Intelligent Design in Universities

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An utterly despicable and cynical philosophy of education, scordova.

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Like any department fighting for money to stay alive, the religion and philosophy departmensts in the USA are on the brink of finding a way to attract a large flow of money into their departments from legislatures and alums and donations, and ultimately students!This is will be glorious! The Darwinists will say ID is religion and belongs in the religion departments. Well, there the IDists will be in the university, right in the religion departments, free from being controlled by the Darwinists, free from persecutions like those leveled at Bill Dembski and Caroline Crocker. They will be free to encourage research and exploration, and be in a setting where they will be celebrated rather than ridiculed.Right there in the religion departments, right there at the universities, ID will have a voice where it cannot be suppressed by the peer-review process. Right there showing ID videos, and (gasp) even creationist videos, and distributing literature like crazy and hosting discussions. Can you imagine the effect on the campus culture? Then the students will be on the net, able to corroborate the findings of the IDists.The IDEA members in our chpaters are science students all the way up to the PhD level, and in disciplines like biology. I KNOW how unlikely it is that the Darwinist case can persuade them to relinquish their sympathies to ID. I know for a fact that they come back to me each week telling me their biology professors are unable to give them proof of Darwin's grand claims (that's because Darwin's theory is wrong!). The effect of seeing their professors capitulation is powerful!A somewhat forgotten opinion from the Father of ID, Phillip Johnson: Johnson Interview

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PJ: Oh, I'm in favor of teaching biology in the high school.

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YB: But teaching modern biology can't be done without teaching modern scientific thinking on the evolution of the species.

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PJ: Well, now this is why I feel that the essential argument has to be carried on at the higher level, at the university level, and it's interesting you see that the people that come from the NCSE side are always trying to say this is just an issue in the high schools. Let's talk about high schools.

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YB: Well, that's their primary focus of course. Let's say that the problem is that we must teach some biology in the high school level for educational reasons. In other words, we want to present some sort of option for the kids and also give them background that they can use as adults. Let's say from your point of view the net effect, even if not intended, is that you teach what amounts to a naturalistic philosophy.

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PJ: Oh, but it is intended. It's not, "not intended." It is intended, that's what the whole thing is about, is indoctrinating the kids in the philosophy.

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and this is corroborated by anti-IDist Barbara Forrest whose alarmist scare tactics have actually hastened the arrival of ID in universities by all the publicity she attracted to us. We were veritble nobodies till she painted us some incredible onslaught intent on invading the unversities.

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page 301, Creationism's Trojan Horse:

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Dembski recently indicated hopes for ID recruits from high schools and colleges: "My commitment is to see intelligent design flourish as a scientific research program....To do that, I need a new generation of scholars willing to consider this, because the older generation is largely hidebound. So I would like to see textbooks, certainly at the college level and even at the high school level, which reframe introductory biology within a design paradigm."

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The recruits may not be long coming. [ ]. The Wedge has already acquired two groups of college followers, the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center (IDURC) and the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club. The IDURC has become a division of Access Research Network and promotes Wedge books and other products through links to ARN's website and to commercial sites like Amazon.com.....

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The IDEA Center's advisory board consists of Wedge members Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Jay Wesley Richards, Mark Hartwig, and Francis Beckwith; Dennis Wagner executive director of Access Research Network ......

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The Wedge has always had as a goal the insertion of ID courses into the university curriculum

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page 168

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Finally the Intelligent Design and Evolution Aawreness Club (IDEA) was formed in May 1999....

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they do represent a a vast potential pool of recruits that the Wedge is cultivating

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I'd like to commend Barbara Forrest for her optimistic appraisal of ID's future!This message has been edited by scordova, 05-04-2005 04:42 PM

What a sob story! So it's a choice between financial bankruptcy and intellectual bankruptcy for the poor poverty-stricken american universities who operate under such difficult economic conditions!If the US, richest nation on the planet, and richest nation in the history of the planet, does not see fit to fund decent undergraduate-level education, then it will get intellectual bankruptcy, and it will deserve it.We might spare a thought for those who genuinely can't afford to fund undergraduate-level education, but struggle against the odds to keep it going, without having the useless luxury of ID in the classroom.Makes your claims of the poverty of US universities a bit laughable, really, doesn't it?MickThis message has been edited by mick, 05-04-2005 05:09 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 05-04-2005 05:26 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 05-04-2005 05:28 PM

if this^1
http://www.energyfields.org/science/becker.html
&
this^2
http://www.iabc.readywebsites.com/page/page/623959.htmare true... the circulatory SYSTEM as opposed to the nervous SYStem or the digestive SYStem might have a natural purpose if we(can) identify the product teleologically unitarily.1

