> It's just a bit of silly politics renaming creationism the pretend that a former court ruling doesn't apply to it.
Kind of like redefining "POW" to "enemy combatant" so the usual rules won't apply. Or saying that US law doesn't apply because we've got them at GITMO.
Social conservatives tend to have an excessively legalistic mindset. Especially when the rules won't let them have something they want.
> Science has historically operated as a discipline of philosophy. The Kansas education board's decision simply begins the process of formally re-combining fields of philosophy that had been separated.
> (I had to go back and add the word "formally," because the philosophy of Humanism does govern science today. It filled the religious vacuum that came about in academia after God was essentially banned.)
Science isn't "governed" by [Hh]umanism. It's governed by the need to check your answers. (And that is the vacuum that religion can't fill.)
> Your "2" is exactly why ID is a supernatural rather than natural explanation. If you keep it in the natural realm, the flaw that you mention is exposed--the problem of complexity is merely shifted rather than removed, and you've added a layer to your explanation for no reason at all.
> Say that the creator is outside of the natural order, and that problem goes away.
And that simple observation is how you know the leading lights of the ID movement are liars when they claim that it's not about religion.
> But say, for example, that there is a God. Just because we so far have been able to rationalize phenomena with facts and statistics, that is not to say at some point we will be at a loss to explain something without supernatural explaination. [...] If the complexity is enough to make one wonder if there is a God or not, then one cannot assume God is without hand in the event just because it does not fit our definition of logic. Because if there is one, and he did have a hand in creation (to what extent, not known) ignoring his existance could hurt our progression.
The problem is that God, as commonly conceived, can do anything he wants and can want things for reasons that we cannot comprehend. Thus any observation at all can be "explained" as something God did. As a result of that unconstrained explanatory power, it is completely useless as an actual explanation. How could you distinguish something God did frome something he didn't do?
If something doesn't have a natural explanation we'll just have to stick to "we don't know". We could plug "God did it" into every gap in our knowledge, but where would that get us? How would we ever know if we were right?
> After all, it is rather odd that such comlex results could come fom natural selection. Things happenening at random to create life, and then sentinence is kind of Odd.
> Yes, natural selection is an explination that fits the evidence, but the complexity and depth of the result is enough to evoke question.
What is the basis for these claims? Why should your naive intuition about what is and isn't possible be any guide to reality?
> I'll probably get modded into oblivion for this, and I may indeed be quite wrong, but is there anything wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught? Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there really no scientific basis for any criticism of evolution? Isn't it only fair - and rather scientific - to explain both supporting and critical evidence?
Those are good questions.
Criticism of evolution? There's an enormous amount of debate about the details, but among biologists only a kook denies that evolution happens and is central to biology and the history of life on earth.
Teach the criticisms? Nit-picks are more appropriate for grad students in the field, who actually understand the issues. We don't teach grade schoolers the problems reconciling GR and QM, and we certainly don't invoke those problems to cast doubts on the theories or on science in general.
A theory that isn't very solid shouldn't be taught in grade school at all. And when introducing theories that are solid, the introductees don't have nearly enough knowledge to make informed decisions about areas of controversy.
Heck, their teachers probably don't know enough to weigh in on the controversies.
> > If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.
> You are going a little too far here. The phrase "Intelligent Design" does not have the word "God" in there at all.
When you ask where intelligent designers come from you are inexorably led to supernatural creators. The entire ID argument is that certain types of complexity cannot arise by natural causes. If you allow that a creature could evolve by natural causes and then "design" stuff that couldn't have arisen by natural causes, ID becomes vacuous.
> Also, people disagree about the properties of God -- it could be a limited God like Zeus or Thor.
That hardly helps your position, since ignorance of what kind of god is in operation doesn't make it the least bit easier to constrain the outcome. Don't forget the "start with some hypothesis about how God would behave" part.
> It did? With all due respect, on what do you base that claim?
Start with abiogenesis = a-bio-genesis, "non-biological origin".
Add the fact life was impossible in the early universe, but now exists, and it follows inexorably that life started from non-life at some point.
Or, to be anal retentive about it, if you conjecture that supernatural beings exist and qualify as "life", then rephrase it as "it follows inexorably that life had a non-biological origin at some point".
As I said, the only question is whether you want to attribute abiogenesis to natural or supernatural causes.
> > Nor would you assume God made it.
