What would be taught in intelligent design?

First the basics:



Then some chemistry:

Well i thought this link was interesting. When asked of voters what should be taught in schools, creation+evolution, just creation or just evolution, 71% of Bush voters thought BOTH should be taught, but when asked again 45% of the same group of poeple thought creationism should be taught in place of evolutions. This means one of two things:

A. CBS is on crack.

B. These people aren't playing with a full deck of cards.

Or a little from column A and a little from column B.

That is an excellent point. I guess the largest obstacle when trying to come up with a curriculum for ID in a science class is that Intelligent Design* does not really fall under the umbrella of supportable scientific theory. There is no way to test for a higher intelligence/creator type. The only remotely scientific things ID contains are arguments against evolution, although I can't attest to their validity or lack thereof.

* Does anybody else think the name is marketing genius?

Outsider: Excellent pics

C. Just using straight questioning on politically/morally sensitive issues doesn't produce accurate results (people just have a natural tendancy to flinch a bit with their answers), even if the surveys are anonymous. (I think this is based on the liszt experiment. Sorry, I can't find a link.)

Where is that from?

Well, in the spirit of open-minded scientific evaluation, an Intelligent Design class would have to look analytically and fastidiously at all the world's myths of creation.

It would ask 'Is the moon really a shoe with red dust on it?' before counting out the myths of the /Xam-ka !ei of South Africa. Asking "what is the evidence that the antelope herds were made from drops of blood and fat?" would count out the myths of the hunter gatherers of present-day Lesotho.

Is there any evidence that whales were made from pebbles? OK, this counts out the myths of the Inuktituk people of the Bering Straits.

Does man share any genes with bamboo? Because this would help us to evaluate if there's any merit to the myths of the indigenous people of southern Taiwan.

Is there any evidence that land was made by the scratching of a chicken brought down out of heaven by the Great Orisha Obatala, who also made men and women from clay from the banks of the River Oba in southern-central Nigeria. Do we have any clay genes? Are there still the vestigial fingerprints of this god on us?

Is universal background radiation the still-sounding 'Om' uttered at the first instant of creation according to Hindu tradition? This would be good evidence that Hindus have it right, and we can look for evidence of the giant turtle and the poison that Siva sucked from the swirling oceans.

And then we can discount them all and uphold the self-evident truth of the Bible. Women have an extra rib. It stands to reason.

First, the basics - the table of elements pictured above is an IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) table.
Mendeleyev table is different as it group the elements of the first major 8 columns together. And there is a reason for it, but that is another story.

Second - it helps to know the theory before one goes to argue and apply it to real life. Most people who argue about this don't know it.

Third - theory of evolution, as developed by Darwin, has been refined and augmented by great many elements such as chaotic elements of evolution (such as Markov's prety-preditor models), an entire field of molecular evolution describing evolution of biochemical pathways, etc... so that the evolution taught in schools is a simplification that is makes the concept accessible to kids. After all we don't start physics by teaching the true kinematics equations with realtivistic and quantum corrections. We teach them simple classical newton's laws because you have to start somewhere.
So there is no need to argue whether kids in school are being taught a lie... they're, but only because human mind can only grasp certain amount of material at a time.

Fourth - Can evolution explain everything in the recorded history? We don't know. In particular we don't know because, in many cases, we don't know whether our historical evidence is accurate and is taken in proper context. Regardless of the reason, these arguments are so high level that it is silly to touch them unless you're a world's expert on evolution.

Fifth - Intelligent design, as it stands today, does not follow the scientific method if inquiry. Thus it is, by definition, not a science.

The end!

You know, I was kind of hoping that someone from the ID camp might chime in on this as I suspect that many IDers believe that the vast amount of existing ID propoganda constitutes a curriculum.

I was anticipating that you would get the standard arguments-

Argument of incredulity (Evolution is just too hard to believe)
Argument to ignorance (You can't prove ID isn't true)
God of Gaps Argument (Look at all the stuff Evolution theory hasn't explained yet).
Strawman (Evolutoin predicts 747s would just come together out of nowhere)

Then there would be this long, muddy time in the thread where the nature of science was explained and a few IDers would regroup and try to sell some psuedoscientific arguments.

