Intelligent Design struck down in Federal Court

Perhaps then you are more of a scientist than I previously realized.

Who is teaching such things?
There is no science curriculum I know of which does so.
But I do hear and see religions telling children their religion can only be the correct one and others are wrong.

Not understanding the atheism of scientists is akin to not understanding the theism or agnosticism of scientists.
It should not matter what their personal beliefs or non beliefs are.

"I know God does not exist" is a personal statement, not a scientific one.

To be asked to think without giving information would not be offering much freedom to learn or arrive at a conclusion.
Scientific dogma is falsifiable if not accepted or believed. Theistic dogma is heresy if not accepted or believed.

Inserting ID into biology class would be pushing theistic thinking on the child. Biology has no religious connotations unless they are artificially introduced.
If a teacher were to introduce theistic or atheistic viewpoints into biology class, they should be firmly dealt with. The biology should not be altered to include an ID theistic viewpoint.

In my opinion you would teach very little if anything at all under thoise circumstances. Getting a theist to agree with an atheist before something considered as fact can be taught, would deprive all children of learning.
Science and biology do not deal with proving things of God. Religious study class say they know how to do that.

The ID movement is trying to force science and biology to include messages to do with religion.
Biology and science do not teach about God or religion. ID wants them both to start doing so.

Teaching scientific Theory was what they were doing. ID wants to alter the nature of scientific Theory by introducing non-scientific ideas into it.
Scientists who are too much in love with a scientific Theory can be tested for the accuracy of their love affair. ID theists too much in love with their God claim their idea to be above all understanding.

That would mean turning ID notions into scientific Theory. So far that has been impossible to do.

Science is only ever true as far as it can be falsified.
ID and religion are only ever endorsed as being true.

Evolution is a biological process. What has become to be known as the Theory of Evolution and Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence of a designer or not. Such notions to do with creation itself are pure speculation, for or against, spun off from the facts and information contained within biological science.
ID latched onto the spin offs and from that try to gain entry for their personal beliefs by altering biology away from the science.

Then keep giving them the information science has to offer and the information religion has to offer in separate classes, and let them make up their own minds.

 

roberk,
Karl Popper was referring to natural selection, he did not attach that statement to evolution.
I think it fair to say he was describing the way in which some philosophizing was not a bad approach as it helped develop scientific research by keeping an open mind.
He is also famous for saying theism as an explanation for evolution "was worse than an open admission of failure,..."

 

Perhaps then you are more of a scientist than I previously realized.Who is teaching such things?

Perhaps your previous and/or existing narrow minded misconceptions extend to more areas than you can imagine.

There is no science curriculum I know of which does so.

A teacher teaches, not a science book. Books don't answer questions directed to them, they don't provide explanations when asked.

Parents hear when their kids come home from school what their children heard the teachers say, and what the teachers are teaching.

But I do hear and see religions telling children their religion can only be the correct one and others are wrong.

A parent has that right, the public schools do not have the right to push religious or atheistic principles or ideas onto children. I certainly hope that you are not comparing parents and what they do, and what public schools should be doing.

Not understanding the atheism of scientists is akin to not understanding the theism or agnosticism of scientists.

The atheism or theism of scientists or teachers should not be a factor at all, or influence children one way or another in their learning of scientific principles or the practice of science.

The personal beliefs of a teacher are not what the school system is paying the teacher to present to children.

It should not matter what their personal beliefs or non beliefs are.

It absolutely should not matter, and a theist and atheist should teacher science exactly the same way...leading children to no conclusion of their own making. Their job is not to load the pitch with their own spit.

"I know God does not exist" is a personal statement, not a scientific one.

Of course. Just as someone who says "I know God exists" is a personal statement, not a scientific one.

One could though make a reasonable argument for the probability of God existing through the logical and reasonable process of induction and inference.

To be asked to think without giving information would not be offering much freedom to learn or arrive at a conclusion.

Agree, so to ask science to deliver a conclusion to the nature of life without having all the information is to ask people to guess without sufficient evidence.

Scientific dogma is falsifiable if not accepted or believed.

Scientific dogma is just that, dogma.

Theistic dogma is heresy if not accepted or believed.

Only among those who are judging the religious beliefs. Deists and other religions don't get into the heresy business.

Just like democrats don't get into "you are not patriotic unless you believe what I believe" business. We see the totalitarian thought process lots of places.

Inserting ID into biology class would be pushing theistic thinking on the child.

I do not agree. Offering ID as an alternative explanation, i.e. that life is a result of intelligent design, not random ignorant chance will only stimulate children to think. Providing more than one possible and reasonable choice is what stimulates thinking, not limiting explanations to only a narrow point of view.

Biology has no religious connotations unless they are artificially introduced.

Strict facts of biology do not. Theories do. Going forward with the move in genetic engineering and other advancements have deep ethical issues, and as such have profound religious and spiritual import.

