> IDs only hope is to conduct a scientifically verifiable experiment. I laugh at the prospects of ID ever getting published in Nature.
It has recently come to light that the Templeton Foundation - a group with a pro-religion agenda - has had a standing offer out to fund ID research, but they finally dropped the offer because they never got a single application.
> TMM is assuming that a Perfect Creator necessarily will create a perfect creation. Assuming that God created the world, no creationist should claim (and few do) that the creation was perfect (as evidenced by all the crap going on in the world). It was good, not perfect. So in my opinion this whole "flawed mammalian eye" argument is really a straw-man argument.
But it shows exactly what's wrong with ID as science: if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'good', it's because the designer wanted it to be good; if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'bad', it's because the designer wanted it to be bad.
> > It's an interesting interpretation of the state of the universe, but it answers exactly zero questions about it.
> The gist of the problem is, ID is unscientific more because it *poses* no questions than because it answers none.
It's even worse than that: proponents of ID argue that questions shouldn't even be interesting.
Imagine a real scientist discovering that some previously unknown force is having an observable effect on various things, publishing that claim to much fanfare, and then arguing that the nature, properties, and origin of the force aren't interesting questions and shouldn't be pursued.
> > I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
> What theories are being taught that are like ID? Relativity? Are you joking me? You are comparing relativity with ID?
I think you missed his (and the panelist's) point: the whole "it's just a theory", "you can't prove it", "teach the controversy!", "X is a religion too", argument from incredibility, etc., can be targeted at any science, but people only target them at sciences that conflict with their beliefs.
In this case, religious beliefs. I.e., biblical literalists will reject evolution, geology, the big bang theory, radioisotopic science, etc., because they all show that a peculiar set of religious beliefs is wrong, but they don't reject atomic theory, the heliocentric solar system, etc., which don't have anything to say that refutes their religious beliefs.
For that matter, they draw really fine lines even within fields: DNA based paternity tests are OK, DNA evidence for evolution must be wrong; our understanding of radiation that makes medical technology, nuclear bombs, and nuclear reactors possible is OK, but our understanding of radiation that shows things have been around for a heck of a lot more than 6000 years is wrong; etc.
If their critiques of the theory of evolution - however bogus - were truly heartfelt, why aren't they peddling the same critiques of other sciences that don't conflict with their religious beliefs.
> While school boards may continue to trickle out ID curriculua mandates, this ruling and the trial's record will effectively mean such mandates won't last long once they get to court. It's over as far as the public schools are concerned.
Yes, at the very least the courtroom testimony in the Dover case was absolutely devastating, and any school district that wants to fight it in the future is going to have to risk having all that come out again.
(Given the kind of zealots we're talking about, some of them surely will be stupid enough to risk it, but they'll get hammered for precisely the same reasons, if not by precedent.)
> I think the next battleground will be the lawsuit against the University of California for not accepting ID-inclusive biologic coursework as valid science coursework for admissions. This is about (essentially) privately educated students who want to go to good public schools and raises different issues, as I think the main summary of the plaintiff's argument is that the UC is discriminating on religious grounds.
Sounds pretty bogus to me. Basically UC is refusing to accept religious instruction as science instruction, and the plaintiffs are trying to play the martyr card. Unfortunately we've got a lot of fundamentalists and evangelicals in this country who think not getting their way is tantamount to persecution.
> Ok, so now they teach the " Fact of Evolution" not the " Theory of Evolution" hmmm....
FYI, "evolution" is a fact of biology, and "the theory of evolution" is a theory that explains it.
> you know that humanism, atheism, and being agnostic are all religions too
I don't know any such thing. Humanism is a set of values, atheism is the lack of a religion, and agnosticism is not knowing whether any gods exist or not.
It seems that American fundamentalists and evangelicals have gone from "creationism" to "creation science" to "intelligent design" to "teach the controversy" and finally settled on "yeah, well science is just a religion too".
When I was a kid that kind of Postmodernist "everything is just an opinion" wouldn't have flown in the very fundamentalist church I was taken to. It seems that some people are so eager to win an argument that they'll disown their most basic principles for it.
> if you are so sure ID is incorrect
Since it ultimately boils down to "sometime, somewhere, somebody did something", it's really hard to be sure it's incorrect.
At any rate, I don't feel any urge - or ability - to prove that nobody, nowhere, at no time did anything. My beef is that ID is a tissue of faulty logic applied to misunderstandings (or misrepresentations) of what we know about evolution. And that it is being peddled for religious and political purposes. Perhaps somebody, somewhere, really did do something. The problem is that ID hasn't given us any reason to believe it.