In the end, however, we all know that you can't test a god. Theists know this as well as atheists. And the shell game of saying that it may not be a god, but a superintelligent alien is just silly.

^ Well, I think that about sums this thread up...were it to progress on. Clever girl.

It is so much more fun to watch y'all patting yourselves on the back.

No we're not.

We're having a laugh at your expense, and jolly good it feels too.

However it works out. As long as your enjoying yourselves.

Don't mind if we do.

Any time you want to defend your argument from our ceaseless mocking, or even answer the very sensible question posed in the thread's first post, feel, you know, free.

Until then we'll carry on having a right old laugh at your expense.

Oh, by the way, did you ever get round to researching Shetline's terms and learning anything about energy and order and randomness and variety and whatnot?

I only ask.

I'm currently reading this book and for beginners, is a good book on understanding the earliest forms of life and what needed to happen and what environment needed to be in place for the first pseudo micro-organisms to develop.

A recommended read.

This is just lovely. Hats off.

Yes, hats off, and as a fan of idiomatic English, "Until then we'll carry on having a right old laugh at your expense" brought a gurt big smile to my face too.

How many debates have taken place if the T-Rex was a predator or scavanger? Look back at bones from 10 million years ago and tell me you are for sure about anything other than they are bones...

More like 65 MYA, but regardless I think even you are admitting you can tell more than just that they are bones. First, you recognize that they do constitute a specific, extinct animal. Then I'm sure you would recognize that basic physics and comparitive anatomy can make reasonable conclusions about what kind of mass (tissue) the bone supported. Also, you are admitting that you can date them to be milions of years old (not thousands).

Of course, there are many, many more things we can determine reliably. But as for knowing things "for sure," I can't know for sure anything other than that I exist. Nevertheless, I continue to rely on science and rationality to provide reasonable conclusions about how the world works.

ID, on the otherhand, requires us to simply throw our hands up in the air and proclaim that things are just too darn complex to understand, so we should all assume a higher intelligence exists that is forever outside of our ability to test.

First, a few notes on WHY Intelligent Design is proposed, according the scientists who have adopted it:
There is a fascist body of scientists whose whole lives have been built around Natural Selection (Darwin's theory of evolution). This body is unwilling to consider viewpoints and hypotheses that threaten Natural Selection (such as the inability of NS to create irreducibly complex systems (those which must come into create in working form, not piece by piece, or they will have no reason for NS to preserve them). This body is also extremely materialist in its views, meaning that any hypothesis that even implies something other than brute matter made the universe is heresy.

Bluntly put, I like Intelligent Design because it pisses all the know-it-all's off.

The history of science is rife with know-it-alls whose knowledge proved too little over time. Scientists believed they had all the answers to human breeding in the early 20th century, and were happy to push Eugenics all around the world (especially in California, where thousands were sterilized because they were feeble-minded). The Rockafellers paid for research, so did the Carnegies, whole governments adopted it, promoted it as viable science when it had less real science than mold on bread. The result of the political furor in favor of Eugenics? Nazi death camps, World War II, tens of millions dead for a supposed scientific idea and the fear that it was used to create.

At the beginning of the 20th century, physicists thought they had just about answered all the questions they could answer. Then Einstein's work blossomed and they realized just how ignorant they were. Stephen Hawking is saying these days that science is about to answer the big questions. SOmehow I doubt that he will find much more than MORE questions. The arrogance of scientists who know the motives of their financiers is incredible. These people are merely writing the results their paymasters want, no matter how clean and pure they claim to be. Bias is that powerful.

So, now, imagine you are a 35-year old scientist who has been a material atheist all his life. Imagine the freedom of not having to worry about God's opinion of the advantage you took of others, of the promiscuous sex you had, of the leverage you used to get the job you have, of the lies you told and the cheating you did. You are invested in there being no God to judge you. You cannot possibly remove that bias from your subconscious. You might see it and overcome it, but it will always be there. And that is the fight that is really going on here.

