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.'"

Comments

Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

It's not really religion either.

God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.

The arrogance of the goddamn literal read types is just astounding....Anyone else would look at evolution and go, "Damn! That God guy is hella fricking smart! Look at this crap! It's a system for self-improvement built into self-replicating creatures! It's awesome!" but a literal-read weenie will look at it and say, "Don't say nuthin about that in da bible. You must be wrong."

The worst thing that can be said about the literal read types, is that they have nothing to look up to. They know all there is to know about god and everything. So very very sad.

Re:Hah.

[Dann25]

Paraphrasing another article.... its amazing how people that want to take everything on faith become experts on the scientific method when they want you to prove evolution

Re:Hah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! How many times has some creationist offered criticism of some experiment I show them. The criticism is sometimes very well founded, and I agree with it. Then in the next breath, they say they believe the Bible is the only truth. Where did the useful skepticism go??

Re:Hah.

[adisakp]

God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.

That postulate leaves the existence of God vulnerable to a Babel Fish Argument -- i.e. were someone to experience a true miracle, it would disprove the existance of such a God.

Re:Hah.

[lawpoop]

It's not really religion either.

God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out. There are some religions that don't have a big faith component. A lot of types of Hindudism and Buddhism, for examples. They claim that their traditions are 'sciences' ( and they made this claim well before modern western science came on the scene ), meaning serious, systematic studies. In this case they are studying the experience of consciousness, from the subjective point of view of the practitioner.

In other words, you don't need faith, they claim -- or rather, they don't even mention it at all. Just sit and meditate seriously for long enough, and you will have a direct experience of the divine. There's a famous maxim from one of the Zen masters, "If you see a Buddha on your path to enlightenment, kill it!"

While it's true that they would say you can't figure God out, either, they might claim that you can 'experience' 'Him'.

Re:Hah.

[PopeRatzo]

He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.

That's beautiful. If you don't mind, I'd like to use that line. I'll try to remember to give you credit, SatanicPuppy.

I used to date a stuck-up girl who was ineffable, too. I finally gave up and eff'ed her friend.

Re:Hah.

[PorkNutz]

You're confusing faith and belief. Faith is not believing that some one exists, but that they are a trustworthy and benevolent. ...And you are wrong. Faith has many definitions, one of which you have chosen to deny.

Faith

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

-----
Jon Stewart for President T-Shirt
Funny Shirts @ ProStoner.com

Re:Hah.

[Lord Ender]

Good research wouldn't assume anything for which there is no evidence. But, if a working assumption must be made, assuming something magical (such as "gods/unicorns/santa clause did it") would get you laughed out of any academic organization except for Liberty University.

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

Robert Frost wrote a poem called "The White Tailed Hornet" basically to put his two cents worth in regarding instincts and evolution: "Once we began to see our images reflected in the mud and even dust...Nothing but fallibility was left us..." Basically, once you stop striving for something higher than yourself, you become no better than an animal.

Frost couldn't see in science a thing greater than himself. It was all about lesser and lesser things, smaller in every way than the ideals he loved.

But it's not about that at all; for many of us, science is about truth, and the glory of humanity, and we view those ideals to be a higher end. A great striving, a noble (nobel?) quest. Something greater.

True believers, and believe is the right word, those who have faith, they look up to an ideal greater than they could ever hope to know, and try in a small way to take some of that into themselves.

Neither of these groups bother me. Hell, there is often overlap. The striving for something greater is what humanity is about.

And then there is the third group. Those who know all there is about the world, and all there is about god, and all there is about science. It's not even only the intelligent design guys, though they annoy me most. They've got the world figured; they know everything about it, and they've pinned it's dessicated body to a piece of felt, and stuck it under glass, where they can point to it every day and declaim how much they "know".

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh. Sure, there a lots of testimonials about people who have witnessed the power of god in their lives...I don't know of any that lend themselves to experimentation or replication. You may believe that God has touched your life, you may have faith that something is evidence for the existence of a higher being.

But you don't have proof. Proof is something you can hold in your hand, and show to someone else, something that can have only one meaning, only one possible cause.

Re:Hah.

[EaglemanBSA]

I offer criticism to many experiments, but I don't discount the existence of evolution. I believe the Bible to be wholly true, but that belief has come through useful skepticism. Tell me, after being skeptic of an experiment, then trying it time and time again, coming up with the same results...doesn't that eliminate the skepticism? Surely you're not skeptic of the existence of gravity because you've had a lifetime around it to know it's there...why is it any different for a Christian believing the Bible? Time and time again, I've found what it says to be true, so I believe it is.

Attacking 'creationists' by name here doesn't really jive with me, because I believe evolution to be a completely probable, possible theory. It's been shown in many experiments to be the best model for development of living organisms that we know of, by the scientific method. I also believe that God created it. Believing that God created the universe and believing that a species changes from one eon to the next as an adaptation to its environment are not mutually exclusive. I, in fact, think it's pretty dadgum cool.

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

Ha! Yes, you're quite right. The "Literal Read" as it's called is actually a quite liberal read...They make some pretty broad leaps away from what I would consider mainstream Christianity.

Frankly I think it has a lot to do with the educational requirements of the priesthood in the modern evangelical churches...It was quite a shock to me, raised Catholic as I was, to find that most southern baptist preachers didn't have any formal religious instruction at all, and were perfectly free to preach their own version of the baptist faith within an extremely broad set of guidelines.

Re:Hah.

[plunge]

And look, you shifted the goalposts, from common descent via natural selection to complaints about the "genesis of life" which doesn't even concern evolution BY DEFINITION (since evolution is only relevant when you have self-reproduction with heredity, i.e. life already).

Your accusations are standard "pox on all houses" boilerplate. But the rub is that they are creationist boilerplate: the idea of the tactic is that one attacks the very idea that we have good evidence or can know much of anything at all... i.e. simply tries to discredit most of modern biology without actually doing any work... with the hopes that once this is done, religious assertions become more compelling in the aftermath.

Re:Hah.

[plunge]

"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.

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

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 .sig, before I moved on to other fallacies...Here it is one more time.

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.

Re:Hah.

[plunge]

"Frankly there's not enough data to "prove" either side. "

So you say. The vast vast majority of the people that actually study the data disagree, and most of the people that agree with you, when asked to explain why, demonstrably get things wrong and misrepresent what the evidence is and how it is used.

