Intelligent Design Ruled "Not Science" 1497
blane.bramble writes "The Register is reporting that the UK government has stated there is no place in the science curriculum for Intelligent Design and that it can not be taught as science. 'The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programs of study and should not be taught as science.'"
Re:How about in the US? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, this is why the UK will always have an upper hand.
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When they can explain... (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for the "Intelligent" and "Design" parts, you mean?
If you open for the far fetched possibility of the universe being created, there's not only intelligent design to consider, but by logic you must also open for stupid design, intelligent accident and stupid accident. Because there's nothing that points to either intelligence or design being the only possible factors of a creation, unless you beg the question.
Regards,
--
*Art
government defined science (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Interesting)
That postulate leaves the existence of God vulnerable to a Babel Fish Argument [ucsd.edu] -- i.e. were someone to experience a true miracle, it would disprove the existance of such a God.
The cardinal sin of "I don't know." (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are some things that do need to be understood.
1. Evolution does not disprove the existence of "God" but it may undermine the myth of Jehovah. That is to say, the creationists are afraid that if we get so much evidence to show that the religions of Abraham are false, or the world doesn't work the way they say it does, that God becomes impersonal and Alien to us. Which is a sane argument really. The creator of the Universe caring about what happens to us is like us caring about what happens to some Ant hill somewhere.
If that happens, then all our wars, and churches, and institutions we built up to serve religion will be for a "God" who is disconnected and we will have built these social institutions for the sake of ourselves. Alot of powerful people don't want that.
2. Our understanding of Evolution is incomplete. That is to say, we can see the trees, but not the entire forest. We aren't that far ahead. There are going to be errors we make in our determination in how evolution works. The creationists are going to come back and say "see! see! you screwed up! but God makes everything perfect!"
3. If you want to know the truth of whats out there, I'd imagine religious forces in this world would seek to prevent it, or cover it up. A lot of these religions created by Abraham revolve around the idea that Man is at the center of everything. If we discovered Alien life elsewhere in the Universe, at first everyone religious would panic. Gradually, Religion would change to accommodate the Aliens. But you damn well bet there would be people saying "Jebus died on the Cross for Humans/Terrans/Earthlings" whatever.
So, as an Agnostic, who isn't sure whats out there, I'd like to know, but I can't be sure until the technology exists for me to explore this universe in much greater depth. I'm very curious. But I feel comfortable saying "I don't know right now." The hard core religious people can't afford to be wrong. If their $Holy_Text is wrong, then they are going to realize the magnitude of some of the inexcusable things done in History.
I think some day it will happen. We will come out with concrete evidence that exposes the whole mythology, something so observable that religion can't adjust to it. Who knows if we will accept it and become better people, or deny it and kill each other. Again, I just don't know.
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Interesting)
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.
In other words, you don't need faith, they claim -- or rather, they don't even mention it at all. Just sit and meditate seriously for long enough, and you will have a direct experience of the divine. There's a famous maxim from one of the Zen masters, "If you see a Buddha on your path to enlightenment, kill it!"
While it's true that they would say you can't figure God out, either, they might claim that you can 'experience' 'Him'.
Can I have a filter? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm tired of hearing about the E/ID debate, and I'm sick of seeing news about it. Can I PLEASE have a filter that explicitly excludes these kinds of discussions from my RSS feed? Preferably either one on my /. account or one that plugs into aKregator? I neither have the time nor the inclination to care even that much about this topic, and I'm quite busy evaluating for myself which side has more assholes and who is less worth listening to. At the moment, both sides are losing, in my estimation.
You're all lunatics.
Re:As a Christian... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hah. (Score:2, Interesting)
-Homer
Re:Hah. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When they can explain... (Score:3, Interesting)
The theory goes something like this; that it may have been advantageous to detect light or maybe from which direction light comes, specifically sunlight, maybe for navigation - don't recall what the study said. From simply feeling heat on the skin, to a part of the skin being more specifically sensitive to light, to start detect variations in light, to starting to "see" contours, to a rudimentary eye, the steps were all quite logical, although I am now extrapolating from a vague memory...