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AND BASED ON YOUR KNOWLEDGE IN THE WORK YOU HAVE DONE IN YOUR CAREER CONCERNING ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS AND BIOLOGY, WHAT IS YOUR OWN ASSESSMENT OF WHERE WE STAND TODAY IN 2000 IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE PROLIFERATION OF CELL PHONES AND THE MAST TOWERS THAT PUT OUT THE RADIO FREQUENCIES?
As far as I'm concerned, these factors DO have biological effects. I think that the overwhelming evidence indicates that happens. There is an effect even though physicists and engineers continue to say it's impossible. But the biologists know biology. The engineers know engineering and electromagnetics and the two were never able to see eye to eye on this subject.
I have no doubt in my mind that at the present time that the greatest polluting element in the earth's environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. I consider that to be far greater on a global scale than warming...

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2

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a closed-loop circulating current and energy flow is accomplished by the transport of charged particles (ions and electrons), producing slowly varying electric currents in the human body, utilizing various conductive pathways (interstitial fluid, blood vessels,

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I have often wondered if the same possibilty being described for animals occurs in plants here:
pic@
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses.hp/bio366/plants.htmwhat if the torus SHAPE was a means to adapt different ionic effects voltage/capacitance wise as well as by pressure? Could plants have a circulatory system *designed* like animals do?? If a Harvard prof could seriously consider plants analogous to animals endocrinologically then why not circulatorily???Would we still ONLY have chemistry?

I posed you some questions in #18 and #32, this thread, and have not heard any response. I await your reply. I strongly doubt that such "capitulation" is occurring. A scientist admitting they do not know something abiout evolution is not evidence in favor of creationism. How many time have we heard this from the creationist fringe? It's called a false dicotomy and it is a flawed way of thinking. To support your creationist ideas, you have to provide positive evidence for them. Why is it that these efforts have always failed? It must be the fault of science, not of the ideas, even though science works pretty well in every other area. Yes, it must be a conspiracy...In fact, a running theme with you and every other creationist is to criticize evolutionary science in such a way that the layman can easily grasp the seeming problem but the explanation is in depth. That is why creationism, wearing it's own colors or it's feeble disguise of ID, propogates itself in popular books and in debates rather then in scientific circles. It cannot survive the deep scrutiny of knowledgable people.You even seem to acknowledge creationism's complete lack of value. You want to see it taught in theology departments where the big bad scientists can't tell you how wrong you are, because you aren't, because there is a conspiracy, because you know you're right, because the bible tells you so.

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It is clear that you are in need of remedial biology Mr. Bauer...so don't presume to lecture me on biology. You should read the references you post...Where in any the reference did they state that the deleterious mutations lead to non-functioning proteins? Hint, nowhere. As to mutational meltdown, that is called extinction...and there is no evidence that the accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations in hominids is leading in that direction considering the expansion of the species and increase in effective population size. Instead of claiming logic and common sense you should try brushing up on the subject you want to debate. Your ignorance of biology, genetics, and mutation research does not contribute to the validating your claims...note this claim

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Again, please refrain from asserting that just because an exact sentence is not found in a journal abstract that a study cannot infer certain concepts. That's simply illogical. And there is reason to lead one to believe the slightly deleterious mutations estimated in that study can lead to mutational meltdown. Here is an interview with Eyre-Walker, one of the researchers of that study:"We’ve recently estimated the rate of these harmful mutations since we split from chimpanzees about 6 million years ago and we came up with an estimate of about 2 harmful mutations occurring per genome per generation, which is the highest that’s ever been estimated in any organism so far and that’s probably and underestimate. It means that we are all carrying maybe up to 1000 harmful mutations."And:"Mutational meltdown is the process by which as harmful mutations accumulate in a population, those harmful mutations, because they reduce things like fertility, can actually lead to a reduction in the population size. As soon as the population size has reduced, that actually increases the rate at which harmful mutations accumulate in the population. And of course as more accumulate the population size becomes depressed, that leads to the faster accumulation of harmful mutations and you can reach a critical point where those two processes basically snowball, you have positive feedback and eventually the population just becomes extinct."And I will continue to lecture the molecular biologist in biology until this conversation reaches a level that I can ascertain the biologist understands the remedial biology being tossed his direction. Notice - OpenLearn - Open University

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The genome does does not do this but many GENES do...and every living creature on this planet exhibits the trait of genes which are transcribed NOT translated and the transcripts translated into proteins.

