Intelligent Design

[STOguy]

hey guys, check out the trailer at
www.expelledthemovie.com

ben stein's movie called expelled is about the persecution that scientists face when offering alternative theories to darwin's theory of evolution. from what the trailer showed it looks like a really awesome film, check it out.

[symbolon]

looks like a good one.

[music=geometry]

looks great. it reminds me of the electric univserse and i'm sure it will open some eyes to the possiblities, if not to what they have been denied; and that is an open forum of discussion

[meganarline]

hey, look what article showed up on rense this morning.
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20080101evolution.cfm (http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20080101evolution.cfm)



creationism in the classroom




is darwin losing the battle with god?
by lauri lebo | january 1, 2008 in 2004, in a rural elementary-school cafeteria decorated with murals of dancing milk cartons, members of pennsylvania's dover area school board shocked local constituents and the national scientific community with a small but significant change in its biology curriculum, requiring students to be made aware of "intelligent design."
at the time, i was a reporter working at the local newspaper. seeking comment on the curriculum change, i faxed a copy of the dover news article to the oakland, california, offices of the national center for science education (ncse), an organization that defends the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools. eugenie scott, the center's unflappable executive director, read the story i'd faxed her and called me with her astounded response.

"you're it, kiddo," she said.



megan

[johnasmodeus]

i really am sick of this debate.

the problem here is not which of darwinism or intelligent design are correct. the problem is that intelligent design is a trojan horse.

here's what i mean. darwinism is a theory and always has been. nobody of a reasonable level of expertise on the subject will ever say that darwin's theories have been proven, because they can't be. thus, when anybody tries to discredit darwinism by saying, "it hasn't been proven," it's like somebody trying to discredit "i can't believe it's not butter" by saying, "look. there's no butter in this."

the reason that darwinism is taught in the classroom and id is not is because darwinism has a body of research behind it. all that id has behind it is a list of every piece of research that does not fit in with darwinism. and there is a logical disconnect that goes on here, where the people who want to push id say, "look here. you can't explain these using darwin. so that proves that god did it." god becomes some kind of magical variable that fixes all the equations for them.

this logical disconnect is the reason why id, in it's current, unverified form, should not be represented as science and is not included in school curriculae as such. it's not science yet. if they want to teach it, it can be taught - but until it is presented with positive data behind it (data that boils down to more than "darwin is wrong"), it must be taught within a religious context. saying this is no more controversial than saying that algebra should not be taught during history class. algebra is not being "suppressed" because we don't let people insert quadratic equations into the textbooks between the revolutionary and civil wars; it simply does not belong there and has its own place where it does belong.

the real issue here is that if christian study is allowed to penetrate the secular school system on a nationwide scale, especially the evangelical strain of christian study that has taken root in the midwestern states, where support for id is the highest, its proponents will have successfully gotten their foot in the door and from there it's a much easier road toward recriminalizing abortion, officially declaring america a "christian nation," outlawing homosexuality, etc etc. that's why i say it's a trojan horse. if they can get id in, then they have established a precedent that they can use to strengthen their case for all the rest of the items on their laundry list.

and none of this is new. they have been trying to do this since the nineteenth century at least. look through mark twain and you will find his side of the same debate that is being played out on cnn today as if it were somehow fresh and controversial.

now, having said all that, i can say that personally, i do believe in god and i don't believe that life is simply the result of a series of chance occurrences. but until id's proponents come up with some kind - any kind - of research that actively supports their theory, i have no choice but to conclude that it is not yet worthy of inclusion in serious scientific debate.

note: for the purposes of this post, i have used "id" or "intelligent design" to signify it's commonly accepted meaning, and not to mean david's work; which could reasonably be called intelligent design - were there public consensus and no possibility of mixing it up with the common christian definition of "intelligent design." so for the time being at least, i must hold david's research (which is excellent) in it's own, third, category.