> If you find a watch, you don't assume that God created it. Neither do I. We assume, based on our framework of knowledge that: an intelligent designer designed it, someone arranged for production
More specifically, "we assume that people made it, since we know that watches are made by people".
> How then can we look at the myriad complexity of biology and believe that something which is orders of magnitude more complex came to be as a result of time, chance, and favored characteristics?
That's precisely the question that the theory of evolution addresses.
The argument that "people make watches, therefore God made biology" is absurdly bad analogical reasoning.
BTW, what definition of "complexity" are you using? Are the Rocky Mountains complex? Can you give a good argument that complexity can only arise from intelligent intervention?
> The first is an attack on evolution itself. It is simply not true that evolution has been proved beyond doubt
FYI, evolution is as well supported as any other discovery of science.
> Haekel's embryos, Darwin's tree of life, the Miller-Urey experiemnt are all 'evidences' of evolution that in themselves do not stand up to scientific rigor.
Maybe instead of harping on that you should take the time to learn about some of the stuff that does stand up to scrutiny.
(BTW, I don't know what you mean by "Darwin's tree of life", and the M-U experiment was never offered as evidence for evolution in the first place. It was offered as evidence that organic materials relevant to life can be made by simple unintelligent processes. FWIW, the demonstration would be pointless today, as we have a long list of organic materials, including amino acids, that are known to form in deep space.)
> The second argument of ID proponents is that we need a system that will offer a view of the rise of life separate from Darwin's model of selective evolution.
That's a stupid argument. It's like saying we need a system that will offer a view of biology that doesn't involve atomic theory or chemistry. Why must we have a second view?
BTW, even of the two arguments you offer were correct, they wouldn't offer any support for ID. If you want to establish ID as a science somebody is going to have to quit relying on bad arguments against evolution and demands for equal time.
> certainly think that it is time a critical challenge was waged against Darwin's evolution, so that people can make a decision on their own.
Like people make their own decisions about whether 2+2=4, the earth orbits the sun, blood circulates, magma comes from below the earth's crust, chemicals are made of atoms and molecules, and all that other stuff we teach in school?
I was spoon> -fed Darwin's model of life through high school (from the liberal Bay Area), but came to see its flaws after going into biochemstry at UC Berkeley.
Really? Then how come you're offering stupid arguments about Haekel's drawings and the importance of an alternative view, rather than pointing out those flaws?
> Why is Darwin's theory so invincible, that you automatically dismiss any attempts to discredit it?
Why don't we ever see an attempt to discredit it that's worth hearing?
> Have you researched both sides of the Darwin argument?
> In the abstract, looking for an intelligent creator is no different than SETI. Whether we are looking for signs of intelligence in radio waves coming from other stars/planets, or signs of intelligence in, say, the background radiation from the Big Bang, there is nothing theoretically wrong or unscientific with that line of inquiry.
Actually there's a vast difference. SETI starts with the hypothesis that if life arose on other planets it might have turned out somewhat like us, at least to the extent of making use of electromagnetic waves and mathematics. ID starts with a few gaps or perceived gaps in our knowledge and invokes them as "proof" that pretend-its-not-God had a hand in the development of life on earth.
If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.
> A serious study into the question of intelligence would be an interesting line of inquiry.
It certainly would. Too bad the Discovery Institute is more interested in promoting a social agenda than in investigating the nature of intelligence.
> For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.
ID "theory" exists for no reason other than to make creationism appear to be scientifically respectable.
> There are certainly many creationists who hold to intelligent design. However, there are creationists who regard the whole ID movement as missing the point.
Yes, various flavors of creationist disagree on a lot of things. But we still call them creationists, and for that reason we call ID apologists creationists as well.
> Intelligent design argues (or attempts to argue) from scientific evidence
They don't actually attempt to; they merely wish to give the appearence of doing so.
> There are people in the Intelligent Design community (e.g. Michael Behe) who are not fundamentalists
For those who haven't been following the story, when Behe testified in the Dover trial he claimed to be working under an alternative definition of science, and under cross examination he admitted that astrology would have to be accepted as a science under his definition.
The man is a crank.
> The assumption that intelligent design and creationism are the same thing is little more than a smeer campaign
No, it's a fact. If you ask where the first intelligent designer came from, the only answer that doesn't violate the precepts of ID is that some god(s) created it. That's creationism, whether it conforms to Genesis or not.