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El wrongo againo. Many genes comprise the genome, so when I state that the genome is responsible for something and many genes in fact ARE responsible for that something then I can logically extrapolate that logic to either term. You seem to want to debate semantics rather than the issues, why is that? Finally: transcription describes only the first step in the gene to protein process. When messenger RNA directs the synthesis of proteins from amino acids that process is called translation: "Gene translation: The process by which transcribed messenger RNA directs the synthesis of proteins from amino acids." | HHMI Praise good Darwin for evolved dictionaries. Otherwise readers might really believe this tripe you are throwing out you call science.

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Now you have substituted "maximum efficiency" for "best" introducing two non-defined terms into an already muddled attempt at showing that you read a snippet of a genetics textbook years ago.

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Semantics again. You don't know me as I don't recall ever having a conversation with you. Then how is it you know my background and education from only two or three posts? I'm not going to keep trading insults with you, do you want to debate ID, or just continually slug it out on the playground at recess? I out-grew the latter years ago, I'm afraid

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I note that you still have not proposed a testable hypothesis for ID.

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Then you would be in an extreme case of denial. I proposed this hypothesis to you in non-technical terms to insure you understood it: "ID predicts that genomes are at their best when they are just designed and the second law of thermodynamics takes it from there to DEVOLVE genomes in direct opposition to the musings of Darwin." I then introduced a study that show this to happening in the human genome and offered ways it could be falsified.More technically, ID predicts: As loose information is diffused, information entropy will tend to increase unless energy, guided by intelligence, is added into the system to stabilize it.Genes are not fixed into a medium such as a library book, therefore they qualify as loose information. Now it is your turn to do the same for Darwinism and we can move on to other hypotheses. I'm waiting.........you're not presenting anything........

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Please then show how 2LOT inhibits heredity...this should be good...and as for your warning..if your grasp of math is as good as your biology, the outcome should be a real laugher at your expense

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I would be glad to had I asserted that 2LOT inhibits heredity. Talk about a strawman.........

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In another thread you whined because PaulK did not supply you with references...now I do and you get upset about it. Are you really so poorly informed that you were unaware of these papers? And from someone claiming to know so much about biology and evolution. You are rather unimpressive.

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Another ad hom. I'm simply not going to trade these with you. If you are capable of bringing an argument against something I have posted, then stick to the subject and do it or post to someone more on your level. In the meantime, I will expect you to post references PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY READ. My 16 year-old would be going, "Oh Duh" about now.

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In any case, each paper shows that specific retroelements have accumulated in large numbers within the hominid genome. In some cases, there are novel elements among different humans i.e. an increase in the genetic content not decrease...and of course you know what these elements can do? No, I did not think so..so I will give you an example, in my own words since you clearly are too lazy to go into the literature yourself (or would not understand it if you did like the reference you posted). Syncytin is one such element...it controls the formation of the human placenta i.e. has taken on a novel function i.e. positive effect, beneficial mutation. It is unique to primates. 10% of the genome is made up of such elements...genes make up about 1.5-3%

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And posting references is not a game..you posted one and I read it..I post 3 and you cry like a baby. Either you do your homework or admit that you don't know what you are talking about...scratch that, you don't have to bother.

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I don't believe you. Post them where people can judge what they say for themselves not what YOU think they say. You have not posted a single readable reference and your side is infamous for using references that don't exist to support illogical arguments you hope to pass to the masses as quite logical. That duck don't float. What arrogance for you to think other people need to do the work needed to support YOUR argument.

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I will admit that your grasp of the paper is a complete load of crap. I dispute that they claim that the genome has devolved since our lineage separated from that of the chimp lineage..note, chimps also have a high deleterious mutation rate...but clearly you did not understand the conclusions of the paper...please actually read it...and by the way, how can nothing I said about the paper be supported by the paper when I quoted from it?..oh yeah, I quoted from the text and not the abstract..guess you did not get past the first paragraph?

