Intelligent Design in Universities

Mick,
PS - feel free to register your opinions on the 'minority report' if you go to the site I also forgot to mention. The IDers love to state that evolutionary theory is soooo flawed that even evolutionary biologists are in disagreement about many aspects of it.That is like saying the automobile is a failed invention because 2 car designers can't agree on what brand of tires to put on a new model...

Thank you, Limbo for the kind words!In response to Wounded King, the best rationale for putting ID in the view of the administrators and department heads is what ID will do for them. I have been quite open about the fact that the ID and creationist classes could be of mutual interest to the movement and the religion departments and educational institutions that would love to expand their financial base. We are exploring ways to enable them to teach ID and creationism easily and profitably. It will further our marketing of the concept to the next generation of scientists. Even if the department heads and administrators don't believe ID and/or creationism, money talks!Recall however, the push at first is for ID in the religion departments. Eugenie Scott, though she disagrees, seemed surprisingly neutral to the idea of ID and creationism being taught in the religion departments, and was even marginally supportive if it would keep ID out of the science classes. Thus, we may have a workable compromise at this time. Her partial acquiecence on the issue is huge victory for us. She'll oppose us in the public schools (heck I oppose us in the public schools), but not on the campuses. In fact, Brumfiel reported about the divisions among the Darwinists! What was amusing is he called the Darwinists, and that was remarkable in itself!If ID and/or creationism, gain a foothold in the college culture, it will only be a matter of time before more Stephen Meyers' and William Dembski's and Caroline Crocker's are teaching at secular institutions. We are aiming to win the heart of the scientific community of tomorrow, not the scientific community of today.

You want to market to the next generation of researchers that creationism and it's ill-disguised twin brother "Intelligent" design are science. One can only hope that you will fail, because if you succeed there will be no scientists, only priests.What exactly do ID proponets dislike about science? I'm sorry that it doesn't bow down to christian ideas, but them's the breaks. Science is a system, a system that works. We know it works because we see the tangible benefits every day. Why is it that some people are so ready to ignore science because it doesn't support their particular brand of superstition?Is it that some soft minded types are so attached to their fairy tales that anything that casts doubt on them must be opposed? I simply don't get it. Perhaps you, Mr. Cordova, can explain it to me.I also have another question. Why is it that some of those same soft minded types claim to respect science, but only do so until it tells them something they don't like?Maybe that's it. Perhaps those poor people do approve of science in some degenerate way and desperately want the respectability that science provides for their superstitions. Of course, that seems to me to be a testament to a lack of faith, but maybe I'm wrong. Again, Mr. Cordova, you seem to understand the way these people believe. Can you explain it?Perhaps you can explain why all this alleged work in ID is published in popular books rather then in peer reviewed journals? I expect a chorus of the good old "bias" song here, perhaps tending upwards to the more strident "conspiracy" tune. I may be wrong, of course, so what is your explanation?Finally, I would also like an answer to this: How exactly is ID not non-denominational creationism? I've heard the old saw about how ID just points to the existence of a designer but says nothing about Him. (In case it was missed, the use of "Him" was deliberate and sarcastic.) ID just tries to show that there is some unknown power out there that created everything (or at least life on earth). How is that not as religious claim?I await your reply.

thank you for your assistance.In response to your questions:

quote:

---

Sal, I am a novice in the area of intelligent design. I have heard a lot of bad arguments which tout the usefulness of such knowledge, but I as a believer have nevertheless sided with the science guys in regards to this topic. In the article which you cited, several questions were raised. Can you give me your answer to them?

---

I'll try.

quote:

---

Phatboy asked:
Tell me, a believer, why you feel this way [that it would be better to add a creator to the mix]

---

That was Brumfiel's characterization of the situation. He was close, but it does not capture my thought process. What I outlined to him (and Brumfiel has degree in physics ) was the deductions from physical law imply that some sort of deity exists. The conclusion that a deity exists is somewhat outside of ID proper, but if physical law infers a diety, that makes ID arguments a bit more palatable than just attacking Darwinian evolution. I outline the derivation of that thesis in God in the Equations.

quote:

---

phatboy asked:

​

How would you convince scientists who are also perhaps agnostic/atheist that intelligent design does make sense? In other words, how can you speak the language of science? (Can you?)

---

We can be slowly persuading them based on the facts. The young are willing to believe and explore it, and that's the first step. The ID leadership, in many ways, has decided to give up trying to persuade the existing generation. The poll by the way, done at James Madison (not George Mason) was done by the agnostic and atheist college students who felt ID and creationism should get a fairer hearing on the college campuses. That was extraodinary! But it goes to show, that the younger generation atheists and agnostics are much more friendly to the idea of God than the prior generation. They confide in me they want to believe if they could only see the scientific evidence. They feel the ID makes a good case. Antony Flew set an important example for them.We've made a commitment to aim for those who have less to lose financially and emotionally, namely the young. It's very hard persuading an old professor who has devoted 40 years of their life trying to prove a theory close to his heart. The thought that they could be wrong is just too much! The young do not have these barriers, and they are optimistic that the universe has purpose. We just need to get the facts and theories to them, and we are meeting with success as the article reported.

quote:

---

phatboy:

​

What response would you have to Ms. Forrests question and assertion?

