> Would it not make more sense to be proactive [...] why the hell hasn't some top level big-wig at MS pushed for this?
Because security flaws aren't affecting MS policy makers' ability to afford their lifestyle. MS will get serious about security the day it threatens to deflate certain peoples' wealth, and not a day sooner.
> the key for Linux to breakthru to the desktop market is not for widespread adoption by corporate customers, it's just simple, plain old, EASE OF USE.
Why do we want a Linux breakthrough to the desktop market? The only thing the GNOME attempts to do that have done for us is to dumb down applications by eliminating some features and making access to others annoyingly difficult.
I'd rather see the Linux desktop evolve as a power-user desktop than as a competitor in the mass-market desktop.
> Actually, most people offer up "intelligent design" for well-understood phenomena. Would you say that the works of Mozart are not intelligently designed? Or perhaps that the Apache server was not intelligently designed? ID simply says that we can analyze design mathematically, and use the results of that to determine if a given physical system is likely the result of an intelligent agent. In fact, this process is already implicit in Archaeology and in SETI. It's just that biologists don't like it being applied to their neck of the woods.
What biologists don't like is the dishonest pretense of detecting intelligent design in biological organisms.
BTW, do you say Mozart and Apache are examples of intelligent design because you applied Dembski's "explanatory filter" to them, or because you know people created that stuff? The analogy with the Discovery Institute's pretense of detecting design in biology is entirely spurious.
Also, why aren't these nifty ID detection methods ever used in archaeology and SETI?
> ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes.
After failing in a couple of high profile school board farces, the Discovery Institute has now retrenched to a "teach the controversy" position. And they're completely disowning the Dover case because the fools on the Dover school board ignored the "don't say 'God'" memo, completely blowing ID's cover.
The charade has flopped. Dembski's pretence of being the next Einstein failed; he's is now a Professor of Theology. ID has become nothing more than a buzz word among creationists, to the point that they've relabeled all their old stupid anti-evolution arguments as "ID" without regard to content.
> So you say that for anyone to have a discussion of evolution they must use your conventions of naming? I say bullshit.
You can use made-up words if you wish, but if you want anyone to know what you're talking about you need to learn the terminology.
Besides, what good does it do you to criticize the "theory of evolution" if "theory of evolution" doesn't mean what scientists say? What, precisely, would you be criticizing? And why would anyone care?
> You will learn more about evolution in the Bible than any PH.D. granting institution can teach you. And you will live a better life. You should read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Edwards.
And you should listen to the idiocies of John Ashcroft and Pat Robertson.
> How do you explain miricles?
Define 'miracle', and show us one to try our hand at explaining.
> How do you explain the works of Mother Theresa?
Not much beyond con artistry, if you care to read up on it.
> How do you explain it when modern medicine says a person will die, that there is nothing else that can be done, but a priest comes and the person wakes up?
Luck.
How do you explain it when a priest comes and the person dies anyway? And what distinguishes your explanation from luck?
> A hypothesis is any idiots guess. A theory is the guess of a person with many letters behind their name.
No, a hypothesis is a trial explanation, which stands or falls on the basis of what additional observations reveal. A theory is a hypothesis, our usually a big collection or related hypotheses, that models some important class of phenomena. We usually reserve the word for models that have withstood the test of time, but not always (e.g., string theory).
IMO it would be better if we had a different term for the latter category, so we could distinguish between well supported theories (relativity, QM, evolution) and conjectural theoretical systems (string theory, etc.).
> Theory - something backed up with evidence, and has made successful predictions.
I would add that a theory is a model for some phenomenon. I think that's implicit in your "has made successful predictions" part, but it's probably useful to spell it out when trying to help clear up people's misunderstandings about what theories are.
> Intelligent Design - not a theory, but instead conjecture; a made up idea.
I wouldn't even call it a conjecture. It's apologetics, almost certainly conceived and propagated dishonestly.
It's possible that someone could offer "intelligent design" as a conjectural explanation for some poorly understood phenomenon, but that's not what these people are doing. They're trying to convince the courts that creationists have sound scientific reasons for their beliefs.
> Evolution is nothing but a theory. Ask any REAL biologist (like those with Ph.D.'s or those who work in colleges), and they will admit evolution is a theory. It is not fact. It is not a scientific law.
Evolution is a fact.
The theory of evolution is a theory; it explains the fact.
Laws are observed regularities of nature; the idea is orthogonal to the notion of a theory. And though I don't know of any laws of nature that are associated with evolution, I suspect a properly educated person could easily come up with one. For my part, I'm confident in saying that "imperfect self-duplicators will evolve" is a law of nature, even though no guru has stated it formally and given it a name or a number.