It's incorrect as science. If it reached the right conclusion, it's pure luck, because the conclusion doesn't follow from the arguments.
> I'm sorry but this is forcing religious belief on the students - the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong is a religious belief.
No one is forcing you not to believe in a creator. Unfortunately for some people - possibly including you - our study of the world has revealed that a few specific religious beliefs are wrong. If you want to continue believing them, that's your business, but your religious traditions aren't a reasonable - or legal - justification for censoring what we teach in science classes.
> Evolution requires every bit as much faith as ID.
No, evolution is based on copious evidence.
Also, notice that ID professes not to be faith at all. (But where does that leave it once all its arguments have been shown to be faulty?)
> Jacob Dylan said it best - "Every man, woman, and child on the planet is a religious zealot. The only difference is what their religion is."
Appeal to a minor rock star; I like that. It's a nice change from the appeals to novels and movies you always see creationists making over at talk.origins.
> It should be pointed out that natural evolution is also a nondisprovable theory.
Au contraire. The theory of evolution is put to the test everytime a new species' genome is sequenced.
The diffence between evolutionary science and ID creationism is that the science does not allow just any outcome in the gene sequencing. ID, OTOH, can accept any sequence at all, with a glib "that they way the Designer wanted it".
> In fact, if you avoid talking about ID because you dismiss it right off the bat, you will be laughed at for having no knowledge of such an important subject.
I don't dismiss it right of the bat. Over the past several years I have repeatedly offered very specific arguments for what's wrong with it - and a lot is wrong with it. If philosophers need to have bad logic explained to them, so be it, but ID is not a philosophy, and doesn't belong in philosophy class or any other, unless the curriculum covers the deconstruction of pseudoscience, propaganda, or uncritical thinking.
> Nor, for that matter, would the main ID advocates want this case appealed. The Discovery Institute pulled its support early on, for instance. Sophisticated ID advocacy requires that the public face of the movement be very quiet about its religious motivations, for fear of exactly what happened in Kitzmiller. The old Dover school board was unsophisticated, and much too blatant about its purely religious motivations.
They certainly didn't want this case to go to court, but now that it has they're not going to be happy to live with a highly publicized court ruling that states in no uncertain terms that ID isn't science. I don't see how they can live with that (unless they don't have any choice). If they can find a way, they'll try to get a higher court to rule that this judge ruled too broadly, i.e. that the problem in Dover was the overzealous members of the school board, not ID per se.
Though it's not obvious to me how they can arrange an appeal, since the new school board certainly won't be interested in it.
> Some ID proponents advised against the former Dover school board pressing this case, as they felt it didn't have a good chance. Other school boards, however, will now simply become more careful about how they attempt to introduce ID into the classroom.
The problem for ID is, it was designed to give political cover to religious zealots, but it requires those same zealots to keep their mouths shut about their religious beliefs.
That's why it failed in Dover, and that's why it's ultimately going to fail anywhere else. The kind of people who want it in the classroom are precisely the kind of people who feel compelled to insist on having their way with their religious views. The cool intellectuals at the Discovery Institute forgot to consider the nature of their customers, and it blew up in their faces.
> What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.
No modern biologist thinks evolution is purely a matter of natural selection. If you knew the subject matter at the freshman level you'd know that lots of other stuff, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect, also have influence on what evolution produces.
What's really interesting is that nobody is peddling this crap to religious schools, or other private schools. They could teach it with complete impunity.
Of course, since they can teach whatever they please, they don't have any need of disguised creationism.
> The people who are rabidly against the concept of intelligent design are nothing more than arrogant freaks who declare that man may be able to build evolving life in the lab but nobody else in the universe has ever been able to do so, nor ever will
Uh, no. We're rabidly against Intelligent Design (notice the capitals) because it's a blatant political attempt to wedge pseudoscience into the public school classrooms to provide cover for creationist voters who don't want their children to learn about evolution.
> If ID was taught in Biology classes, also Pastafarianism would have to be taught.
During the trial Michael Behe argued that a new definition of science is needed, but had to admit under cross-examination that his proposed definition would relable astrology as science.
> it must be pointed out that the reason why it was defeated - in the words of the Judge - is not because of ID itself but because the people who represented the reasons for inserting ID into the curriculum did so inappropriately. [...] ID itself is not the reason for the ruling as much as the deceitful practices of those who fought to have it put into the schools.
