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Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design?
Funksaw writes "Here's an op-ed by first-time politician, long-time Slashdotter Brian Boyko, where he talks about his experiences testifying at the Texas Board of Education in favor of having real science in science textbooks. But beyond that, he also tries to examine, philosophically, why there is such hardened resistance to the idea of evolution in Texas. From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself. So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.'"
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
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The argument seems to go as follows:
If evolution is true, then Genesis is false
If Genesis is fals ethen the whole of the Bible is called into question.
If the Bible is called into question then it is no basis for morality.
If the Bible is no basis for morality then the ten commandments are invalid.
Therefore if evlution is true, there's no prohibition on murder.
Clearly we could play a game of spot the logical fallacy but this seems to be the issue creationists have with evolution.
Well, the fact that he couldn't make up his bloody mind at all in the Bible might have something to do with it—what with all the smiting and so forth. You'd think a perfect being would be a tad better at manufacturing and maintaining a harmonious world. (Maybe one without apple trees?)
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Ummm... the way TFT(itle) is worded throws some gas over fire.
How's that for a believer: "If you believe in Inteligent Design, then you are bent by hell"?
How this way of framing the topic helps a civilized tone for a discussion?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
... it pretty much removes God from the whole picture. His place is then relegated to the creation of life in it's absolutely fundamental form, where evolution takes over. Personally, I think that abiogenesis is the better rational explanation. The people who want intelligent design (or, let's call it by name: "creationism") have a problem with God of the gaps, so they desperately try to cling to a gap that has been filled a long time ago. The remaining gaps (like the actual "first life" and the "big bang") seem too insignificant for their great Skydaddy's glory.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I don't think parroting that is productive. The majority of creationists simply believe what their leaders tell them, and the ones who forge their own paths and invent doctrine (dinosaur fossils are what?!) do so because they are trapped by their cultural assumptions and (when you get down to it) an unhealthy preoccupation with avoiding oblivion. You, um, did RTFS, right?
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People teach intelligent design because they're afraid that if their kids grow up to be less ignorant and blinkered than they are their kids will leave them either physically or emotionally. Lots of parents try to define small universes that keep their kids close, and not just right wing fundies either, this kind of crap transcends political divides.
It's a legitimate concern, if you let your kids break down the walls that hold you in they might go somewhere you can't follow, but it could probably be better dealt with by addressing your own problems rather than creating problems for your children.
Biblical creationists believe that evolution undermines the idea of divine creation, specifically the idea that man is created in God's image. This is a very important belief for them. Without it, their world crumbles.
When you present them with facts and evidence supporting evolution, they're not dispassionately evaluating the evidence, but desperately trying to avoid confronting it, to the point of profound intellectual dishonesty.
They are what used to be called neurotic, irrational and disturbed in one specific area or about one specific thing, but otherwise relatively functional human beings, able to work, raise families, etc, etc.
The answer to the question of why Biblical Creationists are like this is the same as the answer to the question of why some people are holocaust deniers, or Marxists, or followers of any other ideology or belief that is in obvious defiance of objective reality. They have invested their sense of self into this belief, and they cannot abandon that belief without sacrificing their sense of self along with it.
So they hold on to that belief, no matter what.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The reason there are lots of politicians hell-bent on teaching Intelligent Design is really very similar to the reason the muslim world is currently the most fundamentalist on the planet: there is a perverse incentive in re-enforcing religious dogma. We will take Texas first because its easier, and for the most part, more familiar. Currently in large swaths of Texas "religious" is conflated with "good" and "moral". Therefore, anyone who wants power has to present themselves as being Christian, and thus "good" and "moral". Of course if you claim you are Gods warrior, anything you do in His name is justified, and thus you can plunder and steal as much as you want. Provided of course you are still rabidly defending "God". However if you start to weaken peoples fervent religious devotion and encourage them to think for themselves, well then they probably are a bit more likely to call you out for having your hand in the cookie jar, no matter how holy you claim to be.
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
Monstar L
If your faith cant stand a test. It wasn't very strong.
I still can't believe we don't treat religion as a mental illness. You go around tellin everyone an invisible guy watches you all the time and tells you what to do.... They lock you up. You call that invisible guy god... And that's just a ok fine. Here have some tax exempt status.
Religion is one of the major things holding back the human race. The faster we wise up the better.
As someone who views herself as a fundamental christian (and at one time parroted the creationism agenda), let me state that if God did choose to create via evolution, great! (When studying genetic algorithms way back, I imagined a sufficiently advanced "candidate solution" (read: self-aware, thinking, communicating) belittling another for believing in a "Programmer".) There are a few issues with creationist's explanation of Genesis that gloss over some obvious points in the text. There are also some problems with evolutionist's view of the evolution of homo sapiens, which may better be explained by the roughly 6000 years timespan given for the existence of Adam. (However, these issues themselves have a bearing on both traditional christian and contemporary political dogma, which explains why discussing them in a religious context would be avoided.)