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LOL....How old are you? Do you think you can just throw out an accusation that I misunderstand the paper without telling what I am misunderstanding? Did you read this in the abstract: "Of these mutations, we estimate that at least 38% have been eliminated by natural selection, indicating that there have been more than 1.6 new deleterious mutations per diploid genome per generation. Thus, the deleterious mutation rate specific to protein-coding sequences alone is close to the upper limit tolerable by a species such as humans that has a low reproductive rate, indicating that the effects of deleterious mutations may have combined synergistically. Furthermore, the level of selective constraint in hominid protein-coding sequences is atypically low. A large number of slightly deleterious mutations may therefore have become fixed in hominid lineages."If you read it, do you agree that the study concludes 1.6 new deleterious mutations are occurring in the human genome each generation? That's all I am saying, how could one read this and come to any other conclusion.

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So the evidence for design is that things exist? And how is this either testable or falsifiable?...seems you are the one relying on poof bang ex nihilo fairies.

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Oh, you think that quantum mechanics involve poofs and bangs by ex nihilo fairies.? I'm not going back to this stupid argument as it has been covered. If you would but read the two threads as requested, you could see this for yourself. Read about the ex nihilo fairies HERE.Write a paper on it and submit it to me on these ex nihilo fairies. Please relax as I grade on the curve.

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What is ludicrous is that the paper niether supports the claims you make or even generally resemble your conclusions. This is not about nitpicking or quoting verbatim...from your statements it is hard to conclude anything other than that you either did not read the paper or did not understand a word of it.

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LOL....You seem stuck with this particular mantra.Rest of the post deleted as nothing more than ad homs. I don't debate logical fallacies.

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Design Dynamics

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And there is reason to lead one to believe the slightly deleterious mutations estimated in that
study can lead to mutational meltdown. Here is an interview with Eyre-Walker, one of the researchers of that study:

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Notice - OpenLearn - Open University

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And in that interview Eyre-Walker states: Eyre-Walker does not agree with your assessment of his study.

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"Tying it in" to science doesn't make it scientific.

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What does make something scientific, Mick? Is Newton's science now out the window because he was a creationist in your opinion? Who decides this?

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However, I think the majority of scientific philosophers currently consider this movement little more than a form of mysticism. In relation to processes affecting living things, Mayr's 'Toward a New Philosophy of Biology" is a more practical, down to earth, and relevant work.

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Logical fallacy. You do not know "the majority of scientific philosophers" nor have you surveyed them, to my knowledge, therefore you have no true premises from which to draw that conclusion. Tipler is a respected mathematical physicist at a respected university. Please don't try to paint him as anything else. In fact, before he completed his work on the Omega Point, he was a hard atheist, speaking strictly from a religion perspective.

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My point with respect to trying to argue design and teleology with respect to biology, morphology and behavior is that they simply aren't necessary. Evolutionary biology is quite adequate without any such assumptions. They don't add anything to enhance scientific understanding.

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Do you mean evolutionary biology, or Darwinism. These two are NOT the same. The study of evolution is hard science entailing many areas such as genetic defects in infant births, errors in transcription during nucleic acid replication and the inheritability of certain genetic traits through interbreeding (animal breeders have the concept of evolution down to an art, it would seem).Conversely, Darwinism is a wishy washy conception (it seems that no two Darwinists can agree on much of anything) that takes this area of biology and extrapolates it ridiculously outside the realm of any known science. Darwinism boldly concludes that man sprang from a common ancestor with apes, that huge land dwelling animals called pakicetus somehow had their legs morphed into flippers and crawled into the oceans to turn into what we know today as modern whales, that reptile like organisms called therapsids almost ethereally evolved from reptiles into mammals and that larger mammals such as horses and elephants slowly evolved from tiny, less complex ameboids in violation of some of the most well proven laws of science.No tenet unique to Darwinism has ever been shown to be true in laboratory or field experiments in a manner that is non-controversial to all observers (natural selection is not a tenet unique to Darwin as it pre-existed his writings and is basically little more than common sense).

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They only try and create a platform for the rationalization of religious conviction within a preponderance of undeniable scientific evidence of process.

