Residents of Ohio, are you embarrassed? I think you should be. Recently you announced to the world (well, your State Board of Education announced on your behalf) that you'd be adding Intelligent Design to your high school curriculum. [Edit: The October vote has voted against ID in the curriculum. Congratulations, Ohio. Now where's Kansas?]
For those who haven't heard of it yet, Intelligent Design is the latest spin on Creationism. It's the new boy on the "we didn't evolve from no damn monkeys" block. Have you ever noticed that people who don't believe in evolution seem to be living examples of their own arguments?
The basic difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism is this: Creationism says "The Christian God created the world in 6 days about 6,000 years ago" while Intelligent Design says "God--probably the Christian one but we're not saying that or else you won't let us teach this in schools but really we all know which God we mean wink wink--created the world, and since He's a God it probably took oh let's call it roughly a week, and maybe it was a little longer than 6,000 years ago but let's just say for now that God did it and we'll sneak the rest in later."
And like the Creationists, the Intelligent Design proponents claim that this is science instead of religion. Why? Because, and be sure to pay close attention here because I'm about to take a running leap, they claim that "there must be intelligent design in the face of irreducible complexity."
What does that mean? Simply this: since science cannot currently explain everything about how all life works, we must therefore conclude there is a God. Hey, I warned you I'd be leaping.
Let's look at that again, shall we? Run run run run run...we cannot at the present time explain absolutely everything...run run run...about absolutely everything...run run run...to do with life in all forms...and LEAP...so therefore God exists.
What kind of school board would seriously consider adding "if we don't know it now, it can never be known" to a science curriculum? That's not science. It's not even remotely science. It doesn't even get to visit science on alternate weekends.
So what is science? Well, a big part of it is "the application of theories that are falsifiable." A theory that is not falsifiable is not a scientific theory by definition, because the most basic and essential process of science is the attempt to disprove theories.
Science requires that we supply means by which our theories may be disproved, and so if we want to include "God exists" as part of a theory we must supply a means by which God can be proven to not exist. If I cannot supply a means by which one could prove that God doesn't exist, then "God exists" is simply not part of science. It doesn't mean it's true or false, it's just outside of science. And things that are outside of science should stay outside of science classrooms.
And usually they do, unless you live in a state that elects a bunch of Creationists to your State Board of Education. Creationists who go on to Create a lesson plan that's derived in part directly from the seminal text in Intelligent Design (Jonathan Wells's Icons Of Evolution) while swearing up and down that the lesson plan doesn't actually include Intelligent Design.
And then after nobody believed them, do you know how they solved the problem?
They removed the Wells book from the bibliography.
Seriously. That's it. They didn't change the plan itself, oh no. They just deleted the Intelligent Design source book from the lesson plan's bibliography. They left in the Intelligent Design material, and turned their own school lesson plan into a work of plagiarism.
I suspect the biggest stumbling block for some people to accept the fact of biological evolution (yes, it's a demonstrable fact not a "theory" in the way the general public uses the term) is that most people don't understand "evolution" as a scientific term. And that's not their fault at all since the general public is presented with many, varied, and generally inaccurate definitions of what evolution is.
Most dictionaries and Fox television news reporters define evolution as "the gradual process by which plants and animals arose from earlier more primitive organisms." Sounds about right, huh? If you went door to door and showed that definition to a hundred people, ninety-seven of them would agree that's what evolution is. (Two of the others were out at a movie, and the third pretended not to be home when you knocked because Final Jeopardy was coming on.)
There's only one problem with that definition, though: it's totally inaccurate. That's not what "evolution" means at all, at least not to scientists.
Evolution is actually just the process that results in heritable changes in a population over multiple generations. Or as Curtis and Barnes put it in Biology: "In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next." But that doesn't roll of the tongue too easily, does it? It's so much easier to say "gradual changes from monkey to man."
