Intelligent Design...
 

There is an argument going on in America's schools; it is not about class size, nor about teachers pay, it is about the theory of evolution. Many of the religious conservative right don't believe in the theory of evolution, nor the idea that they may have evolved from apes. Now in fairness to them, they may not have, after all their very belief suggests that they are still thinking like they have a monkey brain and show little signs that they actually did evolve. Most intelligent life accepts the idea that all things evolve including mankind, in our case most recently from apes. The religious fanatics want schools to mention the idea of intelligent design when teaching the theory of evolution. Intelligent design is a rewrite of creationism, proposing that the universe with all its complexities would have to have been designed from an intelligent higher power. The religious right wants intelligent design mentioned in school classes. Since religion cannot be taught in public schools, they spray painted creationism a little and came up with intelligent design, a newer, more colorful version of God and religion that they want to sneak into science class. Unfortunately for them science requires more than an idea but some science behind it to actually be science. The idea that everything comes from an intelligent design is actually an intelligent design to ram religion into schools under a false pretense. The false pretense that there is science to the intelligent design premise however they show no facts or studies on which to base the premise of intelligent design. The only thing to support their belief of intelligent design is faith and as we all know faith is a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence, something that science does. Hence intelligent design is not something to be taught in public schools...

Since the government and the courts have come to the understanding that public schools should not teach about God and or religion. The teaching of intelligent design or the belief that the universe, the Earth and everything on it including each of us were designed from an intelligent higher power could only be taught if that intelligent higher power was not God. That would mean that should they allow schools to teach intelligent design, they would have to teach that the universe, the Earth and everything on it including each of us were designed by a highly intelligent alien life form. Now there is no proof to back that idea up but if they dig around on Mars and find some ancient ruins under all that red dust, they just may find some proof of where we came from and then I may too be for teaching intelligent design. As Mr. Spock might say, the idea that man's roots may have originated from Mars would then be a logical conclusion. The religious right may not like the thought but we may be the intelligent design of the Martian race. One man's God is another life form's scientist...

in other news...


Volcano erupts on Galapagos island

Last Modified: 24 Oct 2005
Source: ITN

The 1,500-metre (4,920-feet) Sierra Negra volcano has begun to erupt on Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands.

The volcano began erupting on Saturday afternoon, producing three lava flows, according to officials from the Galapagos National Park.

Television images show the massive lava flows, although it has not yet been determined whether the island's plant and animal life have been affected.

The famous Galapagos tortoises, some of which have a lifespan of more than 150 years, favour habitats that lie close to volcano craters.

The island is part of an archipelago, located 625 miles off the coast of Ecuador, that is home to a uniquely rich biodiversity and which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

The unique natural wildlife there, which includes marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies, inspired Charles Darwin to come up with his theory of evolution.

Ch4

And so the bong sucking monkey molester takes another piss in someone else's thread.



I suppose peeing into your own mouth gets boring after awhile.

Only if he ignored the vast amount of evidence that life originated and evolved on earth. Spock would never be so prejudiced and irrational. :no:

:bdance: :bdance: :bdance: :bdance: :bdance:


Intelligent Design...


:PE: :PE: :PE: :PE: :PE: :love:

Well, Intelligent Design is simply the newest name for a very old theory, one which predates the theory of evolution by many centuries.

In philosophy this theory is better known as Teleology and it dates back to Plato.

We're often told that the Charles Darwin's studies of the natural world were his masterpiece, yet we rarely hear that those studies directly challenged his religious faith in God's existence. As a scientist he probably didn't feel it appropriate to color his studies with his preconceptions of God. He managed to be a very impartial and observent scientist, and though personal tragedies stripped him of his faith in God he never did claim that God didn't exist. For all the evidence he found for evolution, he never managed to prove it, and nobody has managed to disprove it either.

In my opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching Intelligent Design in schools because it deals directly with reasoning and faith, not necessarily religion and God. Science is part of it, but it has its place in philosophy and history classes as well. The great thing about all the many sciences is that there are no artificial limits placed on them. Any theory, no matter how absurd or seemingly obvious, can be tested, and those test results can be published to be reviewed by other scientists. And the great thing about America is that there are so damn many scientists that nearly every theory can be thoroughly tested and reviewed. The scientific method simply works, and school curriculums should be equally inclusive and objective. We shouldn't be excluding some ideas just because of some irrational fear that students might somehow turn into religious zealots. Teach every idea, and from there let the students figure out their own belief systems.

Students should be taught to think, not believe.


