ID taken to the end

As far as I understand ID, this is correct.Philip Johnson seems to believe that every species was separately created by God, within an OE \ fossil evidence framework.Michael Behe thinks (at least at one point, Behe's thoughts have been revised since he wrote DBB and I'm not sure to what extent this was affected) that common descent is true, just that certain organelles (and whales) need an extra push from God.I've never seen a coherent position from Dembski on this issue, he seems more interested in obfuscating the meaning of the No Free Lunch principle then in advancing his own theory. He's the Isaac Newton of Information Theory, not a biologist. He might well have put one forth, I'm not sure. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!The DI now admits this, after a fashion. They currently urge people to "teach the controversy" and didn't support the Dover PA. school district teaching ID to its students. This is because they can't teach anything other than problems they see with evolution, it's really all they have.ChrisThis message has been edited by cmanteuf, 09-08-2005 01:55 PMThis message has been edited by cmanteuf, 09-08-2005 01:56 PM

Reread my statement more carefully. I didn't say that there wasn't enough time. I said that ID offers an alternative mechanism for the diversification of life on Earth. Astrophysics is part of my study, so I can assure you that, although I can't really wrap my head around the distances involved with astronomy, I do have an idea scale wise. As was addressed in my response to Paulk, ID is still in the most part in its infancy. In this particular case, I really don't think it is fair for people to demand an answer to everything from such a young and deprived theory.Would you agree that the theory of evolution in the 19th century also lacked universal factors within the theory? Why? Because ToE was still in its infancy at the time and could not provide answers for the vast majority of questions posed by people. If you want to discuss ID and education, perhaps you'd like to discuss your points in one of the various threads about the subject in the education forum.

Perhaps because it lacks the support within the scientific community for proper research and experimentation necessary for such a theory to develop further? Pointing out that there are some nutcases supporting certain concept doesn't invalidate the concept.The Nazis were health and environmental freaks. Should we then say that living a healthy life and being environmentally conscious is wrong?As I pointed out before, much of the supporters of ID are know-it-all science illiterates. My guess is the only reason they supported the theory is because, with a little imagination, it resembles their faith.

Well, seeing as ToE is not a method of dating the Earth and only suggests "old" as an age for the Earth, no they didn't.However, an exact age of the Earth isn't a needed piece of the ToE.The Designer IS the most important piece of Intelligent Design. So, a lack of agreement on who / what the designer is, that's a really big problem for the theory.

No. Survival of the Fittest (originally an economics theory) was then and still is the base foundation for ToE. The mechanics of heradity have likewise remained the same.We have a more nuanced understanding now than we did before, but from the start the mechanisms of evolution were apparent.ID doesn't have mechanisms, at least none that I've seen. To say, the theory is still young, give it time, just seems like an excuse. Either you understand the mechanics of the theory and can teach them, or you don't understand the mechanics of a theory and as a result it's just conjecture.

Godwin's law!

Yet some people were criticizing ID for the fact that it offers no official age for the Earth or the universe. I just wanted to bring this to people's attention so they can be more careful and not just criticize something they don't agree with with anything at all.ID is grossly underrepresented! It can't always defend itself! Not necessarily.Permit me to bring up an example.Say that an entire ancient city is discovered in at the bottom of the Mediterranian. From the structural designs of the buildings and the few surviving coins found at the underwater site, it would appear that the civilization who built the city was related to the Ancient Greeks. However, there were some other characteristics that do not seem to match with Ancient Greek Civilization.Based on your logic, since we can't say who built the structures and crafted the coins, it must be the case that those aren't really buildings and the coins aren't really coins. Since we have no way of knowing who built those things, it must be the case that those buildings weren't built by intelligent designers.See the problem with this argument?What IDists try to get people to understand is that they see design in organisms and populations on this planet just like an archaeologist would see design in what would appear to be eroded structures. Just because the archaeolgoist couldn't tell who built the structures doesn't mean they should be dismissed as rocks that happens to look like manmade structures.

I had no idea about this so-called Godwin's law, but I'll be more careful next time. I'm sure you understood what I was trying to say.

This is a gross misunderstanding of ID. Please understand that ID is itself the proposed mechanism.Noone is denying that evolution on the observable level is happening. What IDists try to do is present an alternative mechanism for the diversification of life on Earth. Yes, it is an excuse. Remember that not all excuses are fabricated to help deal with a desperate situation. It's not as simple as "either...or".Darwin had no idea how heredity worked when he came up with his theory. The study of genetics came later.Again, you can't expect a theory that lack age, money, research, and genuine support from people with the real know-how's to rival face to face with something that have the backing millions of minds, billions of dollars, and 200 years of experience.