But biological evolution has nothing to do with a "gradual" process. It is, on the other hand, a straightforward and easily demonstrated one. It is a theory, but it is also a fact. In science, facts are the observable data we collect about the world, theories are collections of statements to explain and interpret those facts, and nerds are the people who do the collecting. What I meant to say was that biological evolution is a fact in that we can observe it in action today and its historical evidence is overwhelming.
There is another aspect, the theory of evolution, which takes the fact of biological evolution and theorizes the specific mechanisms by which it operates. Creationists love to pounce on the word "theory" and claim that even scientists themselves are unsure about the existence of evolution. Naughty word-twisting Creationists. Tsk tsk.
The truth is, biological evolution has been accepted as a fact by all non-bigoted scientists for well over a century. Darwin himself always took pains to separate his two accomplishments: one, discovering the fact of biological evolution, and two, proposing natural selection as a theory to explain the specific mechanisms of that fact. He always separated the two, and this was a guy who didn't even separate his cottons from his delicates when he did the laundry.
Gravity is a fact. We know this because things fall down. Things like apples and Humpty Dumpty. But gravity is also a theory which explains why things fall down (because all the cool apples were doing it, and because he was drunk, respectively). Newton's theory of gravitation was replaced by Einstein's, but while the new textbooks were being printed at no point did things stop falling down. Not even a little bit. Just ask all the king's horses and all the king's men, who will tell you I'm correct right after they finish their omelets. The fact of gravity was not affected by improvements to the theory of gravitation any more than the fact of evolution is affected by improvements to the theory of evolution. Saying you don't believe in evolution is like saying you don't believe in gravity. Scientists might debate precisely how evolution works or how gravity works, but they agree about the facts.
God and evolution are not contradictory things. Evolution is how organisms change between generations, and so if there is one or more gods pulling our strings then He or She or It or They set up our world to work this way. I simply don't understand why anybody but the most close-minded, dogmatic fundamentalists would be afraid of teaching rational methodology and observation in school.
I'm more concerned about the theory that some almighty being created and buried millions of dinosaur fossils just to mess with our heads. Now that's something to keep you up at night.
Intelligent Design does not say Evolution is wrong. It says that something created life. The very very basic part of life and then spiecies evolved form that. The irreducible complexity they are talking about is how there are billions upon billions of things that if they were even changed to the slightest degree the universe would not exist. Before you complain about something figure out what it actually means.
From http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php#questionsAboutIntelligentDesign :
What is the theory of intelligent design?
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
From http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1136 :
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and are not the result of an undirected, chance-based process such as Darwinian evolution.
From http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/ :
The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion
All this is saying is that Intelligent Design disagrees with the Evolution in terms of how life started, saying it was not chance. Not saying that evolution and natural selection do not occur. It is just saying that the beginning of life did not just happen by chance and evolution infers.
That's exactly what's its saying though. That is doesn't not occur. Its says that some things, like the life and whatnot, do not occur through evolution/natural selection because its too complex for a chance-based system of design and therefore an intelligent being/deity must have designed it purposely. It leaves no room for evolution or natural selection.
That evolution is just an illusion.
No. You are right about the life being too complex part. But it is saying that starting life is too complex. It is saying nothing about after life was created. And it never says that all different species were created at the same time. Evolution after the start of life is not contradicted by Intelligent Design.
It is not saying that the differences between species is too complex it is saying the start of life is too complex. Evolution and Intelligent design can both exist.
From http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/conlaw/evolution.htm
A CREATIONIST: A creationist is a person who rejects the theory of evolution and believes instead that the each species on earth was put here by a Divine Being. A Creationist might accept "micro-evolution" (changes in the form of a species over time based on natural selection), but rejects the notion that one species can-- over time-- become another species.
YOUNG EARTH CREATIONIST: A young earth creationist believes that the earth is nowhere near the 4.6 billion or so years old that most scientists estimate, but is instead closer to 6,000 or so years old, based on the assumption the Genesis contains a complete listing of the generations from Adam and Eve to historical times.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN PROPONENT: An ID proponent rejects the theory of evolution and, more generally, the notion that natural law and chance alone can explain the diversity of life on earth. Instead, the ID proponent argues--often from statistics--that the diversity of life is the result of a purposeful scheme of some higher power (who may or may not be the God of the Bible).