> The cool thing Intelligent Design is we know God made us.
Hopefully you're trolling, because that's nonsense. (It's semantic nonsense even if you insert the missing "about" to fix the grammatical nonsense.)
> Think about how the world was made. Science has a theory called "Big Bang". It is a theory which states that in the start the mass was so dense, it exploded and everything flew away randomly, making stars and planets, and life. For any people who know statistics, what is the probability of that happening?
What is the probability that a god would exist and do the exact same thing? Why do you think invoking "goddidit" makes something more probable? Wouldn't it actually be less probable, since you have added one more constraint that has to be satisfied?
> God made life. It is called a soul.
"Life" and "soul" aren't synonymous even among theists.
> ID has one thing to offer that makes it recommendable that evolution does not: the fact that we are as complex as we are is exceedingly difficult to justify from the theory of evolution alone when faced with the inexorable increase of entropy.
Before you go further, what definition of 'entropy' are you using, and what does its increase have to do with evolution?
Notice that if you're going to make claims based on an increase in entropy, your definition has to be quantitative.
Also, unless your definition is something that can be measured, you're not going to be able to show whether it actually does increase in the real world.
> I am not saying that what evolution describes is impossible, only that it is unlikely.
How unlikely is it? Is it more unlikely than ID, or less likely? Can you support your answer?
> Another plausable explanation is that somebody, or perhaps many somebodies, somewhere in the universe, perhaps long dead by now, had designed us to be the way that we are, or perhaps to evolve the way that we did, possibly even ultimately surpassing them in complexity (in much the same way that computers today are rapidly approaching the complexity of our own brains, and will almost certainly exceed it at some point).
Plausible? Perhaps. Supported by evidence? No.
> The only real "proof" that we currently have to support this notion is that we are astoundingly complex creatures and it is similarily astoundingly unlikely that we evolved the way we did entirely by chance.
FYI, the theory of evolution doesn't specify "entirely by chance". Mutations are a matter of chance, but natural selection is a derandomizing filter: it biases the results strongly in favor of adaptedness.
Moreover, an argument that one mechanism is unlikely is not an argument in favor of a competing mechanism. And in this case, we don't have the faintest idea what the unlikeliness of that competing mechanism is.
> One can not assume that absence of evidence of the existence of these designers is evidence of their absence
The same applies to the FSM, IPU, and Santa Claus.
> although it does provide a very sound supporting argument against ID, the argument does not constitute actual proof
I don't know of many people trying to prove that IDers don't exist. What people are pointing out is that there is no reason to believe that they do exist.
> Again, one cannot rationally conclude that evolution is the only possible way, or even the simplest explanation for how we got to be the way we are unless one presupposes that, in fact, such an assertion is true in the first place, before even subjecting it to objective scientific inquiry.
You miss the point. No one is trying to prove that evolution is the only possible mechanism or the simplest explanation. What biologists and other educated people claim is that evolution is the only explanation anyone has ever offered that stands up to scrutiny.
> A significant majority of the people that are aware of ID perceive it as a back door to creationism, and while one cannot refute that it could be used in that manner, if ID is true, that doesn't necessarily mean that creationism is true. I categorically do *NOT* advocate the teaching of creationism in schools, as that makes suppositions about the nature of the designer in ID theory, which cannot be addressed in any objective scientific manner.
That, IMO, is a sensible position. I wish you would go further and learn a bit more about the other topics you brough up in your post.
> Philosophy describes what science is, but philosophy is not science.
I would have said, philosophy attempts to offer a post hoc explanation for what we were already doing.
> I believe it is logical and rational to state: a. God exists b. Christianity is the one true religion And providing proofs for each is ultimately a philosophical process, not a scientific one.
Notice that "logical and rational" have nothing to do with "true". You can build a "logical and rational" system on any set of non-contradicting axioms.
> I do not appreciate attitudes that condescend religion as a useful but ultimately misguided crutch by which the weaker minded can cling to what is good.
And other people don't appreciate your attitudes. But what does any of that have to do with the truth?
> Ie, those who say that religion is untrue, but serves as a useful means to keep people in line.
ISTM that it serves a useful means of keeping people in line, whether it's true or not. (Supposedly Napoleon and several other monarchs spoke the explicit idea that religion is useful for keeping people in line.)
> There are "proofs" that God exists, and these are logical/philosophical "proofs".