> that allows people to completely bypass the arguments (which, whether they are faulty or not are not religious arguments) that ID proponents make in support of their position. The way the scientific community has attacked ID is sickening: it is almost always founded in ad hominem (circumstnatial and otherwise) attacks rather than actual criticism of their arguments.
I've seen lots of criticism of ID's claims. I even post some now and then.
> It's materialistic philosophy that demands that abiogenesis occur.
Abiogenesis had to occur anyway. The only difference is whether we attribute it to natural or supernatural causes.
> ID says 'what if there's a non-material root cause for biogenesis?'
Some generalized pop notion of ID might say that. But the pseudoscience being peddled as Intelligent Design says nothing about abiogenesis; they merely claim that certain biological features could not have evolved, and that therefore there must have been some intelligent tampering somewhere along the way.
Also, when they're being carefule they claim that their "proof" doesn't necessarily mean a supernatural designer (wink-wink).
> Materialists - otherwise known as naturalists - require that nothing non-natural be considered when examining the universe.
And rightly so, since there's absolutely no way to show that one supernatural explanation is any better than another.
> If I find a watch on the beach, I'm not going to assume a natural process got it there.
Nor would you assume God made it.
> Why then must we completely do an about-face when it comes to universal origins or biogenesis? It's philosophy, not science that makes that demand.
No, it's merely pragmatics that makes the demand. If you can define 'supernatural' and show us how to study it (rather than merely making unsupportable assertions about it), you'll find lots of us willing to consider it.
> My personal take on ID supporters is that in their arrogance they believe that they should be able to understand everything that is not supernatural. As a result if they don't get it it must be God's work.
I think you have that backwards. They start with the assumption that "goddidit", and then look for gaps in our knowledge to plug their god into.
(Actually, there are indications that the leadership is doing it for political reasons rather than religious regions. [Queue famous quotes from Marx, Napoleon, etc. about the political utility of religion.])
> Everyone would probably be better off if Evolution had been "marketed" as a way of expressing the relationships between the various species, and not as the actual *origins* of the species.
FYI, science is in the business of explaining stuff.
Which is yet another reason ID is pure bunkum: they want to take a shortcut and insert "somebody did it" at arbitrary places where we don't have a detailed explanation. ID means rejecting the pursuit of knowledge in favor of arbitrary belief systems.
> I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.
You know, someone could with equal rationality make the same claim about the Enûma Elish, The Poetic Edda, "The Call of Cthulhu", the writings of Rael or Hubbard or Flint.
> The "mark out" (i.e., G-d) is not a sign of respect so much as it is an observance of a mitzvah. Specifically, the mitzvah that tells us to not take G-d's name in vain.
However, God's name isn't "God".
Also, how does that bit of censorship work. Can you use "G-d" or "YHWH" in vain? Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain, because you made a typographic substitution?
> ntelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world.
That's not at all what the leading ID "theorists" claim. They claim that certain things could not have evolved, and that therefore "sometime, somewhere, somebody did something" to "design" those unevolved things. They say nothing about the origin(s) of life.
Your post is a good example of the fact that ID means whatever anyone wants it to mean.
> Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.
The leading ID "theorists" don't even claim that much. They merely claim that "somebody" must have designed the E. coli flagellum and some particular chain of biochemical reactions.
Creationists take that ball and run with it, usually interpreting those (unfounded) claims as if tthe supported biblical literalism.
Slashdot Mirror
> Now, post below with ideas for T-shirt designs and bumper stickers associating the term "American Taliban" with Kansas.
A picture of OBL and one of his cronies standing in a cornfield, with the crony saying "I don't think we're in Afghanistan any more, Osama."
> Jokes are good, but ideas of a serious nature would be a better way to communicate the gravity of this problem to those who see these designs.
"Aren't you glad the Taliban didn't have the world's largest nuclear arsenal."
> Conclusion: ID is superscience!
I'll give you partial credit for getting the 'p' 's' 'e' 'u' right.
> The ID approach is "it's all too hard, the (can't mention God) did it".
One of the best reads on ID is titled "The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name".
> It's just a bit of silly politics renaming creationism the pretend that a former court ruling doesn't apply to it.
Kind of like redefining "POW" to "enemy combatant" so the usual rules won't apply. Or saying that US law doesn't apply because we've got them at GITMO.