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Assuming something was designed is never going to improve your understanding of it - unless you presume to know the physchology and intent of your supposed designer.

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Not true, I'm afraid. In fact, there is not even a logical connection between how something exists in a designed form and the bio of the design engineer. Try reading a bio of the design engineer rather than the maintenance manual the next time you need to change the piston rings in your chain saw and see how far you get. They're simply different subjects irrelevant to one another.

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Design Dynamics

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The research method of methodological naturalism is called the scientific method. The scientific method is a toolbox of ideas, concepts and practices that help us to effectively study the natural world. The scientific method means that methodological naturalism does indeed have a research area. The research matter of methodologic naturalism is limited to natural observable phenomena.

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No it isn't. The scientific method has nothing to do with the philosophy of MN. The method describes research methodology beginning with an observation and ending with a theory or law. It is the philosophy of Karl Popper that takes it from there by then attempting to falsify these theories or laws. They stand until falsified or replaced by a better theory or law. No MN in here.All that MN does in science is to teach the young chemist that when he runs across a chemical reaction he doesn't understand, it is not correct to conclude "God must have dun it."MN doesn't research anything, scientists do. The same can be said of ID.

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This inability of ID to provide a research methodology is why your statement "We study science just as you or anyone else does" is incorrect.

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Well, LOL...I do admire your tenacity. You apparently intend to just come back with this slanted at a slightly different angle as each of your old angles are refuted. The ID theorist that does research has the same methodology that anyone else uses in research: the scientific method. End of story.

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This is irrelevant. You are trying to make a fudge between teleology and intelligent design. They are not the same thing. You have already provided a teleological system (the blood circulatory system) that has been elucidated by the scientific method. In evolutionary biology, teleological systems (such as mate finding behaviour) have been shown to have been generated by natural selection. A teleological framework is also inherent in many scientific disciplines such as "rational choice theory" in sociology and economics. The existence of teleology in biological systems does not necessitate an intelligent designer. The existence of natural teleological systems, and scientists who subscribe to a teleological world view, has absolutely no relevance on the debate about the academic standing of ID.

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It could not be anymore RELEVANT. You seem to want to paint a picture where no IDist can research anything and when I point out that 3/4 of the science we use today in the lab was brought to that lab by teleologists, you deem it then irrelevant. I'm smelling a religious bias creeping stealthfully into our words of wisdom. Finally, I think you misunderstand teleology from the aspect of design. It is simply another paradigm in science through which the design of certain systems can be viewed as purposeful. When I state that Harvey and Boyle were teleologists and viewed their science through these glasses, all that means is that their observation begins with a sort of, "if this is designed, I may have designed it like this" type of world-view. This worked well for both of those scientists and we can add Pasteur and Newton in there as well.

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First of all, I don't understand why you expect me to provide hypotheses for ID researchers to test. I have already made clear that ID is not a science and is not an effective way of answering sceintific questions. You should not expect me to come up with anything. In the same way that I wouldn't ask the imam of my local mosque to provide me with biological hypotheses.

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If that Imam were a biologist, I wouldn't hesitate to ask him a question. You seem to think that Imams cannot be biologists because they are Imams. This is not logical cognition as the two titles are not mutually exclusive.And I do not expect you to provide hypotheses to ID, others are glad to do this and have. But although they may be even exclusive to ID, this does not mean they are now ID and no longer science.You keep screaming at me (so to speak) to do some research. When I ask you what it is you would have me research, you have no answer because anything I would scientifically research would then be science. You're simply dropping your logic here. And recognizing this I will reiterate what I have previously stated: This entire line of logic is nonsensical.

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Now let's get back to the point of this thread. That is the teaching of ID is schools and universities.

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Since you agree that "the entire concept of ID research is nonsensical", then I hope you will also agree that ID should not be taught in biology classes. That is because biology, as a science, is research-oriented. No research, no biology.

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No, I will not agree with this, I firmly believe ID should be taught when people are eager to learn about it. Anything less than this is nothing short of intellectual censorship which your side seems now to have embraced with the fervor of a Pentecostal preacher.The biology inherent in ID is not now ID, it is still biology. And were we to research any area of that biology we would use biology, not ID. You seem to have painted yourself into a vicious circle, here.

