Comments

1. #1 Roman Werpachowski

   January 29, 2006

   In my opinion, high school science lessons should not teach controversy. Assuming the false opinion that ID is a “controversial scientific theory” it still has as much space in the high school curriculum as one of the versions of quantum gravity.

2. #2 Red Reader

   January 30, 2006

   Dr. Lynch wrote:
   “For example, my BIO/HPS: Origins, Evolution and Creation course has been dealing with ID since its inception….”

   The title of your course suggests that while you may be dealing with Creationism, you may not be aware of the distinction between Creationism and Intelligent Design. I’m not being critical: knowledge of ID and it’s distinction is growing, but there remains quite a lot of confusion.

   I am aware that Evolutionists in general assert there is no difference and Judge Jones in the Dover case ruled there is no difference. I try to attribute the confusion to honest misunderstanding rather than deliberate misrepresentation.

   Nevertheless, there is a difference between ID theory and creationism. As with any theory, it would seem only fair to ask those who are involved in the theory’s development what THEY mean, what their definition is.

   As an analogy, if I want to know what Democrats stand for, it’s only fair to ask a Democrat: a Republican may give me a version of Democrat policy proposals somewhat unflattering to the proposals. If I understand the Democrat, I still may not agree, but at least I will have been fair.

   The most recent article addressing this very subject by an active ID theorist is an article written by Dr. Stephen Meyer published Jan. 28, 2006 in the Daily Telegraph of London titled: “Intelligent design is not creationism”. Here is the link:
   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/01/28/do2803.xml

   Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin of life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. He is also director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, in Seattle.

   G. Jennings
   Houston, TX

3. #3 John Lynch

   January 30, 2006

   I *very* aware of the claimed distinction between ID and creationism. I don’t buy it. Meyer and his fellow travellers can keep claiming all they like … it don’t make it so.

4. #4 Michael

   January 30, 2006

   Good point Red Reader! We should ask ID proponents what ID actually is!
   Let’s see what Michael Behe has to say!

   Rothschild: I don t think I got a reply, so I m asking you, you ve made this claim here, ?Intelligent design theory
   focuses exclusively on the proposed mechanism of how complex biological structures arose.? And I want to
   know what is the mechanism that intelligent design proposes for how complex biological structures arose?
   Behe: Again, it does not propose a mechanism in the sense
   of a step-by-step description of how those structures arose.
   Rothschild: And then further down the page at line 24 I asked
   you, “In terms of the mechanism, it s just a criticism of
   Darwinian evolution s mechanism and not a positive
   description of a mechanism.” And what did you answer,
   Professor Behe?
   Behe: I said “that s correct.”

   So in Behe’s own words, Intelligent Design is just a criticism of the mechanism of evolution. Sweet! Now there is no more confusion. Everybody can go home and stop arguing about this; Behe has settled it for us!

5. #5 Glen Davidson

   January 30, 2006

   On TalkOrigins today I wrote what I think is a fairly good description of what ID is about. I don’t think it’s exactly creationism of the Biblically literal kind, but it is in the same ballpark, with the same unwillingness to consider evidence and a desire to re-define science to support their less-literalistic views of the Bible and God. Anyway, here is what I think is a good characterization of what ID is up to:

   Nearly all of this can be collapsed down to one observation about
   IDists: They wish to simply define the complexity of life as
   “designed”, and they wish for this definition to supersede all normal
   measures of design.
   Were they serious about showing life to be designed using accepted
   measure for design, they would be moving past Paley’s, “I know it when
   I see it”. They’d show us how everything is designed at least as well
   as a human would design things, the purposes of the “designs” we see in
   nature, the constraints (if any) that the designer encountered, and
   most of all, [evidence] that intelligence is actually capable of designing the
   complexities of life.
   I think the latter is particularly telling about ID. How absurd to
   suggest that complex structures we as intelligent beings couldn’t even
   begin to produce at the present time (alongside design elements that
   we’d immediately improve in a some cases) should, by analogy with human
   design, be considered to be the default explanation for life’s
   complexities. Not that anything could really be the default
   explanation, but clearly the intelligence that we know is not even in
   the running as a candidate for a default explanation for life.
   The reasons why gods were invoked as the explanation for life in the
   first place is that human-type design is not evident in nature, with
   neither human purposes nor human capabilities being evident in
   organisms (which is why the “designer” of the IDists is neither human
   nor humanoid, meaning once again that it is God). The IDiots are so
   far removed from both science, and religion in its “natural state”,
   that they fail to notice that their anthropoid analogy is completely
   inadequate for explaining organisms (OK, some are probably lying at
   least in part, but if one notices how inept one like Behe is at dealing
   with the overall issues, one realizes that at least some of these
   people are incredibly ignorant sods), that no aliens would ever be
   supposed by competent scientists to be the source of wild-type genetic
   codes, and that any animal-designer would have designed for such
   different purposes and through such different means than we recognize
   that such a being would have to be a god of some kind.
   It all comes back to the fact that they simply wish to re-define life
   as designed, and not to bother with the evidence except in the most
   tangential fashion. They re-define what “counts as evidence for
   design”, without any supporting evidence for their assertions, and
   re-define the default position of what is not known to be “God’s
   doings” (OK, “Designer’s doings”). This is their entire “scientific
   project”, indeed, this attempt to bypass the actual predictions
   possible as a design hypothesis (because all such predictions have
   failed), and to substitute unsubstantiated measures of design in place
   of the scientific measures of design (to be sure, we don’t really have
   “measures of design” (since “design” doesn’t really capture human’s
   animal purposes for manipulating the world), only various means of
   showing that humans were responsible for various objects, but we can
   use “measure of design” loosely in this context if we wish).
   Their entire motivation in the matter of life is to brush off the
   science that has failed their prejudices, and to redefine “science” to
   fit their prejudices. Any scientific discussion of the evidences
   simply gets in the way of this project that they are focused upon, and
   in their minds it only makes sense to dismiss all real science and to
   get back to their attempt to make science into an apologia for their
   religion.

   Glen Davidson
   http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

   [One word was added, in brackets, for the sake of comprehension,]

   This message in the TO context exists here:

   http://tinyurl.com/bm7ns