Social conservatives tend to have an excessively legalistic mindset. Especially when the rules won't let them have something they want.
> Science has historically operated as a discipline of philosophy. The Kansas education board's decision simply begins the process of formally re-combining fields of philosophy that had been separated.
> (I had to go back and add the word "formally," because the philosophy of Humanism does govern science today. It filled the religious vacuum that came about in academia after God was essentially banned.)
Science isn't "governed" by [Hh]umanism. It's governed by the need to check your answers. (And that is the vacuum that religion can't fill.)
> Your "2" is exactly why ID is a supernatural rather than natural explanation. If you keep it in the natural realm, the flaw that you mention is exposed--the problem of complexity is merely shifted rather than removed, and you've added a layer to your explanation for no reason at all.
> Say that the creator is outside of the natural order, and that problem goes away.
And that simple observation is how you know the leading lights of the ID movement are liars when they claim that it's not about religion.
Splitting up your post a bit:
> But say, for example, that there is a God. Just because we so far have been able to rationalize phenomena with facts and statistics, that is not to say at some point we will be at a loss to explain something without supernatural explaination. [...] If the complexity is enough to make one wonder if there is a God or not, then one cannot assume God is without hand in the event just because it does not fit our definition of logic. Because if there is one, and he did have a hand in creation (to what extent, not known) ignoring his existance could hurt our progression.
The problem is that God, as commonly conceived, can do anything he wants and can want things for reasons that we cannot comprehend. Thus any observation at all can be "explained" as something God did. As a result of that unconstrained explanatory power, it is completely useless as an actual explanation. How could you distinguish something God did frome something he didn't do?
If something doesn't have a natural explanation we'll just have to stick to "we don't know". We could plug "God did it" into every gap in our knowledge, but where would that get us? How would we ever know if we were right?
> After all, it is rather odd that such comlex results could come fom natural selection. Things happenening at random to create life, and then sentinence is kind of Odd.
> Yes, natural selection is an explination that fits the evidence, but the complexity and depth of the result is enough to evoke question.
What is the basis for these claims? Why should your naive intuition about what is and isn't possible be any guide to reality?
> I'll probably get modded into oblivion for this, and I may indeed be quite wrong, but is there anything wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught? Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there really no scientific basis for any criticism of evolution? Isn't it only fair - and rather scientific - to explain both supporting and critical evidence?
Those are good questions.
Criticism of evolution? There's an enormous amount of debate about the details, but among biologists only a kook denies that evolution happens and is central to biology and the history of life on earth.
Teach the criticisms? Nit-picks are more appropriate for grad students in the field, who actually understand the issues. We don't teach grade schoolers the problems reconciling GR and QM, and we certainly don't invoke those problems to cast doubts on the theories or on science in general.
A theory that isn't very solid shouldn't be taught in grade school at all. And when introducing theories that are solid, the introductees don't have nearly enough knowledge to make informed decisions about areas of controversy.
Heck, their teachers probably don't know enough to weigh in on the controversies.
> Wait, so if science isn't the study of explanations for natural phenomena, then what is?
> Even intelligent design is an explanation.
No it isn't. It's an incredibly lame attempt at an existence proof.
> The issue here is that they redefine science. Truly a sad day.
Behe redefined science at the Dover trial, and had to admit under crossexamination that astrology meets his definition of science.
> > If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.
> You are going a little too far here. The phrase "Intelligent Design" does not have the word "God" in there at all.
When you ask where intelligent designers come from you are inexorably led to supernatural creators. The entire ID argument is that certain types of complexity cannot arise by natural causes. If you allow that a creature could evolve by natural causes and then "design" stuff that couldn't have arisen by natural causes, ID becomes vacuous.
> Also, people disagree about the properties of God -- it could be a limited God like Zeus or Thor.
That hardly helps your position, since ignorance of what kind of god is in operation doesn't make it the least bit easier to constrain the outcome. Don't forget the "start with some hypothesis about how God would behave" part.
> > Abiogenesis had to occur anyway.
> It did? With all due respect, on what do you base that claim?
Start with abiogenesis = a-bio-genesis, "non-biological origin".
Add the fact life was impossible in the early universe, but now exists, and it follows inexorably that life started from non-life at some point.
Or, to be anal retentive about it, if you conjecture that supernatural beings exist and qualify as "life", then rephrase it as "it follows inexorably that life had a non-biological origin at some point".