It's all about if something provides an advantage for survival and therefore reproduction - if it does, and well enough, it may yield fantastic results, like the eye. Conversely, bad designs that doesn't really affect survival to any large degree may often be left untouched forever - a good example is our shared throats for breathing and eating/drinking, which is a pretty half-assed design, causing discomfort and problems, even death at rare times. It's just that it's so rare that it actually affects someones survival that there hasn't been an evolutionary need to get rid of it. Still might happen in the future.
Not that this actually proves anything, just shows that it's quite possible to find reasonable, logic explanations for incredibly awesome things like the eye as well as incredibly stupid designs like the shared throat.
What's wrong with... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nice argument, but it's flawed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice argument, but it's flawed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's good. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Ascent of Man (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ID (Score:5, Interesting)
To quote wikipedia on the matter:
Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University has stated, "To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory."
Now, ID can still be a theory, it just can't be a scientific one.
Re:Religion != Abrahamic religion (Score:4, Interesting)
Now it should be obvious to anyone that there is no scientific proof for the existence of god, and while I know that there are many who think science is complete crap, I am not one of those people. As far as I am concerned, however, there is also no scientific proof against the existence of god. Before the "prove a negative" people jump out of the woodwork, I should say that I would consider a scientifically complete model of the universe that includes no "extra" variables to be a sufficient proof...It's a high standard, but a reasonable one for a scientific proof.
As this is the case, it is my belief that any side who declaims to have "proof" one way or the other to be absolutely out of their fricking minds. This is an opinion I have stated repeatedly for about a decade now. If you check my comment history, you'll find any number of instances of me stating that very opinion here, and I haunt these ID discussions because the debate interests me, often racking up a dozen or more posts.
All that being said, claiming that I know nothing about standard Christian arguments for the existence of god, is a bit ignorant. I once got thrown out of a coffee shop for taking on a professor who was preaching ID to his students; they threw him out too because he got "disruptive". I'd tried to ignore him, but when he started taking natural bridges [google.com] as "proof for the existence of god", I just couldn't let it slide. The most common "proof" that has been cited to me is the Bible itself, in the classic circular argument.
In my Catholic youth, I often heard the arguments from Faith. They are nearly a central tenet of the Catholic faith, and at no point will you hear a mainstream catholic priest spouting off about concrete "proof" for the existence of God...Logical proofs they will give you, a la Descartes and Anselm, but that's the limit. I have also heard similar arguments from Muslims and Buddhists.
Coming right down to it, I've never heard an argument that didn't boil down to either: "The bible says what god did, and science says how he did it" (this is what I call the argument ex cathedra, since it's been endorsed by no less than three Popes (Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI)) or "The bible is how it was done, and science is full of it" which is the root of the Intelligent Design argument, though of course they have pretensions to science. I hear the latter argument all the time, because I live in Georgia, and here they think they really have proof, though I've never seen it.
If you have an argument for the existence of god that doesn't rely on faith or proof, I'd like to hear it. It would be unique in my experience.
Re:Hah. (Score:4, Interesting)
Attacking 'creationists' by name here doesn't really jive with me, because I believe evolution to be a completely probable, possible theory. It's been shown in many experiments to be the best model for development of living organisms that we know of, by the scientific method. I also believe that God created it. Believing that God created the universe and believing that a species changes from one eon to the next as an adaptation to its environment are not mutually exclusive. I, in fact, think it's pretty dadgum cool.
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly I think it has a lot to do with the educational requirements of the priesthood in the modern evangelical churches...It was quite a shock to me, raised Catholic as I was, to find that most southern baptist preachers didn't have any formal religious instruction at all, and were perfectly free to preach their own version of the baptist faith within an extremely broad set of guidelines.
Re:Hah. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Religion != Abrahamic religion (Score:4, Interesting)
There are always a few; that's one of the things the "proof" religious types trumpet loudest...That there are scientists who disagree with the majority view. Whether it's ID, or Global Warming, or Dark Matter, or any of a number of drugs and pollutants, there is always a minority view.
