Defending the Wedge Strategy

Intelligent design has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with the supernatural. And ID is not anti-evolution if one defines evolution simply as “change over time,” or even that living things are related by common ancestry. However, the National Association of Biology Teachers contends that evolution is "an unpredictable and purposeless process" that “has no discernable direction or goal, including survival of a species.” It is this specific claim made by neo-Darwinism that intelligent design directly challenges.

The question —How Did the Appearance of Design in Living Systems Arise—Has Long Been Part of Historical and Evolutionary Biology.

As detailed in Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, Darwinian theory was developed as a counter argument to the observed fact that living systems appear to be designed. Before Darwin "there was no alternative explanation for apparent design." Thus, Darwinian theory is essentially a scientific rebuttal of design. As Dawkins points out so explicitly, it is a theory that seeks to show that the apparent design in nature is actually just an illusion.

The denial of actual design in biology is central to Darwinian thought. While Dawkins could be right, there’s no proof that the apparent design in nature is just an illusion. Therefore, either both the ID hypothesis and the blind watchmaker hypothesis are science or they are both non-science. One is the flip-side of the other. If the hypothesis of "no design", is science, then it necessarily follows that its counter argument is science.

The ID critics can't have it both ways. If they consider anti-design arguments as scientific then they have no grounds for claiming pro-design arguments to be unscientific. Design is science and not metaphysics for the same reasons the ID critics claim their anti-design arguments are science and not metaphysics. To be testable, the blind watchmaker thesis needs a null hypothesis which just happens to be ID. Without it the claim of "no-design" is dogma not science.

 

yes the ignorant chance the god has created us out
of thin air cant be proved, that's why theology and science are two different practices: one relies on beliefs, the other on hard facts...u cannot mix 'em up.

 

How many times over the centuries have people claimed things to be impossible only to have that notion proved wrong as mankind advanced? Thankfully, everyone has not taken your attitude, or we'd all be laughing our asses off while living in caves.

 

The ignorant chance that evolution happened without outside manipulation cannot be proved either. Evolution happened for sure, but why it happened the way it happened, is still very much unknown.

 

Ignorant chance is a belief bitty...

 

of course u don't know why it happened, evolution and science's role its not to prove why it occurs but how. u can find an answer as of why only in religion: it's up to your personal beliefs.

 

Bitstream wrote:

This cuts both ways. The ID critics believe that non-intelligent processes were behind all origin events. But how did they get to this belief? Did they develop some experiment to distinguish products of blind watchmaking from products of intelligent design? No. They have no test, they have no method, they have no procedure for determining an evolutionary origin via non-intelligent causes. Shesssh.

 

ror, that's like sayin' the earth spinnin' around the sun cud be due to gravity but also to id since we really dont know exactly what gravity is. absurd.

 

Since there is no proof of ignorant chance, then we don't know how, or why.

So why do kids grow up, believing dogmatically that that they descended from apes as a result of ignorant chance?

Because science, for the masses has drifted away from its primary purpose.

It has replaced religion for many as a means to explain the unknown, and then people take it wholly on faith, then they want to propagate that faith in order to reinforce their own belief systems...it has become dogma.

We need to return to a more balanced and proper approached to educating children in the school.

Isn't it better to have children educated to have open minds, inquiring minds, not indoctrinated minds?

 

How random is gravity in your world bitty?