20 years of the Creation/ID science curriculum

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If you say that naturalistic explanations are the only ones that are allowed, you may have shut out what really happened -is that science?

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Yep!The alternative is letting in explanations that do not lead to greater understanding.Let's say we do allow "the IDerdidit" as an explanation. Or "Allahdidit", or "Krishnadidit", or "Isisdidit".Now what? How do we use that? How does it increase our understanding of how nature works? How does any new technology or any new avenues of research spring from that conclusion?How is inquiry benefitted by letting in magic as explanations for anything?How would letting in non-natural explanations into, for example, forensics investigations help in the solving of crimes?

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No, I think you're wrong -there are divisions about what may have happened but we all agree on one major point -that mutation and natural selection cannot account for the complexity of what exists

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That directly contradicts CTD who insists that ID doesn't challenge any part of evolution - only abiogenesis. Looks like there's a major disagreement right there.And you'll note that your point of agreement is purely negative. You've got nothing to teach, no alternative account. To assume that ID would stop with that - when it's a position they've retreated to, fairly recently - for twenty years seems pretty unlikely.

But science is, by definition at the present time, naturalistic. Is it your view that the acceptance of ID into the classroom would be accompanied by a fundamental change in the definition of science to include non-naturalistic explanations?--Percy

Hi Beretta,Once again, this thread is not about evolutionary theory's flaws. It's about ID in the classroom.--Percy

So all ID does is trot out the same tired old PRATTs of ToE criticism. Where is that ID hypothesis that FilesOnly and myself have been asking for?What would kids be taught in ID class besides "evolution is wrong"? Will they learn how ID works? Will they hear about predictions that ID makes? Will they learn who exactly did the designing?Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Percy has pointed out that the thread is about 20 years of I.D. in schools, rather than complaining about what you want to perceive as faults in evolutionary theory. However, as I.D. is actually only another name for "God of the Gaps" arguments, you have little choice but to pursue your attempted line of justification for it.So here's some evidence of the "creative power of mutation and natural selection" for you. In return, you should offer concrete evidence of the intelligent designers in real time action, as they are I.D.'s "mechanisms", the exact equivalent of mutation and selection. "Teach the controversy" should be equally demanding of both sides, don't you agree?

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Adaptation to a Low Phosphate Chemostat Environment by a Clonal Line of Yeast

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P.E. Hansche and J.C. Francis set up chemosats to allow evolution of a single clonal line of beer yeast in a phosphate limited (due to high pH) environment. (A chemostat is a device that allows the propagation of microorganisms in an extremely constant environment.) The yeast clones grew slowly for about the first 180 generations when there was an abrupt increase in population density. This was later shown to be due to better assimilation of the phosphate, presumably due to an improvement in the permease molecule. (Permease is an enzyme that controls what is allowed to come into the cell through the yeast's cell membrane.) After about 400 generations, a second improvement in cell growth rates occurred because of a mutation to the yeast's phosphatase (an enzyme that improves the cells ability to use phosphate). The phosphatase became more active overall, and its optimal pH (the pH where it is most active) was raised. Finally, a third mutant appeared after 800 generations that caused the yeast cells to clump. This raised the population density in the chemostat because individual cells were no longer being washed out of chemostat (which is one of the methods that the chemostat uses to maintain very uniform conditions) as quickly as they had prior to the mutation. (This is just speculation on my part, but I wonder if it wasn't under some similar conditions that multi-cellularity became favored over unicellularity - perhaps on a sea bed or river bottom.)
This experiment was repeated, and the same mutations occurred, but in different orders. Also, in one replication, the processing of phosphate was improved by a duplication of the gene that produces phosphatase. This is experimental evidence of an extremely important mechanism in evolutionary history! It is also a particularly elegant experiment because not only was all of this adaptation shown to occur in clonal lines (descended from a single individual), but the authors also determined the exact mutations that caused the improved adaptations by sequencing the genes and proteins involved.

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Francis, J.E., & Hansche, P.E. (1972) Directed evolution of metabolic pathways in microbial populations. I. Modification of the acid phosphatase pH optimum in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 70: 59-73.

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Francis, J.E., & Hansche, P.E. (1973) Directed evolution of metabolic pathways in microbial populations. II. A repeatable adaptation in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 74:259-265.

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Hansche, P.E. (1975) Gene duplication as a mechanism of genetic adaptation in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 79: 661-674.