Logical/philosophical proofs have nothing to do with reality. You can "prove" anything you want, given a free choice of axioms. But that doesn't mean the real world will conform to the proven claims.
> Darwinists in my experience are the most likely to elevate science to a level that it does not approach in reality.
In what way do you think they do that, and what is your support for that claim?
> Science is a very useful process for understanding our universe, but it is not the sole means of discerning truth.
But unlike other "means of discerning truth", science is the one that checks its results.
> Basic summary of my post: I am aware of the difference of science and philosophy and how they apply to the creation/evolution debate. I do not think it is foolish, or a sacrifice of reason, to accept God and reject Darwinism.
It may not be foolish to accept God, since there isn't any evidence one way or the other. However, the same can be said of the IPU, the FSM, and, AFAIK, string theory.
However, if by "Darwinism" you mean the fact and/or theory of evolution, it is both foolish and unreasonable to reject it, just as it is foolish and unreasonable to reject general relativity. Because there isn't a lack of evidence on those topics.
> What makes you think that Christian Creationists aren't allowed to participate in the scientific process?
Oh, they're allowed to. They just don't want to, because part of the scientific process is discarding nifty ideas that turn out to be contrary to the evidence.
> They do not contradict. I doubt you can tell me anything on this topic I haven't already heard.
And there's the problem: having had the problems with your "model" pointed out to you repeatedly, you still cling to it.
> And a simple google search will show many different ideas on how the two chapters complement each other and do not necessarily contradict.
And which of those ideas is actually right? If some of them are wrong, how do you know one of them isn't wrong?
> They only contradict if you take one set of assumptions.
Namely, that both versions of the story mean what they say.
> There's an alternate definition of theory that applies to the Theory of Intelligent Design. An acceptable definition of "theory" (although the last one listed in my Random House dictionary) is: Guess or conjecture.
ID isn't a guess or conjecture either: it's apologetics for big-tent creationism. These people aren't "guessing" or "conjecturing" that an intelligent designer exists; they're offering pseudosceintific "proofs" to shore up the beliefs of people who don't like what real science has discovered.
> If it weren't such a pain to type out, from now on, I'd refer to it as the "Guess or Conjecture of Intelligent Design".
Stick with "Intelligent Design Creationism" or "Intelligent Design Propaganda". (Preferably the first, since that seems to piss them off the most.)
> ID, on the other hand, may be a viable theory to teach in schools with respect to figuring out where *WE* came from
ID has nothing more to recommend it than the others do. It is nothing more than a tissue of logical fallicies applied to misrepresentations of biology. Its only value is as religious propaganda.
> I would put it to anyone to find more than 5 people in the entire world that *seriously* believe any of those theories, and not merely claim to as a response to somehow satirize or ridicule another person or group of people's sincere beliefs. People can _say_ they believe in the flying spaghetti monster theory, but do they _REALLY_ believe it? Or are they just saying that they do in order to somehow show how silly it must be to believe in something that science is unable to prove? I expect the latter.
Of course. The whole point is that unevidenced beliefs are all in the same basket, and it's as foolish to teach one in school as it is to teach another.
The fact that some people "really" believe one myth or another is irrelevant. We could make a long list of stupid stuff that people "really" believe. Should any of these be taught in schools?
Raelian Theory
Heaven's Gate Theory
Thetan Theory
All European Languages Are Derived From Greek Thory
UFOs Are Alien Visitors Theory
9/11 Was Another Rove Scam Theory
My Religious Sect Is Right And Yours Is Wrong Theory
I Could Win The Randi Challenge If I Wanted To But I Don't Want To Theory
No. When it comes to primary education, we need to stick with the tried-and-true Bullshit Walks Theory.
Slashdot Mirror
> Would it not make more sense to be proactive [...] why the hell hasn't some top level big-wig at MS pushed for this?
Because security flaws aren't affecting MS policy makers' ability to afford their lifestyle. MS will get serious about security the day it threatens to deflate certain peoples' wealth, and not a day sooner.
> the key for Linux to breakthru to the desktop market is not for widespread adoption by corporate customers, it's just simple, plain old, EASE OF USE.
Why do we want a Linux breakthrough to the desktop market? The only thing the GNOME attempts to do that have done for us is to dumb down applications by eliminating some features and making access to others annoyingly difficult.
I'd rather see the Linux desktop evolve as a power-user desktop than as a competitor in the mass-market desktop.
> Which of these things is not like the others?
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Scientology
- Amway
- Herbalife
Amway. It's the only one that doesn't have an 'i' in it.> What kind of STUPID commentary is that?