[Ewhaz]

johnasmodeus:

i've been on this debate for a long time as well, though on the opposite side. from that perspective, darwinism isn't much of a better choice to be honest. with david's work in this feild, it seems clear that we cannot discount evolution, so obviously the darwinist have a piece of the truth. the part of their philosophy that is completely wrong however is that it is all random chance. you also said you disagreed with this. the problem is that darwinism has become the ground work for militant atheism. they themselves are not willing to tolerate religious views and like it or not, the religious have just as much right to their views as any one else. in the grander scheme of things we find that these views, one or the other, are valid and necessary for personal evolution.

this militant atheism is also materialistic. if some had their way, as proven by a recent paper trying again to give weight to the idea that one race is superior to the next, their own rash of restrictions and ideological views would begin to attempt to change the social paradigm. this isn't a question of weather id or darwinism is true, they are both trojan's for their own personal philosophies. it's almost as if their philosophies were simply meant to keep one another in check, without letting one or the other take over.

now id's main issue, that i can see, is the fact that they are tying to put the idea in a little box called christianity. they are taking the facts and misconstruing them to fit the biblical philosophy of how the universe came to be. david's work clearly shows that both aspects have equal emphasis in the universe.. since we are respectively the creator, we have created life on earth by simply becoming it. they are tying to restrain the grand scheme of things to a single personified deity, who has a direct interest in the daily affairs of the human race. this is where they utterly fail, the scheme is so much grander than that restricted view that they can never hope to be any where near the truth. neither can the darwinist.

still, the fact of the mater is that free will is still part and parcel of this distortion. the fact that both atheist and theist can look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions is simply that distortion enforcing itself on this density. both sides have their right to believe as they do, and will most likely go on believing like that until every person in each respective party comes to a personal understanding of the greater truth and is willing to take the jump in that direction. i was in that place at one time and i can tell you that changing a paradigm like that is not simple. it's a matter of changing your entire world view and everything in it. that is (and was) a very scary thing to do.

[SuperManny]

megan, i don't know when that article showed up on rense, but i promise you i read it quite awhile ago. i don't think it was on rense, tho, so maybe it's a copy-and-paste from another site. yeah, i definitely remember it, because my mind is like a steel trap (a little rusty, and illegal in some states) :d

as far as this topic goes, i don't really subscribe to either camp. i just think there's quite a bit more involved in this story than our 3d minds can make sense of.

i once worked with a self-proclaimed athiest, and she was really a pretty nice person, but she liked to tell people she was an athiest (shock value, i think). so she got into it with me, one day, getting into a lengthy rant about all the 'evidence' that there was no god.

i just let her talk, without interrupting her until she finally relaxed a little. when i still didn't say anything, she finally prodded me for a response. i told her, " well, after listening to you describe this god you don't believe in, perhaps i'm an athiest, too, because i damn sure don't believe in him!"

[STOguy]

just to make things clear about what i believe here, i didn't create the title intelligent design, the moderator did that (not mad or anything;) ) and i definitely don't believe what the intelligent design people are saying or what the darwinists are saying. the most convincing argument i've heard regarding evolution is from dr. bruce lipton, he basically merges the two theories in a very convincing nature, check him out on google or something he's got some good vids up there.

[onething]

johnasmodeus (mostly) and ewhaz,too

i can tell by the things you write that you have not actually spent any time with either the books or the websites in which the real promoters of intelligent design operate. don't you think you ought to be more familiar with it before making such posts, which merely repeat the tiresome, deliberate misunderstandings of its detractors, who have most of the media access?

intelligent design is not christianity, nor any religion at all. yes, lots of fundies are into it, and some are mad at the the intelligent design folks for not simply insisting on the inerrancy of the bible. but intelligent design is not based on any revelation. it is simply the premise that certain biological systems in nature contain complexity and information that defy any random, non-mind origin. and that, by the way, is a positive statement.

also, if there is a theory which becomes obviously unsound, yet the actual workings of the system are still unknown, how is it wrong to make a 'negative' pronouncement, that, hey guys, this is just not holding up? detractors often say, well, you've got to come up with a theory to replace darwinism. no, they don't.

i've read some great essays and even a book on why big bang is not true, but that doesn't mean they understand the ultimate origin of matter and the universe.

and that doesn't make it a religious argument. it may have spiritual implications, but that isn't dogma, and it might turn out nonspiritual.

i fear the fundies as much as you do, but i have to follow the truth trail wherever it leads.

