Yes, the religious types are at it again:


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.

What are your views? The Americans are advocating ID be taught alongside evolution in schools, just like creationism all that time ago - I can pick out fundamental flaws in the explanation presented above just by reading through it.

For a start, ID is not scientific, it is metaphysical, or rather pseudoscience - it relies on debunking all the other theories with the logical conclusion that if all the other theories are rubbish ID is the only one left and therefore everyone must believe in it. This is not science. It's one of the reasons why Creationism was laughed out of the laboratories - though ID does have an advantage over creationism in that it at least *pretends* to be science, being couched in scientific terms and not waving the Bible around to back up every single argument that it makes.

However, they are still resorting to the old Creationist tactics, such as targeting the less scientifically-minded public instead of mainstream scientific circles in order to get their theories accepted. The US state Kansas opting to teach it did not come as a surprise, but what is sad is the fact that President Bush has actually advocated teaching this fundamentally useless theory alongside evolution in schools.

In a way, what's worse about ID compared with creationist "science" is the fact that it does not outrightly claim to be a Christian-orientated movement. They say that their arguments do not imply a divine designer, merely that there is empirical (right under your nose) evidence that design exists in certain aspects of the biological world. In this way they are able to get around the Congress ruling that creationism is a religious belief and should not be taught in schools as it crosses the separation line between Church and State. Rather sneaky really.

There are other flaws in the Intelligent Design argument as well, but I wanna leave SOME room for discussion here so I'll let you clever people do some research XD

To sum up:

In my opinion Intelligent Design is a downright sneaky repackaging of Creationist theory and should NOT be taught in schools as a VALID theory (we were taught about Creationism, but only that it's a most laughable load of bullshit and our job was to find out why - it didn't take long ;)) as it discourages further investigation of how things came to be (I mean, "God said so" is one of the biggest turn-offs!)

Opinions please!

I agree with you maz but I would also like to point out that you cannot really teach this alongside evolution in schools. The two theories contradict each other. School is hard enough for children even when you aren't trying to tear their heads in two.

Well, I think they should be mentioned, but not as valid theories - students need to be open to the fact that there are other theories out there and more than one side to any argument, provided that it is also explained why these other theories are a pile of crap XD After all, evolution by natural selection is just a theory, as all those Intelligent Design types love to harp on, but the difference between it and the other theories out there is that it has an absolute heapload of scientific experiments and empirical evidence to back it up, whereas Intelligent Design doesn't, ditto Creationist Theory.

Mentioned yes but deffinately not taught. It is useless and stupid to try and teach contradictory theories.

Particularly when they suck XD

But there isn't really much empirical evidence about natural selection either. It's just a bunch of hypotheses founded on discovered fossils and such, and it is us (Darwin, Lamarck, whoever :\ )who do the linking to make it sound logical.I'm not like in full support for ID or something, but I think we should be open-minded and not strike it off as total crap, simply because it doesn't have any evidence backing it up. It's something like the ancients scoffing at philosophers who declare they think the Earth to be round, but don't have evidence to show for it. :P

For the teaching part, yea i think it should be taught for exposing the kids to various theories. But it should stay as that; just the plain laying down of facts and principles of various theories, and it should be up to the kids to make their own stand. Like maybe they can hold a class debate or discussion or something. I don't think education should be about telling the kids what to think, on the basis of what the educators think is wrong or right, when there isn't concrete evidence that it's definitely wrong.

IMO, comparing Intelligent Design with the Darwinian Theory of Evolution isn't fair; mostly, because they're not doing the same things. Whether there are alternative interpretations or not, you can demonstrate principles like natural selection. You can point out flaws and look to improve on the theories (which has happened; genetics has lead to huge advances). It's a process of trying to understand more and more.

Intelligent Design is a dead end, as far as the scientific method is concerned. I've never seen a definition of "design", or a description of the designer. Whether there is a designer or not is largly irrelevant to the data, and to how the world works. Assuming there is an intelligent design in the world, how are we going to understand it?

This is actually a philosophical debate, not a scientific one. It's another instance of Naturalisms (I have eyes and in consequence I see) vs. Teleology (I have eyes in order to see).

Within the framework of science, Intelligent Design is meaningless, IMO. I simply can't think of a way to describe the "designer" without recourse to the "design", as observed, since everything is supposed to be an expression of said design. In other words, an empirical method is inherently blind to the "designer". This is not saying that there isn't some kind of intelligent design in the world, only, that science has no way of proving or disproving this; an so it would be better off ignoring it. Asking science whether there is "intelligent design" in the world, is like asking a hammer whether I should drive a nail into the wall. Science hasn't been designed with that kind of question in mind. (Which doesn't mean scientists don't ask them. They do. The Multiple World explanation of quantum behaviour is an example of this kind of thinking; not science, but a philosophical interpratation of scientific theories that appear to make no sense, although they yield results.)

***

Anyone here read Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels? There's this inventor, called Bloody Stupid Johnson; he's renowned for inventing lots of stuff that doesn't work. Word is, that if one of his inventions do work it's probably been meant to be something else entirely.