EVOLUTIONIST: An evolutionist accepts the Darwinian argument that natural selection and environmental factors combine to explain the diversity of life we see on earth. An evolutionist may or may not believe that evolution is the way in which a Divine Being has chosen to work in the world. Evolutionists divide into various camps, including PUNCTUALISTS (who believe that evolution usually occurs sporadically, in relatively short bursts, as the result of major environmental change) and GRADUALISTS (who are more inclined to believe that evolution occurs more evenly, over longer periods of time). The PUNCTUALISTS seem now to be winning the argument.
What about the Flying Spaghetti Monster though?
His Noodly appendage really DID create the universe.
Here is the proof
www.venganza.org
i love the ending! but seriously, that was one kick ass piece of argumentative writing. i feel the same way, but maybe i just don't have the time to be so eloquent. write more and we'll listen(or read, unless one days the computers start talking with one of those suave telephone voices, which would be awsome cuz no one would listen to the mecanical, techno voice)keep it up.
I used to want to be a journalism major when I was in high school, but my writing tends to be more argumentative/subjective than objective. As a freshman in college, I took an argumentative writing course. My final MLA paper was trying to prove that the war in Iraq was a douche move on Bush's part. People complained about my topic, saying that hindsight is 20/20, so I wrote the whole paper using sources from before the "War in Iraq" officially started. 20 pages long.
I disagree that intellegent design goes against all "science." Life is too complex to hand over to chance creating it. The earth is in such a balance that there is no way a simple explosion and "poof" evolution caused it. Besides, your claim that Christians say God created the world in a week is actually untrue. In Hebrew the word that we have translated to mean "day" acutally stands for several ammounts of time including centuries and millennia.
I must say, as an ID supporter, the arguements in this post does nothing to discredit Intelligent Design. This is yet another example of an evolutionist who either does not know what ID is, or try to deface it in order to avoid the very real issues it raises. A typical strategy of evolutionists is to create the strawman arguement that "ID is dressed up creationism, based on religion, not science", and then attack that idea, all for the sake of feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. All of this does nothing to convince people who are informed about what ID really is.
The fact is, ID is not going away, because it IS science, and makes NO reference to religion.
First of all, even Young Earth Creationists accept the reality of observable evolution, which is called "Micro-evolution". No one is disputing that.
The dispute is not so much about whether evolution happens, but whether evolution alone can account for the origin of life. On this matter, darwinism's awnser is far from being a from being a proven fact. After 150 years, it still falls in the realm of a hypothesis. Darwinism proposes that live formed from nothing more than chemical reactions which formed in the ideal circumstances which allows those chemical reactions to occur. The fact is, this "theory" which is promoted as "scientific fact" by darwinists, is actually becomming increasingly unlikely in light of recent discoveries. In fact, it is a theory that is yet to be proven, as those "ideal circumstances" in which life will form without intelligent intervention is yet to be defined. I believe, as the ID movement does, that the discovery of irreducibly complex structures in biology has falsified naturalistic darwinism on its own terms. Those who deny this, has a religious faith in darwinsim, and won't accept any proof that it has been falsified, pretty much like the creationists. ID can be accepted as an acceptable scientific theory until a better theory comes along. The leaders of the ID movement are not motivated by creationism or religion, and will gladly dump ID for a beter naturalistic theory, if it can be proven. So far, all darwinist ideas on the origin of live remains in the realm of "hypothesis", and, until it can PHYSICALLY DEMONSTRATE that natural processes alone can account for irreducibly complex structures, ID remains the better theory.
This not about creationists asking people to believe in God without evidence, this is about darwinists asking people to believe in the supernatural capabilities of darwinism without evidence.