---

First of all, I have to thank Barbara for propelling our organization to fame. Her conspiracy theories about IDEA supposedly being part of a large covert masterplan to overtake the government provide an endless source of entertainment to us. IDEA has gotten so much attention because of the publicity drama she created.Forrest is wrong about us wanting to split the public understanding of science. This is a joke, and I have 3 times more scientific training than her, and by some measures, I'm only moderately trained. We want people to know more about science. I have an easier time persuading students with strong backgrounds in math, chemistry, physics, and biology. I have the hardest time persuading humanities students commited to not believing ID.I would add, consider the fact that Caroline Crocker was not an IDists until some fellow science professors gave her ID materials. She is one of the few of the older generation who converted, but that will play out with the younger generation many times over if we are just able to reach them with the information. There are enough dissenters in the older generation of scientists, that the next generation does not totally feel like they are out on a limb. We want more people who are well informed about science like Caroline Crocker.

quote:

---

phatboy asked:

​

Were a student raised strictly on the teaching of I.D. creationism, would this teaching equip them for jobs in the secular world related to scientific disciplines?

---

I don't know, and therefore to be safe and to be fair I encourage the bio majors in our IDEA chapters to learn and study theories like evolutionary biology even if they don't believe it is true.I should mention we have bio majors in our IDEA chapters that are undergraduates, graudates, and PhD candidates, and faculty. Some of them have had as much exposure to Darwinian evolution from professors, text books, peer-reviewed journals, and supposed experimental proof as any one in the world, and yet the are still IDists. It's testament of the inablity of Darwian theory to mount a convincing case to biologists who are well qualified to decide for themselves.In any case, I want IDEA members to learn as much about other theories, and to even view ID theory with healthy skepticism as every good scientist should exercise.I do believe, part of appreciating the power of ID theory is witnessing the weakness of competing theories. That's why I delight when the IDEA members who are bio majors take evolutionary biology classes only to come back and tell me that ID makes far more reasonable claims from a scientific standpoint. For example, one ID member said she asked her professor about the theoretical transitional between a prokaryotic to a eukaryotic cell, the professor said, "I don't know". This line of questioning went on for several other transitionals with the same result. She now knows we weren't lying to her when we told her the empirical support is lacking where it is really needed. Then she meets someone like micro biologist Caroline Crocker, and then she's pretty much at peace over the issue that proponents of Darwinian evolution have not been able to substantiate their case.This message has been edited by scordova, 05-03-2005 04:58 PM

The trouble with these sorts of analogical arguments from quantum mechanics, aside from their imprecision and vagueness, is that they are just as consistent with Buddhist concepts of an impersonal disembodied universal sentience as they are with the Abrahamic God concept.You're still faced with theological arguments to resolve that conundrum, and a program that really is not "research" in any real sense, because it does not produce testable and falsifiable predictions, but instead confines itself to attempting to critique scientific concepts it finds incompatible with previously constrained theological concepts.You aren't willing to go wherever the evidence leads, even if it forces a reassessment or abandonment of your preconceptions. If you want to claim to be scientific, you have to be willing to go where the evidence leads, like it or not.

quote:

---

mick wrote:

​

If you read the article...

​

It certainly isn't a growing force amongst people how actually study biology.

---

Not only did I read the article, I provided information for the article. The case of Caroline Crocker and Michael Behe are the tip of the iceberg. We're only 2% perhaps of academia, but it wasn't even that much some time ago. Brumfiel did not mention that we have several IDEA bio majors all the way up to the PhD level.

quote:

---

do believe, part of appreciating the power of ID theory is witnessing the weakness of competing theories. That's why I delight when the IDEA members who are bio majors take evolutionary biology classes only to come back and tell me that ID makes far more reasonable claims from a scientific standpoint. For example, one ID member said she asked her professor about the theoretical transitional between a prokaryotic to a eukaryotic cell, the professor said, "I don't know". This line of questioning went on for several other transitionals with the same result. She now knows we weren't lying to her when we told her the empirical support is lacking where it is really needed

---

I assume then that ID actually has empirically supported explanations for all these areas ? Because I don't know how else you could write the above with a straight face.

quote:

---

I would like to know just what sort of useful insights have ever been derived from 'reasoning' along an ID interpretation of nature?

​

What real phenomenon have these pseudoscientists EVER explained,
or explained better than evolutionary biology can?