Re:Hah.

[WilliamSChips]

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.

Re:Hah.

[Anonymous Coward]

You find 4 to be the most ludicrous, so something had to create the universe. Which leads us to try to answer who created god.

Assuming one of the following to be true, pick the most ludicrous:
1. Man created God
2. Unicorns created God
3. Santa Clause created God
4. Nobody created God

Since we have already determined it's ludicrous to believe that something really complex can't just exist, I am going to go out on a limb and say that number 4 is the most ludicrous answer. What I don't get is how can a person who believes the universe is too complex to just exist will postulate a being so complex that he can hold the entire knowledge to create the universe in his head and cause it's creation.

Re:Hah.

[Pfhorrest]

why is it any different for a Christian believing the Bible? Time and time again, I've found what it says to be true, so I believe it is. I'm curious, what is it that the Bible has claimed which you have observed to be true? I'm assuming here that by "found" you mean something like "observed", and not just "well that sounds right to me", as intuition is clearly no basis for grounding an argument, since arguing that way, you'd only ever convince people who already agreed with you, and never anybody who didn't.

Note that there is a big difference between saying non-false things and saying true things. If what you say implies nothing at all, then you've not really said anything descriptive of the world, and that non-statement is no more false, but also no more true, than silence. So feel-good emotional language (blessed are so-and-so...), lists of commands (thou shalt not...), and so forth, are not even candidates for being true or false. Also bear in mind that "The Bible" is not one big theory, hypothesis, or proposition: it's a whole bunch of them, and as such, some of them could be right and others wrong, and so finding some true statements in there doesn't imply that all statements therein are true.

In my experience, those claims that the Bible makes which are meaningful (actually say something with observable implications), and not evidently false (such as a literal reading of Genesis), are fairly trivial and not disputed even by atheists. (Christians and non-Christians, for all their differences, still agree on a whole lot of things, like for example that 2+2=4, so there are plenty of trivial things in the Bible than even an atheist will agree are true). So if you've read something in there which is meaningful, controversial (i.e. something Christians believe and non-Christians don't), and which you've observed evidence for, I'd be rather interested in hearing what is was, and what sort of evidence you've observed.

Re:Hah.

[Hatta]

Basically, once you stop striving for something higher than yourself, you become no better than an animal.

We are no better than animals because we are animals. If that conflicts with your ideals, you should get some more realistic ideals.

Re:Hah.

[pnewhook]

I had religion (required) in public school. It was great. But they didn't preach any one religion. They showed how all the religions of the world came about, their origins and similarities and differences in their belief systems. Then we had guest speakers, one each from the major local religions that came in to talk about and answer questions of their beliefs and customs.

I firmly believe that type of religion in schools should be mandatory. It would certainly remove a lot of the predjudices and stereotyping that goes on simply due to fear and lack of understanding.

Re:Hah.

[BakaHoushi]

To quote George Carlin, "Give me ONE reason why a human being is better than a chicken. Just ONE. ...See? Nobody can do it! Why? Because chickens are honest, living creatures!"

Let's look at the chicken/human comparison a little more:
We both require and search for nourishment, often in a group.
We take in that nourishment, where a complex series of systems provide energy to all the necessary cells of the body.
We both have an innate desire after a certain period of time to combine our genetic material with another in hopes of keeping some portion of ourselves "alive".
After a set amount of time, natural causes will end our lives, leaving room for the next generation to take our places.

Where exactly do we differ enough that we are so different? Because we use tools? Sorry, but so do other animals. Plenty of simians, and even some birds. Because we create communities where we work together and raise each other? Again, so do plenty of animals. Because we have "free will" and can act in good or evil ways, such as murdering our own? It's been shown that chimps can, in fact, commit murder.

Human beings are intelligent (...well, some of us, anyway...) because that's how we survived long enough to fuck. A frog is not as intelligent because... he doesn't need to be that smart and reasoning to survive. His mechanism is having 10,000 little eggs and, with any luck, a handful will survive to reproduce. Those whose mechanisms didn't work... well, they not here anymore. Ours? It worked. A vulture's design lets him eat rotting meat with little risk of getting sick. If a human ate that meat, he'd vomit. So, using intelligence, we created cooking. Lower risk of getting sick from food. A rhino has thick hide and a powerful horn to fend off predators. We can creates weaponry. Different means to the same end.

So, where's the difference?

Re:Hah.

[ppanon]

Well, another way to look at it is that evolution is half of a proof by induction where you have X(N+1) = F(X(N)) but you are missing X(0).

Scientists say the induction step has meaning because evidence supports it for many N in (long ago to now), and when new X(N)/X(N+a) value pairs are discovered, they appear to follow the induction step.

Religious fundamentalists say that because you have no idea what X(0) is, then the induction step must be wrong. Thus they claim either a God created all X(0) and X(N) is a mere subset, or else they claim that X(N+1) = God(X(N)) for some, but not all, N.

While the scientific approach is far from a complete proof, it does have a lot of evidence that supports it. In contrast, a lot of counterexamples exist for the first religious fundamentalist approach, and the second religious fundamentalist approach has no elegance.

And well, if the rest of the Universe is anything to judge by, I think that's it's pretty unlikely that a Creator would create life through an inelegant process.

Re:Hah.

[aldo.gs]

I do agree that we are not better than animals (although it seems to me that the notion of "betterness" is quite subjective).

But I can think of a difference between us and the rest of the animals: knowledge passed along generations.

I have never seen another species use (or create) some tool and improve it over time. Or keep historical records. Of course, for them there is no need to do it, but we managed to survive without writing and with very primitive weapons too. Maybe it can be summed up as 'civilization', but that term can be ambiguous sometimes.

Perhaps I got your comment the wrong way (and sorry for my english).

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

A dog just wants to be a dog. A chicken just wants to be a chicken. A pig a pig. A frog a frog.

But a man wants to be more than a man. For the whole existence of our species we have striven to be more than just what we are. In everything where we have ever fallen short, we have built tools to extend our reach. Every comparison is upward. We have no final goals; when we achieve, we immediately try to take the next step.

We have ideals. People live in pursuit of dreams...We give up sex for them sometimes! We die for them when we must.