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From:http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.htmlwhere there are several other examples.The I.D. equivalent would be perhaps showing the intelligent designers practising genetic modification on organisms in a specific environment in order to improve their nature and chances of survival in relation to that environment. Either on film, or reliable eyewitness accounts. Both will do. I.D.ers agree that change over time happens, but disagree on the mechanisms, so the demands for evidence of their mechanism should be met.Kids might enjoy having nothing to learn about in their biology classes for twenty years, but that's not really the idea behind science teaching.

Hi Beretta: Let me start this by asking for the eighth time...please supply us with the I.D. hypothesis, or admit that none exists. We're running our of thread space here Beretta, please see if you can do this one simply thing before we reach post number 300...please.
Anyway...on to your post: I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Look around you Beretta, there's a shit load of evidence for the "creative" power of random mutation and natural selection. Are you suggesting that we know very little about random mutation and natural selection, as the apply to the ToE? Oh, and by the way...evolution IS a fact. Even you admit as much. So teaching evolution as a fact is the only thing we can do. Now, we couple that fact with the only viable scientific explanation for how evolution "works", (namely, the ToE), and there's the beginnings of a wonderful lesson plan for a high school biology course. Of course, if we follow your suggestions, we'd have to stop teaching and stop asking questions and instead just say: "...and this part here...well...God did that so we can stop investigating and testing". Because that is not what it is. A hypothesis is a specific "answer" to a specific question. A theory is a scientifically sound generalization. The ToE addresses all of life, and how it could have evolved. It is the result of a "collection" of verified experiments (via countless hypotheses) that cover the gambit of life on this planet. That's your lesson plan...to simply tell kids that I.D. thinks that the ToE is not good enough? What are you going to teach in it's place? Again, your only option would be to then say something like: "and therefore we can stop looking for more fossils, we can stop studying geology, we can ignore radiometric dating, we can stop studying comparative anatomy, we can ignore biochemistry, we can skip over developmental biology...(and the list goes on and on)...and instead we can claim that God did it". I dare say, you'll be very popular amongst the student body. They'll all want to take Mr. Beretta's biology class because about five minutes into the semester, the course would be over. Go to one of the many threads that address this issue. It's not a complicated as you think, nor does it (the Cambrian explosion) in any way support the I.D. movement. See above. And we don't say that...so what's your point? Well, since we cannot really scientifically investigate the supernatural (except, of course, to disprove it as a viable hypothesis), what other options do we have. Personally, I like science. It's done wondrous things for the planet (and some not-so-wonderful things too). What contributions has I.D. made?What you are essentially asking science to do, is when we find something for which we have not yet found an answer, to halt all further investigation and simply state that God did it. No thanks, I'll stick with science, thank you very much. Well...essentially, yes. How do you scientifically investigate that which cannot be seen...that which cannot be heard, that which cannot be felt...basically, that which does not exist? You seem to want science to engage in mythological investigations. How do you propose we do that, exactly? And why would you want us to do that...exactly? Aren't you happy with our medical advancements over that past 150 years or so? Aren't you happy with our technological advancements over the past 150 years or so? What do you have against science anyway?

Alas, they seem to be making inroads all over. A couple of months ago a professor at Iowa State University, Guillermo Gonzalez, was denied tenure. He and his supporters contended the denial was due to his co-authoring a book on Intelligent Design. He appealed to the Iowa Board of Regents and they upheld the decision.I was listening to Public Radio when the Regents decision was announced. The announcer said that Intelligent Design was a "Scientific" alternative to the Theory of Evolution. If the public radio audience is hearing crap like that, imagine what the Fox news crowd is hearing.

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The lack of a coherent theory is inevitable, as no-one will be able to decide what the designer actually designs, and what he leaves to evolution.

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This strongly implies that most, if not all IDers accept some form of evolution. We seem to be in agreement.There is absolute agreement within ID that some intelligent being designed life initially. That they disagree on later events says nothing about the validity of the one thing they all agree upon. But that's where their opposition has chosen to focus arguments.In order to defeat them, attacking their common conclusion would be in order. Since no such attack has a chance to succeed, stalling tactics have been employed. Conflicts aren't often won by stalling. A genuine offensive is typically required. I guess we'll see if this is an exception.

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Natural selection on a simple level would be easy to test, so do you mean evidence of natural selection as the driving force behind species formation?

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I was talking about testing it in the scientific sense: make predictions and see how they compare to results. Natural selection has failed such tests in the past, and I'm curious if any such tests have ever been successful for the concept.Generally it's applied as a device to explain known results. It appears to work in the past tense, but fail when it's used in the future tense. I think most astrologers could manage as much, given the opportunity.