Sounds like you should have read more before posting.
> Indeed. However, given how strongly proponents of ID hold their views, and how much backing it has, presumably they won't tolerate this decision being allowed to stand. Regardless of the degree of smackdown, and the claim that the case has already been a signficant waste of time and money, I'm presuming it's going to get appealed. I'm curious as to what the dismissal of the school board in the recent elections is going to mean on that front though - exactly who would be doing the appealing? Anyone familiar with legal matters care to explain whether an appeal is likely, and how it would take shape?
I'm not familiar with legal matters, but I do know that the creationists on the school board all got voted out a few weeks ago, so it seems highly unlikely that the Dover school board will appeal. (One of the outgoing charlatans even suggested running up the surrender flag before the verdict came down, in hopes of avoiding the finiancial consequences.)
At any rate, if the school board doesn't appeal, who can?
> Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?
Not legally, since it's in a different federal district.
If Kansas goes to court the judge may or may not look to the Dover case for precedent. Fairly often we get conflicting rulings on an issue in different districts, and no one knows where things stand until the supreme court takes a side on it.
OTOH, I'm sure this will "affect" Kansas to the extent of having the creationists on the state board of education call a strategy meeting...
"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
Slashdot Mirror
> There's no irony here at all. What these individuals were doing is properly called "perjury".
Yet somehow I don't expect the social conservatives who jumped all over Bill Clinton for perjuring himself will be jumping all over these people.
> IDs only hope is to conduct a scientifically verifiable experiment. I laugh at the prospects of ID ever getting published in Nature.
It has recently come to light that the Templeton Foundation - a group with a pro-religion agenda - has had a standing offer out to fund ID research, but they finally dropped the offer because they never got a single application.
> TMM is assuming that a Perfect Creator necessarily will create a perfect creation. Assuming that God created the world, no creationist should claim (and few do) that the creation was perfect (as evidenced by all the crap going on in the world). It was good, not perfect. So in my opinion this whole "flawed mammalian eye" argument is really a straw-man argument.
But it shows exactly what's wrong with ID as science: if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'good', it's because the designer wanted it to be good; if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'bad', it's because the designer wanted it to be bad.
It's utterly vacuous.
> > It's an interesting interpretation of the state of the universe, but it answers exactly zero questions about it.
> The gist of the problem is, ID is unscientific more because it *poses* no questions than because it answers none.
It's even worse than that: proponents of ID argue that questions shouldn't even be interesting.
Imagine a real scientist discovering that some previously unknown force is having an observable effect on various things, publishing that claim to much fanfare, and then arguing that the nature, properties, and origin of the force aren't interesting questions and shouldn't be pursued.
> > I was hearing a discussion about this topic on the BBC the other day, and one of the panel members made an excellent point: the same criticism ID'ers make about evolution can be made of a ton of other scientific theories (in all sciences, not just biology), so why aren't those theories criticized as well? They aren't because evolution is the typical battleground in the cultural war between religious and secular US, not Relativity or Gravity.
> What theories are being taught that are like ID? Relativity? Are you joking me? You are comparing relativity with ID?
I think you missed his (and the panelist's) point: the whole "it's just a theory", "you can't prove it", "teach the controversy!", "X is a religion too", argument from incredibility, etc., can be targeted at any science, but people only target them at sciences that conflict with their beliefs.
In this case, religious beliefs. I.e., biblical literalists will reject evolution, geology, the big bang theory, radioisotopic science, etc., because they all show that a peculiar set of religious beliefs is wrong, but they don't reject atomic theory, the heliocentric solar system, etc., which don't have anything to say that refutes their religious beliefs.
For that matter, they draw really fine lines even within fields: DNA based paternity tests are OK, DNA evidence for evolution must be wrong; our understanding of radiation that makes medical technology, nuclear bombs, and nuclear reactors possible is OK, but our understanding of radiation that shows things have been around for a heck of a lot more than 6000 years is wrong; etc.
If their critiques of the theory of evolution - however bogus - were truly heartfelt, why aren't they peddling the same critiques of other sciences that don't conflict with their religious beliefs.
> While school boards may continue to trickle out ID curriculua mandates, this ruling and the trial's record will effectively mean such mandates won't last long once they get to court. It's over as far as the public schools are concerned.
Yes, at the very least the courtroom testimony in the Dover case was absolutely devastating, and any school district that wants to fight it in the future is going to have to risk having all that come out again.