If a teacher were to introduce theistic or atheistic viewpoints into biology class, they should be firmly dealt with.

Teachers have contracts. They can also subtly influence children by many means. To think a teacher doesn't have power to shape the ideas of a young mind is unrealistic.

The biology should not be altered to include an ID theistic viewpoint.

I don't agree. Offering alternative viewpoints is what learning is all about, and learning to make choices is what ecuation is all about.

In my opinion you would teach very little if anything at all under those circumstances.

Yes, your opinion.

Getting a theist to agree with an atheist before something considered as fact can be taught, would deprive all children of learning.

Facts of life are not the problem, theories are the issue.

Science and biology do not deal with proving things of God.

Science is not supposed to deal with proving of non God, but we all know that is the agenda of many in the scientific community.

Religious study class say they know how to do that.

They may say that....

The ID movement is trying to force science and biology to include messages to do with religion.

The ID movement is trying to give children more choices before the children reach their own conclusions and form their own opinions.

Biology and science do not teach about God or religion.

Not directly, but the agenda is quite clear that many in the scientific community are tyring to make the case for non God, using Darwinism as a cornerstone of their belief system.

ID wants them both to start doing so.

No, ID wants to give more than one theory, let the children then decide.

Teaching scientific Theory was what they were doing.

Teaching one scientific theory is what they are doing. They are afraid of teaching an alternate point of view.

Why is that? Why should the scientists fear the teaching of an alternate point of view?

ID wants to alter the nature of scientific Theory by introducing non-scientific ideas into it.

Not non scientific, but ideas that come from observation of the nature of life, and then logical induction to the concept of an intelligent design in nature.....not a biological world that is devoid of intelligent planning behind it.

If it is logical possibility, if not a reasonable logical probability that there is an ID, why not offer it as an alternate theory?

Scientists who are too much in love with a scientific Theory can be tested for the accuracy of their love affair.

And how do you test for a non God theory in biology?

ID theists too much in love with their God claim their idea to be above all understanding.

Some ID theists do, some don't.

That would mean turning ID notions into scientific Theory.

Certain aspects of ID theory are quite reasonable, and rely on repetitive observation, verification of that observation, and then a probabilistic theory as to the possible reasons for what is observed.

There is a danger in this alternate theory? I don't see it.

So far that has been impossible to do.

So far it has been impossible to show how Darwinism can be proved, yet it is still taught.

Science is only ever true as far as it can be falsified.

How do you falsify science itself?

ID and religion are only ever endorsed as being true.

This is not a true statement. Some simply think that ID may be true, or probably is true, and that it makes sense. As it makes sense that it is a viable explantion, they offer it up to children to let them come to their own conclusions.

There has been no argument that I have seen that shows ID is not possible, or that a creative force behind our world is improbable. It is more probably that all this order is a result of programming than random chance.

Evolution is a biological process.

Change and adaptation is a biological process, factually observed.

Evolution of Darwin, which is what most people understand by the word evolution as it relates to species is not a factually observed phenomena. It is a guess.

What has become to be known as the Theory of Evolution and Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence of a designer or not.

Then there will be no harm or threat to Darwinism to suggest that the programming behind the nature of biological organisms may be a product of a programmer, not random chance.

Such notions to do with creation itself are pure speculation, for or against, spun off from the facts and information contained within biological science.

Such notions that a so called evolution goes along without any guidance or planning is pure speculation.

ID latched onto the spin offs and from that try to gain entry for their personal beliefs by altering biology away from the science.

Not at all.

Then keep giving them the information science has to offer and the information religion has to offer in separate classes, and let them make up their own minds.

Teaching the equal possibility that life is the result of ID or a non ID will allow children a choice. Teaching them only one possibility affords no such choice.

 

the id movement is really just a last ditch effort by theists to retreat to a position of defensibility to prevent becoming totally irrelevant it the search for truth and knowledge. it has become untenable for theists to argue that man was created out of clay, just as he is today, 6000 years ago. as scientific knowledge advances there becomes less and less need for "god did it" explanations.
a simple test for the honesty of the id proponents would be to imagine how they would react if evidence were discovered that yes indeed there was a designer, it was Zeus. I suspect they would deny that and insist it had to be the Christian god and to believe otherwise puts you in danger of damnation and being cast in to a pit of fire.


"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn."
[St. Augustine,



"The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if
any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents
as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false."St. Thomas Aquinas:

 

Personal beliefs of teachers for or against religious beliefs should not be foisted onto children.

Science and biology do not teach religion. If teachers are pushing their own agenda for or against ID on top of biology lessons , they should be stopped. Biology lessons are for teaching biology. They are not pro or anti religion lessons.

ID tried to do that. They were stopped. If they want to push their ideas of intelligent designer, then they should turn to the religious education department.