We have it in us to be truly animals. Hardly any doubt of that; we see it everywhere. Dogs, chickens, and pigs, as far as the eye can see.

But I'll set my sights a little higher, so that one day, perhaps, we can be something more.

Re:Hah.

[snowgirl]

So, where's the difference?

I'll throw this out here, and all the linguists will nod, and all the non-linguists are going to try and debate me about this.

We have a method that relies upon complex syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in order to generate reasonably effective communication between our species. In one word: Language.

Now, to deal with the issues that people will likely raise:

"What about parrots, they can talk", Parrots are indeed capable of a surprising amount of phonology, that allows them to mimic human speech patterns. It has also been shown that they are able to associate words and phrases with ideas, concepts and behaviors. However, they only satisfy "semantics" in the above, and a relatively small subset of semantics.

"What about those apes that I heard learned to use sign language!" Well, first off, I'm happy to see that you recogize that sign language is actually language, and not just some form of gestural gumbo. However, the sign language learned by these Apes is equivalent to that gestural gumbo. They have associated one sign to an idea, and then they throw those signs out until someone actually does what they're hoping to get. "YOU ME TICKLE TICKLE ME ME TICKLE YOU ME TICKLE ME YOU" is a pretty good example of their communicative skill.

"I heard Dolphins can talk!" Dolphins do have a complex communication system that allows them to transmit fairly detailed notions back and forth to each other. However, they still lack the "complex syntax" given above.

"What about white mice, huh?" ok, you got me there.

Re:Hah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know, the eyeball isn't all that great. First, we only have two of them. And because of their positioning, the majority of our surroundings are rendered into a huge blind spot. Squids got it right. Does god love squids more than us? And why can we only see a small portion of the light spectrum? Or Infrared rays? Gamma? Ultraviolet? General radiation?

While we're at it, why do I drink, breath, talk and eat out of the same hole? Dolphins have more options than we do. Great move God. Are you TRYING to make me choke and die on my Hot Pocket?.

And what the hell is up with our genitals? That's like putting a theme park in the middle of sewage treatment plant.

Re:Hah.

[SatanicPuppy]

In what way? Do you think frogs dream of greatness, or that men don't?

Our whole history is one of envy. We envy the tiger its claws, so we learn to make our own out of stone. We envy the deer its speed, so we domesticate the horse. We envy the fish their abilities with the sea, so we invent boats, and then submarines. We envy the birds the sky, so we invent the airplane.

Was all that enough? No. We launch our crazy asses into outer fucking space.

We are not a complacent species. There is never going to be a point where we say, "Enough." Do you know where that's going to lead...I mean, clearly you think you do, but do you know?

Re:Hah.

[MrCopilot]

A dog just wants to be a dog. A chicken just wants to be a chicken. A pig a pig. A frog a frog.

Dunno about your's, but my dog wants to be a human.

I've never been confident enough in my observational abilities to discern what a chicken, pig, or frog wants to be, but if I had to guess, I bet it does not want to be dinner. Which is almost the very definition of pig and chicken and in some countries frog.

On these grounds, I respectfully disagree.

Re:Hah.

[BakaHoushi]

That's not what I'm saying. That's what YOU'RE saying.

I'm saying that culture and improvements are irrelevant. The universe does not care that we do things. The only ones who do care is... us.

In your book, that makes us better. But that's the thing, isn't it? It's YOUR book. Not OUR book. Not THEIR book. Just yours. I'm certain that many, if not most, or nearly all people share that idea with you (myself, too, in a way) but again, we defined what is "better." Life has no inherit value for attributes. It's like arguing over who's a better artist. Ultimately, it comes down to opinion.

Re:Hah.

[Rallion]

In my book, that makes us "better" than animals. I know that I, for one, would be bored out of my mind picking bugs off of others in my "group" and throwing poo.

I'm going to quote Douglas Adams now.

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

As a species, we value the things that we have. We value self-improvement, because we can do it. We value culture, because we have it.

However, monkeys probably think out inability to properly groom each other is somewhat silly.

It's a problem of bias to an incredible degree. You must admit that it's a bit suspicious that every single way in which some animal is clearly superior to humans is viewed by humanity as utterly unimportant.

Re:Hah.

[BillyBlaze]

Well chickens don't have the tools to do those things. Would you really be surprised to see a chicken help another injured chicken? If you saw that, you might call it instinct, just a meaningless programmed behavior. But I say it's compassion. There's really no difference.

Why is it so horrible to be grouped with animals? Are they really such an abomination? Why must we invent a god to create us above them, and to deny the similarity? Being animals doesn't make our humanity any less great.

Re:Hah.

[Tatarize]

So what if a hawk can see much better than I can. I shoot the hawk.
So what if a cheetah can run must faster than I can. I shoot the cheetah.
So what if a bird's cardiopulmonary system is better than mine. I can shoot the bird.
So what if a dolphin can swim faster than I can. I shoot the dolphin.
So what if most animals can fly and I can't. I shoot them.
So what if I am restricted to land covering a tiny 25% of the Earth's surface. I shoot those water things.
So what if bees can see ultraviolet colors. I crush them.
So what if pit vipers can see infrared light. I will back away slowly.
So what if owls can see 100 times better in the dark. I will shoot them.
So what if dragonflies can see completely around themselves. I will crush them.
So what if plants convert light into energy. I will eat them.

I rule over them all. I have tools. Better than otter tools. Better than chimp tools. Better than all other tool-users around... so only tool use matters. Suck it world of organisms with powers I obviously lack. I can't spit venom at you, or spin a web... but I can hit you with a shovel, and that's what really matters.

Re:Hah.

[KoldKompress]

And yet, we're still humbled by simple virus and bacteria. Sure, we've defeated some of them, but they still kill many people. So sure you can shoot a bird, but you can also die from disease, spread my microscopic, simple and basic organisms.

Re:Hah.

[Alsee]

Hey, show me some examples of *ANY* abiogenesis, lab created or any other type and I will lend some credence to your 'science'.

Yep. Which is exactly why chemistry was bogus 'science' back in 1900... when they couldn't create elements in the laboratory and they had absolutely no explanation for the origin of elements. Chemistry is not real science until you have nuclear fusion theory *and* you can produce elements in a laboratory. And Nuclear fusion theory is just a theory and not real science until you have quantum mechanics theory and you can create protons in the laboratory to make elements from. And quantum mechanics theory is just just a theory and not real science until I see you make a universe from scratch in a laboratory.