When the ID scientists do debates with atheist scientists they never here attacks on the science, only on the implications of their hypothesis.

As for ID not being Falsifiable, that is BS. Every part of the various proposals that support ID is testable. Back to our irrreducible complexity theory:
Take a bacterial flagellum away from its host bacteria and see if Natural Selection can create one from scratch. Heck, take the many parts of the flagellum and put them inside the bacteria and see if NS can even assemble the pre-made parts. Too complex? Try the same with protein strings on a virus? Can natural selection create a new and unique part from nothing over time? Even mutations, which are almost always early-growth and fatal or late-growth and incidental, cannot do this.

My 2 cents

Materialist = Eugenics and nazis, check.

Cute, Anders.

SHort answer then:

Materialism: theory that may not include all the realms of existence.

Eugenics: Prime example of how an idea can have NO scientific basis yet be adopted by scientists, government and the population.

Bias: a subconcious understanding of preferred outcome. Ever deal with lab mice? take one genetically identical batch, split the group in two. Sent half of them to a lab with a maze and have the delivery person mention that these mice are kind of stupid. Send the other batch to a different lab and have the delivery person mention that these mice are above-average intelligence. Same mice, same maze, two different findings. The dumb mice will be found to be dumb, and the smart ones found to be smart. Why? Bias. Unless everything is done double-blind and with no knowledge of the source of funding, bias can and will creep in.

Intelligent Design is as subject to bias as the atheistic conclusions held by many Darwinists. Yet we don't question the motives of the Darwinists, do we?

I didn't mean 10 MYA the TRex was here. My point was, we don't know much about anything about them. Personalities, how they acted, how smart they were, blah, blah. You see what I am saying? You took me a little to serious.

You mean somewhat like your whole spiel about how the 35 year old scientist scientist believes in evolutionary theory only because he wishes to avoid God's judgement? Excuse me, but can you really not see that you did exactly what you accuse atheist scientists of doing?

Also are you implying that any scientist who accepts evololution is necessarilly an atheist. Kenneth Miller, a major participant in such debates, is a devout catholic. He even wrote a book about the compatibility of his faith and the science.

This argument goes way back before ID came along and recast it in molecular biology terms. The old creationist used to say, "Show me a lizard evolving into a bird and I'll believe in evolution." These arguments show either a complete ignorance of evolution, probability, or common sense.

As an analogy, I propose Intelligent Lottery theory. Given the highly unlikely chance of any particular set of lottery numbers comming up it is totally reasonable to conclude that some guiding force must be at work. I'm sure if you asked the majority of lottery winners they would agree that it was more than chance that they won the lottery. God must have meant them to win for some reason. When is the last time you saw a lottery winner who didn't thank God after all. Is this theory falsifiable?

So my IL theory predicts that it is highly unlikely that the same lottery numbers will appear again just by chance. Go ahead, test it. If the same numbers come up again then I'm wrong, so my theory is falsifiable and should therefore be treated as a real scientific theory.

Do you like to travel on aeroplanes serviced by know-it-alls?

I know I like to have my bicycle serviced by know-it-alls.

However.

I would not tolerate my children being taught by know-it-alls. Which is why I will teach them at home. I will teach them to speak Mandarin Chinese.

I will make it up.

That will piss off the Chinese know-it-alls when my children try to speak to them!

But it'll be worth it just to piss them off.

(note that I am very stingy with the coveted "three laughing smilies" award)

Wow, great ob bringing stereotypes together.

So 35-year old scientists are atheistic, materialistic and promiscuous. They lie, cheat and behave unfairly. And if they had existed 70 years ago, they would be nazis and engage in killing millions of people.

Get a life.

Since when is materialism in any way whatsoever related to science? Materialism is a concept of economy and society, not of science.


