Where's the opinion? I think there's very little arguing that ID is talking about God, so that's not an opinion. There's very little arguing that a very very large majority of scientists, whether they believe it or not themselves, consider ID to be unscientific, so that's not an opinion.

Again, where's the opinion? Clearly it's talking about a deity since there's no other type of intelligent designer we could be talking about. So that's not an opinion. Deities are religious concepts, that's not an opinion either.

Stop refuting my arguments with "in your opinion". Truth does not become opinion just because accepting it makes it harder to push your point of view. Either show me where it's only an opinion, or accept that it's not just an opinion.

By the way, even if these were just opinions, the maxim "My opinion is as good as your opinion" is not true. If somebody tried telling you Hitler was a really great guy, would you accept his explanation that his opinion was just as good as yours? So, something being an opinion does not necessarily mean it can be dismissed. Some opinions hold more weight than others. Some people think Hitler was a great guy, and we think they're nutcases -- and rightly so.

Not that I'm comparing ID advocates to Hitler or nutcases, I'm just making a point about opinions.

From two pages ago:



This suggests you think ID has a place in science class, whether or not it is itself science. I again ask you why.

The reason it's rude is that presenting somebody with reading material interrupts the discussion. You sat down to talk, not to read. However, on the Internet, you're already reading. The difference is much less jarring and does not slow down the pace of a conversation nearly so much -- especially on a message board medium, where there is generally a reasonably long time between replies anyway. There is not a big difference between the format of a long post and of a long article, but there's a huge difference in normal real-life conversation.

- Kef

You're missing my point here. I wouldn't have a problem with Intelligent Design, if it weren't for the very nature of science.

Science if the study of nature. IT works within the universe. Evolution is one way, explained by the known aspects of our universe, to explain how we are the way we are today.

Creationism is an idea that evolution is incorrect, whitch is fine. But the explanation is of, well, intelligent design, i.e. something greater than us, above the universe, made us the way we are. That's not scientific, because science has no way of knowing what goes on outside our known world. Flaws can be found in the evolutionary theory, but the ID explanation is that of the creation outside of the universe. Yuo can't teach anything in science class unless it is science, and though I respect ID, and those who belive in it, it can't be placed under the category of science.

Please read the rest of the posts... we have been over that CREATIONISM IS NOT INTELLIGENT DESIGN!! Sorry for the caps, hopefully they will catch anyone else before they start bringing in creationsim..... oh, and sorry for the double post as well.

If intelligent design is not creationism, then what is it? Are you seriously telling me that you think ID might be referring to a super advanced race of space aliens from another universe who created our universe as a middle school science project? I highly doubt you believe that. Thus, creationism is a synonym for ID, because the people advocating it clearly intend the Intelligent Designer to be God. In there eyes, there is no other alternative.

I just can't reconcile teaching an untestable hypothesis as science, that's all. I say keep it in theology or mythology. Teach it, by all means, just keep it out of biology class.

And posting a reply that is only a link and a statement that the article says how you feel doesn't interrupt? I disagree... as I stated in my post, this is a forum for discussion, and posts that consist only of a link and a short "this is how I feel" is cheating imo. It makes who ever responds to it read the article, which may or may not be true, and then go through the process of posting a rebutle of some credibility, while the poster of the article may not have even read the whole thing him/herself. I don't think that its too much to ask people to state their opinion and give some argument why it is justified.

Why should we? As stated in Behe's book, the ID theory is the only one that can explain those irreducible complexities. Evolution in and of itself cannot. And has been stated on this thread and many others, science is not equipped to address the issue of the existence of a Creator God. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, science by its very nature cannot favor an atheistic natural selection over ID without at least making some attempt at addressing the existence of a Creator. In other words, science must be able to disprove the existence of God before dismissing ID, and that it cannot do.

ID is dismissed because it is based mostly on conjecture and belief, not experimentation and observation.

Sweet mercy, this is ridiculous - does anyone know what seamusz actually wants those who argue against him to do? Because first he berates Trog-Dork for not expressing opinion, and then he berates furrykef for expressing opinion. Thing is, SZ, you've been opining like crazy for the past dozen posts - mostly instructing people on how to present their arguments.

And the opinion that creationism/ID shouldn't be taught as a scientific subject isn't just furrykef's - it's the opinion of most in the American scientific community from what I've seen and heard.

The National Academy of Sciences oppose the teaching of creationism/ID as fact (and they also consider them both to be the same thing, in that they are non-scientific views of the creation of the universe), as outlined in their study "Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Science, second edition (1999)".

Sorry to point you to more reading material, but that is the way to prove that you've researched your argument. But opinion is valid too, even if you don't agree with that opinion.

It is true that most people are against teaching ID, so what? as I stated earlier, Im not convinced it should be myself, but there is nothing wrong with discussing the matter.

The National Acadamy of Science should oppose ID or Evolution being taught as fact. Neither has been empirically proven. And they should re-evaluate their study to only consider the proposistions of ID apart from Creationism. They may have a different conclusion of the issue.

And it's true that evolution should be considered with a pinch of salt, but also as the more realistic theory out there.

I would suggest that (since I sincearly believe in an Intelligent Design) ID would not seem so hokey with a greater effort put into studying features in the world around us that denote a non-random design.

The writter of this article makes a mistake that is very common. He starts off by saying that ID is simply another name for creationism. The ID I am arguing for is NOT creationism. Although I personally believe in a type of creationism, I wouldn't support it being taught in a science class. Once agian, please read the rest of this discussion as most of what I am saying is repitition.

btw, what is it with just pasteing anothers articles as the whole of your argument... what ever happened to original thoughts?

One problem with this is randomness isn't really quantifiable. You can do statistic analyses, of course, but you can't really compute the probability of life "spontaneously" forming on Earth, or of stray radiation altering DNA just so that a particular mutation happens, etc., and even if we had these numbers we wouldn't really know what to do with them. In other words, there's nothing we can really look at and say with even a good dose of scientific certainty, "this did not happen by chance".

Well then please provide your definition of Intelligent Design so we're both on the same page.

Long live Wikipedia! Behold:Intelligent Design vs. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism]Creationism
[/url]

This pretty much sums up ID. The thing to remember is that ID leaves the identity of any potential creator out of the picture, and only addresses proofs of design.

Sorry for the extreme necromancy, but I just wanted to share an article.

Evolution in the bible, says Vatican

Ignore the silly title; the jist is that a Vatican official has said that evolution is completely compatible with the book of Genesis and that fundamentalists in the U.S. pushing "Intelligent Design" are completely out of touch with reality. Or something like that. I love it.

Good grief! The Catholic Church has finally entered the 19th century!

Naw seriously, this is good news. I was always of the mind that Genesis in no way clashed with Darwin's theory of evolution. Like Didymus said once, Genesis is a poetic work probably not to be taken word for word (or I think that's what he said, apologies if wrong).

And also, if you look at the order in which God created the animals in Genesis, it's not too different from the order they came in the process of evolution.