​

The answer is none, nothing, zip, zilch.

---

Not true, I'm afraid.ID has been directly tied into science. One example of this is the work of English physician William Harvey, considered by many to have laid the foundation for modern medicine. Harvey was the first to demonstrate the function of the heart and the circulation of the blood.[1]According to Barrow and Tipler, Harvey deduced the mammalian circulatory system using the epistemology of teleology: "The way in which this respect for Aristotle was realized in Harvey's works seems to have been in the search for discernible purpose in the workings of living organisms- indeed, the expectation of purposeful activity . . . he tried to conceive of how a purposeful designer would have constructed a system of motion."Harvey commented to Robert Boyle how he conceived the layout of the circulatory system. He reasoned the shape and positioning of the valves in the system and invited himself to imagine that so Provident a cause as Nature had not so placed many values without Design; and no Design seem'd more possible than that, since the Blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent, by the veins to the limbs; it should be sent through the Arteries and return through the veins.English scientist Robert Boyle discovered the relationship between the temperature, pressure and volume of a gas and is often considered the father of modern chemistry. Boyle formulated science used by today’s modern chemists including a law known as Boyle's Law which states that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to the volume it occupies.Boyle was also an avid teleologist as he noted in his writings, The Excellence of Theology (1674) and The Christian Virtuoso (1690).Newton enshrouded his science with a healthy dose of his version of a creator.

quote:

---

Where are the products of their so-called 'research programs'?

​

Any single product, for that matter.

---

There is nothing to research (that hasn't been done) as there is no such thing as a separate ID science. ID is an epistemology, a scaffolding in which hypotheses and theories are examined with a slightly different paradigm.

quote:

---

The whole premise of ID amounts to nothing more than an abdication of intellect - stuff can be just 'too complex' for us mortals to understand or explain.

​

And don't assume, as earlier in this thread, that public schools are now safe from these fundamentalists either.

​

Here is the latest on the war in my own intellectually challenged state.

---

No one has stated anything is too complex for a temporal human to understand. We understand organisms and organelles quite well.But you mean fundamentalists as in the form of Eugenie Scott? The attempts to bury ID and keep this concept from being considered by the public in an education setting is nothing more than intellectual censorship akin to the book burnings back in the 'good old days.'[1] The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford Paperbacks), John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, Chapter 1.

---

Design Dynamics

Nice work, ID is clearly an active, thriving field. Hence your plethora of research results dating from as recently as the sixteenth century!Actually I am a bit pissed off at your post. I think it is a slur on Harvey, for a start. Harvey was working without a theory of evolution and about 450 years ago. The average biology undergraduate now knows more about circulation than did poor Harvey. Perhaps that is why his wording seems a little quaint. But the quaintness of his writings back up your position not one iota. He made up for it through his rigorous use of naturalistic scientific methods.Why do you equate teleology with ID? No biologist would claim that the blood circulatory system has no purpose! Are you trying to set up a strawman here, or something?Can you describe a research accomplishment of ID or can you not?And by research accomplishment, I don't mean that you can just go and look for the word "design" in the index of an encyclopedia of the history of science, because that simply does not wash.added in edit:here is harvey in action: He appears to be using experimental naturalistic methods. That is the least I expect to see from somebody who claims that ID is a valid scientific approach. If you cannot do that, then you should stop slurring Harvey's reputation by claiming his work supports ID.This message has been edited by mick, 05-03-2005 08:58 PM

quote:

---

Nice work, ID is clearly an active, thriving field. Hence your plethora of research results dating from as recently as the sixteenth century!

---

Well that certainly refutes that ID has never accomplished anything scientifically and shows that the field has a scientific history, in fact, it has a rich history. That was the point. Aristotle was a teleologist. Heck, so was Socrates and Plato. Aren't you guys being just a tad disingenuous to state otherwise?

quote:

---

Actually I am a bit pissed off at your post. I think it is a slur on Harvey, for a start. Harvey was working without a theory of evolution and about 450 years ago. The average biology undergraduate now knows more about circulation than did poor Harvey. Perhaps that is why his wording seems a little quaint. But the quaintness of his writings back up your position not one iota.

---

First, don't get pissed about trivial discussions, it's not worth it. Either enjoy them or don't participate in them would be my advice to you. And you don't seem to be reading what I'm posting. Here's Harvey's own words I quoted with a reference to the book as a footnote:that so Provident a cause as Nature had not so placed many values without Design; and no Design seem'd more possible than that, since the Blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent, by the veins to the limbs; it should be sent through the Arteries and return through the veins.Now how else can a person read that and not deduce that he describes the circulatory system assuming the possibility it was designed?

quote:

---

Why do you equate teleology with ID? No biologist would claim that the blood circulatory system has no purpose! Are you trying to set up a strawman here, or something?