The completely predictable attempt at damage control by the spokesman for a corporation that got caught screwing up.
Any more questions?
> The same reason there are two radians: it's a convention someone found useful.
Er, make that two pi radians.
> I never really got a good answer to that one from my maths teachers.
The same reason there are two radians: it's a convention someone found useful.
> Actually, most people offer up "intelligent design" for well-understood phenomena. Would you say that the works of Mozart are not intelligently designed? Or perhaps that the Apache server was not intelligently designed? ID simply says that we can analyze design mathematically, and use the results of that to determine if a given physical system is likely the result of an intelligent agent. In fact, this process is already implicit in Archaeology and in SETI. It's just that biologists don't like it being applied to their neck of the woods.
What biologists don't like is the dishonest pretense of detecting intelligent design in biological organisms.
BTW, do you say Mozart and Apache are examples of intelligent design because you applied Dembski's "explanatory filter" to them, or because you know people created that stuff? The analogy with the Discovery Institute's pretense of detecting design in biology is entirely spurious.
Also, why aren't these nifty ID detection methods ever used in archaeology and SETI?
> ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes.
After failing in a couple of high profile school board farces, the Discovery Institute has now retrenched to a "teach the controversy" position. And they're completely disowning the Dover case because the fools on the Dover school board ignored the "don't say 'God'" memo, completely blowing ID's cover.
The charade has flopped. Dembski's pretence of being the next Einstein failed; he's is now a Professor of Theology. ID has become nothing more than a buzz word among creationists, to the point that they've relabeled all their old stupid anti-evolution arguments as "ID" without regard to content.
> So you say that for anyone to have a discussion of evolution they must use your conventions of naming? I say bullshit.
You can use made-up words if you wish, but if you want anyone to know what you're talking about you need to learn the terminology.
Besides, what good does it do you to criticize the "theory of evolution" if "theory of evolution" doesn't mean what scientists say? What, precisely, would you be criticizing? And why would anyone care?
> You will learn more about evolution in the Bible than any PH.D. granting institution can teach you. And you will live a better life. You should read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Edwards.
And you should listen to the idiocies of John Ashcroft and Pat Robertson.
> How do you explain miricles?
Define 'miracle', and show us one to try our hand at explaining.
> How do you explain the works of Mother Theresa?
Not much beyond con artistry, if you care to read up on it.
> How do you explain it when modern medicine says a person will die, that there is nothing else that can be done, but a priest comes and the person wakes up?
Luck.
How do you explain it when a priest comes and the person dies anyway? And what distinguishes your explanation from luck?
> A hypothesis is any idiots guess. A theory is the guess of a person with many letters behind their name.
No, a hypothesis is a trial explanation, which stands or falls on the basis of what additional observations reveal. A theory is a hypothesis, our usually a big collection or related hypotheses, that models some important class of phenomena. We usually reserve the word for models that have withstood the test of time, but not always (e.g., string theory).
IMO it would be better if we had a different term for the latter category, so we could distinguish between well supported theories (relativity, QM, evolution) and conjectural theoretical systems (string theory, etc.).
> > God made life. It is called a soul.
> So life is a soul? So cows aren't alive?
No, you've got it all wrong: cows are souls!
> Nice job. Not many people take pride in their trolling these days. Most just try to post something "shocking" or "obscene."
His post is shocking, if he really believes it.
Of course, then it wouldn't be a troll, either.
> Theory - something backed up with evidence, and has made successful predictions.
I would add that a theory is a model for some phenomenon. I think that's implicit in your "has made successful predictions" part, but it's probably useful to spell it out when trying to help clear up people's misunderstandings about what theories are.
> Intelligent Design - not a theory, but instead conjecture; a made up idea.
I wouldn't even call it a conjecture. It's apologetics, almost certainly conceived and propagated dishonestly.
It's possible that someone could offer "intelligent design" as a conjectural explanation for some poorly understood phenomenon, but that's not what these people are doing. They're trying to convince the courts that creationists have sound scientific reasons for their beliefs.
> Evolution is nothing but a theory. Ask any REAL biologist (like those with Ph.D.'s or those who work in colleges), and they will admit evolution is a theory. It is not fact. It is not a scientific law.
Evolution is a fact.
The theory of evolution is a theory; it explains the fact.
Laws are observed regularities of nature; the idea is orthogonal to the notion of a theory. And though I don't know of any laws of nature that are associated with evolution, I suspect a properly educated person could easily come up with one. For my part, I'm confident in saying that "imperfect self-duplicators will evolve" is a law of nature, even though no guru has stated it formally and given it a name or a number.