My question is this: Assuming there is design; how do you tell the world is what it's meant to be? How do you tell, there is no "flaw" in the design? How do you tell, there is no mistake in it's implementation? If you can't ask Bloody Stupid Johnson what he wanted to make, how are you going to determine if he was successful, or not?

***

Have you ever wondered about how hard it is to come up with something that is entirely useless? A lot of things could be used as a paper weight or a door stop, if not for nothing else.

Personally, I think seeing Intelligent Design in the world is confusing the method with which we make sense of the world with the world itself. But who knows... I've written a story (http://www.sffworld.com/community/story/14p0.html) that's relavant in that respect, I think.

My avatar and signature set are created from the idea of intelligent design.
http://www.venganza.org/

An excellent reason why so-called "Intelligent Design" doesn't work. (http://www.idrewthis.org/2005/intelligentdesign.html)

Also, what makes the ID-ers think that God (http://photos1.blogger.com/img/58/3375/640/GOD.jpg) drew up the blueprints??? I could make the *equally* valid case that it was Aliens (http://www.myinterests.com/images/aliens/astroalien2.gif) who "designed" us and put us on Earth. (The so-called "'Founders' theory".) But somehow I think that they would howl in protest if I tried to demand that it be taught in our schools... <_<

There's no proof for ID, so it can't be a theory. It's only a hypothesis. Natural selection, however, is a theory with evidence to back it up. No competition there.

watch it, not everybody believes that creationism is a joke

Oh well, but this is just a discussion. :\

watch it, not everybody believes that creationism is a joke

Sure, not everybody believes it - go to Kansas and you'll be able to find half a dozen people who believe it's the gospel truth. But there's no denying the fact that Creationist Scientists ignore LARGE parts of the Bible when putting forward their ideas based upon the same text. If you're presenting a text as being the definitive authority on something then you can't just pretend large parts of it aren't really there. That's what makes it a joke - they try to pretend that it's science when it's nothing more than a religious belief. I don't have a problem with religious beliefs, but I do have problem with them pretending to be scientific fact.

watch it, not everybody believes that creationism is a joke
i dont think its a joke, but i do find it highly implasuable considering even dasic ideas of genetics, we should have died of lack of genetic variation by now.

I say, if we're the result of Intelligent Design then why do we have so many physical flaws? Our bodies are so far away from being perfect.

watch it, not everybody believes that creationism is a joke
Nobody said it's a joke. It's an uneducated, unproven guess. Why anyone would want to introduce uneducated, unproven guesses into the education system is beyond me.

Exactly. Not to mention not everyone believes in God, and so if they taught it in school, then it would offend those who aren't of that ID religion. I mean, why would you teach intelligent design in school? It's entirely religion-based. And the people that are not religious? This would be of no meaning to them. And it does bring religion into school. If you want to learn about intelligent design, go to church. School should teach evolution, and churches should teach intelligent design. That is the way it goes. It is incredibly ridiculous for people to learn things that do not concern them. Religion and school should be two separate things. You do not teach science in church, so obviously, the conclusion would be you do not teach religion in science! It is so obvious that I practically scoff upon this debate. Not to mention science is not about supernatural beings. They don't teach about demons or angels or anything, so therefore, God should not be an exception.

And in the first page, on the philosophers that said the Earth was round, there WAS evidence that backed it up, not then, but in the future. And I don't think that in the future, there will be evidence to prove God is real.

Wouldn't it be more productive to compare intelligent design and the big bang theory? Evolution isn't about the creation of life, it's about... well, the evolution of life, and how it has changed. Rather, shouldn't we talk about the notion of an intelligent being creating the earth and (perhaps basic) forms of life compared to lightning striking a pond and synthesising life?
It seems like evolution is in a different group than ID would be?

Wouldn't it be more productive to compare intelligent design and the big bang theory? Evolution isn't about the creation of life, it's about... well, the evolution of life, and how it has changed. Rather, shouldn't we talk about the notion of an intelligent being creating the earth and (perhaps basic) forms of life compared to lightning striking a pond and synthesising life?
It seems like evolution is in a different group than ID would be?

Creation is about whether or not things come to be (and why). This is a different idea from "design", which is about how things are (and why).

So one could technically be a creationist and still believe in evolution, then, but could one believe in the Big Bang theory and still believe in Intelligent Design?

but could one believe in the Big Bang theory and still believe in Intelligent Design?

Well, as far as heard (but I'm not an expert) some proponents of ID put forth that life on Earth has been designed by aliens. (IMO, this doesn't answer any question, it just displaces it.) All you need for ID is a "shaper".

Finally, you could posit ID as a "principle", in that it's not the product of a designer but an intrinsic quality of the universe. (I've heard interpretations of consciousness that state consciouness is the universe observing itself, for example.) Teleology at its purest.

I find THIS (http://qwantz.com/comics/comic2-676.png) comic to contain relevance!