As I said, the only question is whether you want to attribute abiogenesis to natural or supernatural causes.
> > Nor would you assume God made it.
> If you find a watch, you don't assume that God created it. Neither do I. We assume, based on our framework of knowledge that: an intelligent designer designed it, someone arranged for production
More specifically, "we assume that people made it, since we know that watches are made by people".
> How then can we look at the myriad complexity of biology and believe that something which is orders of magnitude more complex came to be as a result of time, chance, and favored characteristics?
That's precisely the question that the theory of evolution addresses.
The argument that "people make watches, therefore God made biology" is absurdly bad analogical reasoning.
BTW, what definition of "complexity" are you using? Are the Rocky Mountains complex? Can you give a good argument that complexity can only arise from intelligent intervention?
> The whole JEDP hypothesis approaches absurdity once higher criticism methods lead to every word in a passage being attributed to a different author.
And the counterargument reaches absurdity when it compares the idea of four or five sources to the idea of a separate source for each word.
> The first is an attack on evolution itself. It is simply not true that evolution has been proved beyond doubt
FYI, evolution is as well supported as any other discovery of science.
> Haekel's embryos, Darwin's tree of life, the Miller-Urey experiemnt are all 'evidences' of evolution that in themselves do not stand up to scientific rigor.
Maybe instead of harping on that you should take the time to learn about some of the stuff that does stand up to scrutiny.
(BTW, I don't know what you mean by "Darwin's tree of life", and the M-U experiment was never offered as evidence for evolution in the first place. It was offered as evidence that organic materials relevant to life can be made by simple unintelligent processes. FWIW, the demonstration would be pointless today, as we have a long list of organic materials, including amino acids, that are known to form in deep space.)
> The second argument of ID proponents is that we need a system that will offer a view of the rise of life separate from Darwin's model of selective evolution.
That's a stupid argument. It's like saying we need a system that will offer a view of biology that doesn't involve atomic theory or chemistry. Why must we have a second view?
BTW, even of the two arguments you offer were correct, they wouldn't offer any support for ID. If you want to establish ID as a science somebody is going to have to quit relying on bad arguments against evolution and demands for equal time.
> certainly think that it is time a critical challenge was waged against Darwin's evolution, so that people can make a decision on their own.
Like people make their own decisions about whether 2+2=4, the earth orbits the sun, blood circulates, magma comes from below the earth's crust, chemicals are made of atoms and molecules, and all that other stuff we teach in school?
I was spoon> -fed Darwin's model of life through high school (from the liberal Bay Area), but came to see its flaws after going into biochemstry at UC Berkeley.
Really? Then how come you're offering stupid arguments about Haekel's drawings and the importance of an alternative view, rather than pointing out those flaws?
> Why is Darwin's theory so invincible, that you automatically dismiss any attempts to discredit it?
Why don't we ever see an attempt to discredit it that's worth hearing?
> Have you researched both sides of the Darwin argument?
What is the second side you refer to? Ignorance?
> In the abstract, looking for an intelligent creator is no different than SETI. Whether we are looking for signs of intelligence in radio waves coming from other stars/planets, or signs of intelligence in, say, the background radiation from the Big Bang, there is nothing theoretically wrong or unscientific with that line of inquiry.
Actually there's a vast difference. SETI starts with the hypothesis that if life arose on other planets it might have turned out somewhat like us, at least to the extent of making use of electromagnetic waves and mathematics. ID starts with a few gaps or perceived gaps in our knowledge and invokes them as "proof" that pretend-its-not-God had a hand in the development of life on earth.
If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.
> A serious study into the question of intelligence would be an interesting line of inquiry.
It certainly would. Too bad the Discovery Institute is more interested in promoting a social agenda than in investigating the nature of intelligence.
> For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.
ID "theory" exists for no reason other than to make creationism appear to be scientifically respectable.
> There are certainly many creationists who hold to intelligent design. However, there are creationists who regard the whole ID movement as missing the point.
Yes, various flavors of creationist disagree on a lot of things. But we still call them creationists, and for that reason we call ID apologists creationists as well.
> Intelligent design argues (or attempts to argue) from scientific evidence
They don't actually attempt to; they merely wish to give the appearence of doing so.