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It seems that it is your definition of ID that is mythical. The definition used in "Of Pandas and People" certainly conflicts with evolution.

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It conflicts with some varieties, and is compatible with others.And it's the opinion of one individual. Has any ID group attempted to have it implemented on any official basis? If so, were they successful?Is this about double standards? Am I allowed to define "evolution" by quoting the evolutionist of my choice?

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Your definition excludes all the creationists too. In fact it excludes almost all the major figures in ID. What makes you think that you know better than them ?

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I disagree. And I wonder how anyone would get that impression. ID is very broad, and has the potential to encompass anyone who doesn't think it's proper to state as if it were fact "no intelligent being had anything to do with the origin of life".It baffles me that so many ID people can see so few flaws in evolutionism. I would expect that when a person starts to see errors they'd be alerted to watch for more faults.I actually kind of like the definition of ID as most evolutionists use it in practice: anyone who believes anything that casts doubt on any aspect of Orthodox Evolutionism.

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Even if there was a 100% correlation between astrological predictions and outcomes we would still be no nearer to identifying how astrology works.

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In this sense it can be regarded as non-science.

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Same applies to the "non-science" of gravity.
And what holds the nucleus of an atom together?If you want to play the game of 3-year-olds, and keep asking "why" long enough, you can break down any science.

And yet, there is no way to test such an idea. So again, I ask:
What is the I.D. hypothesis that we can use to test what the designer actually designed, where the designer comes into play (did he design all species? Did he design all phyla? Did he design all kingdoms?...you get the picture), and why he designed us, for example, so poorly? While it may be true to say that it is "valid" that they agree a designer designed things...it is equally valid to say that there is no scientific validity in their claims. Their valid claim of agreement means nothing from a scientific standpoint. What is their common conclusion? Is it that something designed somethings at sometime? I can "attack" that pretty easily, simply by asking for any supportive evidence. What sort of predictions are you looking for? You need to remember the "random" part of random mutation. We have no way of knowing how, what, when, where, or why any particular mutation might occur. While it is true that we may be able to accurately predict one or two of these variables, and/or that we can manipulate one or two of them in a laboratory setting (just ask a geneticists, they do this sort of thing all the time with fruit flies), this will certainly not allow us to predict what future generations of naturally occurring species may look like, nor when the may "speciate", nor any other sort of wild-ass guess you may want us to make. Again, I fail to fully understand what you're trying to say here. What sort of "tests" has natural selection failed? Not true. Just look at the advancements in medicine alone, that we have made in the past 150 years. You don't think evolutionary biology played any role in that? Tell people trying to come up with an AIDS vaccine (or cure) that evolutionary biology is not useful. Tell them that praying to an unknown designer would be a far better use of their time.

As do young most young earth creationists. It's the only thing in relation to origins theories/beliefs for which there is evidence that can be directly observed, so they have little choice. Their common conclusion is easily attacked and dismissed on the basis that they have no evidence for it. Someone can propose that fairies are sometimes required to help pollinate flowers, and claim the same validity as the I.D. suggestion.And the evidence for these fairies is exactly the same as the evidence for the invisible designers of biology. Zero.That's not stalling. No one needs to disprove things for which there is no evidence. Try disproving the existence of my fairies. And that's what I gave you in the post you're replying to.Prediction of ToE: There should be a correlation between environmental adaption and reproductive isolation.And in that research, there was. Tests done in real time, you mean? Easy. Look at the example I gave to Beratta in a post above. And also note my logical suggestion as to what the I.D. equivalent would be.http://EvC Forum: 20 years of the Creation/ID science curriculum -->EvC Forum: 20 years of the Creation/ID science curriculumThe NS prediction is simply that the strains best suited to the low phosphate environment will prevail. Obvious, and easy to understand. Theories are used to explain observations. The main mechanisms of ToE can all be observed in the present. Meanwhile, evidence for I.D. and its special mechanism remain at a spectacular nothing.

We can see the effects of gravitational lensing on stars through telescope. We also know that gravity distorts space-time, thus producing the effects we see. What is still unknown is the exact nature of gravitational radiation, but this is something that can be and is being investigated. This is no great mystery - the strong nuclear force.Both effects manifest themselves in ways we are able to investigate. Your analogy is flawed.

The ToE in conjunction with geology has also made predictions that have guided archaeologists. Tiktaalik, a fish-amphibian transitional, was found due to predictions as to when it might be found in the fossil record and where to dig.Edited by RickJB, : Typo.