It's a good thing; science doesn't need a lot of people sitting around agreeing with each other. The pro-ID science guys are pretty fringe, however.
emotion (Score:1, Interesting)
That useful skepticism was primarily produced by the left hippocampus, whereas his emotional attachments to his religious beliefs are primarily produced by the right hippocampus. Unfortunately, in most brains, the two are mutually-exclusive; when one is dominant in a thought process the other one is barely expressive (hence the heartless logician stereotype).
Or at least, that is one theory. I think I read most of my evidence for it right here on slashdot. We can perhaps apply that skepticism to this theory as well and just reflect on the issue from a higher-level perspective...
Like, for example, the observation that the mind will seek to preserve the integrity of the core set of beliefs which provide it with a sense of security. Anything that might disrupt that sense is percieved as an attack against the self-structure, and all kinds of interesting psychological self-defense mechanisms will kick in (including, but not limited to, outright irrationality). It takes courage to remain open to the possibility of new learning, and it is far, far easier to just assume that one already knows all the important things. From my perspective, this amounts to little more than intellectual cowardice. But don't say that to a Christian's face...in my experience some of them are not at all hesitant to use their fists as a means of demonstrating just how well they can turn the other cheek.
I used to try to cultivate a high level of respect for the sorts of value-systems that motivate other people. After all, don't I demand similar respect? But in truth all I demand is that I be treated with basic human decency regardless of my beliefs, and so that is all I will give in return. I reserve the right to think a person who can't distinguish between mythology and science, nor between fact and opinion, is injuriously unintelligent and/or a coward.
(disclaimer: believing in fairy-tales about talking animals, magical fruits, and super-powerful beings who threaten to torture you for all eternity is ENTIRELY different from believing that their is more to the universe than science understands. Mysticism is not necessarily the same thing as mythology...it is just common (and unfortunate) that the two are generally associated).
Re:How about in the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're describing an agnostic - someone who is not certain of the existence of God or Gods (though they may be ALMOST certain of it, based on available evidence or the lack thereof).
An atheist is making a positive statement that they do not believe in God or Gods, period. Atheism is as much a belief as theism - it's a belief that the person in question *knows* the truth about the existence of God or Gods.
I don't think that it is possible to know the truth, for certain, about the non-existence of God or Gods. It isn't possible to prove a negative in the case of God. God, if one exists, would by definition have powers that violate any logical framework we can devise, and thus would be perfectly able to handle the paradox of existing in a universe where it's possible to prove that God does not exist. God is beyond paradox, by definition. So, for someone to say that God or Gods cannot and do not exist - true atheism - they are stating a belief. A belief based, ironically, on faith that there's no validity to the other guy's faith.
Personally, I'm an apatheist/agnostic. I'm not being glib - but I really don't know if God or Gods exist, and even if they did and could prove it, I still wouldn't care to worship them. I'm pretty sure that God or Gods don't exist in any ways that matter outside of being concepts used by some human beings for various purposes. I have no evidence for the existence of God or Gods, and as explained above, it's not possible for any real evidence for the non-existence of God or Gods, so I just choose to leave the question open as being more or less irrelevant. If something changes - if there were to be discovered some kind of irrefutable proof that God or Gods existed, that would be interesting, but I still don't know that I'd feel compelled to worship them or do what they say.
I will say that I've always found the poles in these discussions to be interesting. Absolute theists and absolute atheists alike are convinced that their understanding about God or Gods is the only correct one and that anyone who disagrees with them is an awful, pathetic creature that's ruining things for everyone else. Same behavior, slightly different window-dressing.
For what it's worth, I think that the real problem isn't theist vs. atheist, it's true believers (of whatever sort) vs. skeptics.
I'll disprove ID (Score:2, Interesting)
The Spine. I can think of several better ways to go about that one.
Foot arches. If these were designed by God, then God hates pedestrians.
Appendix. 'Nuff said.
Sinuses. WTF! What kind of a MORON bores holes in a skull that do nothing but attract infection?
Nipples on men. Makes perfect sense as a leftover byproduct of an evolved system, but as a purpose-designed feature? Get real!