Yep, there's no such thing as actual science. It's all just theories, it's all hogwash 'science'. I reject anything and everything is so-called 'science, until I see you make a universe from scratch in a laboratory, including that electron theory electricity mumbo-jumbo. I reject anything and everything, except for my particular literalist interpretation of the Bible (well, except for the parts that *I* pick and choose as obviously figurative, but the rest, that is all literal and the Earth does *not* move around the sun, because some parts *I* say are literal clearly say that the earth doesn't move).

-

How about in the US?

[oskay]

Will someone in the US government please do the same?

Re:How about in the US?

[Hungus]

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.

Re:How about in the US?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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.

Re:How about in the US?

[MightyMartian]

Nothing more perverts the issue than those that try to make the battle against pseudoscience into a "rights" issue. I don't hear too many people complaining because high school history classes don't teach the "controversy" of whether the Holocaust happened or not, and yet all the Creationists and IDers bemoan the supposed censorship of their pseudoscientific claptrap not being taught in science classrooms, despite the fact that neither Creationism or ID (and ID is, after all, nothing more then Creationism with the word "God" removed in an attempt to fool Supreme Court justices) are recognized as science by the overwhelming majority of scientists inside and outside the US.

People are perfectly free to talk about ID, publish letters in the newspaper, buy spots on TV, stand on the proverbial soapbox and preach it. There is no infringement of freedom, save that all those Evangelicals and the like would like special dispensation so that they could teach their own religious beliefs openly or in a pathetically thinly-veiled form like ID.

Re:How about in the US?

[Zibblsnrt]

Intelligent design isn't free thinking, it's free of it.

Re:How about in the US?

[an.echte.trilingue]

"only 14 percent believe humans evolved without divine involvement."

You do of course realize that one can both believe that the theory of evolution is 100% correct and also believe that God created this process? I am not saying that we should teach that God/god/goddess/gods/goddesses directed evolution, just that the numbers you present are framed. After all, only atheists believe that humans evolved with no divine involvement at any juncture. I would really like to know which opinion polls the article refers to and how they were conducted, because I don't believe that these statistics reflect what Americans actually think.

Re:How about in the US?

[SCHecklerX]

You can believe that all you want. It's still not *SCIENCE*. You can have ID in the classroom. But it's a religious studies or philosophy subject. It is not science any more than creative writing is mathematics.

Re:How about in the US?

[PopeRatzo]

our country is governed by zealots and money-hungry folk, whom are guided by the fundamentalists.

The kind of fundamentalists that are currently running our government are to Faith what a ten-dollar hooker is to romantic love.

Re:How about in the US?

[fiannaFailMan]

only atheists believe that humans evolved with no divine involvement at any juncture

"Believe?" I would say "think is the most likely explanation after having considered the evidence" would be more appropriate.

Re:How about in the US?

[CompMD]

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.

So, let's say....

[Vihai]

...ALLELUJA! :)

That's good.

[cromar]

I can't believe it is such an issue in the USA. People don't seem to even understand the definition of science. While I won't diminish the importance of religion or spirituality in life, science is based on reason and logic and is therefore a very practical and useful way to understand the natural world.

Personally, I don't see any conflict between the world being created by some God, even in 7 days, and its being formed over billions of years by natural processes. One is a faith based way of experiencing the world, the other is a sensory based, practical, and logical way. They are both useful.

What isn't useful is to deny children understanding of what, very practically and falsifiably, is the way our reality works.

Re:That's good.

[clickety6]

Would you rather live in a magical world full of fairies or dry reality?

Dry reality? You obviously don't live in the same world as me because there are more incredible and amazing things in this universe than I could ever fully explore in a single lifetime. I don't need to add imaginary fairies and hobgoblins to the mix. Just read a book about cosmology, or quantum physics or the human mind or zoology or... you don't need to start inventing fairies and easter bunnies to live in a magical world -we're already in one!

Re:That's good.

[asylumx]

I believe in both...

Seriously, how could God have created the world in seven "days" when day & night didn't even exist until the second "day" then? So who's to say that (his) seven days were not billions of our years?

The problem isn't that people read the bible in a literal sense, but that they read one sentence literally, and the next as symbolic.

Whew!

[oneandoneis2]

Thank God for that!

No, wait...

Re:Yeah, but ...

[Hes Nikke]

Isn't evolution *also* pretty much just a theory at this point, like Intelligent Design? Isn't astronomy *also* pretty much just a theory at this point, like astrology?

Forgive the english, they don't know what they do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Lord. Don't look at those sinners in the United Kingdom.

Enjoy looking at us in the US, please?

We love you so much we do everything in your name.

Come to church friends and lets pray for less WMD and more enforcement of DMCA.

So God will get so much love from us that he can ignore that hate from the UK.

George W Bush will tell us how much God loves our prayers and how desperate we try to look better in churches than the rest of the world with all our singing and praying.

Re:Yeah, but ...

[MightyMartian]

Isn't evolution *also* pretty much just a theory at this point, like Intelligent Design?

When one conflates two different usages of the word "theory", one can come up with idiotic statements like this one. The common vernacular meaning of theory is pretty much "any ol' idea I can think up". The scientific formulation is significantly more rigorous, so that ID and evolution, while in the common vernacular, are both theories, when it comes to the scientific notion of a theory, no, they are not equivalent.

Re:When they can explain...

[Skreems]

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.

Re:When they can explain...

[MightyMartian]

Could you list the sources where you got your definition of Big Bang cosmology? I'd love to know what hoakey craphouse you got it from. Big Bang cosmology neatly explains:

1. the red-shift of distant galaxies.
2. nucleosynthesis
3. the black body radiation that can be found every in the universe

ID, on the other hand, explains nothing. It's an empty statement that is designed to

a. fool judges
b. make such vague statements on the origins of the universe and life that everyone from a Young Earth Creationist to a Theistic Evolutionist are supposed to be friendly and consequently overthrow the evil secular forces of public education in America.

My recommendation to you is to

a. go read something on the Big Bang by actual cosmologists
b. go look up the Wedge Document to find out what ID *really* is.

Just Science

[Wellington Grey]

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.

If there is no intelligent designer...