(Given the kind of zealots we're talking about, some of them surely will be stupid enough to risk it, but they'll get hammered for precisely the same reasons, if not by precedent.)
> I think the next battleground will be the lawsuit against the University of California for not accepting ID-inclusive biologic coursework as valid science coursework for admissions. This is about (essentially) privately educated students who want to go to good public schools and raises different issues, as I think the main summary of the plaintiff's argument is that the UC is discriminating on religious grounds.
Sounds pretty bogus to me. Basically UC is refusing to accept religious instruction as science instruction, and the plaintiffs are trying to play the martyr card. Unfortunately we've got a lot of fundamentalists and evangelicals in this country who think not getting their way is tantamount to persecution.
> Ok, so now they teach the " Fact of Evolution" not the " Theory of Evolution" hmmm....
FYI, "evolution" is a fact of biology, and "the theory of evolution" is a theory that explains it.
> you know that humanism, atheism, and being agnostic are all religions too
I don't know any such thing. Humanism is a set of values, atheism is the lack of a religion, and agnosticism is not knowing whether any gods exist or not.
It seems that American fundamentalists and evangelicals have gone from "creationism" to "creation science" to "intelligent design" to "teach the controversy" and finally settled on "yeah, well science is just a religion too".
When I was a kid that kind of Postmodernist "everything is just an opinion" wouldn't have flown in the very fundamentalist church I was taken to. It seems that some people are so eager to win an argument that they'll disown their most basic principles for it.
> if you are so sure ID is incorrect
Since it ultimately boils down to "sometime, somewhere, somebody did something", it's really hard to be sure it's incorrect.
At any rate, I don't feel any urge - or ability - to prove that nobody, nowhere, at no time did anything. My beef is that ID is a tissue of faulty logic applied to misunderstandings (or misrepresentations) of what we know about evolution. And that it is being peddled for religious and political purposes. Perhaps somebody, somewhere, really did do something. The problem is that ID hasn't given us any reason to believe it.
It's incorrect as science. If it reached the right conclusion, it's pure luck, because the conclusion doesn't follow from the arguments.
> I'm sorry but this is forcing religious belief on the students - the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong is a religious belief.
No one is forcing you not to believe in a creator. Unfortunately for some people - possibly including you - our study of the world has revealed that a few specific religious beliefs are wrong. If you want to continue believing them, that's your business, but your religious traditions aren't a reasonable - or legal - justification for censoring what we teach in science classes.
> Evolution requires every bit as much faith as ID.
No, evolution is based on copious evidence.
Also, notice that ID professes not to be faith at all. (But where does that leave it once all its arguments have been shown to be faulty?)
> Jacob Dylan said it best - "Every man, woman, and child on the planet is a religious zealot. The only difference is what their religion is."
Appeal to a minor rock star; I like that. It's a nice change from the appeals to novels and movies you always see creationists making over at talk.origins.
> > Raising kids to believe in mythology is child abuse.
> I'm still bitter about the whole Santa Claus thing...
What Santa Claus thing?
> You're assuming they don't. Many do.
Would you be so kind as to list the first dozen or so that come to mind?
> It should be pointed out that natural evolution is also a nondisprovable theory.
Au contraire. The theory of evolution is put to the test everytime a new species' genome is sequenced.
The diffence between evolutionary science and ID creationism is that the science does not allow just any outcome in the gene sequencing. ID, OTOH, can accept any sequence at all, with a glib "that they way the Designer wanted it".
> In fact, if you avoid talking about ID because you dismiss it right off the bat, you will be laughed at for having no knowledge of such an important subject.
I don't dismiss it right of the bat. Over the past several years I have repeatedly offered very specific arguments for what's wrong with it - and a lot is wrong with it. If philosophers need to have bad logic explained to them, so be it, but ID is not a philosophy, and doesn't belong in philosophy class or any other, unless the curriculum covers the deconstruction of pseudoscience, propaganda, or uncritical thinking.
ID is simply vacuous.
> Nor, for that matter, would the main ID advocates want this case appealed. The Discovery Institute pulled its support early on, for instance. Sophisticated ID advocacy requires that the public face of the movement be very quiet about its religious motivations, for fear of exactly what happened in Kitzmiller. The old Dover school board was unsophisticated, and much too blatant about its purely religious motivations.