id has nothing to do with christian study in the schools.

and by the way, you're quite right david's work could most definitely be included in the list of possible explanations for the intelligent design of the universe. why would you put it in a separate category? different id people have come up with a few tentative explanations. there's panspermia, frontloading, and something like "innate endogenous intelligence." which means internal intelligence - i can speculate that the dna is a form of the intelligence of the godhead.

now id's main issue, that i can see, is the fact that they are tying to put the idea in a little box called christianity.

actually, what they're trying really, really hard to do is to take it out of that box, into which they have been put by the materialists. on the other hand, i'd have to concede that a lot of them are christians, albeit open-minded ones, and in my humble opinion, anyone who puts a lot of stock in scriptures being infallible and from 'god' is in for a rough collision at some point. nonetheless, they are not using scripture or anything but the evidence and for this i admire them. because the darwinists are every bit as religious and biased as any believer. the most scientific people in this debate are the intelligent design people because they are just obsessed with sticking to evidence and nothing but evidence.

[johnasmodeus]

wow. calm, cogent replies from everybody. this forum is so unlike every other forum i've participated in. awesome.

@ewhaz: looks like we both are on the same page on this, even if you come down in favor of id. it appears that it comes down to which of the two groups we see as the greater threat to the common good.

now, personally, i have never understood why atheists were a threat to anybody. like homosexuals and, earlier, african-americans, they are often represented as having some kind of dark agenda when all they really want is to be left alone.

i have always enjoyed talking with atheists about religion more than fellow christians simply because i find that they come to the table having done much more serious questioning and self-examination than the majority of christians i know, who for the most part never think about religion at all; or else they are very devout but in that extremely non-critical, glassy-eyed way that unnerves those of us who are prone to critical thinking.

but when i read about the huge amounts of money behind some of these christian organizations, and see what their gatherings are like (see jesus camp and borat), and especially hear what some of their leaders -- pat robertson is the easiest, scariest example -- say, all i can conclude -- from a purely rational perspective -- is that they are a greater threat to peace in the u.s. than al-qaeda, the taliban, and the 1962 mets combined.

now, back to the id versus darwin thing for a moment: the punchline is that darwinism and id are not logically exclusive. everybody pretends that there is some kind of struggle going on when, actually, if you take a serious look at what they say, it's quite easy for both to be true.

god exists and he directs the creation and changing of life on this planet.
evolution, of which we have at this time a partial understanding, is the mechanism through which he makes manifest such direction.

see? in two sentences i have reduced the entire "debate" to naught.

[meganarline]

super manny,

i did find the article on rense and on the same day that i posted it. (i check rense every morning and do not check the washington spectator every morning) it looks from the link that it was originally posted earlier by the washington spectator but it didn't show up on rense until the 5th.

i only posted it because it seemed to relate to what stoguy was talking about in the new movie.

i had only really heard about this whole can of worms the day before from stoguy's post so i haven't formed an opinion about it either way.

i am enjoying the debate though :-).

megan

[Ewhaz]

onething:

there are some scientist who are willing to be scientific, that is to go where the facts lead, rather than where their own ideas lead, those scientists are far and few in between that i have seen in the community. i have watched a few evolutionist video's where noted scientists have gone out of their way to put down creationists as stupid, somehow ignoring facts or distorting the truth. the same can be said about creationists videos, they rarely come out with anything but a deep religious tang. remember, we are talking about changing world views.

these world views do not simply include how we came about.. once that one situation is changed, all else must change too. i wen't through this at one time, seriously considering for a brief moment if in fact the idea that a god existed was all wrong. it forced me to reconsider my whole life and i became aware that it would require a retooling of all my beliefs, ideas and how i operated in the world. thats why some of these scientist work so hard to defend something that they know doesn't support their thesis. even the best of them becomes emotional when defending their views and it's evident on both sides.

while the scientists may only be trying to defend their thesis, in the secular corner the people are using the findings of the scientists to reinforce their perspective faiths. there is always a bit of doubt in each other's mind and they need those things to help reinforce their point of view, otherwise their world becomes unpredictable. after my little derailment, i've become comfortable admitting to myself i have no idea whats going on. i hold to this particular set of beliefs, but very loosely. it gives me something to rely on, but if 2012 comes along and by whatever fluke nothing happens as they said it would, i'll move on at that point to.