Teaching Darwin is not teaching against religion or for religion. It is not about religion or creators or designers.

To make people tell children something 'ID' about the teaching of Darwin, which Darwin has nothing to do with, is nothing more than dishonestly pushing the separate agenda of ID onto children.

 

Here are quotes from some popular biology highschool texts. It would be disingenuous to say they are not anti-religious:

"It is important to keep this concept in mind: Evolution is random and undirected (Biology, Miller and Levine, Prentice Hall, 1995, p.658).
One of the great wonders of our existence and of life itself is that it has all arisen through a combination of evolutionary processes and chance events (Biology Concepts and Connections, Campbell, Mitchell, and Reece, Benjamin Cummings, 1994, p.390).

Evolution works without either plan or purpose! (p.658) Evolution is random and undirected (p.658) (Biology, Miller and Levine, Prentice Hall, 1995).
Life's building blocks can form spontaneously…. Soon after the Earth's surface cooled life arose in the ancient seas. The first organisms to appear on the planet were bacteria, which are single-celled prokaryotes. These early bacteria are the ancestors of modern bacteria and of all the many different kinds of organisms living today, including you (Biology, Visualizing Life, Johnson, Holt Rinehart Winston, 1994, pp.200, 203).

Even before sperm and egg merge by chance and establish the genetic makeup of a new individual, they are as much alive as any other form of life (p.528). [This is part of a chapter that is in favour of free choice for abortion] (Biology Concepts and Applications, Cecie Star, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994, SA).

 

there is nothing anti religious there. in fact evolution and god can coexist. the theory of evolution says nothing about the point of creation. the theist can always say "at whatever point life started god started it"and used evolution to accomplish his will. that statement can never be falsified.
of course this makes the bible wrong so christians will not go there.

 

I see. You can't prove ID is true by any scientific method, so you will resort to simply proclaiming it to be true based on the weight of your empirical observations of nature and your belief in what those observations reveal.

And, you want your "scientific explanation" taught as science.

Go to http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/ and read.

Now, you can choose to go with what you believe to be true, i.e., that based upon your personal observation of the world, order can only develop as the result of the purposeful acts of an intelligent designer, or you can accept the fact Dr. Thomas Schneider of the National Institute of Health has scientifically proven, that random mutation can produce an ordered system from disordered base chemical constituents.

If you do not accept the proof of Schneider's work, then it's up to you to show why it is false. If you succeed, then you will have achieved what neither Michael Behe or William Dembski have been able to do.

Schneider's work falsifies Behe's and Dembski's and proves evolution is a mathematically sound proposition.

You challenged me earlier in the thread to disprove intelligent design. As I have pointed out, that is an impossibility, because proof of God is not possible by any natural methodology.

However, Schneider's work scientifically proves that evolution can do what you claim only an intelligent designer can do, i.e., produce order from chaos.

So, now I challenge you to scientifically prove that either (1) Schneider's work is incorrect, or (2) that an intelligent designer exists.

 

I agree with vehn. Non of that denies or supports religion or creators or Gods. Reading into things, stuff not said is to my mind what is disingenuous

roberk, evolution is not creation.

 

Here are some quotes from leading evolutionists Stu:

T.H. Morgan thought that the “main goal of Biology was to show the invalidity of religious views of man and the universe” (T. Dobzhansky in The Evolutionary Synthesis, 1998, p.446).

Julian Huxley, at the Darwin Centennial in 1959 said there was no longer any need for man “to take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinised father-figure[God]” (Witham, 2003, p.5). Religion, according to Huxley, was only one stage in evolution and now man was at a higher level where it “rejected the supernatural idea of creation for that of material progress”(ibid, 2003, p.5). And “Darwinism removed the whole idea of god as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion. Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed” (ibid, 2003, p.7).

Daniel Dennett writes in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: “Safety demands that religions be put in cages” (1995).

Douglas Futuyma: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx’s materialist theory of history and society and Freud’s attribution of human behaviour to influences over which we have little control, Darwin’s theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism – of much of science, in short – that has since been the stage of most Western thought.” (Futuyma, 1986, p.2).

Lewontin: “We have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (Lewontin, 1997).

William Provine: “Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented” (keynote address at the 1998 Darwin Day celebration at the University of Tennessee). He also suggests trying to join evolution with theology, as in beliefs that God(s) somehow started creation but is now out of the picture as being “worthless.” Those type of God(s) “don’t give life after death, they don’t answer prayers, they don’t give you foundations for ethics. In fact they give you nothing” (ibid, 1998).

Even when religion is not specifically mentioned, the conclusions of biologists are antithetical to religious beliefs:
George Gaylord Simpson: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” (1967, pp.344-345).



Jacques Monod thinks that “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, lies at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution ...” (Monod, 1972, p.110); and “Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged by chance.” (p.167).