Sure, YEC's, IDer's, etc may accept micro-evolution, but people who actually do biology don't make a distinction between micro- and macro-. It's the same process, the same data, the same thing.
ID is a lousy theory. It starts from a false dichotomy - "evolution is wrong" - as its primary support. It then goes on to posit unknowable non-naturalistic prime causes for observable naturalistic phenomena. Its rationale stems from what we *don't* know, rather than what we do - can't yet explain why whales don't have feet, must be intelligent design. That isn't a theory, and that isn't science.
Could evolution be wrong? Sure. But ID is a lousy, lousy alternative.
Oh, additionally...
Evolution as a theory makes no suggestions regarding the actual abiogenetic origin of life. There are other theories for that, and some of them tie into evolution, but evolution itself does not. Evolution is simply natural selection of life over time.
I blame poor teaching for that mixup - every time I've heard about the primordial soup experiments it's always framed in terms of evolution, which any respectable biologist will tell you are two different things.
It's like saying gravity is wrong because we don't have as much evidence for the big bang. Yeah, there's a relationship in the subjects, but the theories are about different things.
You accuse evolution proponents setting up straw men, but you set up a standard straw man right out of the anti-ev playbook by damning evolution for not explaining the origin of life. Your argument is disingenuous and not even original. Darwin did not propose evolution to explain the origins of life, nor does today's evolutionary thinking propose to explain the origins of life.
So next time, try a better, logical line of reasoning that doesn't rely on tired arguments from the Discover Institute.
And your statement that the leaders of the ID movement are not motivated by religion is laughable, as the ID camp's origins, money and fundamental viewpoint have been well-documented.
I suggest that you read the Ohio news on Panda's Thumb. Intelligent design creationism was resoundingly rejected by the State Board of Education at its October meeting in a 14-3 vote, and in the election Tuesday the main ID advocate lost her bid for re-election by a nearly 2-1 margin. Four supporters of honest science won seats on the Ohio State BOE out of five running. Put bluntly, honest science won big in Ohio and ID's sectarian pseudoscience lost big.
The October vote in the Board of Education was 11-4, not 14-3. My fingers are cold! :)
This article was written in response to an earlier vote. I was not aware that there was a new one. However, the point still remains the same.
They are teaching both as far as I know.
Micro evolution - real observable evolution. Limited in its capability to changes species and form new ones, e.a. Fact
Macro evolution - grandious assumptions based on micro evolution, sometimes giving it super natural powers, e.a. Theory.
Secondly, the leadership never said evolution is false. This is another strawman arguement. It only states that evolution alone can not explain everything in biology. Basically saying, evolution has its limits.
If you have an alternative other than design, I'm sure Micheal Behe would love to hear about it. Design was chosen as explaination, because there is no other alternative yet. You might feel design is not a lousy explaination. but it sure beats the mystical primordial soup hypothesys. Between bad and worse, I choose bad. If Design is a lousy explaination, so is the big bang. like design, we do not know the why and how of the big bang, we only have the evidence that it most likely happened.
Once again, if you want to accuse ID of religious motivations, you have every right to feel warm and fuzzy inside. However, this is not a valid arguement, and it is simply false. As a scientific study, ID can only detect design in what it can study. Yes, there are philosophical debates about the religious meaning of ID, just as there is about darwinism, but the SCIENCE of ID do not get involved in that. This is simply an arguement to ignore the real arguements. Darwinists might well dismiss valid scientific critisisms with a wave of the hand, saying "Well discover the awnser in the future". This, however, is not good enough scientific evidence for me.
Furthermore, ID is not bashing darwinism because it can't explain the origin of life, it's bashing darwinism because it often CLAIM to be able to explain the origin of life. For this, they only have themselves to blame. Quite often, when presenting evolution to the general public, darwinists often makes grandious unsubstantiated claims and poetical conclusions, and even present "evidence" which has already been falsified by other darwinists. Darwinism is not limited to Darwins own words, but includes all the unsubstantiated grandious claims darwinists presented as "facts" for the last 150 years, many of which they themselves now reject, while inventing new grand ideas. Darwinists like to jump ahead with their ideas (represented as facts), thinking they know which why the evidence will eventually point to, only to have their ideas smashed later on. You see, we're not disputing evolution, we're disputing darwinism, which takes a very small biological phenomenon, evolution, and assign it godly abilities.
