ContraCostaTimes.com | 01/29/2006 | Intelligent design has local roots — I was wondering how the Pennsylvania Intelligent design controversy disappeared so quickly and now the whole movement backtracked and is regrouping. This fascinating story in the small California paper explains it completely. Apparently the constant assertions that Intelligent Design is about science and has nothing whatsoever to do with Creationism turned out to be a pack of lies! I guess being truthful wasn’t in the arsenal of these phonies.
The center’s work on a case in Dover, Pa., that drew national attention helped lead a judge to conclude that intelligent design was essentially creationism in disguise.
The case stemmed from a school district’s requirement that teachers read a statement in biology class about gaps in evolutionary theory and point students to the pro-intelligent design text, “Of Pandas and People.”
So lawyers subpoenaed early drafts of the book. The first version was called “Creation Biology,” and drafts up until 1987 were full of references to creationism. But the wording changed after the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 struck down a Louisiana law banning the teaching of evolution. References to creationism in the Pandas drafts after 1987 had been almost entirely replaced by intelligent design.
“Once we figured that out, it was really a slam dunk,” Matzke said. “How much clearer could the evidence be?”
Remember that Science is also “faith based”. The idea that matter came from who knows where and then somehow over unknown ages managed to construct itself into intelliegence and organization requires far more faith than the belief that a higher intelliegence created this universe and has a plan for us. When I see a Lincoln Towncar it never occurs to me that it could have evolved from a VW because that would be stupid. I just don’t have that kind of blind and ignorant faith. There is nothing wrong wtih our trying our best to understand how things work or could have been formed. But to blindly trust in science alone is silly. Remember that last century science taught the universe was in steady-state (never changing), but later came to believe in a big bang theory (and most likely that is exactly what it is, a theory). One thing for sure, if there is no intelligent design it makes absolutely no difference what you believe because you simply don’t matter after you die. On the other hand, if there is intelliegent design… Well that makes you think doesn’t it?
Well, of course intelligent design relies on the existence of a creator. But it also accepts the notion that the creator created life in a way that allows for evolutionary change. The difference is in the origin.
Intelligent deisgn seems much more plausible than to hold the belief that a puddle of chemicals and enzymes has evolved over the past few million years into an entire planet of diverse, sentient life. That senario relies primarily on chance and the coincidence of many unlikely circumstances.
I would call myself a deist.
Also don’t forget that a key part of the scientific method is to critically review and rethink hypothesis in view of new or differing facts. Thus to use Doug’s example, steady state theory of the Universe was refuted when new data from radio telescopes was presented.
This process is almost never put to use in Religion.
“certain chemicals are combined under certain circumstances life will be created”
well, that’s certainly specific enough to change my whole belief system. :-/
I’ve never seen it shown that some chemicals could just be thrown together under a heat lamp and spawn self-sustaining life. Are these chemicals magically forming into DNA and all the other required structures to perform the most basic functions that a simple cell needs to accomplish to be called “living”?
No but many of the other objections by Creat.. er.. ID’ers have been overturned- for example we have had species differentiate in the last 100 years (common parent 100 years ago- can’t interbreed any more).
Even ID’ers concede natural selection these days.
Besides, evolution doesn’t say how life started- that’s a different field. But it does predict that you can evolve something the size of a mouse into something the size of an elephant in about 10,000 years with rates of change we observe in the real world.
In the face of plague or drought, species can evolve a lot faster since they are under much higher selection pressures.
See talkorigins.org for more.
—
Science:
Gather facts
Construct a theory based on those facts.
Predict that things will be true based on the theory.
A: The predictions are false when tested- the theory is wrong.
B: The predictions are true when tested- the theory is supported.
—
There isn’t a lot of faith in that.
Because it is not a fact, it is a theory, unless if you have found (or are) the missing link.
Do I believe in intelligent design, creationism, or evolution? Answer: None of the above, because none are proven facts.
To answer anything else is to confuse facts with beliefs.
well, since you are the one dealing with vagaries, and claiming them as fact, I suppose you could provide an example of mixing “certain chemicals” under “certain circumstances” and producing something we would all agree to calling “life.”
