Bill Frist has decided to endorse so-called intelligent design. I know Democrats have been deluded by the press into being more “open” to religion, but this stuff isn’t even Godly. It’s hokum.
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What is the theory of “intelligent design” besides “I can’t imagine how all this stuff could happen by natural processes, so it must have been God who made it happen”?
At one time the same thing was said about lightning, eclipses, earthquakes, diseases, planetary motion, etc. Thank God we didn’t listen to the shamans and charlatans when they told us there was no reason to look into those issues!
There’s another word for “intelligent design”; it’s “anti-science”. It’s “God used his intellect so I don’t have to use mine.”
Here’s The Onion’s take on it:
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with new ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory.
What I resent about intelligent design advocates is that they’re cheating (though they may not realize it).
In the free marketplace of ideas, intelligent design is an OLD idea…and an idea that has LOST. Repeatedly. The evidence gathered by modern biology is just too much for intelligent design to handle.
So what is their strategy? To keep coming back, using the same old arguments that were losers in the marketplace of ideas…and to insure their win, they’re demanding to change the rules of the game that other people made up.
And THEY whine about fairness?
Wilbur said:
However, it should be noted that darwinism doesn’t answer all the questions. It doesn’t say how life began, nor how evolution occurs. It just states that it does and gives an explanation of why.
The rest, especially the origin of life on this funky little green and blue ball, is really a matter of faith. Religion and science aren’t mutually exclusive; many of the medical researchers I work with are also quite religious, with many Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus all working on things like stem cells and microevolution among viruses. They all realize that science can’t explain everything and religion can’t explain everything, but together, they can help explain a lot – as long as you have a little faith.
Also, for a lot of people (myself included), it’s hard to believe that things subconciously evolve without realizing it. Trying to wrap your head around it can be like trying to wrap your head around the size of the universe or even – around the implications of the existence of a supreme being.
So, I don’t fault the creationists. Darwinism is way over a lot of people’s heads (including mine), just as a lot of religion is. I try to leave the details to the experts and use common sense to weed out stupid ideas like intelligent design.
My experience is that the non-religiuous have just as many faith-based beliefs of one form or another as the religious. And in the end, nobody can prove anything (after all we are talking about deities, right?)
Nope.
But here’s an experment: next time you’re really sick–try going to the church of your choosing as opposed to visting an MD. After all, they’re both faith-based, right?
However, it should be noted that darwinism doesn t answer all the questions. It doesn t say how life began, nor how evolution occurs. It just states that it does and gives an explanation of why.
The best explanation for the origins of life is as consistent with Darwinism as the laws of chemistry are consistent with the laws of physics. Abiogenesis involves self-replicating carbon molecules increasing in complexity to form amino acids and proteins and, eventually, life.
And Darwinism does explain how evolution occurs. Mutations occur naturally and mutations that prove to be beneficial to the organism are selected for. If you are attempting to say that Darwinism doesn’t explain speciation, then you are also incorrect. People commonly view the distinction between species as a quantifiable genetic difference and not simply as a somewhat arbitrary distinction used to distinguish populations. A notable example is the ongoing argument regarding the red wolf’s classfication as a species or a hybrid. If you are saying that Darwinism doesn’t entirely explain how an ovipositor could become a stinger, for example, then you are correct after a fashion, but later refinements of the theory have worked on this shortcoming. Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibria holds that, under certain circumstances, favorable mutations can occur and spread very rapidly in isolated populations. This isn’t an alteration of Darwinism, merely another layer of complexity in the theory.
The problem as I see it lies mostly in the terminology. ID wants to credit a “higher being” or “supreme being” for creating the universe. However, the proponents of ID never take that idea any further.
A “being” implies a single, finite entity, an intelligence that is aware of a self. In other words, a king alien, a superhuman daddy, a something–or rather a someone–that’s pretty much like us, only big. Real big.
Maybe that’s not what some ID proponents have in mind, but that’s what the language they use suggests. It would advance the debate if they would describe what they mean when they ponder the existence of a “designer.”
However, it should be noted that darwinism doesn t answer all the questions. It doesn t say how life began, nor how evolution occurs. It just states that it does and gives an explanation of why.
Nonsense.
Evolution doesn’t say how life began because evolution is about the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. Evolution doesn’t have all the answers–but neither does our understanding of gravitatonal forces.
Fnally, Pionar asserts evolution doesn’t explain how evolution occurs. This is patently false. In fact, a good example of how evolution occurs s evident in the example of why people may build up a resistance to antibiotics over time. Or why insects may, over time, buld up resistances against pesticides.
Kind of silly to berate religion or people for their religious beliefs. Its a matter of faith. Someone “BELIEVES” something. My experience is that the non-religiuous have just as many faith-based beliefs of one form or another as the religious. And in the end, nobody can prove anything (after all we are talking about deities, right?)
Dugger
jade,
You did miss the point. Which was that religious and not-religious people have beliefs grounded in some faith or another . The faith might be Catholiicism, an “ism” of some sort, New Age, faith in the evilness of neocons or liberals, etc. When I’m sick I go to the doctor and I have no problem if he/she is or isn’t religious or believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was a dupe of Zontar from Venus. Unless you believe a religious person can’t be a capable doctor, your analogy misses. As I understand it, the whole thing about intelligent design is to make science and religion compatible – thereby recognizing two separate, distinct disciplines. As back-up, perhaps you recall Lysenko and the excesses of Stalinist science where Uncle Joe and the non-religious Commies decided science had to fit their ideology – and changed science?