Lastly, I was not aware that scientific facts are based on democratic votes. We surely have returned to the dark ages when political and judicial decisions are used as valid arguements against scientific ideas.
I've came to this post to see if my support of ID is still justified, and whether darwinists have came up with some cold rational awnsers to ID. Instead, I found a bunch of darwinists "preaching to the converted (i.e. other darwinists)" with lousy arguements and false representations, making themselves feel better.
As you were, sorry for disturbing the peace.
If you want cold, rational answers, you're looking in the wrong place. Comment sections can't hold libraries full of molecular bio papers or evo-development textbooks.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be flippant. There are tons, and tons, and tons of concrete observations regarding evolution (and not just the "micro" kind, which is why biologists don't use that distinction). But you're not going to find them here, nor would I expect anyone to try and present them. It's way too difficult to water down literally a century and a half of research into a few paragraphs. The best we "darwinists" can hope to do in a place like this is refute a few specious arguments here and there.
Yes, you're right, certain observations have been replaced over time and refuted by other evolutionary biologists. That's science. We refine knoweldge and discredit old stuff as new info comes in.
The problem is that evolution is big. And slow. Which makes it hard to teach and explain. Gravity is easy - we can see it happen immediately. And you don't need to understand relativity or quantum theory to know intuitively that something physical is happening, even though the deep explanations do require that knoweldge. Evolution requires long spans of time and encompasses a lot of physical processes, which makes it intrinsically hard to grasp - and makes much simpler epistemological hand-waving like ID look really good.
Evolution is also harder to accept for a lot of people because it's not easy to observe firsthand. We don't often get to see speciation in action (although a few labs have) so it's very easy to just dismiss it all as an overly complex thought experiment. BUt that doesn't mean that second-hand knoweldge isn't just as important. The analogy I'm fond of is your great-great-great grandparents - you most likely never knew them firsthand, and can't firsthand prove that they existed - and yet you probably have a lot of secondary evidence that they existed (not the least of which is the fact that you exist). Evolution is the same way - there's a lot of observational and historical evidence, and more is coming along all the time.
I strongly dislike ID, as you might well notice, but not for the reasons you might think. Not because it's a challenge to evolution - frankly, I think any theory is up for a challenge, if it's a good one, that's how we learn new things. Moreso, because it's disingenuous. It uses science-ish language and the overall popular misunderstanding about what evolution is and how it works as a political tool. If more people actually were properly instructed on what evolution was all about and the basic principles (as opposed to the more-commonly taught "random changes made us from monkeys" which is wrong on many, many levels) I think there really wouldn't be an argument here. At its core, evolution by natural selection is a very elegant, simple explanation for the diversity of life around us.
The problem with ID though, is that its a "theory" made up of negative arguments. It doesn't really add anything to do the table of knowledge (i.e. no positive arguments) because you can't experiment with it. All ID "theory" is a bunch of negative arguments from the Evolution side (it just takes everything that goes against Evolution and groups it all together).
As far as the religious undertones, when you bring a creator or an Intelligent Designer into your "theory," that is the sole root of the religious undertones. It may not necessarily be the Christian religion, but I've found that in the United States, 99% of ID are in fact, Christian.
I'm not saying ID is wrong. I'm just saying that it has no place in the science classroom. It doesn't offer any breakthrough observable (from experiments) data, you surely can't reproduce it in a lab (without claiming that in the event that one did experiment it would prove that there is an Intelligent Designer because humans are intelligent and we've designed something), and its not falsifiable. If you want to include the bit about a Designer, you have to provide means to be able to attempt to prove that there isn't. But there's no negative arguments to ID because you have to first have positive arguments that the negative arguments correlates with.
