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Intelligent Design Ruled "Not Science"
blane.bramble writes "The Register is reporting that the UK government has stated there is no place in the science curriculum for Intelligent Design and that it can not be taught as science. 'The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programs of study and should not be taught as science.'"
Not going to happen: Opinion polls suggest 43 per cent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Only 14 per cent believe humans evolved without divine involvement.
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The idiots in Kansas who got intelligent design into schools were voted out. (Although I think it took a few years.) So the system works, just slowly.
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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The difference is, Intelligent Design teaches specifically that certain structures found in biological systems are too complex to have come about through macro evolution. They point to things as varied as the eye, flagella on bacterium, and a number of other things which they call "irreducibly complex", meaning that they would have no function if broken apart, and so supposedly cannot have an evolutionary pathway leading to their creation. ID has nothing to do with explaining the origins of the universe. It's an attempt to prove the involvement of a deity in the development of life on Earth.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
While this is indeed a win, the watering down of the sciences in the UK is horrifying. I've written an article about the physics exams to try and bring some attention to this topic. On the biology side, I was shocked by the most recent GCSE paper on which the last question described an experiment on lab animals and the effect exposure of a hormone had on them. The students where then asked: ''How does this experiment contradict the theory of evolution.'' Also they are asked questions like ''Who would oppose contraception'' and they get a mark for writing ''Certain religious groups.'' It's really sad.
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And now we're going to have Kuhn thrown in our face. ID is not a theory, save in the vernacular definition of the word. Even Michael Behe, one of its formulators, was forced to admit it during the Dover Trial. The very few predictions that it has made have been falsified, and it is in fact used by no one in actual fields that rely upon learning about the actions of intelligent agents. You can take science or leave it if you like, but don't pretend that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory. It, in fact, rejects key lines of research that real fields of inquiry into intelligent agents attempt to answer. It explicitely refuses to answer who the Designer is, where the Designer is or was, how the Designer went about producing the designs, or even, in fact, what was designed. Now you can go around trumpeting Kuhn all you want, but any line of inquiry that explicitely refuses to answer specific questions that naturally come from investigation into the hypothesis sure doesn't sound like a useful way to gain knowledge to me.
Oh, and explain why anyone should give a damn what Kuhn says?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Intelligent Design is not a theory in the scientific meaning of the word. A scientific theory is the best explanation that fits the evidence available, and is falsifiable. What that means is that if new evidence comes to light that disproves it, then the scientific theory can be replaced with a new theory, or modified to fit the new evidence.
Intelligent Design does not meet the requirements of a scientific theory, because it is not falsifiable. Please stop claiming that evolution is a theory using the layman's definition of the term. Also, please do not claim that intelligent design is a theory unless you have a falsifiable model which fits all the evidence in place.
This is not an example of actual evolution - there was no change to the gene pool. This is, however, like the industrial era moths, an excellent example of natural selection.
Evolution is any change in the relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool. Natural selection is the process which drives that change.
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"And even he recognized, for example (to use a beaten-to death example, at that!), that the eye was very complex and his theory did not account for it at that time."
Why do critics constantly bring this up, when all it does is display their own ignorance about Darwin? Darwin noted the complexity of the eye and how it SEEMED to refute his ideas, and THEN he DID go on to show how his theory could not only account for it, but that the remnants of many of the necessary transitional stages existed in existent life. Right or wrong, he did NOT think it was "too complex for his theory at the time."
That people think so and claim so is a telltale sign that they've only ever read the creationist quote mine, where they quote Darwin saying that the eye seems confoundingly complex... but then fail to continue the quote or note that he RIGHT AFTERWARDS discusses why theis perception is mistaken.
I highly recommend reading the transcripts of Kitzmiller v Dover. It is the whole debate couched in the form of a political drama, with top notch experts on both sides.
.sig, before I moved on to other fallacies...Here it is one more time.
There was not one single objection raised by the pro-ID defendant that was not utterly crushed by scientific evidence.
There is not one single ID argument that doesn't reduce to the argument from ignorance...I cited it so often, it used to be my
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam:
Fallacy of taking a statement not provably false and implying that it is therefore true
Irreducible Complexity basically states, "I don't know what is smaller than this, so it's irreducible, and therefore proof for the existence of god." It's a huge fallacy.
Anyway, read Kitzmiller. A lot of the standard ID irreducibles are reduced in there, and the judge is a character.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Scientific method: a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning, the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
You might say that a real scientist is always a practitioner. What you think you know based on what you heard from someone else (even someone with a reputation as a "scientist") is in some part based on faith. As you put it, "tied to the limits of their scientific knowledge." Faith in science, yes, but still faith, until you have verified it yourself.
The proper scientific attitude is "I don't know, let's check this out for ourselves, what happens when we do this?" which is, coincidentally (?) also the proper attitude recommended by Buddhist teachers. In the Kalama sutra, the Buddha said:
I always thought it was really interesting to see a 2600 year old tradition which teaches, "don't accept something just because it's in the scriptures -- check it out for yourself!"
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Evolution says nothing about abiogenesis. All it says is what happened after the abiogenesis. Same with the Big Bang--all it says is what happens after the universe is created.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I don't know what Kansas you're talking about, but the Kansas that I live in never had anyone "who got intelligent design into schools." We had a few Board of Education members that insisted upon stating that evolution was only a theory, and that there are other possible explanations for life. They also wanted stickers in biology textbooks warning students that the topic of evolution was discussed, and that they should keep an open mind to alternate theories. It was the implication of intelligent design as science that was troubling. Never was it pushed into schools. The constituents of these board members saw the potential for all kinds of issues that were inappropriate for a science classroom and rightfully voted out the troublesome board members.
Everyone who doesn't live in Kansas thinks that a few crackpots tried shoving ID down children's throats, despite the opposition of thousands of Kansans. In reality, a few crackpots tried getting their collective foot in the door to do this later on, and were successfully stopped.