EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed - Science Under Attack

I don't know that there is a real lot that the established scientific community can do that would make much of a difference. They might send out Dawkins et al, or other professionals to speak out, but I can hear Cletus in the audience thinking to himself "Aw heck, I doesn't understand all this science crap these evilutionist guys is talkin! But the Bible says I ain't descended from no goddamn ape!"Wilful ignorance, misunderstanding of science, propaganda, evolutionist conspiracy theories and a (potentially) popular film may be an unfortunate combination. I just hope it doesn't become very popular.

Very true. I am aware that it is a difficult process. But it makes it a whole lot harder when people's personal philosophies get in the way of that process. Shouldn't it just be measured on the information available, despite the overtones or (ir)religious implications? I hadn't read it, no. I've kind of stretched myself thin by being on like 6 different threads. But I will now. Is there something you want me to add to it, or did you just want me to gain a perspective from it? No he isn't, because he understands, as I do now, that you can't mix theology with science. Science can't answer those questions, and the Bible, Qur'an, the Vedas, etc, are not science textbooks. They aren't designed to answer those questions, which is why I object to creationism. Creationism puts the cart before the horse, instead of following the evidence wherever it goes.To me, ID doesn't presuppose any kind of God(s), Goddesses, aliens, robots, flying spaghetti monsters, etc, but rather simply notes that random causes cannot alone deduce the array and complexity of life. But they have. And it has been usurped at every chance because they are reticent of battling creationists all over again. I can appreciate that up to a point. But after that point, its just flat out because of the philosophical implications. You make it seem like they are specifically targeting "dumbasses." They present their information on the web. Anyone can click on the link and make the deduction for themselves. You are obviously undaunted by it, and that's fine. That's your right. But they have a right to put that information out there. It is also a right to combat "bad science," by putting up rebuttals. They have done that too. But it has gone deeper now in to a smear campaign. Truth will prevail in the end. Whatever the truth is, it will unfold. I just posted it so you could critique it. I wasn't expecting you to pour all of your heart in to it. You seemed to have thought that ID was so completely inept that they use cartoons for illustrations and say things E = JesusluvsU4eva²!

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“First dentistry was painless, then bicycles were chainless, and carriages were horseless, and many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, telegraphy was wireless, cigars were nicotineless, and coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, the putting green was weedless, the college boy was hatless, the proper diet -- fatless. New motor roads are dustless, the latest steel is rustless, our tennis courts are sodless, our new religion -- Godless” -Arthur Guiterman

But they do target a bunch of dumbasses in regard to science. The general public has this view that they understand the bulk of scientific knowledge by reading a single article from a popular magazine. You don't know how frustrating it is for someone like me at times to have to answer to questions like "if gravity is real how come rocks don't orbit mountains?" and "if the big bang happened how come there are retrograde planets?" The answers to those questions are quite simple, but you must first have a background to understand the answer. When they see me hesitate to give a single sentence answer, they assume I'm just another dumbass physicist.The general public is the worst crowd for scientists to have to deal with, especially since we live in an age when everyone has an opinion on everything. Just the other day, I heard someone rant on and on how quantum physics is a bunch of crap. I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from saying anything. When he saw me didn't say anything, he thought he was right and continued to give me a load of horseshit on why quantum physics is "scientifically proven false over and over".Try to see this from our perspective. You wouldn't want someone like me to tell you how to hold a gun, do you? Why appeal to the general public in hope that they would dictate what ought to and ought not to be science? Perhaps you missed our discussion about the Dover trial.During the trial, they looked through the drafts and earlier versions of pandas and people. The earlier versions of this book, instead of having the words intelligent design, had the word creationism. Instead of having the words design proponent, it had creationist. Only the latest version did they change creationism to intelligent design and creationist to design proponent.And during the trial, they were able to find a "missing link" between intelligent design and creationism. They found the word cdesign proponentist. Get it? They probably did it in a hurry so they only highlighted "reation" and left in "c ist".And you're trying to tell me intelligent design has nothing to do with biblical creationism? Nem, in the academic world, we try to stay close to our field as much as possible.We're not like you where we feel like we have the right to comment on every subject known to man. I was trained in physics, math, and chemistry. I'm not going to pretend like I could accurately critique a biology paper.This is another thing that the general public seems to have a problem understanding. People generally don't understand what it means to be a specialist.Some years ago, I went to see a debate between an astronomer and a creationist preacher. The preacher attacked the astronomer by spouting out all kinds of lies about geology and asking the astronomer random questions about geology... even though the topic was astronomical evidence for an old universe. The astronomer wasn't that good of a public speaker or debater, so he simply said geology wasn't his field of expertise. You know what happened? The crowed cheered for the preacher, thinking he was way smarter and more knowledgable than the astronomer. Regular people don't understand that in academia we don't pretend to know something that we don't know. Creationists and cdesign proponentists have done well to take advantage of this public ignorance.Again, try to see it from our point of view. We know how ignorant the masses can be. By appealing straight to the masses, cdesign proponentists are simply taking advantage of the ignorant masses for their own religious agenda.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