> The cool thing Intelligent Design is we know God made us.
Hopefully you're trolling, because that's nonsense. (It's semantic nonsense even if you insert the missing "about" to fix the grammatical nonsense.)
> Think about how the world was made. Science has a theory called "Big Bang". It is a theory which states that in the start the mass was so dense, it exploded and everything flew away randomly, making stars and planets, and life. For any people who know statistics, what is the probability of that happening?
What is the probability that a god would exist and do the exact same thing? Why do you think invoking "goddidit" makes something more probable? Wouldn't it actually be less probable, since you have added one more constraint that has to be satisfied?
> God made life. It is called a soul.
"Life" and "soul" aren't synonymous even among theists.
Your score:
- if trolling, 2/10
- if serious, 0/10
Thanks for playing.> Dupe! Oh.... Nevermind, it seems like just yesterday a serious flaw was found in CISCO. I hope this doesn't become common place for CISCO
It's getting hard to tell when it's a dupe on Slashdot vs. when it's a dupe at Cisco.
Maybe she'll settle for a tubular zirconia.
> story and more interesting is the link.. where is it??
Feh, it was a trick to see if anyone actually reads the stories.
Now we can retire "The dog ate my homework" for something more modern.
> God of the Gaps' describes a philosophical point of view in which God is given as the explanation things we don't understand
Ach, I thought Godiva Gaps was an anatomical term.
> Why do you claim it it foolish in God's eyes to require proof of something before you accept it
Because God's in deep sh*t if he wants people to think that way and still believe in him.
> ID has one thing to offer that makes it recommendable that evolution does not: the fact that we are as complex as we are is exceedingly difficult to justify from the theory of evolution alone when faced with the inexorable increase of entropy.
Before you go further, what definition of 'entropy' are you using, and what does its increase have to do with evolution?
Notice that if you're going to make claims based on an increase in entropy, your definition has to be quantitative.
Also, unless your definition is something that can be measured, you're not going to be able to show whether it actually does increase in the real world.
> I am not saying that what evolution describes is impossible, only that it is unlikely.
How unlikely is it? Is it more unlikely than ID, or less likely? Can you support your answer?
> Another plausable explanation is that somebody, or perhaps many somebodies, somewhere in the universe, perhaps long dead by now, had designed us to be the way that we are, or perhaps to evolve the way that we did, possibly even ultimately surpassing them in complexity (in much the same way that computers today are rapidly approaching the complexity of our own brains, and will almost certainly exceed it at some point).
Plausible? Perhaps. Supported by evidence? No.
> The only real "proof" that we currently have to support this notion is that we are astoundingly complex creatures and it is similarily astoundingly unlikely that we evolved the way we did entirely by chance.
FYI, the theory of evolution doesn't specify "entirely by chance". Mutations are a matter of chance, but natural selection is a derandomizing filter: it biases the results strongly in favor of adaptedness.
Moreover, an argument that one mechanism is unlikely is not an argument in favor of a competing mechanism. And in this case, we don't have the faintest idea what the unlikeliness of that competing mechanism is.
> One can not assume that absence of evidence of the existence of these designers is evidence of their absence
The same applies to the FSM, IPU, and Santa Claus.
> although it does provide a very sound supporting argument against ID, the argument does not constitute actual proof
I don't know of many people trying to prove that IDers don't exist. What people are pointing out is that there is no reason to believe that they do exist.
> Again, one cannot rationally conclude that evolution is the only possible way, or even the simplest explanation for how we got to be the way we are unless one presupposes that, in fact, such an assertion is true in the first place, before even subjecting it to objective scientific inquiry.
You miss the point. No one is trying to prove that evolution is the only possible mechanism or the simplest explanation. What biologists and other educated people claim is that evolution is the only explanation anyone has ever offered that stands up to scrutiny.
> A significant majority of the people that are aware of ID perceive it as a back door to creationism, and while one cannot refute that it could be used in that manner, if ID is true, that doesn't necessarily mean that creationism is true. I categorically do *NOT* advocate the teaching of creationism in schools, as that makes suppositions about the nature of the designer in ID theory, which cannot be addressed in any objective scientific manner.
That, IMO, is a sensible position. I wish you would go further and learn a bit more about the other topics you brough up in your post.
> Philosophy describes what science is, but philosophy is not science.
I would have said, philosophy attempts to offer a post hoc explanation for what we were already doing.