Scientific fact is the observable data we collect in experiments and from the surrounding world. But observation subjected to perception. What is fact but a mere opinion that has been sterilized, tested, and cropped? If every answer is truly an examined theory, then facts are simply the more systematic, exercised forms of personal values.
Wow! I think you're taking it a little too...seriously? I'm not even going to argue about whether evolution is a fact or a theory cuz it depends on what your definition of evolution is. Anyway, I am not a creationist either, but I think you're takin it a lil over the top. no offense. ~pyrochica
Okay i was going to say alot of things but there are so many posts i doubt i can say anything new. Just one little thing i want to point out is in the beginging you said "falsifiable" and science "is the attempt to disprove theories." intelligence design is an attempt to disprove a theory it may or may not be a good one but by your definition does make the attempt and therefore can be considered science and used in that class room. plus there is never any harm in talking about stuff...so far both theories have not been proven. oh and there is that whole repeatability thing science like to have which nither theory can accomplish...okay enough of that have a nice week
Er, that's not *quite* right. Science is about having falsifiable theories, yes, but because one "theory" seeks to falsify another does not automatically give the second theory validity.
What it means is you could actually do tests or perform some sort of evidential observation to falsify a theory. And while ID does seek to falsify evolution, it by itself cannot be falsified because there is no observational or methodological way to rule out (or, for that matter, prove) the intervention of a super/extranatural force.
Because something is an attempt to disprove something doesn't necessarily give it equal validity. It additionally needs to give forth positive assertions of its own.
Amen to that.
but doesn't this cause the theory to be disqualified too since it cant be reproduced or measured...i knew i should not have said something that i have limited knowledge on i was just going off of what you said
That is a tough one, admittedly, but reproducability isn't a strict requirement. Well, it is, but...how do I explain this.
Um...okay, a theory needs evidence. If your theory is about something that happened in the past, you can reproduce your theoretical results by finding new, independent data that points to the same conclusions. Or, falsify it by finding evidence that disputes it.
Obviously, there are a lot of theories that, in order to validate directly and experimentally, would require impossibly long lifespans and resources beyond our grasp - theories of star formation, theories of geology, etc. The reason these theories persist as the best explanation is because a whole bunch of different people, working independently, come to similar or the same conclusions based on post-facto observational evidence. That's the "reproduction" part of science, not necesarily doing it twice in a lab. The Big Myth of science is that for something to be acceptable you have to watch it happen first hand in the lab. While that's nice and all, what you really need are conclusions that can be reproducably drawn independently from evidence - laboratory or otherwise. If everything needed strict laboratory experimentation, a lot of the science we've taken for granted for centuries wouldn't be possible. We wouldn't even be able to predict orbits of some planets, because nobody lives long enough to see them go all the way 'round.
The most public method for results-reproduction is peer review - you publish your theory and your evidence, and hundreds if not thousands of people look for holes in it. They might present evidence that contradicts your theory. If nobody finds a hole in it, it gets accepted until somebody else finds something new that might contradict it, or at the very least, amends it. This has happened with evolution a lot. There have been many thousands of small modifcations, updates, changes, to the theory of the mechanism, although lots of people have independently found evidence, from paleological to genetic, that supports the basic premise of natural selection.
ID comes along and says "it's all wrong, because we don't know the following things..." That's not a theory, that's just an argument, albiet an interesting philosophical one...but it's also one for which there can never be any evidentiary basis because you need something beyond natural evidence to make it happen. Even if it's true, we've got no way of ever finding any real positive evidence to support it (at least none that don't push back the question "where did the deisgner come from?). Yes, it's true we don't know everything about a lot of the gaps in evolutionary theory. But that doesn't preclude those holes from being filled in at a later date as new evidence is uncovered - the theory of evolution is evolving, it is not an endpoint in itself.