---

Because that is what ID is based on. You don't know this because you haven't studied it to any degree. And teleology doesn't relate to blood systems as having a purpose or not. It relates to whether it was purposefully designed. There is a big difference.

quote:

---

Can you describe a research accomplishment of ID or can you not? And by research accomplishment, I don't mean that you can just go and look for the word "design" in the index of an encyclopedia of the history of science, because that simply does not wash.

---

Again, this is a nonsensical challenge. ID has nothing to research. What would you have us research? What does methodological naturalism research? How does an epistemological paradigm do research?And you are sure these are snapshots of Harvey in action??

---

Design Dynamics

Jerry, you can have it one way or the other, but your posts up to yet show that you are confused about your own field. ID has a rich history of scientific accomplishments, yet it has nothing to research?Of course it is clear why you like to have this contradiction. When somebody asks for the scientific credentials of ID you can reel off the illustrious names of Newton, Boyle and Harvey. But when somebody asks about your research program, you can say not only that it doesn't have one, but it doesn't need one. Very convenient for you!I do wonder though, if ID has no subject of research, why do you bother to publish Design Dynamics? Is it going to be an empty journal? Is that why nothing appears to have been published yet? Yup, Harvey probably thought that the blood circulatory system was designed. As I said, he lived around 450 years ago, and had no theory of evolution. What is your point? More importantly, what does it matter, given that his scientific methodology didn't make any use whatsoever of his theological beliefs?MickThis message has been edited by mick, 05-03-2005 09:28 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 05-03-2005 09:34 PM

quote:

---

Jerry, you can have it one way or the other, but your posts up to yet show that you are confused about your own field. ID has a rich history of scientific accomplishments, yet it has nothing to research?

---

Mick: I disagree with this. The communication problem here is that I fully understand my own field and you guys only think you do. It appears that none of you have studied ID to any degree other than what you read on the Internet posted by our detractors who are confused about even what they are detracting when you corner them. Many of them are little more than evangelical atheists with a religious agenda, I'm afraid. Please look at ID for what it really is, not what someone with a poorly disguised religious bias tells you it is.There is NOTHING in ID to research. Do you think that reductionism or monism has something to research?Now, many teleologists have contributed to science, Faraday, Boyle, Harvey, Newton, Pasteur, Lord Kelvin and the list goes on ad nauseam. But it is not ID they were researching, they were researching their respective fields, biology--chemistry--physics.There is no such thing as an ID biology, ID chemistry or an ID physics. We study science just as you or anyone else does. It does not make anymore sense to ask to see scientific papers on ID than it does to demand to see scientific papers on dualism. Don't hold your breath.

quote:

---

Of course it is clear why you like to have this contradiction. When somebody asks for the scientific credentials of ID you can reel off the illustrious names of Newton, Boyle and Harvey. But when somebody asks about your research program, you can say not only that it doesn't have one, but it doesn't need one. Very convenient for you!

---

It may be convenient but only because of its veracity. There is no such thing as scientific credentials for ID other than for one to show it entails scientific and mathematic methodology (which I have since I have entered this forum) just as does methodological naturalism. For you to even state this communicates that you don't understand what it is. What scientific credentials does philosophical naturalism have? And I see you just ignore the questions posed to you in the vein of what would you have us research? You can't think of anything, can you? That's because the entire concept of ID research is nonsensical.

quote:

---

I do wonder though, if ID has no subject of research, why do you bother to publish Design Dynamics? Is it going to be an empty journal? Is that why nothing appears to have been published yet?

---

No, it hasn't been published yet because it is a new publication that has not yet arrived at its first date of publishment. Heck, it was only announced a week or two ago. When it comes out, and if you subscribe to it, you will fully see what its all about. But...careful here...as you might actually learn something about the truths of our universe. Don't ya just hate it when that happens?? OOPS, missed this: "More importantly, what does it matter, given that his scientific methodology didn't make any use whatsoever of his theological beliefs?"Right.....Now hold that thought, because you just might be on to something important here. IT DOESN'T MATTER whether one is of the naturalist persuasion or the ID persuasion. It either walks in the scientific method or it does not. Right? So what's the big deal?This message has been edited by Jerry Don Bauer, 05-03-2005 10:17 PMThis message has been edited by Jerry Don Bauer, 05-03-2005 10:57 PM

---

Design Dynamics

So you would agree that ID is philosophy, not science ? Of what use is it to a practicing scientist, then ?

quote:

---

So you would agree that ID is philosophy, not science ? Of what use is it to a practicing scientist, then?

---

No, no more than I would agree that chemistry based on methodological naturalism is philosophy rather than science.

How would inorganic chemistry of the transition metals using ID differ from inorganic chemistry of the transition metals using methodological naturealism ?