What is the point of intelligent design?

[billvon 2,990]

>If the answer is GOD DID IT what is there to study?

_How_ God did it.

ID arose for several reasons.

One, there are a lot of intelligent people who believe in God, the Bible, the Trinity etc but cannot believe that all the land-based life on earth came from one boat, or that all people came from one man. ID is a more science-based approach to the issue of Biblical creationism, one that fits both their intellectual understanding of how the world came to be and their faith in God and the (relative) inerrancy of the Bible.

Two, there are people - real scientists - who do research and occasionally hit dead ends. The explanation for the Cambrian explosion is one - how did we get such a massive increase in complexity in such a short time? It's mathematically hard to comprehend. Wells wrote a pretty good paper about how it was hard to figure out why it happened; it was published in a peer-reviewed journal (in Nature I believe.) He then concluded that an "intelligent designer" must have intervened.

Now, since then, we have discovered adaptive radiation occurring at about the rate that was seen in the Cambrian Explosion, notably the Cichlids of Victoria Lake. They began from a single species, and within 12,000 years years they had already speciated into 500 new, different species! Given that that much evolution occurred in 12,000 years, understanding how the Cambrian Explosion happened over 50 _million_ years is a lot easier. Indeed, we have learned a lot from the Cichlids about how evolution works.

So a researcher hit a dead end (which often happens) and blamed an unlikely source (God.) Then further research shined some light on the problem. Unfortunately, creationists continue to quote Wells' paper as "proof that serious scientists believe in ID."

Three, aggressive creationists - people who desire political power to preach creationism - have been on the run for quite a while. There are people out there who fervently believe that a) things happen pretty much like they are described in the bible and b) it is their mission to spread that teaching to everyone. The best place to do that, of course, is in schools; they have a captive audience, and they can get them quite young, during a time when most parents would shield their kids from a proselytizer on the street if one tried to preach there.

They have hit many barriers in their attempts to do this. The Scopes trial was the first big blow. Although the teacher was found guilty of 'teaching evolution', this started an uproar that effectively got creationism taken out of the science curriculum at most schools; evolution took its place. Since then, time and again the courts have ruled that schools cannot teach religion in science class.

So creationists resorted to other tactics. A few laws in Arkansas and Louisiana tried to force schools to give 'equal time' to both creationism and evolution; sort of a 'let them decide for themselves" angle. These laws were thrown out by courts.

In addition, they have suffered other defeats. School boards that propose standards that remove evolution from curricula are regularly voted out, despite getting a lot of press.

So these creationists needed a new tool to get creationism taught in schools. They needed, in other words, a 'wedge' to crack open the science class and let a little God in. They got it with Intelligent Design.

The big strength of ID from an aggressive creationist's perspective is that it sounds good. "Yeah, they keep throwing all those science terms at us like molecular clocks, DNA, mitochondrial inheritance - well, I got me here a paper that uses all those words and says God did it!" In effect, they saw a way to "use science against them."

Thus the Discovery Institute was founded. Its purpose was to push ID as valid science, and to that end they funded a few scientists who were both credible and strong believers in creationism. They then touted their papers as "real science." This worked until about 1999, when a document was leaked to the Internet that outlined their 'wedge strategy.' This document outlined the goals of the Discovery Institute, namely:

1. To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.

2. To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

Once it was recognized that the organization's goals were religious and political rather than scientific in nature, they lost most of their credibility.

Nowadays, ID is something of a fringe science. It is considered science at all because some of the research done by Behe, Dembski, Wells et al is quite valid; it's just their conclusions that are suspect. Sort of like a world-class skydiver telling you how to fly in a tunnel, then telling you "and remember, God creates the wind." You might do well to heed his advice on how to fly your body even if you figure an electric motor, rather than God, makes the wind.

[AlexCrowley 0]

how ironic. I think your a big turd.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[billvon 2,990]

Could you two please cut it out?

[narcimund 0]

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Sort of like a world-class skydiver telling you how to fly in a tunnel, then telling you "and remember, God creates the wind." You might do well to heed his advice on how to fly your body even if you figure an electric motor, rather than God, makes the wind.

That's a brilliant analogy. Too bad illustrating points with analogies around here is like feeding priceless paintings to a goat.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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That's a brilliant analogy. Too bad illustrating points with analogies around here is like feeding priceless paintings to a goat.