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We agree that ID has no research methodology, no means of testing its research results, no research program. To put it simply, ID has no research.

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Are you perhaps a parrot that has learned to use your owner's keyboard? You may be, because you just....type.....the....same....thing....over....and.....over........

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Design Dynamics

okay Jerry, perhaps it is time for me to do some more reading. I am willing to put a little effort in to understand your position better. Can you give me a reading list or something?Specifically, who are the "ID theorists that [do] research", and what are the hypotheses that "others are glad to [make] and have". I particularly would like to read some articles that make use of ID philosophy in their experimental design, or their statistical methods, or something like that. I mean to say, for example, that I don't just want a list of articles by scientists who believe in God, but if that is all you can provide, that is okay. As long as the notion of an intelligent designer is at least mentioned in the article.I only ask that you restrict your reading list to articles published in scientific journals that are available online (under a university subscription - I can access most journals). This is just because I don't have time to traipse to the library for books, or do inter-library loans for ancient manuscripts.Cheersmick

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What does make something scientific, Mick?

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Testability, falsifiability, positive evidence, and predictive power.IOW, derived through methodolofical naturalism.(Actually, a theory can inclued everything above except the positive evidence part and still be scientific. It is just a falsified theory.)

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Is Newton's science now out the window because he was a creationist in your opinion? Who decides this?

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Newton used methodological naturalism in his scientific work. Anyone today, no matter what religion or lack thereof, can use Newton's calculations and get the same result.Newton did NOT require any supernatural mechanisms for his results.That is the difference between someone who is able to use methodological naturalism in their work and still hold whatever religious views they want, and Creationists who want to use whatever religious views they want to in science, instead of methodological naturalism.

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Conversely, Darwinism is a wishy washy conception (it seems that no two Darwinists can agree on much of anything)

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Uh, all the Darwinists here agree on nearly everything WRT Biology and the evidence for Evolution.

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that takes this area of biology and extrapolates it ridiculously outside the realm of any known science.

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Um, Darwin's ideas are the basis of all modern Biology.Common descent with modification was a biggie, and that was all Darwin. He was the first to propose a mechanism (RM + NS), and he was largely correct.

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Darwinism boldly concludes that man sprang from a common ancestor with apes,

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And this prediction has been very well-supported by a lot of evidence found in the last 150 years, especially the genetic evidence.Tell me, why do both homo sapiens and our closest primate relatives both have an identical broken vitamin C producing gene, yet more distant relatives do not?

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that huge land dwelling animals called pakicetus somehow had their legs morphed into flippers and crawled into the oceans to turn into what we know today as modern whales,

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I have seen much of this fossil evidence with my own eyes, as one of the world's foremost whale evolution researcher, Philip D. Gingerich, is based here at the University of Michigan and there is a wonderful exhibit of whale evolution at the university natural history museum.Here is a link to some of his research.Tell me, why should I consider your personal incredulity to be more convincing than the bones themselves?Oh, BTW, Pakicetus attocki was not "huge".It was about the size of a wolf. Exactly what whale ancestors do you think scientists say were "huge"?

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that reptile like organisms called therapsids almost ethereally evolved from reptiles into mammals

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link to info"Ethereally?" Again, why should I put more stock in your personal incredulity as opposed to the evidence?

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and that larger mammals such as horses and elephants slowly evolved from tiny, less complex ameboids in violation of some of the most well proven laws of science.

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Seem plenty plausible to me, especially if you understand that there was never any plan or guarantee that any particular outcome (horses or elephants, or anything else) was ever specified in advanceLet me explain.If we throw a deck of cards into the air, the chances of a specific pattern of cards ending up on the ground is astronomically low.However, the odds of any pattern occurring are very great.Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that evolution has a end product or goal in mind? It doesn't. All evolution posits is that species will change in reponse to selection pressure from the environment. That is common descent with modification.There is no "desire" or "goal" of the environment to "eventually" produce a specific outcome, such as horses or elephants.

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No tenet unique to Darwinism has ever been shown to be true in laboratory or field experiments in a manner that is non-controversial to all observers (natural selection is not a tenet unique to Darwin as it pre-existed his writings and is basically little more than common sense).

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Darwin was the first to propose the theory of sexual selection. Darwin was the first of propose common descent for ALL life.So far, both of these predictions have been abundantly supported by the evidence.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-04-2005 09:03 PM

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I am willing to put a little effort in to understand your position better. Can you give me a reading list or something?