Steve, those people drive by faith alone, and trust God to tow them when they break down, instead of performing preventive maintenance on their car and holding a AAA card.
Floyd,
Perhaps you read in my original post where i called myself a deist. Maybe you should look that up in the dictionary before commenting on my faith.
Steve,
Now you are simply acting like a child.who relies on ad hominem attacks. Good job champ!
you haven’t provided any evidence. all you have done is made an assertion and insisted that everybody here is “well read” enough to know what the hell you are talking about, without you actually having to point to it yourself.
a definition of plausible: likely but not certain to be or become true or real; “a likely result”
Creationism is an obsolete explanation of the origin of Man. The center of their argument is that God created the Universe. What is God? God is the Ultimate Unknown. What is the ultimate unknown in Science? The ulitimate unknown in Science is what is it that fucking went “BANG”! In other words, what was the unknown infinitesmal point that contained all the matter and energy in the Universe and that exploded in the Big Bang? Scientist’s God has a different name. His name is: I Don’t Know. On the other hand, Creationists view of the material world is a 10,000 year old fairy tale that was told to frightened humans who felt consulation in a story that they could understand. But think about it. REALLY think about it… Everything that exists in the Universe today was contained inside a sphere smaller than this period.
It is utter NONSENSE.
God created the Universe. This is true. But man does not know God. How can you? To understand Him is to BE HIM!
I highly recommend seeing the exhibit “Bodies” now showing at South Street Seaport in New York. See up close what is beneath our skins. The “models” were REAL human beings that were preserved by a special plastication process that has left intact the innard muscles, tissues, etc as if you are witnessing a frozen corpse. See yourself. I spoke to two people while I was there. And the three of us all agreed that there was no way that evolution could explain what we were seeing with our own eyes. The sheer miracle of our bodies is proof that Intelligence is behind our design. Evolution says it is endless mistakes that created the human form as we know it today. This may be true in one aspect HOWEVER mistakes will keep happening UNLESS their is Intelligence to finally see that something has been corrected and it is RIGHT. THERE IS A DIRECTION! This “direction” scientists call evolution while creationist call it “intelligent design”.
If you believe that one-hundred monkeys banging away on one-hundred typewriters will eventually type out “Hamlet” in 100 billions years, then you believe evolution’s mistakes are the sole designer. How do monkeys know when the type out
“To me or not to be”
is close to what they want to get to?
Intelligence began at the beginning. Whatever went “BANG” knew enough to know that if it DID NOT go BANG then it would never have known that it went BANG!
#10 James “Because it is not a fact, it is a theory,”
The theory of arithmetic says that 2+2=4.
Mike,
Do take in to account how large the universe is/seems to be. Think about how many “puddles of chemicals and enzymes” there are in the universe that didn’t make it.
Simply because statistics says that a coin toss is 50-50, doesn’t mean that a coin can’t land heads up 50, 100, 1000, or more times heads up.
and furthermore; achieving a chemical reaction, even a self-sustaining one, is a far cry from saying you have created life. Chemicals have this strange tendency to react in a predictable manner, as long as the conditions exist to support that reaction. Life is neither predictable nor reliable. Life changes, and mutates…. it reacts to stimuli. Chemicals in a beaker are not the same as life.
But, Steve, if you can provide a link to show where scientists have created life from chemicals where no life previously existed, then I’ll be more than happy to take a look at it.
Science at least TRIES to explain how the world and universe works by trial and error. Rather than something entirely made up by people’s imaginations over 2000 years ago.
Steve,
That has been quite the elegant and intelligent post. Well said my man.
Mike,
I will give you credit for one thing. You have not tried to use the Bible as proof of your argument. The downside to that is that you now have nothing except words, or as we call it, your faith to present.
No, Science does not know exactly as a fact what happened 13 billion years ago. Or even 10,000 years ago. By using analysis of records though we have a pretty good idea. In fact, there is enough evidence to support the scientists explanation and to refute most beliefs held by the Creationists / Unintelligent Designers. Through hypothesis and experimentation it has been demonstrated that the universe began with the Big Bang. I am not an astrophysicist so I will not attempt to explain it.