Nulldevice beat me to the answer about measuring evolution. But there is another reason to reject ID as a scientific theory. Theories are useful because they explain many otherwise unconnected facts. But, beyond that, the ultimate uses of a scientific theory are to point the way toward further investigations and to control nature in some way.
Intelligent design concerns itself only with a binary choice: Was a particular feature (blood clotting, bacterial flagellum, etc.) designed, or not? There is no follow-on. If something was designed, end of story. IDers insist that they have nothing to say about the designer or about the designs. So what benefits does ID get you? Absolutely none. Evolution and Darwin's theory, on the other hand, might tell you things such as how bird flu might get around to letting humans infect other humans directly, or which species we should look at for a possible cure for hemophilia, or how climate change might affect the ecology.
ID has never come up with---or even planned---any research program. Several years ago, the Templeton Foundation gave the Discovery Institute several megabucks specifically for scientific research. They yanked the money the following year, because DI was never able even to come up with a plan for conducting any research that might qualify as "scientific."
"Replicability" - the ability to replicate (or reproduce) :)
so basically they both may or may not be right or they both could be the end point is ID is not science only an intresting refute? I think it should be briefly mentioned to taller students(ie high schoolers and up) so they can go find out more and come to there own...we had a discussion period in my bio class on it was intresting and refresahing i only wish i could remeber more about...thanks for the explantions people i now understand
" The problem with ID though, is that its a "theory" made up of negative arguments. It doesn't really add anything to do the table of knowledge (i.e. no positive arguments) because you can't experiment with it. All ID "theory" is a bunch of negative arguments from the Evolution side (it just takes everything that goes against Evolution and groups it all together)."
Ususally in science, when you have empirical evidence against a theory, it's called "falsification". In the case of ID, it is reduced to "Negative arguements". Also, ID provide compelling arguements in favour of design, without making any assumptions about the designer, as that is beyond the scope of science.
Secondly, ID can actually PROMOTE biological knowledge. Way too often have I seen darwinists point to "useless evolutionary leftovers" and "poor designs", only to be refuted later on, when it is discovered that the so called "evolutionary leftover" have a well defined function. I believe a scientist who believes in ID has a greater chance of discovering the biological functions of organs, than a darwinist who is more concerned with finding "useless evolutionary leftovers" in order to support the "bad design" arguement.
Thirdly, a large black market trade in falsified fossils exist in the world today. Why? Because darwinists do not follow the evidence like good scientists, instead they're looking for evidence that fits their theory. Some of these fossils got published in respecable, peer reviewed scientific journals, only to be embarrased weeks later when the fraud is discovered. Now I have to ask myself, is there any value in a peer review system where the "peers" are biased about what the outcome should be? The same people who so uncrittically accepted this fraud that fits the theory, would set impossible high standards for ID scientists, only to use the peer review arguement against them later on. That's like saying "ID is not science, because we says so".
"As far as the religious undertones, when you bring a creator or an Intelligent Designer into your "theory," that is the sole root of the religious undertones. It may not necessarily be the Christian religion, but I've found that in the United States, 99% of ID are in fact, Christian."
This arguement is lame. A large percentage of people who left Christianity, did so because of Darwinism. Richard Dawkins makes no secret of his theological agenda in science, and yet, his atheistic motivations is no basis for discrediting his theories. ID do not use his atheist believes as a basis to attack his theories, but Darwinists use the theistic views of ID scientists to attack their theories. In fact many leaders in ID are not supporting ID because their religion led their scienctific believes, but because their science has led their religious believes. It is a logical conclusion that if science points to a designer, you are likely to believe in one. That is, if you are open minded. You get commited atheists who would rather propose outlandish, unsuported hypothesis (which is just as impossible to falsify as any religion), than to just accept the evidence. If ID made reference to religious texts to back up its claims, the arguements against ID would've been valid, and it would not have been science. But if you reject empirical evidence, just because you don't like the conclusion, that is not science either.