at the heart of it i think i was simply stating what johnasmodeus was, only from the other side.. i'm sick of the debate, or rather to the point, i'm sick of the intolerance in the debate. people on these two factions don't respect one another as equals, they do their best to debunk the other side and make them look like fools to their respective supporters. inevitably this filters down into the lower ranks of the civil circles and now you have people thinking their counterparts are somehow stupid and deluding themselves.

from the atheist i've literally seen videos where they call theist delusional.. thats one step away from saying they need to have psychiatric care to treat some mental illness. unfortunately those willing to live and let live are the quiet ones, so this type of propaganda is rampant in the civil circle.

johnasmodeus:

the christian circles are willing to become emotional about their side of the story and i know there are people in the christian circles are very scary. i always got a little nervous when i attended church that had a habit of raising hands as a form of worship.. i was always afraid of running into extremists where it became more like a cult than a church. so i do agree, there are some very extreme forms of religion and thats true for all religions.

but this also includes the atheists as well. as i mentioned before, there are those trying to say that the facts support the idea that one race may be inferior to another. ie the bell curve and just recently some one else was trying to do the same thing. taken to the next level you would have discrimination based solely on your ethnic background. like the christians, not every one is willing to believe or support this point of view and are far more rational and tolerant. but just like the christians, there are those who let this become so big that they are willing to go to extremes to defend it and or propagate it, along with there personal agenda's

and yes, we can dismantle both sides into a thesis that incorporates both ideas but you have to have a world view that is capable of including that at the time. the extremists in both camps are simply not capable or willing at this time.

[onething]

johnas,

atheists in this country are not really a big threat, but what do you think about trying to be a believer in china or the soviet union a couple of decades ago?

as for this country, they do have a lot of power in the secular world, which hasn't really gotten out of hand in a major way, except that americans are being taught the materialist point of view as if it were fact.

darwinism as it is taught and understood, and even as darwin states it in his book is mutually exclusive to intelligent design. what you are arguing, is that evolution and intelligent design are compatible and that is true. most all intelligent design people, of which some are christian, believe in evolution.

what they do not believe is that it is an unplanned and random process, and that is what darwinism and the modern science take on it insists upon. that is an absolute underpinning. there are two pillars of darwinian evolution:

1) it is undirected and unplanned.
2) it involves only slow and gradual changes

so, to repeat, it is not evolution per se, but specifically neo-darwinian evolution theory that is incompatible with intelligent design.

i am not sure why you equate the shortcomings of the fundamentalists with proponents of intelligent design, not all of whom are even christian.

[johnasmodeus]

i hear where you're coming from, ewhaz, but i just don't see the connection between atheism and racism. atheism seems to me to be a perfectly harmless belief system. racism is something that has no trouble at all thriving in highly religious environments; in fact, racism is very often actually fueled by religious zeal.

and i think i understand your point of view as well, onething. but i don't understand the connection between atheism and materialism. these two ideologies exist in independent spheres. if the children are being taught to be materialistic, it's through the efforts of the advertising industry, not through those of any sort of atheist organization. and even in china or the soviet union, atheism was just another political tool, like christianity is for our government. i just don't see a huge difference between trying to be a believer then and there and trying to be an atheist now and here. sure, the penalties were different, but that was due more to the more totalitarian nature of the governments then to the policy itself.

anyway, my intent was not to come down on one side or the other. my intent was to point out that the argument ceased to be a logical one decades ago. for all intents and purposes it has devolved into a purely political debate.

which is why i'm sick of hearing about it. but not yet of talking about it, apparently. :d

[Ewhaz]

well, it really depends on where your getting your information to be honest. i'm sure there are rational atheists who have no want of racism or any other kind of social profiling. then there are others who believe they are in some way superior to another race.. the bell curve was a book that supported the notion that race had something to do with mental ability, they basically pointed out that african american minorities had statistically lower iq's than other races. the recent paper (though i cant remember what it was called) was released by a prominent evolutionist and the conclusion the paper came to was that minority races where genetically inferior to white races. these were not shots in the dark nor fringe propagandist, but some of the main stream respected scientist in their fields.