They certainly didn't want this case to go to court, but now that it has they're not going to be happy to live with a highly publicized court ruling that states in no uncertain terms that ID isn't science. I don't see how they can live with that (unless they don't have any choice). If they can find a way, they'll try to get a higher court to rule that this judge ruled too broadly, i.e. that the problem in Dover was the overzealous members of the school board, not ID per se.
Though it's not obvious to me how they can arrange an appeal, since the new school board certainly won't be interested in it.
> Some ID proponents advised against the former Dover school board pressing this case, as they felt it didn't have a good chance. Other school boards, however, will now simply become more careful about how they attempt to introduce ID into the classroom.
The problem for ID is, it was designed to give political cover to religious zealots, but it requires those same zealots to keep their mouths shut about their religious beliefs.
That's why it failed in Dover, and that's why it's ultimately going to fail anywhere else. The kind of people who want it in the classroom are precisely the kind of people who feel compelled to insist on having their way with their religious views. The cool intellectuals at the Discovery Institute forgot to consider the nature of their customers, and it blew up in their faces.
> What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.
No modern biologist thinks evolution is purely a matter of natural selection. If you knew the subject matter at the freshman level you'd know that lots of other stuff, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect, also have influence on what evolution produces.
> It's a public school receiving public funds.
What's really interesting is that nobody is peddling this crap to religious schools, or other private schools. They could teach it with complete impunity.
Of course, since they can teach whatever they please, they don't have any need of disguised creationism.
> Please someone explain to me what's wrong with Intelligent Design as a theory? For God's sake, we intelligently designed the computer, no?
Sure we did. It hardly follows that "someone" designed biology.
> Damn it, what's wrong with the Intelligent Design theory?
For starts, it's not a theory. It's religious apologetics very thinly disguised as science.
> The people who are rabidly against the concept of intelligent design are nothing more than arrogant freaks who declare that man may be able to build evolving life in the lab but nobody else in the universe has ever been able to do so, nor ever will
Uh, no. We're rabidly against Intelligent Design (notice the capitals) because it's a blatant political attempt to wedge pseudoscience into the public school classrooms to provide cover for creationist voters who don't want their children to learn about evolution.
> I'm sorry, the word was "evidence" not "printed text trying to force a theory down my throat".
Fortunately for you and your ilk, the judge didn't rule it illegal to deny reality.
> Show me evidence that I evolved from a fish or a single celled animal.
Ask your librarian for a first year biology textbook.
> You can't, therefor evolution isn't science.
Maybe you should back up and tell us what definition of 'science' you're using.
> If ID was taught in Biology classes, also Pastafarianism would have to be taught.
During the trial Michael Behe argued that a new definition of science is needed, but had to admit under cross-examination that his proposed definition would relable astrology as science.
> it must be pointed out that the reason why it was defeated - in the words of the Judge - is not because of ID itself but because the people who represented the reasons for inserting ID into the curriculum did so inappropriately. [...] ID itself is not the reason for the ruling as much as the deceitful practices of those who fought to have it put into the schools.
Sounds like you should have read more before posting.
> Indeed. However, given how strongly proponents of ID hold their views, and how much backing it has, presumably they won't tolerate this decision being allowed to stand. Regardless of the degree of smackdown, and the claim that the case has already been a signficant waste of time and money, I'm presuming it's going to get appealed. I'm curious as to what the dismissal of the school board in the recent elections is going to mean on that front though - exactly who would be doing the appealing? Anyone familiar with legal matters care to explain whether an appeal is likely, and how it would take shape?
I'm not familiar with legal matters, but I do know that the creationists on the school board all got voted out a few weeks ago, so it seems highly unlikely that the Dover school board will appeal. (One of the outgoing charlatans even suggested running up the surrender flag before the verdict came down, in hopes of avoiding the finiancial consequences.)
At any rate, if the school board doesn't appeal, who can?
> If high schools had philosophy classes, though, it would be a perfect subject there.
I don't think ID has enough substance to rate being treated as a philosophy.
Better would be a class on critical thinking vs. pseudoscience.
> Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?
Not legally, since it's in a different federal district.
If Kansas goes to court the judge may or may not look to the Dover case for precedent. Fairly often we get conflicting rulings on an issue in different districts, and no one knows where things stand until the supreme court takes a side on it.
OTOH, I'm sure this will "affect" Kansas to the extent of having the creationists on the state board of education call a strategy meeting...
> Damn...what a smackdown.
Also:
"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and
proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and
again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind
the ID Policy."