Talk:Intelligent design controversy

"In fact, evolutionists have no answer to ID's arguments and therefore refuse to deal forthrightly with it's proponents."

ID eventually comes down to a godlike figure, which is supernatural, science deals with natural phenomena, and thus ID is not science. Science has no arguements to "A creator designed us." because it is impossible to refute. No matter what evidence there is for evolution, "A creator designed us" can still be said. There is no way to disprove it, it relies on the supernatural.

As for dealing with it's proponents, the major push of intelligent design seems to rest far more on trying to find fault with evolution, as opposed to offering good decent evidence (such a signature saying "Made in heaven" "Intelligence Inside" etc etc). Now I'm not complaining about this. Irreducible complexity on the molecular levels is a superb attack on evolution, and absolutely scientific in it's approach. But don't mistake a good attack on evolution, with any sort of positive evidence for any other approach. Pushing scientists to think up feasible routes for these moleculer devices to evolve is excellent work. You cannot expect them to come up with answers instantly, but after time to think, consider and examine, these problems reach plausible solutions.

If you are talking about a general refusal to debate intelligent designists, it's not suprising, an ID proponent can throw a large number of molecular devices at a single scientist who is perhaps an expert in one of these areas, and even then would require a period of time, and access to materials to work out an acceptable path. So in the debate it appears that the scientist is lost for words, where in fact he just can't give you the answer like that. It's like me asking the non-savants of you out there whats the square root of 3042894.124 and expecting an answer immediately whilst you aren't allowed access to a calculating device.

Now I'm not going to bother editing the page, since I know it would merely be reverted, but i felt the need to point out the necessary Raggs 10:59, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

ID opponents generally pretend that they "don't get the point", but this is simply because to address what ID is saying would be the first of a series of lost battles which would end in their utter defeat. The comment above exemplifies this trend.

ID does not point to any godlike figure but makes the point that natural causes alone cannot account for the design of complex organisms, whether organs or cells. Materialism has no argument to account for the appearance of design for anything for complicated than salt crystals or snowflakes. "It evolved that way, and designs that can't compete are weeded out."

Materialists dismiss the appearance of design because their philosophical assumptions preclude any alternative. To distract attention from the weakness of basis of their atheism, they pretend that ID's anti-evolutionary critique is a front for Creationism. My advice to them is the same as what Raggs wrote above: "But don't mistake a good attack on evolution, with any sort of positive evidence for any other approach." ID is not an argument for creation; rather it is an argument against evolution.

It is because atheists and materialists don't want their arguments to be examined that they imprison, expel or fire anyone who dares challenge them. In the marketplace of ideas, their product would not sell, so they insist on having a monopoly.

Evolution cannot account for molecular devices. The rules of the "game" state that if you can't show how gradual changes could accumulate, then your theory doesn't hold water. It is the irreducible complexity of the eye and the flagellum, among many other examples, which show that natural forces alone are insufficient to account for the design of complex organs and cells.

By the way, a square root can be calculated without a machine, using procedures known to mathematicians centuries before the invention of electronic calculators. So "can't explain it" really does mean "the theory simply is no good"; see theory and fact. --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:15, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

"ID eventually comes down to a godlike figure, which is supernatural, science deals with natural phenomena, and thus ID is not science": This is wrong in two respects. First, although you are correct that ID eventually comes down to a god figure, other immediate (hypothetical) possibilities include aliens. They are not supernatural, so ID is within the realm of science.

Second, science only dealing with the natural does not preclude it from inferring a designer. Archaeologists find stone artifacts which they can determine are stone tools, fashioned by an intelligent being, and do not have to identify or study that being in order to come to that conclusion. Concluding that life had an intelligent designer is exactly the same thing in principle, and that designer possibly or probably being God does not prevent science from reaching that conclusion. However, that designer probably being God is a strong motive for misotheists to reject Intelligent Design—for religious reasons!

Philip J. Rayment 11:22, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

It is because atheists and materialists don't want their arguments to be examined that they imprison, expel or fire anyone who dares challenge them. Buwha? Who's gone to JAIL for blaspheming against the Gospel of Darwin?! Most of the time, us materialists prefer to just point and laugh. I do hope you're not talking about Kent Hovind (who went to prison for tax fraud), or Al York (who stabbed a man to death....for arguing with him about evolution).

Intelligent Design is NOT a "scientific theory". It makes no useful predictions, proposes no experiments. It only exists as a rather transparent attempt to get Creationism back into schools, where they think it belongs. And the courts have decided it fails at that, too.

And just so you know, those pesky Evilutionists have already done the flagellum.

AND the eye. --Gulik5 11:52, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

I can't at the moment think of anyone going to jail, but otherwise see Suppression of alternatives to evolution. Your claim about predictions and experiments is disputed, not self-evident truth, and your claim about the reason for its existence is rhetoric. The Talk.Origins explanations of the flagellum and the eye are just-so stories, not scientific descriptions. Philip J. Rayment 12:02, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

Gulik, are you trying to change the subject? ID says that evolution can't explain design, and you veer off into a quibble about whether my generalization about atheists and materialists applies to all cases of dispute about ID. That is specious reasoning, and it has no place on an article discussion page. Save it for the our Debate Topics, if you plan to stay around.

