Why should ID be taught in science classes...

Hi Beretta,I know you're getting lots of help going off-topic, but it all seems to begin with you, so here's the deal. In this thread, please do not mention evolution or any evidence related to evolution. Address yourself specifically to the topic, describing positive reasons why ID should be taught in science class, and absolutely avoiding to complete exclusion negative reasons why evolution is wrong. Each failure to follow this request will receive a 24 hour suspension.There are plenty of threads that address the problems with evolution, please use one of those if that's what you'd like to discuss. The broken link from Dwise1 has been fixed, you can go to that thread if you like, or choose from dozens of others, or propose a new thread over at [forum=-25]. Only post to this thread if you'd like to discuss why ID should be taught in science class.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Mea culpa.
Here is an attempt at something relevant.
I have said elsewhere that I am against ID in schools because I believe it to be false and because I do not believe that ID is science.
The reason why I think this issue is so very important is because teaching nonsense like ID wastes valuable lesson time. Most of the kids in the school system will receive no science instruction after high school, so lesson time is a valuable resource. What makes this even more crucial is the opportunity cost involved. Lesson wasted on ID could be better employed teaching kids about a subject of critical importance, namely global warming.
The topic of climate change is not without its own "teach the controversy" rows of course, but presuming that the precautionary principle casts any doubts to one side for the time being, we are left with a catastrophe on our hands. Even if only the most conservative estimates of the impact of climate change are correct, the damage to our ecosystems is going to be dramatic, with a human cost measured in millions of lives turned upside-down. If the real doom-sayers are right, we may even be facing a serious threat to human civilisation itself.
This is no time to allow religious fundamentalists to interfere with science education. Misrepresentation of the both evidence and the scientific method itself, is a feature common to both the ID lobby and the climate change nay-sayers. It is essential that we stand up to the propaganda of intellectual Luddites. Promoting genuine understanding of the science involved in climate change is the only way to make people accept its reality and change their lifestyles. Without this change in attitude, we are going to keep marching headlong into ecological disaster.
Go ahead and disbelieve evolution if you like, but just don't attempt to hamper the public's understanding of science, because we've never needed it more.

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Mutate and Survive

OK, thanks for presenting one of the creationist hoaxes. The Internet has thousands of sites filled with them; they're refered to here as PRATTs ("point refuted a thousand times").But the real question is still: how is ID science supposed to work?A primary goal of ID is to change science fundamentally so that it makes use of supernaturalistic explanations, in particular "goddidit". So how are scientists supposed to do science when they are not only allowed to use "goddidit", but are even expected to use it? I've asked you that question before, but the topic closed before you would answer. So I opened a new topic specifically for that question: "So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work?". Come on over.The science classroom is where students are supposed to learn about science and to learn the scientific method. If ID is taught there, then we must know what the ID "scientific method" is. If students are going to be taught to use "goddidit", then what kind of science will they end up practicing? If you are going to push for ID to be taught, then you must know that answer, or at least have given it some very serious thought.Now, if you are well read in the ID literature, then you must already know what the ID "scientific method" will be and how it will work. I mean, certainly the key ID creators and proponents have worked that all out, right? I mean, if this were a true paradigm shift then they would have worked it out and presented it in their writings, right?Personally, I believe that even they have not worked it all out, or at least will not present it. No more than a creationist would publish an honest examination of the evidence.I stated before that adopting ID would kill science. You scoffed that that statement. I have offered support for my position; you have offered none.Come over to the "So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work?" topic and support your position. That's what it's there for.PS
Read that topic's OP for a brief description of how science currently works. That will give you an idea of the kind of description of the ID "scientific method" you would need to offer.In other words, no more PRATTs, please.Edited by dwise1, : PS

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

Well that's news to me that its been refuted -but perhaps that's like the specified complexity argument or the irreducible complexity argument. Evolutionists deny its importance but to ID proponents evolutionists deny in vain and we don't understand how come you don't seem to understand the argument.Can you explain the refutation or give me a link? Does this mean that we know what preceded the banana in the evolution process or why bananas remain bananas for so long while apes (that really seem to be managing well) progressed so rapidly to humans? Is there proof for what is contended re: banans or is it the fossils and the belief in the geological time scale and the assumption of uniformatarianism that is being held up as pure science? Making use of supernatural explanations for origins doesn't change anything since the fact of natural selection and variation are what is used in science.Please tell me what you disagree with in that statement.
God may have dun it but scientific progress carries on - we are not going to perform experimentation via the miraculous, we are going to carry on working with natural laws and how can that possibly threaten science or scientists for that matter? Yes and being informed of the contentions of ID proponents appropo life on earth is not going to change the scientific method -in fact knowing the difference between historical and experimentally verifiable science is going to help students to think critically about how to think and what makes people believe the way they do and how science can be misled when it uses its assumptions to determine reality.
NOTHING BAD is going to happen!!We are not going to get stupider if we allow for godidit instead of 'nothing' did it.
Everything THAT HAS A BEGINNING has a cause. God is eternal so he needs no cause.(but that's another argument.) I wonder if what is above answers your question.How do you think ID kills science -exactly???