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Good! That's a very reasonable proposition.

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Specifically, who are the "ID theorists that [do] research", and what are the hypotheses that "others are glad to [make] and have". I particularly would like to read some articles that make use of ID philosophy in their experimental design, or their statistical methods, or something like that. I mean to say, for example, that I don't just want a list of articles by scientists who believe in God, but if that is all you can provide, that is okay. As long as the notion of an intelligent designer is at least mentioned in the article.

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I only ask that you restrict your reading list to articles published in scientific journals that are available online (under a university subscription - I can access most journals). This is just because I don't have time to traipse to the library for books, or do inter-library loans for ancient manuscripts.

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Sigh. Another twist of you demanding to see ID and intelligent designers in science journals. If I sent you to a biology paper that supports a tenet of ID you would simply state, this is biology, not ID. Will you ever understand that this is logically nonsensical?I fear if you don't grasp this, you may never grasp the overall concept of intelligent design and our discussion will simply become moot. If you want to know what Judaism is, ask a rabbi. If you want to know what calculus is, ask a math professor. If you want to know what ID is, ask an ID theorist. The only problem is that when you ask me what it is and I tell you, you reject what it is in favor of your subjective painting of what it is not. Not much I can do about that, I'm afraid.

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Design Dynamics

sigh. ID may be difficult to understand, but you are not making it any easier. Okay. I ask you to tell me what ID is. Please bear in mind that I am a research biologist, so I also need to know why I should care.Mick

I would like to note that ID is leaning towards what Newton did not suggest, aka, THE CAUSE(reciprocally noticed by KANT), but if it can be workable without an hypothesis seems difficult(even if we were able to keep Hume's mite ontologically on a fringe) as I dont know if the reptile to mammal transit transitions Agassiz's fish articulations or not. I have not tried to look that up or compare the current evidence on it.

Except the basic model of Darwinian Evolution apparently, otherwise it wouldn't comprise such a monolithic target for creationists. Hmmmm... Seems that many other non-biological branches of science corroborate Darwinian perspectives almost uniformly. True enough. True again. Only a matter of time, my friend, only a matter of time.This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-04-2005 10:45 PM

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What does make something scientific, Mick?

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Testability, falsifiability, positive evidence, and predictive power.
IOW, derived through methodolofical naturalism.
(Actually, a theory can inclued everything above except the positive evidence part and still be scientific. It is just a falsified theory.)

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Gee. Mick seems to have evolved. Ok, I am buying this so far. Pretty good, in fact.

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Newton used methodological naturalism in his scientific work. Anyone today, no matter what religion or lack thereof, can use Newton's calculations and get the same result.
Newton did NOT require any supernatural mechanisms for his results.

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That is the difference between someone who is able to use methodological naturalism in their work and still hold whatever religious views they want, and Creationists who want to use whatever religious views they want to in science, instead of methodological naturalism.

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So what? So does everybody trained in science. Where do you find examples of IDists employing science not susceptible to MN? Nothing in ID requires a supernatural mechanism. Sheeze....I wonder sometimes if you guys even read what I post.Anyhow, I assume you have a point here and that point is that just because I am an IDist I am no longer capable of doing science because of a religious belief. What religious belief would I hold that would prevent me from doing science using the philosophy of MN? And if this is a systemic problem, why is the science of Faraday, Newton, Lord Kelvin, blah...blah....viewed as valid science? I mean these guys were strong creationist type critters.

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Uh, all the Darwinists here agree on nearly everything WRT Biology and the evidence for Evolution.

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I did not mention all the biologists in HERE, now did I.

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Um, Darwin's ideas are the basis of all modern Biology.
Common descent with modification was a biggie, and that was all Darwin. He was the first to propose a mechanism (RM + NS), and he was largely correct.

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You best hope not if this is your field. Darwin was a non-scientist college drop out that could not handle the math even with the help of tutors his father hired for him. There was not a single mathematical formula anywhere in OoS. And funny, I have a BS with a biology minor, and I don't recall even discussing Darwin in most of those classes. If all modern biology is based on the musings of Darwin, no one seems to know this.Finally, there is no such thing as a scientific mechanism in Darwinism. Even stochastic mechanisms must have some degree of predictability via probability. So, unless you think you can mathematically determine what evolves from what, you need to drop the term mechanism from your vocabulary concerning this subject or note that you are defining the term differently than does most of science.