More to the point, you may already be aware of American scholars who have been fired from their jobs for - as you put it - "blaspheming against the Gospel of Darwin". Perhaps I should assign you to google this up and add it to Expelled.

Is the standard for a scientific theory that it must make predictions? Then how about plate tectonics? What predictions does it make? More to the point, name 3 predictions that the theory of evolution makes. Then explain what tests were conducted to see if those predictions came true.

If you are well verse in these matters, you may want to collaborate with me on such articles as Philosophy of science and Scientific method. Or at least Falsifiability. For example, name a kind of experiment or observation or discovery that could possibly "falsify" evolution. If you can't - indeed, if no one can - than we'd have to classify evolution as pseudoscience. --Ed Poor ^Talk 12:10, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

Experiment to falsify the currently-accepted model of evolution: Dig up a fossil of a Tyrannosaurus Rex that died from choking to death on a Homo Sapiens. There. Any other area with blatantly anachronistic fossils (such as modern birds mixed in with Trilobites, flowers in the Silurian age, etc.) would do the trick as well. Conversely, you could also disprove evolution with that old Creationist canard, a cat 'evolving' into a rabbit in one generation. So would verifiable proof of Lamarckian evolution--the inheritance of acquired traits.

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Evolution has been the basis of many predictions. For example: Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000). Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000). Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey (Yoshida et al. 2003). Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction (Webster et al. 2003). Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003). Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees. This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982). Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005). (From Talkorigins.org, your one-stop shop for rebuttals to the Factory-Extruded Creationist Arguments!)

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Plate tectonics was uncertain as recently as the 1960s, but evidence in its favor has become overwhelming: Plate motions are measured directly (Davidson et al. 1997). The eastern edge of the continental shelves of North and South America fit closely (within 50 km) with the western continental shelves of Africa and Europe (Bishop 1981). The Mid-Atlantic Ridge has the same shape. Plant and animal fossil distributions, geological formations, and indications of ancient climate match up in Africa and South America as if the continents once fit together (Davidson et al. 1997). When new rocks are formed, they record the earth's current magnetic field, which reverses occasionally. The magnetic field pattern recorded in the sea floor rocks shows bands mirrored across a spreading center (Bishop 1981; Davidson et al. 1997). (See also Magnetic reversals.) Paleomagnetic studies show different polar wandering on different continents, indicating that the continents moved relative to one another (Bishop 1981; Davidson et al. 1997). Oceanic sediments are young and thin, indicating that sea basins are relatively young (Graham 1981). Maps of earthquake locations show plate boundaries and the paths of subducting plates (Davidson et al. 1997; Graham 1981). Hot spots leave trails such as volcanic island chains as the plates move over them (Davidson et al. 1997). (More from talkorigins. Sorry for the unoriginality, but I'm on my lunch break.)

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As for Expelled--I'd want a biologist who taught Creationism moved to a non-teaching position for roughly the same reason I'd rather not be operated on by a doctor who rejected modern medicine in favor of the Four Humor theory of treatment.

Hope this helps you understand where I'm coming from, even it if is all a flimsy tissue of rationalizations over my seething hatred of God and America fnord.

I'd better go edit something now. Don't want a 90/10 block for disrespect towards my bettersunproductive edits, after all. --Gulik5 15:25, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

To add since this was removed from the original Intelligent design talk page during the moves of the article...

The International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) says that “intelligent design” is neither sound science nor good theology. Intelligent Design theorists do not have proper research programmes to make their points. In fact, what they believe is against science, according to the seven scientists who prepared the statement for the ISSR, a scholarly body devoted to dialogue between science and world faiths.

The whole of the society’s membership, many of whom are Christian, were involved in a consultation about the statement. The ISSR says it “greatly values modern science, while deploring efforts to drive a wedge between science and religion.”

Whereas Gulik provided much research to support evolution, Intelligent Design has yet to produce research or a mechanism outside of the mechanisms of evolution to support their hypothesis. Something to add is that most new concepts of science begin in the collegiate academic environment where they undergo testing and verification before being trickled down to the general public and secondary and primary education systems, therefore intelligent design is suspect of circumventing this practice do to a failure of meeting the standards necessary to be a competing theory in the aforementioned environment, which leads many to conclude that the proponents of intelligent design are trying to indoctrinate instead of allowing the application of rational debate for defense of their hypothesis. The major concern is that by allowing the circumvention of the testing and debate in the academic environment sets a standard for other untested, non qualified concepts to be taught with a scientific label. I personally feel it is fine for intelligent design to be taught in a theological setting not a scientific one. This debate with evolution is a bit unreasonable due to evolution's stance in the biological sciences, if intelligent design wanted to replace evolution then it should have followed the standard, much like string theory has been for the past 20 years. This motivation is also suspect since when has a scientific concept not taken more than 10 years to reach the public? Why push intelligent design on school children with less than 10 years of development, let alone testing and research? Like I said the motivations behind the intelligent design proponents are suspect. --Able806 16:44, 8 April 2008 (EDT)