The list goes on longer than I am willing to type, (did I mention carpal-tunnel syndrome? There's some brilliant engineering) but I think I've pretty well debunked Intelligent Design by a Benevalent Deity.
Either God intelligently designed the world to fxxx us over hard, or he couldn't design his way out of a paper bag, or HE DOESN'T EXIST!
Re:How about in the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
Dogma takes many forms.
This argument is a matter of definition, not meaning. If you want to get really picky, it's common to define three categories of non-believers in a higher being: hard atheists, soft atheists and agnostics.
Hard atheists emphatically deny the existence of a god of any sort. Given that they can't prove the non-existence of god, this position is roughly equivalent to that of theists, with respect to scientific proof.
Soft atheists don't see any reason to believe in a god, but neither do they dogmatically deny the existence of such. They can't deny it because they have no evidence, but they have no evidence of existence either, and therefore choose to apply Occam's Razor. This is the most purely rational belief.
Agnostics are basically just unsure, open to the idea that a god exists, but equally open to the idea that no god exists. The line between agnosticism and soft atheism is really broad and fuzzy; it's more a matter of degree than of kind. The major differentiator in practice is just what individual agnostics and soft atheists choose to call themselves.
FWIW, I was once a soft atheist, but various personal experiences have convinced me of God's existence and importance. I'd say my belief is based on empirical but non-scientific evidence. It's empirical in that it's derived from specific observations. It's non-scientific in that the observations are not reproducible under controlled conditions.
'Cause I gotta have faith, faith, faith... (Score:4, Interesting)
Its called faith you stupid jackass. Some people have it and others don't. Deal with it.
I'll give you the benefit of a doubt that you're not merely a troll, but legitimately upset that some people don't believe as you do, and so ask you this simple question: What is it that is "called faith"? That is, what do you mean by faith? The usual meaning I hear is "belief in something without evidence". But I'm not talking about evidence or skepticism at all. Faith of that sort is not always misplaced: for example, I have faith that the person who put together the periodic table of elements in my chemistry class did so correctly. We wouldn't get very far if we didn't have faith of that sort, because it's beyond any of us to build our entire knowledge base from the ground up.
But since that's not the kind of thing I was talking about at all, I'm at a loss as to what you mean by faith and what it has to do with verifiability. Are you saying that acceptance of unverifiable propositions (that is to say, things that don't make any descriptive claims about the world at all) is faith? Cause I don't have any problem with that either: if you say that the sky is blue and water is wet and 2+2=4 and all sleezborgs are foodlebaks, I can agree with you 100%, because I agree that the sky is blue, and that water is wet, and that 2+2=4, and since 'sleezeborg' and 'foodlebak' are meaningless words I just made up right now, you can agree or disagree with that bit and it won't make any difference to me. So if both you and Joe Blow agree that the physical (i.e. observable) world operates according to such-and-such laws and has such-and such history, but you believe that that is the case because an in-principle unverifiable mind wills it to be so, and Joe Blow ostensibly disagrees, you two actually agree on all matters of fact; your point of contention is, literally, an empty statement with no truth-value (neither true nor false), so it makes no difference whether you say that's the case or not. For a mathematical analogy: if you say the measure of something is equal to 2 plus 1 plus 0, and Joe Blow says it's equal to 2 plus 1 minus 0, you're both equally right (or wrong) because you're both saying the same thing, namely that the measure of that thing is 3 - despite your difference in words.
An important footnote here: by "in-principle unverifiable" I don't just mean that no one anywhere ever WILL have opportunity to observe it, as may be the case with events far away in space or time; rather, I mean something like, if you had absolutely perfect instruments of every variety available to you, and a magic device that could take you any place and any time, even in that fantastic case there is no observation you could make that could prove or disprove the hypothesis in question. In short: a statement is verifiable if and only if, were there someone in the right place(s) at the right time(s) with the right sensors, they would be able to tell by observation whether the statement was true or not.