Taz I used to worry about the takeover of Canada by the US one day if they got desperate enough for our resources.Now I know the likelihood is they could not find the place if they were told to just head north and keep going.

I'd hardly call a bunch of arctic archipeligos valuable resources.

Is targeting anyone who will listen tantamount to targeting "dumbasses?" You are blaming ID'ists for questions like this???? Are ID'ists claiming that rocks orbit mountains? If not, then why do you lay blame against them? Well, everyone had to start somewhere. Try and have a little more patience with these people (are they kids or something?). You have to crawl before you can walk. At one time you crawled. No one can lay claim to the best technique for holding a firearm. Some things work better for other people. And I'm never adverse to shooting tips since there is so much more to it than just aiming and squeezing the trigger. But, I understand your analogy. I just don't see this as being a threat. What is going to become of the world should people see design in nature? Is it going to change any physical law? There is little question that creationists have latched on to the idea of Intelligent Design as a way to piggyback off of its success (which is hardly no success at all, but moreso than creationist literature). And it is also probably true that the majority of ID'ists are in fact Bible-believing Christians. But is that something that someone is supposed to apologize for?I can tell you that I honestly don't like creationism because it emasculates scientific inquiry. Trying to find any reason to have nature conform to a theological text is just not science. I want nothing to do with it for probably the exact same reasons you don't. But I believe they have every right to speak about it. That's their right. And I also believe that ID is vastly different from creationism.ID is theologically neutral. It just says that it seems possible that the universe was intelligently designed, as opposed to nothingness creating everything. Heck, in my mind, is the greater alternative. But, I digress. We don't need to drag this OT. This whole forum is full of people who inject their own beliefs in to any given thing based on their level of expertise or understanding of any given topic.

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“First dentistry was painless, then bicycles were chainless, and carriages were horseless, and many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, telegraphy was wireless, cigars were nicotineless, and coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, the putting green was weedless, the college boy was hatless, the proper diet -- fatless. New motor roads are dustless, the latest steel is rustless, our tennis courts are sodless, our new religion -- Godless” -Arthur Guiterman

{Main bulk of this message has been hidden by moi. Read below for reason.} Look, if ID is really science, can you name a few ways in which we can disprove the "theory"? This is one of the criteria for being a valid scientific theory. You have to be able to disprove it.In fact, I'm going to hide the rest of this post. Just name a few ways we can do to disprove this ID theory.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

what about existance, taz?to make existance a valid discussion, we must assert that it has a reason for debate in the scientific community.can you assert, that in physics, understanding elements is the reason for the science? and that by asking where the elements came from has established the big bang theory? and that by asking where existance fits is not against scientific enquiry, since it would be a debate based on science of what is, and attemtping to discover through scientific logic, in what way elements asserted "being"?Edited by tesla, : elaberated

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keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not-being is
~parmenides

Nemesis
Juggernaut AH but there lies the rub NJ. In the fields of science you must appreciate that the point is not whether something is possible or not but whether it is going on or not.
Since intelligence is claimed science requires that it not simply be possible but that it is shown to occur in fact.