I don't think so. Mendelian genetics wasn't widely known at Darwin's time; there was no mechanism given by Darwin for heredity. There were NO mechanics of heredity, only descriptive accounts of results.(Note: I vaguely remember this, and I did a quick Google search to confirm and looks like I'm basically right; for example see Wikipedia's heredity page.) Like I was writing in AnnaFan's thread on ID being non-science, I disagree. Just because a theory has black boxes (i.e. lacks mechanisms for parts of it) doesn't mean it's not worthwhile or "scientific." Another good example of this (besides Evolution Theory, as shown above) is Newton's gravitational law. It's completely based on description of observation; there was no attempt to describe a mechanism at all.

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Anyway, I have a proposal. We're fairly clever people. It's clear that ID is not at all a theory. What if WE try to make it into a theory. Seems that the ID people aren't doing the proper work; let's try to do it for them. We can assume some critical part of ID (maybe that "irreducibly complex" exists), and see if we can find a non-God ID theory that works. And I mean, let's actually try. I don't want to do a half-assed effort, then shoot it down and say ID is impossible. What do you say?Although I get the feeling this is in the direction of what Brad has been working on... so maybe we're better off spending more time understanding Brad's thoughts.BenP.S. Do you mind if I start calling you "Nugs"? An old friend loves the Denver Nuggets, and he always called them the "Nugs"... it's my temptation every time I respond to one of your posts...

I don't think the complaint is that ID can't settle on 440 million vs 450 million. The complaint is that ID can't settle on 450 million vs 6 thousand. That's kind of a BIG range.The reason they can't settle is because ID is a political movement, not a theory. And as a political movement, it needs a support base. Saying 450 million would knock out the Fundies, and saying 6 thousand would forever destroy any impression of scientifostity on their part. No. We can say who build them. People did. And, what's more, we can tell you how they built the buildings, what tools they used, what materials. We can tell you what metals were used in the coins. What process was used to mark the coins.ID can't say what or who the designer is, or how the designing was implimented. That's pretty important stuff when it's the core of the theory. Sometimes they are rocks that look like manmade structures. Let's take the face on Mars as an example. A lot of people saw a Roman soldier in the image. They were convinced that this was evidence of an advanced civilization having built this giant monument.A closer look shows that it's a couple of mountain peaks and some shadows - nothing more.Clouds aren't intelligently designed to look like a fire truck. That particular cloud happens to look like that.I think at its heart there are two different types of IDers.Type 1 - The intellectually dishonest propagandist of religious dogma. These are the people who say things like "Evolution means we're all just animals and have no morals. That's wrong. Design means we have a soul."There's no science there at all.Type 2 - The intellectually honest people who have mistaken apparent pattern for actual pattern.Man is very good at finding patterns. We excel at it. So much so that we often find cause and effect patterns between totally unrelated things. Most superstition is exactly that. Horoscopes, same thing.But when you study the cause and effect relationship, when you examine the "cause", you often find that it's not related in any way to the effect.In this case, we have an apparent effect (highly evolved species with complex features), but an assumed cause (Great Designer) and no methodolody to connect the two.I'm not saying that IDers shouldn't pursue their line of study. By all means, have fun. Just don't expect it to be taught in schools until it can be explained. After all, we have to have something to teach.

Yeah, I took no offense. I had been trying to remember the name of that law for like 3 weeks now and it popped into my head.

Darwin published in 1859. Mendel published in 1866. So we're talking about a seven year gap in a time before computers, globalization, etc.

But ID doesn't have any position at all in regard to the age of the Earth, whether it's 2 years or 8 hundred trillion years. What, you want to force ID into an "either...or" corner? Is this your opinion or fact? Do you have to be so dense?Of course people built them, but you wanted ID to be specific in who the designer was. If your answer for the builder of the structures is people, then I could just as easily say the designer for the designs in nature is an intelligent being. The difference between something that has been eroded and something that happens to look like eroded manmade structures is entirely subjective when we get to certain level of similarities.Yes, clouds happens to look like a lot of things that we know of by accident, but sometimes they really were designed. Been to an air show lately? Good, then you should make your arguments with such people in mind rather than clinging onto the Type 1 concept of an IDist. I could very well say the same thing about the laws of physics or the theory of evolution itself, that these things are just ideas people came up with to find patterns in nature. Physics is my field of study and I can assure you that a lot of times when there are noticable patterns in nature then it usually means there are relationships that we can use to predict results with certain sets of initial conditions.Not all apparent patterns are a result of hallucinations or rationalization. Again, this thread isn't about ID and education. It's about ID, period.This message has been edited by GAW-Snow, 09-09-2005 02:10 AM

Just curious. Are you debating in good faith or are you just trying to be right? Usually, the ones that are just trying to be right will nitpick what the other person says rather than try to understand the point that the person is trying to make.