate during the steady buildup of that glacier over tends of thousands of years.
And it is thought that the presence and levels of LEAD and other trace minerals in the upper layers of glacial dust "could have" been caused by the historical and prehistorical development of human mining releasing such contaminants into the the air.
And as you say, THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT THIS IS HOW GLACIERS ACTUALLY FORMED.
If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a pile of sticks and some glue up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, perfect box.
If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a bunch of water vapor up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, complex perfect snowflake.
The argument you were attempting to make (badly) is the stupid old argument that "the second law of thermodynamics says disorder must increase and therefore proves evolution impossible".
Of course the second law of thermodynamics only apples to average disorder increasing, and it does not apply at all when there is an energy flow through a system.
As I pointed with with snowflakes, it is actually quite normal and common for nature to spontaneously greate complex order and structure out of total chaos when there is an energy flow - in particular the sun provides an energy flow through the earth to drive both snowflake formation and biology and biological evolution.
The nature of life, the structure of life, and the existance of life can only be explained as an engineering miracle that was created. PERIOD.
Statint your ignorance and your lack of understanding is not a disproof of anything.
It is quite well understood how the evolution process creates structure and complexity and information. In fact I have personally witnessed exactly how this process operates and exactly how powerful it is at creating order and complexity and information.
The information is created/added during the secotion step of the evolution process.
If you have a replication (with mutation) and then selection in a repeating cycle, the mutation step creates a bit of random noise, and the selection step converts that noise into ordered/directed information by filtering out any portion that is contrary to the selection direction.
Roll a hundred dice. Do a slection step to "kill" the half with the lowest number showing, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred... you will have a hundred dice showing 4's, 5's, and 6's. "Kill" the half with the lowest number showing again, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred again... and you have a hundred dice showing 5's, and 6's. Repeat a third time and now you "magically" have 100 dices all showing perfect sixes.
We started with perfect chaos rolled dice, and
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