Yes. And? Scientists make mistakes. Churches do, too. Crusades anyone?


Darwinists don't have motives. They have a theory. They don't have any agenda whatsoever to spread it out to the world; if you don't agree with the theory, they will tolerate that.

Intelligent Design advocates have motives. They don't have a theory, they have a set of unfounded claims. They have a strong agenda to spread their ideas to all of the US, which is the only country in the western world stuck in the medieval ages enough to even consider accepting any of this mess.

jccbin, jc = Jack Chick?? Hmm, he talks the talk...

Dear jccbin,
I notice that you're "Apple Certified Technical Coordinator"... and that's a good thing, because as far understanding what evolution is or even what science is, you're not that great! =)


I suggest that you review history of physics. In fact in the beginning of 20th century scientists knew that their theory was inaccurate because the equations of electromagnetism formalized by Maxwell as well as The Michelson-Morley Experiment at the end of 19th century, clearly pointed to the inadequacy of Newton's equations.


I would not judge the state of science, the world, or anything else based on what Hawking says and said. He used to be a decent physicist once, but that was a long time ago!
And that is what science is - answering questions, creating even more questions and asnwering the new ones...


I would not talk about things you have no idea about. Clearly you're the one that has a bias.
As Richard Feynman said during Challenger Investigation: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
So unless you claim that it is ID people who develop all the modern technology, I would rethink your statement.


What exactly does it mean to be "material atheist"?



Sure it can. It's called self-assembly and it observed with great many things in nature.


Yup... one of the biggest areas of biotech right now. Got got a couple of peeps in my lab doing just that.


Sure it can. You can use directed evolution (gene shuffling, family shuffling), etc... to create, for example, proteins with novel properties.

Again, it maybe worthwhile to actually research the subjects that you write about before actually doing so. Otherwise, what you write may not be worth the 2 cents that you think it does.

First thing that I would like to hear taught about ID is, if that "thing" is so intelligent that it could design and create everything, then who designed and created it? At least with flying spaghetti monster we know who created it, and creator is willing to confess that his religion is created purely to pursue his personal interests.

Careful now, people might think you were comparing eugenics to the discovery of penicillin...

Not liking a perceived attitude among a group of scientists is a good reason for adopting a different theory?

Perhaps I should come up with my own subatomic particular theory because the current crop of subatomic physicists have absolutely no fashion sense!

You say these people are "unwilling to consider" these viewpoints? Tell me, how do you know that scientists haven't considered these ideas, found them very lacking, and rejected them? You can't measure consideration in terms of acceptance -- and I'll bet if you think for a moment and are honest with yourself, you'd realize you'd say these ideas were being considered only if you saw them actually being accepted.

Do yourself a favor and look up the difference between methodological materialism and philosophical materialism.

[Skipping over a bunch of stuff that has been well addressed by others, and especially well laughed at by Hassan.]

What convenient bubble have you been living inside? Saying that ID isn't good science and has no body of research, no program of research, no predictive value, that ID is nothing but poorly thought-out negative arguments against evolution combined with using a poorly defined "Designer" which has no particular identifiable or testable characteristics to explain whatever one thinks is too amazing to understand... all of that is much, much more than attacking any "implications" of ID.

I have a "theory" that there's an autographed copy of Alice in Wonderland somewhere near the center of the Moon. As all can plainly see, my conjecture is indeed falsifiable. "All" someone has to do is dig up the Moon and sift through all of the debris -- careful not to destroy the fragile evidence of my correctness in the process -- and if no such book is found, I shall be proven wrong.

But until such time as those lazy, smug bastards who oppose my brilliance bother to do the work to disprove me, I can stand proudly by the excellence of my "theory", no?

Good new science is not only falsifiable in a theoretical sense, but, if it hopes to unseat well-established science that already stands behind a solid framework of evidence, the new science assumes the burden of proof, it does not foist impossible and/or million-year long burdens of proof upon others.

That's a bit overrated.

Oh, and by the way, what does all this mean one would TEACH in a classroom about ID?