I'll have to check on your claims about Darwin's life. He lived in a time when wise men held their tongues when they could rouse the ire of the yet powerful religious elite and end their careers. I suspect you're once again creating your own version of history.


Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...ws_on_religion

On return, while developing his theory of natural selection he came to think that the religious instinct had evolved with society and gradually lost his belief in the Bible. With the death of his daughter Annie, Darwin finally lost all faith in a beneficent God and saw Christianity as futile. He continued to give support to the local church and help with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church.

Geez, you're fast albed. I reread the wikipedia article and realized I might be wrong. Before I had a chance to edit my post you had already replied. :eke: That's the passage I found too, you just didn't give me time to double check myself. ;)

And to your other comment I would say that students should be taught to believe without being taught what to believe, just as students should be taught to think without being taught what to think. Faith is every bit as important as knowledge.

Lucky timing...or unlucky, you know how I am with you and your versions of history.

Completely absurd. How in the world would you go about doing that?

A favorite teacher of mine once told our class that we should be passionate about something, whether it's learning or athletics or politics or family or whatever. What's important, he said, isn't what you're passionate about but that you have passion. It was a short little speech and he only gave it a couple of times, but it stuck with me as it probably did with many other students.

Belief and passion go hand in hand, though of course I know they aren't the same thing. Really you don't have to teach people to believe in things, for the most part everyone already has beliefs. But I think teachers should make it clear that faith is the right of every human being, that beliefs are personal, and that they cannot be forced upon others. It's a very simple concept, albed.

you can hardly talk about pissing in 'someone else's ' thread dipsh1t..

Is this your version of explaining yourself, just switching from one pronouncement to another without noticing the contradiction?

All you seem able to do is believe things without understanding them. You can't explain what you believe or why you believe it, and you can't know if what you believe is true or not because you just don't understand; though I doubt that you really care. You just seem to adopt whatever belief you've been told instead of figuring out for yourself what the truth is.

So belief for you and many others is just a poor substitute for understanding and teaching students to believe instead of understand simply ensures that they will be unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood and so will be easily manipulated by those who tell them what to believe.

What a perfect statement to demonstrate your belief in a falsehood with no understanding at all of how absurd it is. Do you think you could survive for any time at all without knowledge of how to obtain food, water, shelter, etc.? Can you explain how faith is in any way necessary for survival or any aspect of modern living?

But somebody told you to believe that, and lacking the ability to understand, that is all you can do.

As long as I've been coming here, I've been watching you for for signs of phylogenesis. Have you ever said anything that might suggest you're on the path to higher intelligence?

You're like a germ, always looking for something to attach yourself to because you can't make it on your own and should be isolated in a Petri dish, locked away in deep freeze.

Sorry to the rest about getting off topic but contempt breeds contempt.

So now you're trying to tell me what my beliefs are? Do you really know these things about me or do you just believe them? Might I point out that your opinion that belief is absurd is also just a belief?

People don't simply believe the things they're told, albed. Skepticism is a time honored tradation among philosophers and scientists. If most people rejected their own original ideas and believed only what they were told then philosophy and science would still be known as heresy and witchcraft. People have to have enough faith in their own faculties of logic and observation to go out on a limb and challenge the beliefs of others. albed, my friend, you have that kind of faith in spades, but so far it hasn't done you any good in this discussion. You obviously disagree with me, but you haven't used any sort of logic to prove your belief.

teach intelligent design anyway you want, just don't teach it as science. since it is not observable, predictable, or testable, it has no place as theory in a science class.

Intelligent Design is precisely as observable, predictable, and testable as Natural Selection. There is evidence for both and there is proof for neither. Both should be taught as case studies in the difference between scientific fact and theory.

you're on: cite any published accredited scientific experiment where intelligent design (i.e.the presence of a higher, and therefore superhuman, power) has been observed, tested, and/or successfully predicted.

Show me proof of speciation and I'll see what I can come up with.

This should get good. A liberal using facts and logic to convince a religious adherent to believe something that's against his religion.

And with you to moderate this debate, albed, it should be pretty wild. :BL:

And to clarify, I don't believe in Intelligent Design either, but I think it's silly to test just one theory and not all of them. Good science is never so selective or prejudiced.

Lol. I don't moderate, I incite.

Liberalism vs. Superstitionism. Which is more out of touch with reality?

Whales would be a great example of evolution since they've changed so radically from land animals to marine mammals. And of course liberals love whales.

Genesis on the other hand - creating man out of dust and spittle - how could anyone think that's absurd?

i'm not trying to make a case for evolution - i'm just saying that intelligent design is not science and has no place in science class. you say it does...so where are the facts that would validate it as a scientific theory??