> I believe it is logical and rational to state: a. God exists b. Christianity is the one true religion And providing proofs for each is ultimately a philosophical process, not a scientific one.
Notice that "logical and rational" have nothing to do with "true". You can build a "logical and rational" system on any set of non-contradicting axioms.
> I do not appreciate attitudes that condescend religion as a useful but ultimately misguided crutch by which the weaker minded can cling to what is good.
And other people don't appreciate your attitudes. But what does any of that have to do with the truth?
> Ie, those who say that religion is untrue, but serves as a useful means to keep people in line.
ISTM that it serves a useful means of keeping people in line, whether it's true or not. (Supposedly Napoleon and several other monarchs spoke the explicit idea that religion is useful for keeping people in line.)
> There are "proofs" that God exists, and these are logical/philosophical "proofs".
Logical/philosophical proofs have nothing to do with reality. You can "prove" anything you want, given a free choice of axioms. But that doesn't mean the real world will conform to the proven claims.
> Darwinists in my experience are the most likely to elevate science to a level that it does not approach in reality.
In what way do you think they do that, and what is your support for that claim?
> Science is a very useful process for understanding our universe, but it is not the sole means of discerning truth.
But unlike other "means of discerning truth", science is the one that checks its results.
> Basic summary of my post: I am aware of the difference of science and philosophy and how they apply to the creation/evolution debate. I do not think it is foolish, or a sacrifice of reason, to accept God and reject Darwinism.
It may not be foolish to accept God, since there isn't any evidence one way or the other. However, the same can be said of the IPU, the FSM, and, AFAIK, string theory.
However, if by "Darwinism" you mean the fact and/or theory of evolution, it is both foolish and unreasonable to reject it, just as it is foolish and unreasonable to reject general relativity. Because there isn't a lack of evidence on those topics.
> What makes you think that Christian Creationists aren't allowed to participate in the scientific process?
Oh, they're allowed to. They just don't want to, because part of the scientific process is discarding nifty ideas that turn out to be contrary to the evidence.
> They do not contradict. I doubt you can tell me anything on this topic I haven't already heard.
And there's the problem: having had the problems with your "model" pointed out to you repeatedly, you still cling to it.
> And a simple google search will show many different ideas on how the two chapters complement each other and do not necessarily contradict.
And which of those ideas is actually right? If some of them are wrong, how do you know one of them isn't wrong?
> They only contradict if you take one set of assumptions.
Namely, that both versions of the story mean what they say.
> There's an alternate definition of theory that applies to the Theory of Intelligent Design. An acceptable definition of "theory" (although the last one listed in my Random House dictionary) is: Guess or conjecture.
ID isn't a guess or conjecture either: it's apologetics for big-tent creationism. These people aren't "guessing" or "conjecturing" that an intelligent designer exists; they're offering pseudosceintific "proofs" to shore up the beliefs of people who don't like what real science has discovered.
> If it weren't such a pain to type out, from now on, I'd refer to it as the "Guess or Conjecture of Intelligent Design".
Stick with "Intelligent Design Creationism" or "Intelligent Design Propaganda". (Preferably the first, since that seems to piss them off the most.)
> ID, on the other hand, may be a viable theory to teach in schools with respect to figuring out where *WE* came from
ID has nothing more to recommend it than the others do. It is nothing more than a tissue of logical fallicies applied to misrepresentations of biology. Its only value is as religious propaganda.
> I would put it to anyone to find more than 5 people in the entire world that *seriously* believe any of those theories, and not merely claim to as a response to somehow satirize or ridicule another person or group of people's sincere beliefs. People can _say_ they believe in the flying spaghetti monster theory, but do they _REALLY_ believe it? Or are they just saying that they do in order to somehow show how silly it must be to believe in something that science is unable to prove? I expect the latter.
Of course. The whole point is that unevidenced beliefs are all in the same basket, and it's as foolish to teach one in school as it is to teach another.
The fact that some people "really" believe one myth or another is irrelevant. We could make a long list of stupid stuff that people "really" believe. Should any of these be taught in schools?
- Raelian Theory
- Heaven's Gate Theory
- Thetan Theory
- All European Languages Are Derived From Greek Thory
- UFOs Are Alien Visitors Theory
- 9/11 Was Another Rove Scam Theory
- My Religious Sect Is Right And Yours Is Wrong Theory
- I Could Win The Randi Challenge If I Wanted To But I Don't Want To Theory
No. When it comes to primary education, we need to stick with the tried-and-true Bullshit Walks Theory.