Priceless

[jakee 1,489]

Hmm, you are discussing the relative scientific merits of ID, but that's not really related to the original question.

Regardless of whether ID has merit its point, the reason it was created, is to put a respectable face on creationism. The creators and promotors of ID intend it to drive a wedge (their words) between real 'secular' science and what is taught. This is the thin end of that wedge.

Being right (even if they were) is not the point of ID.



Was there something else I'm supposed to add.... Oh yeah, you're a big angry homo! (Was that right?)

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[AlexCrowley 0]

Thanks Bill, thats exactly the stuff I was looking for.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[AlexCrowley 0]

yes, yes he was doing exactly that.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[narcimund 0]

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Hmm, you are discussing the relative scientific merits of ID, but that's not really related to the original question.

Regardless of whether ID has merit its point, the reason it was created, is to put a respectable face on creationism. The creators and promotors of ID intend it to drive a wedge (their words) between real 'secular' science and what is taught. This is the thin end of that wedge.

Being right (even if they were) is not the point of ID.

Wow. That opens up a whole can of worms. Are we going to trace the origins of all the sciences and discredit their results if their ancient history is tainted by ulterior motives?

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Was there something else I'm supposed to add.... Oh yeah, you're a big angry homo! (Was that right?)

Grrrr!

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[micro 0]

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Could you two please cut it out?

which two are you talking about, dad?

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[billvon 2,990]

>which two are you talking about . . .

You and Kallend, who have been sniping at each other for a half dozen posts. (And AlexC too, now that he's jumped on the bandwagon.)

[jakee 1,489]

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Are we going to trace the origins of all the sciences and discredit their results if their ancient history is tainted by ulterior motives?

Nah, I'm not saying ID research should be dismissed without evaluating it first (how else could it be properly refuted).

I'm just saying that (as Bill points out in his vastly superior post) the point of ID is to get creationism into mainstream education.

It is the reason ID was created, it is why it exists. That is true irrespective of the quality of research it produces.

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Grrrr!

Aaaaah!!!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[narcimund 0]

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the point of ID is to get creationism into mainstream education.

Oh, without a doubt!

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Grrrr!

Aaaaah!!!

Now that I've agreed with you, I'm brilliant and good looking, right?

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[jakee 1,489]

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Now that I've agreed with you, I'm brilliant and good looking, right?

I think you should ditch that other guy and come and shack up with me.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[narcimund 0]

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We have civil unions here now.

We call them marriages here!

And I'm not going to ditch "the other guy" but since the slippery slope argument leads to polygamy anyway, why should i have to?

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[noluckned 0]

[reply

If the answer is GOD DID IT what is there to study

[going4alob 0]

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please point me in the direction of an ID based scientific finding .

I don't know anything about the ID findings. I've been explaining what the CONCEPT is because you (and others) seemed to be curious if it was more rigorous and scientific than "god says so". It IS more rigorous than that, at least in theory.

Maybe somebody else has current findings. My guess is there isn't much.

The scientific method, succinctly, is to form a hypothesis based on existing data, use it to make testable predictions, and test them.

ID proponents made such predictions about the eye. Then new data turned up to prove them wrong.

At this point a scientist would reject a hypothesis outright, or modify it to fix the incorrect parts. The ID proponents don't do that. They just say "bad choice of organ, try another".

Science does not go looking for that one piece of data that confirms the hypothesis while rejecting all data to the contrary as not relevant. ID is not falsifiable as long as a single piece of biology remains unknown. ID is NOT science even if dressed up like it.

After forming a hypothesis any good scientist should go about trying their best to disprove it by experimentation. If you cannot disprove your hypothesis then it has validity. This is the problem that I have with ID, in that one will never be able to prove ot disprove the argument, since the core of the ID belief is that God created everything - totally unprovable.

[AlexCrowley 0]

Ah but Bill, Micro and I love each other in a manly platonic way. Calling him a turd is a term of endearment.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[billvon 2,990]

>Calling him a turd is a term of endearment.

No doubt. In a month, someone will call someone _else_ a turd, and the person being called a turd will complain to me. And I will tell the first person to cut it out. And the first person will say 'But . . . but . . . you let AC call people a turd! Favoritism! Bias! Hypocrisy! You obviously hate me but aren't honest enough to just say it because it will reveal your blatant bias for the people in the 'in' crowd."

That's happened often enough that I don't give passes on 'terms of endearment' any more.