Regarding bananas:- The History and Evolution of Banana Tree HybridsModern bananas were domesticated by humans from a plantain mutation discovered in 1836 by Jean Francois Poujot. It is "perfect" for the human hand because we selected it as such.Yet another clear illustration of the utter idiocy of creation "science".

But we have to remember that the banana argument actually comes from those two "idiots for Christ," former child actor Kirk Cameron and Australian fundamentalist minister Ray Comfort, who together comprise the The Way of the Master ministry.If evolutionists wanted to come up with a parody of creationism to poke fun at, they couldn't have invented anything better than Cameron and Comfort. I guess we can think of them as God's gift to evolution. They make even Duane Gish seem like a scientist of the first rank. I agree with your characterization of creation science, and I know Beretta is the one pushing bananas and not you, but I guess I can't help feeling that it's unfair to take too much advantage.--Percy

Here's some people on a pro-I.D. board listing and describing just some of the problems with Dembski's "specified complexity".http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000339.htmlEnjoy yourself with those, then consider that in application to biology, it does nothing to challenge mutation and natural selection without using Behe's concept of irreducible complexity. The problem here is that, as this wiki article puts it:

quote:

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The examples offered to support the irreducible complexity argument have generally been found to fail to meet the definition and intermediate precursor states have been identified for several structures purported to exhibit irreducible complexity. For instance, precursors to the flagellum's motor can be found being used as ionic channels within bacteria, known as the Type III Secretory System. This is true for most of the structure of the flagellum in general; of the 42 proteins found in the flagellum, 40 have already been found in use in different biological pathways. Even Behe's toy model used to illustrate the concept, the mouse trap, was countered by critics including biology professor John McDonald, who produced examples of how he considered the mousetrap to be "easy to reduce", eventually to a single part. Critics consider that most, or all, of the examples were based on misunderstandings of the workings of the biological systems in question, and consider the low quality of these examples excellent evidence for the argument from ignorance. Irreducible complexity is generally dismissed by the scientific community; it is often referred to as pseudoscience.

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Despite being discredited in the Dover trial where the court found in its ruling that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large", irreducible complexity has nevertheless remained a popular argument among advocates of intelligent design and other creationists.

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Irreducible complexity - WikipediaIn other words, it's all a big storm in a tea cup, and a very good example of superstition based wishful thinking.But do present your own evidence for I.D. on the thread that dwise1 has set up for the purpose, and do please include SC and IC in it.

Which contained all the genetic material found in a modern banana -nothing added; some information lost perhaps, but not added.Natural selection or human selection selects -it does not create.

So? Those precursors are needed for the secretory system -at what point did they stop secreting and get in line to motor and gradually get organized into a flagellum. Isn't there still a secretory function ongoing in the bacterium? You have to be an evolutionist to imagine the natural selection pathway that kept a non-functional part way flagellum going while it organized itself into something that worked. Did the bacteria decide that it needed to go somewhere? Did its inner working parts randomly mutate according to its desire to head out there? If my ancestors and I all really felt that flying would be a useful function, would our random generational mutations eventually make that happen. And when our wings were just getting started, of what value would they be? Is natural selection likely to select them if they are halfway there and have no purpose yet.'Scientific' refutations are not always logical but they do appeal to those who would push for evolution as the only possibility. Whats superstitious about it??? I call it scientific reasoning based on facts and logic.

I think the point being made is that bananas were not created by god for the sole purpose of human consumption, as stated by creationists.

Any evidence to back up those assertions? Like say a working definition of information. That is what mutation is for TTFN,WK

The organism would always function, and the parts that become the flagellum would always have some function. Parts of the machine can function on their own, and in conjunction with other missing characteristics. What Behe/Dembski will not tell you is that mutations subtract characteristics just as much as they add them.Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap, so here's an evolving IC mousetrap for you.http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html No. That's like some kind of Lamarckism. It's got nothing to do with what you feel like. Yes. Haven't you heard of gliders? Flying squirrels, flying fish, etc. A squirrel jumps spreadeagled for wind resistance. Even a small bit of skin between it legs and body will give it more resistance, and could be selected for if jumping long distances is more advantageous than being a good runner on the ground (it depends on the specific environment which is better). Evolutionary theory is the only origins theory that fits the evidence. If it weren't for superstition, there would be no need to "push" it. I have yet to see criticism of the kind you're doing of evolutionary theory that wasn't based on superstition and desire. Can't you be honest with yourself about this? Edited by bluegenes, : missing quoteEdited by bluegenes, : quote still missing

That argument has never made any sense to me. How does rearranging the bits and pieces on a DNA molecule change the amount of information? Rearranging the letters in a sentence changes the meaning, but not the amount of information.In a science class, how would you show that mutations cause a change in the amount of information? And how would you show that the simple rearrangement of bits of a molecule always causes a decrease in information?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

If I may try to answer this question, I'd say that any mutation that reduces the number of alleles in a population would also decrease that population's genetic information.”HM

If value is a question, then what value is there in giving cave fish eyes that don't function? Not just eye-like structures, but actual, non-functioning eyes. There are species of fish that live in caves which are blind. Some of them have no eyes at all, but some of them have eyes. I could see designing an organism which is going to live in the dark to be blind, but why give some reduced, non-functional eyes?