> There are people in the Intelligent Design community (e.g. Michael Behe) who are not fundamentalists
For those who haven't been following the story, when Behe testified in the Dover trial he claimed to be working under an alternative definition of science, and under cross examination he admitted that astrology would have to be accepted as a science under his definition.
The man is a crank.
> The assumption that intelligent design and creationism are the same thing is little more than a smeer campaign
No, it's a fact. If you ask where the first intelligent designer came from, the only answer that doesn't violate the precepts of ID is that some god(s) created it. That's creationism, whether it conforms to Genesis or not.
> that allows people to completely bypass the arguments (which, whether they are faulty or not are not religious arguments) that ID proponents make in support of their position. The way the scientific community has attacked ID is sickening: it is almost always founded in ad hominem (circumstnatial and otherwise) attacks rather than actual criticism of their arguments.
I've seen lots of criticism of ID's claims. I even post some now and then.
> > what has materialism got to do with it?
> It's materialistic philosophy that demands that abiogenesis occur.
Abiogenesis had to occur anyway. The only difference is whether we attribute it to natural or supernatural causes.
> ID says 'what if there's a non-material root cause for biogenesis?'
Some generalized pop notion of ID might say that. But the pseudoscience being peddled as Intelligent Design says nothing about abiogenesis; they merely claim that certain biological features could not have evolved, and that therefore there must have been some intelligent tampering somewhere along the way.
Also, when they're being carefule they claim that their "proof" doesn't necessarily mean a supernatural designer (wink-wink).
> Materialists - otherwise known as naturalists - require that nothing non-natural be considered when examining the universe.
And rightly so, since there's absolutely no way to show that one supernatural explanation is any better than another.
> If I find a watch on the beach, I'm not going to assume a natural process got it there.
Nor would you assume God made it.
> Why then must we completely do an about-face when it comes to universal origins or biogenesis? It's philosophy, not science that makes that demand.
No, it's merely pragmatics that makes the demand. If you can define 'supernatural' and show us how to study it (rather than merely making unsupportable assertions about it), you'll find lots of us willing to consider it.
> My personal take on ID supporters is that in their arrogance they believe that they should be able to understand everything that is not supernatural. As a result if they don't get it it must be God's work.
I think you have that backwards. They start with the assumption that "goddidit", and then look for gaps in our knowledge to plug their god into.
(Actually, there are indications that the leadership is doing it for political reasons rather than religious regions. [Queue famous quotes from Marx, Napoleon, etc. about the political utility of religion.])
> If ID is completely baseless, then science can investigate, falsify and then ignore the whole thing.
What's to investigate? ID consists of nothing but propaganda, in the form of logical fallacies applied to misrepresentations of evolution.
> I think that it is particularly telling that materialists are threatened by the ID movement. Why do you think it is so upsetting?
The same reason we'd be offended if people suggested giving astrology, alchemy, Scientology, or Raelism equal status with science.
BTW, what has materialism got to do with it?
> Everyone would probably be better off if Evolution had been "marketed" as a way of expressing the relationships between the various species, and not as the actual *origins* of the species.
FYI, science is in the business of explaining stuff.
Which is yet another reason ID is pure bunkum: they want to take a shortcut and insert "somebody did it" at arbitrary places where we don't have a detailed explanation. ID means rejecting the pursuit of knowledge in favor of arbitrary belief systems.
> I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.
You know, someone could with equal rationality make the same claim about the Enûma Elish, The Poetic Edda, "The Call of Cthulhu", the writings of Rael or Hubbard or Flint.
> > Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain?
;-)
> This would require a non-hellbound lawyer. Please try again.
I'm sure lots of lawyers would volunteer just to get the "Get out of hell free" card.
However, God's name isn't "God".
Also, how does that bit of censorship work. Can you use "G-d" or "YHWH" in vain? Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain, because you made a typographic substitution?
> ntelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world.
That's not at all what the leading ID "theorists" claim. They claim that certain things could not have evolved, and that therefore "sometime, somewhere, somebody did something" to "design" those unevolved things. They say nothing about the origin(s) of life.
Your post is a good example of the fact that ID means whatever anyone wants it to mean.
The leading ID "theorists" don't even claim that much. They merely claim that "somebody" must have designed the E. coli flagellum and some particular chain of biochemical reactions.
Creationists take that ball and run with it, usually interpreting those (unfounded) claims as if tthe supported biblical literalism.
> I don't see why the two theories can't be merged.
No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.