[fm6]

... how do you explain the fact that your finger is exactly the right diameter for sticking up your nose?

Re:If there is no intelligent designer...

[Bemopolis]

That's nothing — most of the anti-evolution crowd is capable of fitting their heads up their asses.

Re:When they can explain...

[MightyMartian]

Even worse, you enter a logic trap when you insist that things require a Prime Mover. If the universe requires a Prime Mover, then the logical extension to that is that the Prime Mover also does, and you enter an infinite regression of Prime Movers. The standard answer by those who insist on causality all the way down is that their Prime Mover is exempt. At that point, an application of Occam's Razor states that unnecessary entities should be removed, and so if the alleged Prime Mover requires no lower-level Prime Mover, then why can't the universe exist without the need of a Prime Mover.

In other news...

[FuckTheModerators]

Fire ruled "Not cold."

Flying Spaghetti Monster

[pauljuno]

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not going to be happy to hear about this!

Both are theories

[PHPNerd]

Both ID and evolution are theories, or they wouldn't have the words "The theory of" before them. I think it's important to remember that the best either camp (scientists and theologians) can offer are just theories, both with their own supporting evidences. It's sad, though, that kids can't be taught both (that is, taught an ID where the goal is to show the probability of some greater power, not necessarily any religion's god) and then be left alone to make up their own minds about which they will choose to believe. Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion. The fact is that some of those who vehemently flame ID have just as much (or more) faith in the current scientific paradigm (see: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn) compared to their religious counterparts.

Re:Both are theories

[MightyMartian]

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?

Re:Both are theories

[Rycross]

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.

Re:Yeah, but ...

[TeknoHog]

The law of gravity is just a theory. If you don't like it, feel free to go jump off a cliff.

The cardinal sin of "I don't know."

[Zombie Ryushu]

What ID really was was an attempt to slip creation in under the door. This is because Creationists can't stand the following phrase. "I don't know."

Here are some things that do need to be understood.

1. Evolution does not disprove the existence of "God" but it may undermine the myth of Jehovah. That is to say, the creationists are afraid that if we get so much evidence to show that the religions of Abraham are false, or the world doesn't work the way they say it does, that God becomes impersonal and Alien to us. Which is a sane argument really. The creator of the Universe caring about what happens to us is like us caring about what happens to some Ant hill somewhere.

If that happens, then all our wars, and churches, and institutions we built up to serve religion will be for a "God" who is disconnected and we will have built these social institutions for the sake of ourselves. Alot of powerful people don't want that.

2. Our understanding of Evolution is incomplete. That is to say, we can see the trees, but not the entire forest. We aren't that far ahead. There are going to be errors we make in our determination in how evolution works. The creationists are going to come back and say "see! see! you screwed up! but God makes everything perfect!"

3. If you want to know the truth of whats out there, I'd imagine religious forces in this world would seek to prevent it, or cover it up. A lot of these religions created by Abraham revolve around the idea that Man is at the center of everything. If we discovered Alien life elsewhere in the Universe, at first everyone religious would panic. Gradually, Religion would change to accommodate the Aliens. But you damn well bet there would be people saying "Jebus died on the Cross for Humans/Terrans/Earthlings" whatever.

So, as an Agnostic, who isn't sure whats out there, I'd like to know, but I can't be sure until the technology exists for me to explore this universe in much greater depth. I'm very curious. But I feel comfortable saying "I don't know right now." The hard core religious people can't afford to be wrong. If their $Holy_Text is wrong, then they are going to realize the magnitude of some of the inexcusable things done in History.

I think some day it will happen. We will come out with concrete evidence that exposes the whole mythology, something so observable that religion can't adjust to it. Who knows if we will accept it and become better people, or deny it and kill each other. Again, I just don't know.

Re:The cardinal sin of "I don't know."

[bill_mcgonigle]

The creator of the Universe caring about what happens to us is like us caring about what happens to some Ant hill somewhere.

Without detracting from the rest of your argument, this part needs work. We're limited beings, complex machines made of crude matter. The Yahoweh mythology is about an infinite being.

Do you have absolutely no interest in what the ants are doing inside their ant hill? I think it might be neat to watch them. But I certainly don't have the resources to do so frequently, widely, or intently, so I elect not to care about them.

Those constraints don't apply to the supreme being worshiped by the tribes of Abraham, ergo it would be surprising if he didn't pay attention to everything. And play Ski-ball at the same time.

Bullshit

[DogDude]

Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion.

Bullshit. Don't water down science as something that people must have "faith" to believe in. That's is 100% false, and that is purely rhetoric to make science sound like something that is debatable. By and large, it is not. It's not always right, but it is right a hell of a lot more often than not. Religion and science do NOT intersect. In fact, they're polar opposites.

Re:Bullshit

[PHPNerd]

Bullshit. Don't water down science as something that people must have "faith" to believe in. That's is 100% false, and that is purely rhetoric to make science sound like something that is debatable. By and large, it is not. It's not always right, but it is right a hell of a lot more often than not. Religion and science do NOT intersect. In fact, they're polar opposites. Sadly, you are incorrect. Thomas Kuhn showed otherwise in his book. Try reading it sometime. He showed that science requires just as much faith as anything else. The fact is that there have been many scientific paradigms throughout the years, and there will surely be more. Each scientist puts faith in his chosen paradigm (most likely the current "ruling" paradigm) that it's actually right, otherwise when holes crop up, they wouldn't try to plug them, but rather seek a wholly different paradigm to explain the new problem(s).

Re:As a Christian...

[CaptainCaustic]

Claiming that you have an opinion regarding Evolution is like saying you have an opinion on Gravity.
Doesn't matter if you don't like the idea or not, you can't get away from the fact they exist.

Re:As a Christian...

[DogDude]

The schools don't force an opinion. Science, by and large, isn't an "opinion". Get your head out of your ass. To put science and faith on the same level is insulting to scientists everywhere.

People talking to invisible men who live in the sky is an opinion... a wrong one.

Re:government defined science

[wizardforce]

Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time. An attempt to limit scholarly inquiry by excluding it from scientific discussion will only discourage diversity in the scientific community.

that is dead wrong, the great leaps forward were strictly through the scientific method which is about as far away from being outside science as you can get. Intelligent design is as you say "excluded" because it explains nothing, predicts nothing and does not adhere to any logical methodology. If ID wants to be scientific they need to provide real evidence, not just what the Bible says. We want concrete testible predictions and an actual theory that extends what is known not just a God of the gaps ideology.

