Moved to this place for anyone interested.

Cher

I won't be commenting on that citation in this forum.

I will ... sadly the Loud Lunkheads that give our dopey/evil politicians permission to drive misguided policies will never, ever understand how awful ID is on every imaginable level.

I'm with Keith. I'm backing away from this one.

I disagree.

You've got to be kidding me.

Religion is one thing, but completely disregarding mountains of legitimate scientific evidence and keeping it from our children is disgusting.

No one mentioned doing this. Where do you arrive at this conclusion?

With what, specifically?

With this:

Okay, according to debate rules, you have two options:

1) You can ask Fred to clarify what meant specifically. What does he mean by "aweful" and what are the "imaginable levels?" How do they conflict with ID?

2) You can opt to interpret what he's said based on what you know of him and your conversations over this issue, and answer directly the "what" that you disagree with. Your argument is a disagreement with a negative statement. Your job in the debate thus is to give the positive correlaries to the negative.

Good luck. It'd be nice to see a well-thought out debate about this issue on the board.

I'm not sure what "awful at every level" really means, and there also seems to be some confusion about what ID actually entails. I certainly have no problems with the belief that there is an intelligence at the root of all nature, although I do not personally believe it is a prerequisite for science as has been argued by authors cited in the orchard because (again) I believe our cognition has evolved specifically to "make sense" of those aspects of the world we interact with to survive, including other humans. I do not see the logical necessity of God in the fact that we perceive order in the everyday world, and clearly this sense of order becomes more tenuous as we explore physics at the subatomic or intergalactic levels which are in a sense "unnatural" territory for us. Personally, I don't have such faith in science nor our limited imaginations to think we will ever fully understand how everything "actually" works, although we can construct increasingly sophisticated and reliable human-compatible cognitive models to help us grasp reality in our own crude and limited way. But I personally think if there is a God and he has a plan, we are not built to really comprehend it.

But anyway, I digress. Whether one is scientifically inclined or not, believing there is a deity behind all this seems perfectly reasonable to me (if not logically necessary), so to believe in intelligent design in a general sense is a matter of faith. Intelligent Design "theory", however, merely postulates (and I believe quite erroneously) that evolution cannot explain the complexity we observe in modern animals, without offering any real alternative explanation (other than "God made them" from those ID theorists who are religiously inclined). Therefore I think that teaching it with the status of a legitimate scientific theory dangerously undermines sound principles of education.

A satirical and all-too-appropriate analogy appeared in a recent issue of The Onion, which Cher cited yesterday in the CJ forum.

Well, let's face it. Everyone wants control over our children. If we can't agree on anytyhing else, let's say that christians, muslims, pagans, agnostics, madison avenue, philip morris, citibank, yada yada bing-bong... EVERYONE wants a piece of the pie--and getting into the minds of the kids is the means to everyone's end.

So this is not just a religious matter, this is an EVERYTHING matter. No one group will ever proliferate without getting the support of the next generation. We know this now, and the ACLU knew it in 1925. So for that matter, ID is not just one isolated example, it's one of many in which a group (in this case christians) is seeking to get a foothold in our schools.

Personally, I think that teaching ID (I didn't know it was called ID until yesterday) number one, doesn't necessarily mean it's in direct oposition to the big bang theory, so it doesn't have to mean it's in competition with it, and number two, the biggest argument that I see people having with this theory is that it's christian rooted.

So, given the fact that christianity is being removed from our schools (as are all belief structures that make children grow up to be hard to control) I can't see how this will ever get anywhere. GWB is using his own personal clout to further a cause he believes in: fundamental christianity. Now, why he believes in FC, is another story, but after is all said and done, he feels the need to push the envelope. And again, IMHO, I don't believe that he expects this to get anywhere either. I think this is all just a dog and pony show for his "constituents" benefit.

But be that as it may, being the FC that I am, I have to come to the soapbox and show my support of ID and say all the things that a good christian should...

Bottom line, ID is not bad in and of itself, it's just one group's belief structure being foisted upon the children in hopes that it will stick.

Does this sound cynical? I'm really trying not to sound cynical.

I disagree; I think it's bad science and bad theology. And as a Christian person, my objection to it is more that it's a half-baked theory promoted by marketers, liars and charlatans than that it's (only very loosly) connected to Christianity.

Wait, isn't this (in a nut shell) creation theory?

The whole point of ID is to avoid identifying the "designer." This is one reason that the whole exercise seem so sneaky. Almost everyone associated with the leadership at the Discovery Institute (the main proponents of ID) and those creating the textual propoganda are, overwhelmingly, fundamentalist or evangelical Christian. Yet they know that if they identify the designer as the Chistian god that they will never get it into school, especially after Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). And it is a marketing campaign. You identified that correctly, which is another cause for the smarminess associated with ID. Just check out the DI's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture Wedge Strategy.

The other main reason for the smarminess is that, rather than submit to the methodologies of science, they try to win the science game by appealing directly to the most vulnerable portion of our society, the portion least equipped to be able to identify and respond to arguments critically.

If people want to believe in god and accept evolution, I have no problem with that. It is theoretically possible that god exists and evolution and its features are the mechanism used by that entity. But that is not what ID is about.

Nice response Mark. I don't agree with much of it, but I think you articulated your point of view very well.

Anna,

I said it was "only very loosely connected with Christianity" because the ideas it promotes are only loosely Christian, not because I've been snowed by the Discovery Institute.

DustyVolume,

ID is not simply belief that God made things. It's a specific ideology making specific truith-claims based on specific evidence ( or lack thereof). I'm not arguing with the idea that God made stuff, but just with the idea that ID is either good science or good theology. It's bad science because it functions by constantly whining about the rules that make science what it is -- it'd be very like if I complained and complained that eustace-numbers was being discriminated against as a theory of numbers in favor of mathematics, and then backed my statement up with the fact that I was derided when I claimed 2+2=5. ID is largely a political movement; almost all of its goals are centered around political and ideological agendas, not around the desire for the truth or for knwoledge of how the world works.

Wow, Maybe I should post more with two beers under my belt!

Well, in lieu of writing another response, I'm going to watch Rock Star INXS! See ya later!

Thank GOD. Eh, so to speak.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/20/intellig...sign/index.html

I heard this on NPR yesterday morning. I suppose he'll be villified for making a very fair judgement in my opinion.

Cher

Not so fast with the cynicism, Cher. You should check out what he wrote in his opinion. It is scathing and honest. It's a beautiful thing. That alone is cause for cheer. The affect of the ruling itself is icing.