i guess the point really is that any one can choose to believe in anything they want, justify any thing they want. it is not something that is relegated only to religion or only to atheism.. the truth is is that we can all come to the same conclusions by many different routes. racism is not something that only thrives in a religious setting, it can thrive no matter what. and to a point, in our own country (usa) it was because of religion that we began to abolish slavery and work for equal rights.

and as far as a political debate, i think that in many ways the ones in power use religion to control the masses and yet do not believe in religion themselves. it's nothing more than a means of control. one reason i left my christian background was simply because there where too many stipulations about right and wrong and then the last stipulation not to judge. i'm far more happier where i am now, though admittedly i am less sure about my standing than i was when i was christian. in the hands of the people, religion can be a catalyst for improving one's self. there are themse of service and helping others. on the other hand, it can be distorted to such a point that those in power use it's great power to motivate people (who better than to serve than the will of an almighty infailable god?) to convince people that their actions are right by providence..

[onething]

ewhaz,

the same can be said about creationists videos, they rarely come out with anything but a deep religious tang.

no doubt, after all religion is their starting point. but i was never defending the creationist position. they start with revelation, and try to make science fit.

after my little derailment, i've become comfortable admitting to myself i have no idea whats going on.

this is high wisdom!

i'm sick of the intolerance in the debate.

yes, but so far the intelligent design side are not often rude. i wonder if they were in power and the tables were turned, if they would remain so. i know a nice website, but i think i'm not allowed to say it. anyway, i'm finished with spending much time on it, fascinating though it is. it's more fun to sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold. i don't need to convince anyone.

but i did feel compelled to make a few corrections on misunderstandings that i recognize as coming from the side intolerant of intelligent design. the creationists have always had some excellent facts on their side, but their weakness was insisting on things like a seven day creation.

i do not think that the intelligent design people are other than truthseekers, and are not motivated primarily by hidden agendas. their movement does not deserve to be called a trojan horse.

johnas,

i hear where you're coming from, ewhaz, but i just don't see the connection between atheism and racism. atheism seems to me to be a perfectly harmless belief system. racism is something that has no trouble at all thriving in highly religious environments; in fact, racism is very often actually fueled by religious zeal.

racism and eugenics got a huge boost in the late 1800's from darwinism. hitler was enamored of darwinism, marx was delighted with darwin's book. eugenics programs were begun in this country as well. darwin said (and he was a kind man, against slavery) that he expected the white race would eliminate the black within a century. right now, political correctness and our indoctrination is against racism, and the evolutionists are going to funny contortions to eliminate it, but it certainly seems about as logical an outcome as you could ask for - that in the long, slow, incremental rise from apes to humans, some groups might be just a teensy bit smarter or different in other ways. why, indeed, should they end up exactly the same?

as for racism being fueled by relgious zeal, i have some very lengthy opinions on that! in short, it's because in my never humble opinion, the bible is a very confusing amalgamation of good and evil teachings, mixed up and masquerading as all good.

when i said materialism, i did not mean greed for stuff. my bad. i meant the philosophy that matter is all there is, no belief in god, soul, afterlife, and mockery of the ether.

my intent was to point out that the argument ceased to be a logical one decades ago. for all intents and purposes it has devolved into a purely political debate.

oh, but hardly. the part of the debate that i pay attention to is almost pure logic. it's all about biological systems, and the way they function. the knowledge of same has only in the past two decades or so even got to the point that has become so amazing that the intelligent design of life becomes harder and harder to deny, and easier and easier to see.