ID is unique (I'm not talking about young earth crap) because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data, it shouldn't be religion because (at least the reasonable arguments) don't actually argue for a "God,"

Intelligent design is nothing more than a philosophy, it makes no predictions and explains nothing outside of a purposefully un-named designer [after Dover it was well understood that God was the implied designer] It isn't based on solid empirical evidence but mere misunderstandings and ideology.

I don't think it is fair to any argument to preclude it being reasonable based on the fact that it doesn't really fit into current frameworks that have been set up.

if you are referring to fairness in the context of giving equal time to each side it is entirely irrelevant. The side that has the most well estabolished evidence and predictive power wins. The scientific community is not interested in being dragged into an ancient ideological pissing contest. I don't mean to start a flame or anything here, I am just sick of religion pretending to be science when it is nothing of the sort.

Re:Religion != Abrahamic religion

[hahiss]

You can't say this is a "typical argument in Abrahamic religious traditions" and then claim that it is a STRAW MAN! Dude, your FIRST sentence shows that your bellicose outburst in the second sentence is high-handed balderdash (because the first shows that the poster WAS engaging the actual claims and beliefs of an actual adversary).

Maybe if you've got some view that god is "effable" or that one can prove the existence of god (good luck with that) or can show that one need not be committed to a dualism of faith/reason, offer that. But *please* don't lecture people about logical fallacies that you are capable of defining but poor at identifying in action.

Teach both theories...

[Catil]

Let the Kids decide

Re:Meh... alert me when...

[crashfrog]

The fundamental basis of the scientific is repeatability.

All the evidence that underlies evolution is repeatable - without having to reproduce 3 billion years in a laboratory the size of the entire Earth.

When you understand how this can be true, you'll be a lot less stupid - and you'll understand what "repeatability" means in the scientific method.

Re:Yeah, but ...

[Goth Biker Babe]

Intelligent Design is not a theory, it's a conjecture. So not only do you not know science you also don't know English.

Theory - "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."

Conjecture - "The formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof."

Note that a theory explains facts and is repeatable and/or can be used to make predictions. A conjecture is just a guess...

The Ascent of Man

[Pedrito]

I was recently watching The Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973). When discussing evolution, Dr. Bronowski says something to the effect of, "Of course, today, almost nobody denies evolution." All I could think was, "How far backwards have we gone that in 1973 the issue was pretty much considered a fact by the general population and now..." It's scary, really.

Re:Cheap Smear

[Hatta]

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.

Meanwhile, in the USA

[Scrith]

Bush-appointed official government scientists have declared Intelligent Design as science and designated Evolution theory as a belief often held by terrorists. Just kidding. I think.

Re:bellicose

[Simon Garlick]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:ID

[bentcd]

Why is it not a scientific theory? Because it isn't disprovable. This is a very simple, formal test that any theory must pass in order to be considered a scientific theory.

To quote wikipedia on the matter:
Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University has stated, "To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory."

Now, ID can still be a theory, it just can't be a scientific one.

my weird thought

[fred fleenblat]

Where I get tripped over ID is that when *I* am Intelligently Designing something, such as a software module, there is a process of evolution going on in my head. I start out with the basic idea, do a first try, step back and look at it, make adaptations and enhancements, evaluate it in a test environment, refine it some more, plug it into a larger module and test that out, fix some stuff I forgot to deal with, rewrite the whole thing from scratch a couple times, try out the alternatives, pick one and go with that, do some performance tuning, roll it out to QA and customers, make staged changes based on feedback, roll those out, then maybe go work on another software module with the same process.

So even if ID is true, it's still evolution, it's just moving the venue from "stuff happening on earth" to "stuff happening in supreme space alien's brain".

Re:Religion != Abrahamic religion

[SatanicPuppy]

I actually have made quite a study of religion, both in and out of academia. I have heard all kinds of arguments for and against the existence of God. As far as I'm concerned, they break down into two categories: Proof, and no Proof.

Now it should be obvious to anyone that there is no scientific proof for the existence of god, and while I know that there are many who think science is complete crap, I am not one of those people. As far as I am concerned, however, there is also no scientific proof against the existence of god. Before the "prove a negative" people jump out of the woodwork, I should say that I would consider a scientifically complete model of the universe that includes no "extra" variables to be a sufficient proof...It's a high standard, but a reasonable one for a scientific proof.

As this is the case, it is my belief that any side who declaims to have "proof" one way or the other to be absolutely out of their fricking minds. This is an opinion I have stated repeatedly for about a decade now. If you check my comment history, you'll find any number of instances of me stating that very opinion here, and I haunt these ID discussions because the debate interests me, often racking up a dozen or more posts.

All that being said, claiming that I know nothing about standard Christian arguments for the existence of god, is a bit ignorant. I once got thrown out of a coffee shop for taking on a professor who was preaching ID to his students; they threw him out too because he got "disruptive". I'd tried to ignore him, but when he started taking natural bridges as "proof for the existence of god", I just couldn't let it slide. The most common "proof" that has been cited to me is the Bible itself, in the classic circular argument.

In my Catholic youth, I often heard the arguments from Faith. They are nearly a central tenet of the Catholic faith, and at no point will you hear a mainstream catholic priest spouting off about concrete "proof" for the existence of God...Logical proofs they will give you, a la Descartes and Anselm, but that's the limit. I have also heard similar arguments from Muslims and Buddhists.

Coming right down to it, I've never heard an argument that didn't boil down to either: "The bible says what god did, and science says how he did it" (this is what I call the argument ex cathedra, since it's been endorsed by no less than three Popes (Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI)) or "The bible is how it was done, and science is full of it" which is the root of the Intelligent Design argument, though of course they have pretensions to science. I hear the latter argument all the time, because I live in Georgia, and here they think they really have proof, though I've never seen it.

If you have an argument for the existence of god that doesn't rely on faith or proof, I'd like to hear it. It would be unique in my experience.

Re:Meh... alert me when...

[DragonWriter]

The problem I find, however, is that when we try to extrapolate what many would claim to be absolute truth based only on what we know how to observe so far, we can easily come to the wrong conclusion.