My view of the typical american evangelical movement and it's copious output of media, is that it's largely a money-making business, where control over the consumers increases profits. It's often a materialistic theology, far removed from the spiritual. Unfortunately on the other hand there are some vocal scientists too with an anti-religious agenda, that is not really born out by science, only by sophistry.
Religion and science do not stand in opposition to each other, nor should one "find some balance/tradeoff" between the two. Both the study of creation (science) and the study of the Creator (religion) should be taken to it's fullest - only then can one arrive at the same answer for both.
> Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
Not even remotely. This idea was proposed back when humans had no understanding of subatomic behavior, and they were drawing assumptions based things they did know, like the solar system. If you want to actually know how electrons and nuclei behave, try to wrap your mind around quantum mechanics. It's almost impossible as it bears little resemblance to anything else you might be familiar with.
It's an interesting example, though, because it illustrates how whenever humans don't know what they're talking about, they fill in the gaps with things that are familiar. Like chariots carrying fire through the sky and an anthropomorphic God creating the universe.
From there your comment just goes further off the rails. Nobody thinks they're "smarter than everyone else". But observation and reason let us learn about the world, and we've learned over and over that mankind's notion of God is always several steps behind our observational understanding. Everything that has improved in the past two centuries has been at the hands of man. We're slowly figuring out ways to improve our lot in life. God's word was around for thousands of years before the enlightenment and didn't improve anything.
The universe is amazing, and every facet fills me with awe. But that doesn't mean there needs to be a personality behind it. I can take it for what it is without having to project my ideas of meaning onto it.
From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence.
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
2. Therefore, "evolution" only tests misguided faith. In fact, even the idea that humans evolved from goo is not ultimately incompatible with faith in God or in intelligent design. This is because the point of ID/Creationism is not how God created, but that God created.
The idea that the Creation stories in Genesis are meant to literally describe how God created is another matter entirely, and it is the blind insistence upon this presupposition that results in so much hot air being expelled on both sides of the issue.
Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself.
That's because that's what Christ said. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Mk 16:16
So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.
Many people's faith is, sadly, based on fragile ideas like Creation stories being literal, or every word written in the Bible being intended literally. To those people, their faith would be quite jeopardized by atheists yelling loudly that there is no God, that the Bible is wrong, that we evolved from goo, etc.
Other people's faith may be based on rational thinking, such as the ideas that the universe or living beings are too complex to have happened randomly, or that the evidence of Christ's resurrection is strong. Such faith can handle Creation stories not necessarily being literal, and the idea of evolution, and the idea of the Bible being inspired by God yet composed by humans and therefore not literally perfect (or always literal).
It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
A man of faith is someone who accepts anything his religion tells him without question.
In other words a fecking idiot.
Go well
Another point from the creationist / young earth / Intelligent Design side, ignoring any argument based on the story of creation or Adam. The young earth creationist who takes the story of Noah literally, doesn't agree with your interpretation of the fossil record and evolutionary history at all. Picture Japan's violent tsunami multiplied to a global scale, eroding away practically everything. The majority of the fossils and layered geological records then deposited as the turbulent ocean calmed down and the water receded from the land. The large flow of receding waters carved out river basins and canyons quite quickly from the soft sediments.
For someone with this world view, the "Facts" of evolution are not incontrovertible. The story of evolution, as derived from the fossil record, is based on assumptions that the creationist doesn't agree with.
That's not to say that the creationist disagrees with the facts of biology, as derived from examining living animals and how they change over time. It's the extrapolation of currently observed processes into the unknowable past that they disagree with.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
There is nothing wrong with the word Theory, the problem is that the people that are looking for arguments against evolution use the wrong definition.
The problem is that we created god - and we obviously weren't very good engineers because the god we created seems to be a bit of an arsehole.
I get chills when I see phrases like:
The fact of evolution is incontrovertible
I 100% believe the theory of evolution provides the best fit with the available data. But stating any theory is a "fact" and "incontrovertible" is just too far. One of the issues is that it is hard to experimentally falsify the thoery of evolution. Either we are scientists and honest about what we do, or we are not. Get off my lawn.
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
That's a flippant quote, but seriously, the number of major design flaws is staggering.
eg. Why does food go down the same hole as the air? How many people choke to death on food every day?
No sig today...
Sex is for evolution not procreation!
I occasionally interact with people who are convinced that "evilution" is taught out of a desire to attack religion and make people into amoral monsters. And they will go on, at length, about their beliefs about the "motives" of scientists. And somehow, none of the motives they invent actually fit very well with anything I see when I talk to scientists. I mean, yes, I occasionally encounter people who really do seem to have those motives, but in general they're not particularly regarded well by the scientific community.
And I occasionally interact with people who have all sorts of really strange beliefs about the "motives" of religion, and similarly, what they say has very little to do with what I mostly encounter among religious people. Although I do occasionally encounter people who appear to have those motives, but they are not regarded well by the religious community.
It seems interesting to me how well these groups parallel each other, and how well each of them plays into the other's narrative of persecution or abuse. And how much both of them rely on the assumption that you can't ask people what they think, or why they think it. Slashdot tends to have more of the people who have a very naive view of what religious faith is, or why people have it, but I've hung around on other sites that tended towards the very naive view of science, and it was just as funny there.