I have heard the claim that ID cannot be falsifiable and therefore cannot be considered a science. The irony, as you can imagine, is the swarm of criticism attempting to falsify it.Since ID is precipiced on complexity, one has to consider how easily or difficult it is to prove. The very thing that would prove ID is the very thing that, in reverse, would destroy all of its credibility.It is no different than what Darwin concluded -- that if it can be demonstrated that no new species come about by successive modification, his theory would breakdown absolutely.So if it can be shown that there is no specified complexity, then there is no reason to assume that an evolutionary algorithm is at work through unguided processes.But see, there is no way to ever discount the possibility of God, or any other intelligence. The intelligence could want it to look as if it were just through happenstance. Evolution could easily fall in that category.But why place it there unnecessarily? Its the same with specified complexity. If we know the 10⁵⁰ is considered absolute zero (a chance so unlikely that it is basically referred to as impossible) then raising the stakes at 10¹⁵⁰ (which is Universal Probability Bound) will really do the trick.All one has to do is to turn the table around on the initial claim and it is effectively dismantled. That is how you can falsify ID. ID is specifically precipiced on the notion of specified and irreducible complexity.Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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“First dentistry was painless, then bicycles were chainless, and carriages were horseless, and many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, telegraphy was wireless, cigars were nicotineless, and coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, the putting green was weedless, the college boy was hatless, the proper diet -- fatless. New motor roads are dustless, the latest steel is rustless, our tennis courts are sodless, our new religion -- Godless” -Arthur Guiterman

Nobody seems to have given an adequate response, so I am dropping back in after a long inactive period.I cannot see anything in the cited article other than a "God of the gaps" pleading.My summary: The author sees an apparent gap, and so chooses to plunk god (as the intelligent designer) in that gap.Okay, I am not myself a biologist. It is my impression that most biologists don't agree that there is any real gap. The area pointed to is a topic of investigation, and some of the citations in the article demonstrate this.A research paper should be informative as a guide to future researchers. The trouble with ID is that it tends to see mystery (i.e. gaps) as themselves an explanation.

No, they are demonstrating that it is not science. That's not the same as falsifying.

There are two broad fronts here:
1) The correction of the criticism of evolutionary science, and the pointing out of the dishonesty of repeating known errors.
2) The correcting the idea that certain concepts such as irreducible complexity can give any indications of a "designer".The reason it is unfalsifiable is because intelligent agents are capable of hiding evidence of their existence. Correct. That is why evolution doesn't rely on disproving specified complexity, but in gathering positive evidence for the hypothesis. There is no reason to think that an entity with no motivation might be motivated to manufacture evidence to cover up its own existence. Indeed there is much evidence that evolution has happened. Of course we could say that the intelligent designer manufactured the evidence to look like evolution happened - but that is unfalsifiable.Evolution doesn't have 'desire' so it cannot 'want' to make it look like an intelligent designer did it.Now - an intelligent designer could have made all of this happen and done so 'using' the mechanism of evolution. This is unfalsifiable and unparsimonious. An intelligent pusher could be keeping us on the planet, in a way that appears to be due to the warping of the geometry of space/time. That contains the same amount of weight as a hypothesis. I didn't do it, the fact that I am on film doing it only proves how devious my enemies are to create the appearance of me being a criminal! And yet, when they are falsified as links to a designer - ID remains - how?Irreducible complexity was shown as not only a bad indicator of design, but (in its biochemical form) as a prediction of evolution! That the mathematics developed regarding specified complex information came from irreducible complexity leaves CSI as equally unfounded. The best part of the whole thing: Dembski was shown a pattern and was asked to determine if it had CSI. He said that evolutionary algorithms were capable of producing the 'appearance of complexity'. He has never to my knowledge given a way to discriminate between the appearance of complexity and actual complexity.Thus the following hypotheses:Irreducible Complexity demonstrates the necessity of an intelligent agent.
and
Specified Complexity demonstrates the necessity of an intelligent agent.Have both been falsified."ID" can never be falsified since it refuses to describe the agent, or its methodology for implementation: and thus we are not able to know what it is capable of. It could be capable of hiding evidence of its own existence. Plenty of statements made by ID proponents can be falsified since they do make empirical claims, and when they do - they are often erroneous.As soon as we get a 'how' that would leave a certain type of evidence that cannot be explained better by some other theory...ID will have itself a theory that might lend itself to actual falsification. However, we still find 'a designer did it' is unfalsifiable. We need 'designer x with properties y designed life using methodology z at time a' before we get anywhere near a scientific theory with the possibility of falsification.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

creationism that implies motives to a devine being is not science, its religeon.science has avoided attempting to explain the very thing that religeon is based on: existance.anyone on this thread care to debate existance on the basis of science?

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keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not-being is
~parmenides

"divine" not "devine""religion" not "religeon""existence" not "existance"Please, please, please learn to use your computer's spell check function.