"I'm not saying ID is wrong. I'm just saying that it has no place in the science classroom. "
It most certainly does belong in the science classroom, as it only deals with empirical evidence. This rejecting of ID because of its theistic conclusion is similar to the church farthers who refused to look through Galileo's "Satanic device".
"It doesn't offer any breakthrough observable (from experiments) data" - Same applies for darwinist macro evolution. When James Gould came up with "Puntuated equilibrium" - which is the most laughable idea ever to be seriously considered by darwinists - he effectively admitted the evidence does not fit the darwinist theory. How much more do you need before it's falsified??? If this is not a religious commitment to darwinism, I don't know what is. Religion does not need to have a "god" in it to be religious. Look at monism!
"you surely can't reproduce it in a lab" - Same applies for darwinist macro evolution.
"...and its not falsifiable" - on the contrary! Darwinism is unfalsifyable. Whenever evidence is provided to falsify darwinism, some excuse is thought out later to save it, just to be falsified again later on. They much rather entertain ideas like "puntuated equilibrium" - which has no empirical evidence, than to simply follow the evidence where it leads. ID on the other hand, can be falsified. You simply need to demonstrate that the odds for the object in dispute to form naturally without intelligent intervention, is high. However, the more we learn about nature, the more the objective person will realise that naturalism falls short as an explaination of origins. Although the focus is primarily in biology, ID is also detectable in other sciences.
"But there's no negative arguments to ID because you have to first have positive arguments that the negative arguments correlates with." - You say this because your source of information about id are darwinists, instead of ID proponents. If you got your information first hand from the ID people themselves, you would know that they do offer positive design arguements.
"Scientific fact is the observable data we collect in experiments and from the surrounding world. But observation subjected to perception. What is fact but a mere opinion that has been sterilized, tested, and cropped? If every answer is truly an examined theory, then facts are simply the more systematic, exercised forms of personal values." The one scientist makes a discovery, and to him, that is proof of naturalism. The other scientist makes a discovery, and to him, that is proof of God. It is true that metaphysicas can not be falsified. However, when you take a look at how fine tuned the universe is to allow for life, how increadibly complex and well designed life is, naturalistic explainations fall short. Even atheists express their disgust that the universe appears to be designed. Naturalists make many attempts to explain the the increadable odds against life forming naturally, and I can't falsify it, as it falls in the realm of metaphysics, not science.
My point is not to convince you of ID. You need to evaluate ID on its own merrits, and decide for yourself. My point is, the assesment of ID in this article is bias, unfair, inaccurate and just plain false. Anyone who has read a single book on ID can see that this article, as most articles against ID, is nothing more than an unfounded smear campaign. Darwinists has been fighting creationists for so long, they are no longer capable of seeing the difference between religious objections and scientific objections. If Darwinism is science, and ID is not, darwinists has nothing to fear. However, ID has the very real potensial to overthrough Darwinism on scientific ground, and people's reputation is on the line. The debate against ID has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with dirty politics
I must say that is the best argument for ID that I've ever come across.
However, there's one part that in there that I don't understand. Although I'm an atheist (agnostic in nature though - I don't believe in a god simply because I don't have proof of existance. I lack faith, the key component of any religion), I think science and religion can work together. I think its logical for religious, theist folks to believe that science is the method of their god's work, the 'how he does things' bit.
There's no direct proof of Intelligent Design. There's no identifiable creature that is 100% certain that it did not result from evolution, macro or otherwise. In the case of humans, its completely philosophical. Intelligent Design is philosophical. It belongs in a philosophy class, not the science classroom. Evolution (both macro and micro) have been observed and recorded throughout history. There's biological proof that evolution occurs. Cold, hard evidence.
Again, I'm not saying ID is wrong. I'm not saying it shouldn't be taught (from an objective standpoint). It just doesn't belong in the science classroom... yet. Its the new kid on the block; let it pick up some new tricks and scientific proof before its taught in a science class.
"Inherit the Wind" is a really good book about all this. =)
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. --Jimi Hendrix