So far as I can tell, in the real world, the majority of religious people have beliefs that are a lot more complicated, and a lot more coherent, than the strawmen that I mostly see attacked on Slashdot. But since they don't usually go around trying to get on TV news and insist that they are the only representatives of their faith, people are less aware of them. In general, most of the time if you know someone's religious beliefs, it's because they're jerks; the non-jerks won't generally get pushy about it and tell you all about it unless you actually ask what they think. And, of course, if you've made up your mind that they're all idiots and you don't want to know, then you're the jerk whose opinions they will take as representative of people who hold your beliefs. (This goes both ways.)
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I wonder what you mean by the "care" part of "child production/care". Genitalia are rarely needed in child care.
Sex is for procreation not recreation! Sinner!
Sex is to quiet those voices... the voices that keep telling me to ...
Wait, nevermind.
If you get a book and a funny hat and a bunch of people standing behind you cheering you on, you can do whatever the voices tell you to do, and even tell people about the voices.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....
Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.
My rights don't need management.
And another slashdotter with no sense of humor.
It hasn't been about whether evolution is true or false for a very long time. It's about whose team you're on and how many points they're up by in the third quarter. Texans can't help themselves. They have to pick a side, and when they do they support it all the way.
Go to any small town in East Texas on a Friday night in September. Around 7PM, folks start streaming out of their houses and heading to stadiums whose size rivals that of some colleges' playing fields. They're there to rally their team on, violently if necessary.
Texans choose sides in ALL aspects of their lives. Ford vs. Chevy. Big Mac vs. the Whopper. Citizens vs. Illegals. Cattlemen vs. Farmers. Evolution vs. Creationism. Whatever the issue, no matter how weighty or how trivial, Texans can figure out a way to polarize it and turn it into a contest. And if it has team jerseys, all the better.
In some ways, this is Texas' greatest strength - that its citizens are willing to stake everything on the team they support, win, lose, or draw. In other ways, the stubborn unwillingness to give up, even in the face of overwhelming strength or indisputable argument can lead to, well I think we all remember the Alamo.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise. For a Texan to even admit that the other side's point of view EXISTS is jaw-droppingly astounding. To offer to teach it alongside their own is nothing short of miraculous.
The only way to resolve this conflict is to understand Texas and embrace its stubborn, contentious, headstrong culture. Ignoring it will only make the issue worse. The sooner people realize this, the better off we'll all be. Texas, as much as we hate to admit it East of the Mississippi, isn't all that different from the rest of the country.
Why does an omnipotent being need to compromise?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Because the sperm needs a temperature a bit lower than body temp in order to be generated.
And isn't that a really dumbass design? Surely an intelligent designer would have made sperm nice and happy at body temperature. And here's the silly thing: there's a fair bit of body temperature variation in mammals, yet none seem to manage to have the testes inside.
Why don't male birds with even higher body temperatures fly around with a pair of danglies hanging below their feathers? Perhaps the designer decided that birds were to get better features like body temperature sperm and uniflow lungs.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Agnostics deal in facts. Atheists deal in beliefs. Christians deal in beliefs. It's one of the cruel irony's of the world. An agnostic takes no issue with faith by his very nature.
Funny how we don't talk about agnostics when it comes to vampires, fairies, Zeus, or any number of other things, but when it comes to "God", all of a sudden if you hold the belief that "God" doesn't exist and is instead mythology like all the other crap you don't believe in, you aren't dealing in facts.
The facts are the evidence doesn't support a lot of the bullshit you find in the Bible. The facts are that there are a lot of religions around the world, with conflicting beliefs based on similar crap evidence. If the "God" of the Bible really wanted to make himself known, to be worshiped, to have certain rules followed, etc, then masquerading as man-made mythology is a really stupid plan.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
So you respect people who are either too afraid or naive to take the same step they do for all other kinds of mythology and superstition, but think it's just a lack of self-esteem that leads to atheism. Right.
This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century.
That's a sugar-coated way of saying that this model was wrong, and scientists had been believing the wrong thing up until less than a century ago.
You scientists sure know your way around words.
I think this comment succinctly sums up the differing frame of mind between faith and science.
With faith, the most fundamentally important thing that you can do it not change your mind. If new evidence arises that challenges your worldview, you are obligated to ignore it or discredit it or... anything but let it shake your worldview. Changing your mind is acceptance of having been wrong, which is the ultimate admission of failure.
Science, on the other hand, represents a dedication to discovering the truth. Being closer to correct now is more important than pretending that you knew the correct answer all along. If you find evidence that your previous model was wrong, you are obligated to change your model to fit all available data and be correct now. There's no shame in having been wrong in the past. There is shame in deliberately being wrong now.
The troll AC bring up science's greatest strength as a failure is a strong sign that there will not be a reconciling between people who are ruled by one mindset or the other.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I'm not the OP but the logic is pretty straightforward. By definition, in any universe where omniscience exists, free will cannot also exist.
If anyone can know with absolute certainty that I will do something, I therefore cannot choose to do anything else.