"Absolute truth" isn't what science is about, and "extrapolation" isn't as important as you would make it; inasmuch as it is relevant at all, it is just in coming up with hypotheses. Once you have a proper scientific hypothesis you then, by definition, have empirically falsifiable predictions you can test to validate the hypothesis. If those predictions fail, your hypothesis is wrong. If they do not, your hypothesis is a viable theory. That doesn't mean it is right: a more parsimonious or powerful theory may displace it because of the greater utility it provides, or additional predictions may be later derived from your hypothesis enabling new tests that may fail. No proper scientific theory (though some things popularly labelled theories are untested hypotheses) rests on extrapolation alone: if it is properly called a theory (as evolution is) it has testable predictions with have withstood testing.

Science isn't about giving answers that are some kind of Ultimate Absolute Truth. It is about refining models that have explanatory and, more importantly, predictive power.

Re:Of course

[the_weasel]

"Creationism isn't science because you can't replicate it in a laboratory."

I have been having that problem with black holes too. You happen to know anyone with an enormous quantity of superdense matter for sale? Ideally someone local to Los Angeles - courier charges for something that heavy would bankrupt me.

Just poking fun :-). I agree with you 100%.

Re:Intelligent Design != AntiEvolution

[rts008]

So, you're saying this god entity is a programmer? He/She/It sure left a lot of bugs! *swats another fly*

Re:Hah Hah.

[rajafarian]

The belief in a creator god cracks me up:

Who created HIM?

No one, he always existed.

Then why can't we say that the universe always existed?

'Cause I'm not smart enough.

Re:Religion != Abrahamic religion

[SatanicPuppy]

Ehh....I assume you mean Behe and his crowd.

There are always a few; that's one of the things the "proof" religious types trumpet loudest...That there are scientists who disagree with the majority view. Whether it's ID, or Global Warming, or Dark Matter, or any of a number of drugs and pollutants, there is always a minority view.

It's a good thing; science doesn't need a lot of people sitting around agreeing with each other. The pro-ID science guys are pretty fringe, however.

Re:So...

[Linux_ho]

So for 2000 years, who was ahead of the game, the ones tied to the limits of their scientific knowledge, or the practitioner?

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:

• Do not accept anything on mere hearsay (ie, thinking that thus have we heard it for a long time).
• Do not accept anything by mere tradition (ie, thinking that it has been handed down thus through many generations).
• Do not accept anything on account of rumours (ie, by believing what others say without any investigation).
• Do not accept anything just because it accords with your scriptures.
• Do not accept anything by mere supposition.
• Do not accept anything by mere inference.
• Do not accept anything by merely considering the appearances.
• Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your preconceived notions.
• Do not accept anything merely because it seems acceptable (ie, should be accepted).
• Do not accept anything thinking that the teacher is respected by us (and that therefore it is right to accept his word.)

But when you know for yourselves - these things are immoral, these things are blameworthy, these things are censured by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to ruin and sorrow - then reject them. When you know for yourselves - these things are moral, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness - then live and act accordingly."

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!"

Re:Cheap Smear

[SatanicPuppy]

I love how everyone who has a crackpot theory thinks they're Galileo. The truth of it is, if there had been a real scientific community around Galileo, they'd have agreed with him. His evidence was sound.

There is zero evidence for ID. None. The only arguments I've ever heard in favor of it were arguments against "DE" as you call it, or Evolution as the rest of the world refers to it. Darwin wouldn't recognize much more than the shell of it, these days. He laid the groundwork, but there has been a lot of building since then.

Basically all ID arguments come down to the following: "Evolution doesn't explain X. X is either irreducible or too complex to have come about 'by accident'. Therefore ID is correct, and God exists."

This is not proof. This is not science...It's actually a fallacy: the argument from ignorance. In many cases, the ID objection isn't even rational. ID has no falsifiable hypothesis, it has no positive evidence supporting it. It's not science, by any definition of science I have ever heard.

I always ask, "Do you have any rational, positive evidence to support ID?" And the answer is always no. I have never heard a single thing that wasn't either negative, or trivial. Maybe this will be the first time.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[SETIGuy]

Isn't it sufficient enough for these science types to believe in god because it is a "safe bet?"

Athiesm IS the safe bet.

OK, lets suppose you believe in a god. Which pisses your god off more, not believing in any gods, or believing in one of his competitors?

Now place your bet. Which god are you going to believe in? Now, if you're like most people you'll choose the one you were indoctrinated to believe in. In the history of the world, far more people have not believed in your god than have. Even right now more people don't believe in your god than do.

Better do your research. You'd better read up on all the gods that have ever been worshipped to make sure you pick the right one. Assuming you only choose a single one and that there is only one god, rather than a pantheon, your chances are probably about 1 in 10,000 you'll get it right. You'll waste a good fraction of your life on this fruitless search. That's pretty high stakes in this bet.

You would think that an all powerful god would make the choice obvious. If you think the choice is obvious, feel free to stand on a box in St. Peters Basilica, at the great mosque in Mecca, at the temple of Tirupati, at the Wailing Wall, any of the thousands of temples to the god you didn't pick, and explain to them why they picked the wrong god. If you picked the right one, I'm sure he will protect you. After all, there are no true believers in a foxhole, because what would a true believer need a foxhole for?

Since the choice isn't obvious, more logical assumption is that either there isn't a god, or he doesn't give a damn who you worship or even if you worship.

Read Kissing Hank's Ass for an alternative look at Pascal's wager.

Darwinism = scientific method applied by nature

[victorvodka]

The problem with attacks on Darwinian science is that they are done from the perspective of someone who accepts an ancient text as flawless received wisdom. Such a person assumes that we in the scientific community also accept our received wisdom (The Origin of Species, for example) as flawless. But no, we realize that Darwin didn't have all the facts or all that many fossils, that science builds upon the shoulders of giants instead of believing that all of reality was revealed at some point in the distant past. Darwinism looks at nature and sees it performing the scientific method (experiments, paradigm abandonment, etc.) to achieve its ends, even as it itself undergoes these forces. I wrote about this at length here:

the Authoritarian Model of Information Value

'Cause I gotta have faith, faith, faith...

[Pfhorrest]

Its called faith you stupid jackass. Some people have it and others don't. Deal with it.