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Tell me, why do both homo sapiens and our closest primate relatives both have an identical broken vitamin C producing gene, yet more distant relatives do not?

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Because an environmental change occurred. When C came into the diet, logic dictates that similar organisms would mutate via that environmental stimuli. Just common sense involved here. Nothing more.

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I have seen much of this fossil evidence with my own eyes, as one of the world's foremost whale evolution researcher, Philip D. Gingerich, is based here at the University of Michigan and there is a wonderful exhibit of whale evolution at the university natural history museum.

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Here is a link to some of his research.
Tell me, why should I consider your personal incredulity to be more convincing than the bones themselves? Oh, BTW, Pakicetus attocki was not "huge".
It was about the size of a wolf. Exactly what whale ancestors do you think scientists say were "huge"?

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The huge is my little tidbit and quite subjective, but you have never seen a huge wolf? The ferocious comes from your side. Would you like to meet this guy in a dark alley about 3:00 in the morning? My personal incredulity has little to do with the fact that you guys deduce this stuff without empirical evidence to support those deductions, IMHO.You (they?? not really trying to get personal with you) have not a single piece of evidence that suggests whales morphed from a land mammal called pakicetus, no matter if they dress it all up in a pretty package with flowing ribbons. Where are the breeding experiments that could deduce speciation in these transitions. Where is the DNA to draw genetic conclusions? Surely they have something other than few rocks that "look funny."You stated up front that science can be identified as science via testability, falsifiability, positive evidence, and predictive power. Pretty good. Now, where do you have evidence that can confirm the speciations you propose in this pakicetus to whale transition? IOW, what tests do you do in the lab to show an evolutionary trend rather that what most of America seems to think of the cute graphs and charts: 'Interesting. What a good example of diversity and similarity in varying species.'Tell me how, 1) what you have is testable in a laboratory considering this particular transition. 2) How could this transition be falsified? 3) Can you now predict what will evolve out of the whale as this transition continues into the future? Why not apply this proposed example to the qualifications you have assigned to science?

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link to info
"Ethereally?"

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Yep.

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Again, why should I put more stock in your personal incredulity as opposed to the evidence?

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You didn't produce any evidence in that posting. You produced someone's opinion. Does opinion now count as a theory of science that must be taken experimentally through the scientific method? Think about it!

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If we throw a deck of cards into the air, the chances of a specific pattern of cards ending up on the ground is astronomically low.

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Correct

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However, the odds of any pattern occurring are very great.

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Incorrect. First, allow me to correct your English: the odds of SOME pattern occurring are very great. But this is not quite accurate, either. There are now no odds involved at all because a pattern MUST occur every time you turn the cards over. When the probability reaches 100% there is no longer probability involved as if you flip the cards it WILL occur.Nothing in nature HAS to occur, so your analogy, unfortunately, is found to be quiet lacking in applicability to our particular discussion.

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Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that evolution has a end product or goal in mind? It doesn't. All evolution posits is that species will change in reponse to selection pressure from the environment. That is common descent with modification.
There is no "desire" or "goal" of the environment to "eventually" produce a specific outcome, such as horses or elephants.

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Yet, you have no evidence to show this, you just accept it seemingly by faith. You seem to follow the natural philosophy which you are quite welcome to do, thus you see no purpose in this process. I however, espouse teleology and thus DO see a trend of purpose had this process occurred.

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Darwin was the first to propose the theory of sexual selection. Darwin was the first of propose common descent for ALL life.

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So far, both of these predictions have been abundantly supported by the evidence.

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You are welcome to your opinion, however, you have presented nothing which would cause an objective person to change their minds. I'll bet you a dollar to a donut I have set through as many formal genetics and evolution classes as have you (unless you are an evolutionary biology major at a post graduate level) and just like most of the college graduates in this country, I reject the entire concept outright.From the aspect of those who study this in a formal setting, I'm afraid that we are in the majority. Accepting Darwinism doesn't affect anyone's religious beliefs as evidenced by the fact there are many theistic evolutionists. So, in light of that fact, why then do you feel this is the way it is?

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Design Dynamics