Now the third thing I can think of that you might mean by faith is something of a cross between the two above: where you say "I don't know what the things he's saying mean, but I agree with him 100%". This kind of blind faith is reprehensible. As I said before, I have faith (of the first variety) in my professors, whereby when they say something and I don't know any better I generally trust that what they say is correct. However, when I hear a professor say something that I don't understand (something which has not conveyed any meaning to me, though perhaps the speaker did mean something by it), I don't think "well, I don't know that to be false, and I trust him, so I'll believe that". I think "what?". And I try to ask questions until I can understand what's being said, and then, if I can finally tease out what exactly he means, then I'll either believe it or not based first on how much I know about the matter and then on how much I trust the professor's beliefs on the matter.
As a philoso
Not a good enough discriminator. (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile the dog thinks its a person. This is partly pack behavior but it's pretty clear that the dog doesn't really distinguish us on a social level, even if it does at a physical one.
This is most telling when the dog attempts to enter into group conversations. She tries to talk. It's not growling or attention-grabbing barking... just moan-inflection-babble she interjects. If we're all around a table or counter, she'll paw up onto it and engage us... not because she wants something in particular, but because she feels that she be involved in the social interaction.
Weird, huh?
Animals can want to be other things too given the right stimuli. By examining the majority of society I say that what most people want is actually pretty base and it is not normal to want to be something more, other than well off.
Re:Libertarianism (Score:3, Interesting)
chimps do acts of altruism too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hah. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When they can explain... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:chimps do acts of altruism too (Score:5, Interesting)
They have plenty of compassion, and emotions. Emotions and morality aren't just human characteristics. We can even witness "moral" activity in plants. When one plant is attacked, they send out a chemical signal to other plants in the area warning of the impending attack, so that they can prepare themselves.
Nothing against egoism, but we should only declare that we kick ass to the extent that we kick ass.
Re:Hah. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ID (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict there are fossils all over the place demonstating the gradual change from pre-human to human. Oh - that prediction failed? Hello punctuated equalibrium.
See - DE is not disprovable either.
I agree that ID isn't disprovable - but only because it is a fact that you can witness in labs around the world. You can predict and then observer one higher species creating another, be it a weather resistant tree or a chess playing computer.
Re:Hah. (Score:3, Interesting)
He couldn't've been more right. We have to really want something in order to have it, and armchair quarterbacking or just talking about it doesn't replace really trying.
I don't have all the answers. I don't have some of the answers. Heck, to be honest, I have practically no answers. And this screwed up world is enough to make anyone nuts. Trust me, I have lost things in my life equivalent to watching my arm get cut off. My own personal tragedies have far more affected me than any war or disease.
I do know this: we do have to want it. It is a struggle. Truth, meaning, the whole "why am I here?!?!?" is the greatest test/struggle we will ever face, and we should all be dogging it like its oxygen. Most of us don't (heck, I don't). We just exist. Sometimes, however, the struggle grabs us and we can't shake it. It's like the scene in fight club where pitt and norton are struggling over norton's hand as acid eats his flesh off. In the middle of it pitt (tyler durden) is shouting "we are god's unwanted children! god hates us!" I like that scene for the specific reason of the struggle with meaning, the struggle with God.
There's this one story in the bible where jacob encounters a man -- turns out to be God -- and they wrestle. They end up wrestling all night. Finally, the man asks to be released, and Jacob demands, "not until you bless me." Not until I have an answer. Not until I know.
It's like that scene from officer and a gentleman where the officer is kicking him out of the program, and gier says, "I have no place else to go! I have no place else to go!" To me, denying my faith, God, is the same. I cannot, will not, accept that I or you or my kid is simply a batch of elements, chemicals, worth about $6 on the market.
Why such a messed up world? I don't know. As Hopkins, playing C.S. Lewis, said to his priest who kept demanding to counsel him after his wife's death. The priest said, "I must counsel you Jack, even you." Finally Lewis shouts, "No! It is a game he's playing with us. We are mice. He is a good holy God but it is still, just, a game...."
So, God can be a flying spaghetti monster, or whatever, but in the least, we should each be struggling with the reason behind our beating hearts, and why we bury people we love, and where we go in so many few short years. So, I ask myself, who is copping out then? Me, the one who believes in the FSM, or those who don't?...