In that case, I don't have to cite a scientific experement on ID in order to prove that it is a theory. To do that I only have to cite the common definition of theory.

Wikipedia has an extensive article in which it states:
Observable facts supporting the theory of ID include the Watchmaker Analogy I cited earlier as well as the Teleological Argument. These facts are flimsy, I agree, but ID barely qualifies as theory under this definition.

The article later states, "Claims such as intelligent design and homeopathy are not scientific theories, but pseudoscience," but then the article contradicts itself when it describes two types of theory:
ID is mostly conjecture, and evolution is definitly hypothesis. Both qualify as theories under this definition.

Now I'm not suggesting that ID and evolution get equal time in classrooms, lets be reasonable. Evolution is a complex theory and has matured greatly over the past 150 years, while Intelligent Design is simplistic and hasn't evolved much over the past two millennia. More attention should be paid to those theories for which good tests can be devised, and the other theories that are yet untestable or otherwise falsified should get nothing more than an honorable mention. This is, after all, how we learn about such things as Newton's laws of motion, the four elements of nature, how people thought the earth was flat, alchemy, eugenics, etc. These things are taught in school all the time, and some things like Newtoinan mechanics are taught in great detail. If they don't belong in a science class then they're still important as history, but that's for the school boards and the teachers to decide among themselves. I just don't like the idea of excluding a concept from a curriculum just because some people don't like it (yes, I think those people who banned evolution lessons from their schools were a bunch of wackos).

FOUL--An analogy isn't a fact. An argument also isn't a fact. --Deceptive snowjob--repeat the post.

Alright, observations then. I don't have to repeat everything.

Does theknife get a penalty shot?

No. You got to repeat the play and come up with a fact supporting Intelligent Design but you failed to make a completion so knife wins.


ID was just conjured up without any scientific basis at all, only the premise that life is complicated so god must have made it. Little different from an old theological argument that since everything exists then god also exists because everything had to be made by someone.


Knowledge has increased considerably along with the freedom to communicate it since the days when religious authorities had a chain and a pile of firewood for the people who dared to openly disagree with them. But a resurgence of superstition in society can once again stall mankinds progress in understanding the universe.

Well alright. I admit that I know much less about ID than evolution, I'm not a very good devil's advocate but I tried.

Complex is the word people use to describe the universe, not complicated. It's the idea that no matter how random a natural phenomenon may first appear, if you study it thoroughly enough you'll eventually be able devise a logical or mathamatic way to describe it. Then you might realize that almost nothing in nature is random, it's simply chaotic. If follows that if natural phenomena are not random accidents then the universe itself is not a random accident.

But then along comes man with his free will, mucking up natural selection by creating civilization. Complexity may or may not be of God's design, depending on who you ask, but life's complications are our own doing.

once you call ID by it's true name - creationism - it becomes pretty clear where it does and doesn't belong.

In Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argued that science is ruled by paradigms, worldviews that fit the available knowledge and according to which scientists operate. But intelligent design is not part of any current scientific paradigm, and besides a few fringe elements, no serious evolutionary biologists accept it. Moreover, it is hard to call ID an emerging scientific paradigm when its leading proponent is a University of California, Berkeley law professor, Phillip E. Johnson, who is not a scientist at all...

The only scientific theory of life's origins thus far is the theory of evolution. ID may have a genuine role to play in the classrooms of philosophers or comparative theologians, but it certainly does not belong in the science lab. If creationists want to have their views taught, they must first meet the biggest challenge in history: proving the existence of God...

That's not a challenge it's a game. Or it used to be. Christianity has gradually changed the 'properties' it attributed to god as science and logic advanced and philosophers used those claimed properties to show there was no god. So the existance of god using the present attributes of modern religion - that he has absolutely no physical effect on anything - is throughly unprovable.

some people feel that there is a wider range of possibilities than just evolution or ID. certainly these should get equal classroom time as well, no?

indeed, one has only to read this letter to feel the touch of His Noodly Appendage.

Churches Celebrate Darwin`s Birthday

NEW YORK, NY, United States (UPI) -- Nearly 450 Christian churches in the United States are celebrating the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin Sunday.

The churches say Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science, the Chicago Tribune reported.

'It`s to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don`t have to make that choice. You can have both,' said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who organized the 'Evolution Sunday' event.

A variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches, are participating in the event, which grew out of Zimmerman`s The Clergy Letter Project, another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive, the newspaper said.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1096932.php/Churches_celebrate_Darwin`s_birthday

This is an important question...
 

Which are worse ~

preachers

or

teachers?