I'll give you the benefit of a doubt that you're not merely a troll, but legitimately upset that some people don't believe as you do, and so ask you this simple question: What is it that is "called faith"? That is, what do you mean by faith? The usual meaning I hear is "belief in something without evidence". But I'm not talking about evidence or skepticism at all. Faith of that sort is not always misplaced: for example, I have faith that the person who put together the periodic table of elements in my chemistry class did so correctly. We wouldn't get very far if we didn't have faith of that sort, because it's beyond any of us to build our entire knowledge base from the ground up.

But since that's not the kind of thing I was talking about at all, I'm at a loss as to what you mean by faith and what it has to do with verifiability. Are you saying that acceptance of unverifiable propositions (that is to say, things that don't make any descriptive claims about the world at all) is faith? Cause I don't have any problem with that either: if you say that the sky is blue and water is wet and 2+2=4 and all sleezborgs are foodlebaks, I can agree with you 100%, because I agree that the sky is blue, and that water is wet, and that 2+2=4, and since 'sleezeborg' and 'foodlebak' are meaningless words I just made up right now, you can agree or disagree with that bit and it won't make any difference to me. So if both you and Joe Blow agree that the physical (i.e. observable) world operates according to such-and-such laws and has such-and such history, but you believe that that is the case because an in-principle unverifiable mind wills it to be so, and Joe Blow ostensibly disagrees, you two actually agree on all matters of fact; your point of contention is, literally, an empty statement with no truth-value (neither true nor false), so it makes no difference whether you say that's the case or not. For a mathematical analogy: if you say the measure of something is equal to 2 plus 1 plus 0, and Joe Blow says it's equal to 2 plus 1 minus 0, you're both equally right (or wrong) because you're both saying the same thing, namely that the measure of that thing is 3 - despite your difference in words.

An important footnote here: by "in-principle unverifiable" I don't just mean that no one anywhere ever WILL have opportunity to observe it, as may be the case with events far away in space or time; rather, I mean something like, if you had absolutely perfect instruments of every variety available to you, and a magic device that could take you any place and any time, even in that fantastic case there is no observation you could make that could prove or disprove the hypothesis in question. In short: a statement is verifiable if and only if, were there someone in the right place(s) at the right time(s) with the right sensors, they would be able to tell by observation whether the statement was true or not.

Now the third thing I can think of that you might mean by faith is something of a cross between the two above: where you say "I don't know what the things he's saying mean, but I agree with him 100%". This kind of blind faith is reprehensible. As I said before, I have faith (of the first variety) in my professors, whereby when they say something and I don't know any better I generally trust that what they say is correct. However, when I hear a professor say something that I don't understand (something which has not conveyed any meaning to me, though perhaps the speaker did mean something by it), I don't think "well, I don't know that to be false, and I trust him, so I'll believe that". I think "what?". And I try to ask questions until I can understand what's being said, and then, if I can finally tease out what exactly he means, then I'll either believe it or not based first on how much I know about the matter and then on how much I trust the professor's beliefs on the matter.

As a philoso

Not a good enough discriminator.

[Ayanami Rei]

My bird wants to be a dog. He's jealous of our dog because the dog interacts with us more. So he makes dog sounds, tries to play with the dog, etc, as if the dog had some "in" with us, the bearers of food and treats.

Meanwhile the dog thinks its a person. This is partly pack behavior but it's pretty clear that the dog doesn't really distinguish us on a social level, even if it does at a physical one.

This is most telling when the dog attempts to enter into group conversations. She tries to talk. It's not growling or attention-grabbing barking... just moan-inflection-babble she interjects. If we're all around a table or counter, she'll paw up onto it and engage us... not because she wants something in particular, but because she feels that she be involved in the social interaction.

Weird, huh?

Animals can want to be other things too given the right stimuli. By examining the majority of society I say that what most people want is actually pretty base and it is not normal to want to be something more, other than well off.

Re:ID

[misleb]

Conversely, the theories that are most easily disprovable are most likely to turn to be false

Awesome. So guess my theory that there are unicorns somewhere in this galaxy is probably true because it isn't very disprovable.

I recognize I am using 'disprovable' in a more literal sense than you mean. However, even more broadly, ID is disprovable if you can prove that another theory (like DE) actually occured.

So ID is true until proven false but any other theory is false until proven true? Is that how this works? ID proponents can just sit back and claim ID is true with every one else has to do the actual scientific legwork?

I wish I had you for a science teacher. I could make up any theory and it would be true by default... as long as it wasn't disprovable! And I wouldn't have to do any actual research. I'd just tell the rest of the students to prove THEIR theories to be true. And if they couldn't do so to my satisfaction, I'd get an A!

-matthew

chimps do acts of altruism too

[weighn]

Humans have compassion for beings they have never seen by "things they have never seen" I guess you mean we feel for people who have suffered once we learn about this suffering via the 6 o'clock news? I don't see how "not seeing" makes any difference. Chimps are known to help out strangers for no reward. As for the other points, I'm sure we'll observe animals displaying abstraction and creativity if don't wipe them out first.

Re:chimps do acts of altruism too

[Tatarize]

Yeah. If you hook one stranger chimp to an electrode and another chimp to a machine that will give them food but only by shocking the crap out of chimp #1. Chimp #2 will nearly starve itself. (even if the chimp isn't seen, and can just be heard)

They have plenty of compassion, and emotions. Emotions and morality aren't just human characteristics. We can even witness "moral" activity in plants. When one plant is attacked, they send out a chemical signal to other plants in the area warning of the impending attack, so that they can prepare themselves.

Nothing against egoism, but we should only declare that we kick ass to the extent that we kick ass.

A scientifically complete model isn't enough

[Myria]

I should say that I would consider a scientifically complete model of the universe that includes no "extra" variables to be a sufficient proof.

Such a model would not be enough to disprove the existence of God. For the universe inside Super Mario Brothers, there exists a scientifically-complete model; it happens to be 40960 octets long. However, when I hex edit a saved state, I am the god of that universe. I can modify the state of the game at will, without modifying the rules. Despite a self-consistent and fully-accurate model of the universe, God exists and can perform miracles.

Similarly, a god of our universe would be able to create objects without regard to the standard rules, and discovering those rules would not disprove her existence.

Note that I'm an atheist. I just want to make sure the logic on all sides is valid.