[MarkM]

well, it really depends on where your getting your information to be honest. i'm sure there are rational atheists who have no want of racism or any other kind of social profiling. then there are others who believe they are in some way superior to another race.. the bell curve was a book that supported the notion that race had something to do with mental ability, they basically pointed out that african american minorities had statistically lower iq's than other races. the recent paper (though i cant remember what it was called) was released by a prominent evolutionist and the conclusion the paper came to was that minority races where genetically inferior to white races. these were not shots in the dark nor fringe propagandist, but some of the main stream respected scientist in their fields.

i guess the point really is that any one can choose to believe in anything they want, justify any thing they want. it is not something that is relegated only to religion or only to atheism.. the truth is is that we can all come to the same conclusions by many different routes. racism is not something that only thrives in a religious setting, it can thrive no matter what. and to a point, in our own country (usa) it was because of religion that we began to abolish slavery and work for equal rights.

this is a huge, salient point for me, having experienced racism at work today.


a classic western world education and immersion in a technological society engenders a built in bias in regards to an individual's proficiency with i.q. tests.

a standard i.q. test covers knowledge of spatial rotation, patternal variance, arithmetic, ratios and language skills, among other things. to proffer such a test to one who has not been immersed in our western society and practised these things since birth does not begin to gauge the potential of, lets say, a third world denizen whose experience is not in these areas. this guarantees no yardstick by which to measure native intelligence, much less the ability to enjoy the light of love.

even those homegrown groups such as americans living in urban projects, for example, may have less native exposure to these things, being culturally involved with the ethnicity and economic/educational standards of their neighbourhoods.

in toronto where i live dwell an estimated 160 cultural source groups , and i work with many who are several-generation canadian, and who, having been raised in this country, by parents who are also canadian by birth, long since past identifying with a foreign culture, are totally indistinguishable from anyone else raised in our culture - in matters of intelligence or aptitude or anything else for that matter, besides skin colour.

many who betray racist tendencies fear 'strange' cultures and perceive their own native culture as superior, perhaps not so much racist per se but 'culturalist', and so will gravitate towards alleged difference to the exclusion of evidence pointing to the contrary.

this is not meant to 'set anyone straight' on this thread, this is a complex series of concepts of relative separation and very far ranging in regards to religious vs scientific fundamentalism, as i percieve it to be.

i just wanted to take the opportunity to speak upon racism, as i saw it rear up in my workplace today.

racism has less to do with religion, science or politics, imatomatho, than it has to do with sheer willful ignorance on an individual level (absolutely acceptable) of that which is most real - namely, the intrinsic connection of all life to infinite intelligence. every life form contains infinite intelligence, and any perception of limitation of intelligence, from the virus on up, is strictly illusion.

yes, but...no buts. there is no difference. this is our challenge. we work so hard to delineate separation,yet each individual owns the power to detach from entrenchment in any 'camp' of social/political/religious influence, as these influences are secondary in power to individual ability to know love.

again, not speaking to anyone on this thread. but every atheist, born again, trotskyite, random evolutionarist and intelligent design proponent has it right. they are absolutely correct in their understanding. i accept all their views with relish..and a bit of mustard, but no onions. we all have our distortions.

[Jivatman]

it tends to be my opinion that the spiritual, "law-of-one" type people who realize that the spiritual nature of reality has already been proven on numerous occasions, and that we are on the verge of mainstream breakthrough, have very little to gain by taking part in this argument.

anyone who has taken a philosophy class realizes that the id arguments presented are the same arguments that have been played over again and again by dozens of philosophers for hundreds upon hundreds of years. anyone who has taken a philosophy class also realizes that in philosophical arguments, there are no winners.

furthermore, our movement is one of love. the restrictive nature of the mainstream media and it's ties with government and big business are more apparent than ever. at this point, attempting to bring spirituality into schools is fruitless. seeing as the government can easily deny all evidence and heartlessly deny such anti-addictive panaceas as ibogaine from medical use, it is obvious that we cannot take them on through their own channels.

as well i agree with an above poster who said that atheists are much more willing to sit down and talk; and indeed these are the people who will be the first to join our movement. they are very moral, often more than the militant evangelists. the "law of one" is beautiful and logical in it's simplicity... along with the upanishads, it's essentially what converted myself from atheism.

seeing as many of us are wanderers, i would, as ra recommends, attempt to get beyond the re-arrangement of social structures, and above all, seek our own heart of self so that we may radiate light and love to others.

or perhaps if you as me, as i have found that mine is a mission of words... though one who only feels the inklings of what it is likely to entails, but finds it coming on soon.