Dugger
Dugger – you are correct, of course – both the religious and the non-religious accept any number of things which can’t be empirically demonstrated, although they may be different things. The problem with “Intelligent Design” – as I see it – has nothing to do with religion vs. non-religion. It has to do with the question of “what is science?”
The universe may or may not have been designed by something intelligent. But that proposition is NOT a scientific proposition. It is a philosophical proposition, and it has no place in a science curriculum.
William Shakespeare is a great author. That proposition has no place in a science curriculum, either. Which has nothing to do with whether or not the statement is TRUE.
More specifically, the whole thing is about making science and conservative evangelical Christian religion compatible. Unfortuneately, they’re trying to accomplish this by bending science to fit a belief that a centuries-old text is inerrant.
Ignatz,
Agree with about all you say. Except that IMHO, intelligent design was a means by which some practicing Christians (I guess only Christians) could in fact divorce religious doctrine from science by saying (sort of): science (and nothing but science) is the means by which God works. This leaves science alone, as it should be, in its disciplined world, but also leaves a place, side-by side but not part of, for religion. All of this would mean to me, as say a non-religious person, that intelligent design is the way Christians keep theology out of the science books. There was an attempt here in Cobb County Georgia to go beyond that and inject religious-based caveats into science text books – which failed.
Quaker,
I’m not an expert at all. My understanding was that intelligent design was the way some non-fundamentist Christians were able able to maintain their faith and yet be intellectually true to science. “The Lord wants us to do all in our power to find a cure for cancer and we should continue the scientific research to come up with that cure” is how I think most see and practice it. ” Regardless, if my God is all powerful (or yours), isn’t he/she able to construct a whole authentic discipline of science with infinite detail and scope. He/she designed it that way. To be science. We can worship our God and have science as it is.
Dugger, Going to H*ll Regardless
Dugger,
Intelligent design was made up to put young earth creationism back into the curricuum. Nothing more, nothing less. The supporters, such as in Kansas and in Dover, PA, are using the exact same arguments as young earth creationists [even though they've been debunked for years].
The kicker is that intelligent design advocates are NOT doing science; they are initiating no independent resarch program, they are not applying their hypotheses to real world problems, nor can they operationalize their concepts so that other people besides them can do research programs. Their agenda is simply evidence against evolution, without compiling positive evidence FOR intelligent design.
>>The kicker is that intelligent design advocates are NOT doing science; they are initiating no independent resarch program, they are not applying their hypotheses to real world problems, nor can they operationalize their concepts so that other people besides them can do research programs
Man…if this doesn’t win some kind of “Comment of the Year” award for clarity, then there is no justice in the Blogosphere.
Until someone out there can in good faith, replicate the “science” of those that advocate for intelligent design, then intelligent design is nothing more than a misplaced Sunday school lesson.
Dugger>>I m not an expert at all.
Yes. We see that. End of discussion.
JK
gwang,
The “why” of the theory means very little to me as to opposed to the theory itself. You seem to be saying that it proposes its own scientific discipline as opposed to providing a frame work within which religious people can practise pure science (and be true to their creed). Do you have a non-polemical reference that provides theory basics.
JK,
Are you an expert, then?
Dugger
“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”
Correct me if I am wrong, but has science ever observed and documented the emergence of brand new life — at the family or genus level — that never before existed, and which could be conclusively proven to have emerged, on its own, from lower-order life?
I’m not talking about natural selection or genetic mutation, examples of which are plentiful and do not challenge intelligent design concepts.
Without that kind of documented proof, “evolution” resides solely in the realm of theory. And it should be presented as such in the school classroom, along with the admission that we are uncertain how the mechanism of life really works, and that there are numerous factors that we don’t (or won’t) ever fully understand.
Trying to shut down debate over the origins of life and pillorying all non-evolutionists as “flat earthers” (Oliver) or “ignoramuses” (Clarence Darrow) is actually reminiscent of the treatment Gallileo received at the hands of the Roman Catholic church.
The Church was worried that their faith in God would be weakened by the work of man; modern evolutionists are worried that their faith in man will be weakened by the work of God.
That’s the most stunning example of up-is-downism I’ve ever seen, Mike.
The ID crowd is being persecuted by Galileo? Galileo had some things like evidence, observation, reason, and mathematics to support his ideas. The proponents of ID have the book of Genesis, which is what Galileo’s opponents used to persecute him.
In reality, the ‘proof’ Mike requires–seeing a new species develop from a separate unrelated species–is an argument against evolution.
It’s a bit tough trying to defend evolution to folks who have little concept of what evolution is.
>>JK, Are you an expert, then?
No. I just enjoy giving you, the consumate right-wing bonehead, a hard time.
I prefer we not mix science with religion in the classroom. Such is the right-wing agenda these days, that is poisoining this nation.
JK
Er…like Galileo.
Sheesh.
JK,
“No. I just enjoy giving you, the consumate right-wing bonehead, a hard time. ”
You are not giving me a hard time. This is the Internet. At any one time you don’t know if you are dealing with a 15 year old sideways-hatted drugged out punk or a university professor (here, the immature name calling would tend to suggest university professor – more humor JK!). Been here a lot longer than you. I’m given a hard time when somebody beats me intellectually in an argument. I have been, but you didn’t. And I’ve been called infinitely worse than “rw bonehead” here by gentle, why-can’t-we- all-just-get-along leftists. I figure every time a lefty is reduced to personal smears and I don’t respond in kind, my side wins. And I know that somewhere in the backs of the minds of people reading these posts, even the silent liberals, it sinks in a little more that the idea that the left and liberaldom are populated by nice, erudite people who just want to debate ideas and deal equally with differing viewpoints, is one big fat canard.
Dugger, ‘Never uses the big, big “D”‘