A puddle of chemicals turning into life? Who knows how life started. There is not only no fossil records of the first slime to move or reproduce, there is no written record from anyone, including God, that observed the incident. In both cases there is a lack of true evidence. Science believes that there is a large difference between todays atmosphere and that of earth two billion years ago. The air had much more oxygen, methane, and ammonia then today. The earth’s temperature was also much higher with constant electrical storms.
Did it take millions of years with one random set to initiate the process? It is quite possible. Did some Supreme Being snap his / her fingers and create life? I doubt it. There is just no evidence that it did. The former can be shown to be statistically possible though. Even if it took hundreds of millions of years for that one random even to occur.
Well, it certainly comes down to personal opinion and perception, now doesn’t it? My saying something seems more plausible doesn’t mean it’s provovable or that I cannot possibly be show as wrong.
I hope you’re finished with your tantrum and done picking nits over a single word. Chill out
I still haven’t seen that link pointing to this life you say chemists have been creating for quite a while now.
Chris,
ultimately, you are still going to have to show where the puddles came from to begin with… and how the rules that govern nature were established.
I believe it’s far more reasonable to believe that it was all begun, at the very least, by an intelligence beyond our universe, than to believe that it all came about from nowhere with no plan; simply because of the complexity of it all. I can’t even comprehend what is beyond.
Pat,
You’ve contradicted yourself. How can the big bang be demonstrated to have happened when, as you’ve stated, we have no idea what was going on billions of years ago on just our planet much less the rest of the universe? You are relying on your faith in science to be able to explain the unexplainable as much as I am relying on faith that an intelligent being started the ball rolling.
Actually, I wouldn’t consider having our universe created by an intelligent being as believing in nothing.
And you really should learn to debate people without resorting to hysterical name calling and ad hominem attacks. Outside of politics, it’s generally considered bad form. And if you’re going to present claims as evidence for your argument, you shouldn’t cast aside inquiries about the source because you feel it’s beneath you to provide a link.
later, stud.
Jeez, maybe one of you people (on both sides) should actually look for something on the science of this instead of blathering back and forth on generalities. Here’s what my less than one minute of searching got from Wikipedia. Not the most authoritative source, but I’m sure you can find better ones if you actually put some effort in.
The answer is: they’re working on it. There’s plausible theories on how a number of cell structures like RNA can come into existance, and experiments to prove it on some of them. They’re working on how this can translate into a living cell.
Some points I want to make in no particular order, since I’m late to this argument:
– I’d like to underscore post #5. “A key part of the scientific method is to critically review and rethink hypothesis in view of new or differing facts. Thus to use Doug’s example, steady state theory of the Universe was refuted when new data from radio telescopes was presented.” This is why I have “faith” in science. There is no unquestionable dogma. They can be wrong, but it will eventually be rooted out. Theories are supported by evidence, not belief, and even the biggest and most widely accepted ones can be overturned given enough evidence. Relativity overthrew Newtonian Mechanics, and others like String Theory are attempting to overthrow that because it doesn’t mesh with Quantum Mechanics. Evolution has an enormous body of evidence behind it, and all that has been shown is that there may be some gaps in our understanding for particular pieces, not that the theory itself is incorrect. Also, criticisms made by talking heads on TV don’t count. Publish an article in a respected peer reviewed journal. You know, so the actual experts can evaluate it and pick it apart on the merits instead of trying to convince the average Joe with arguments about tornadoes in junkyards that sound good but have no scientific weight.
– Evolution and faith are not mutually exclusive. I went through 12 years of Catholic school: two different grammar schools and a high school. I was taught by priests, deacons, and nuns in addition to laypeople. What was I taught? Evolution. That Genesis specifically WASN’T literal, that a “day” could be billions of years in reality. That’s why I’m also very proud of the Catholic bishops who publicly attacked Intelligent Design, saying it wasn’t science and that it was “a dangerous form of fundamentalism” to look for science in the Bible which was not meant to be taken as such.
Ultimately a lot of the peolpe who are upset I think view this type of science as an attack on their faith, but it’s not. Maybe it’s an attack on a simplistic version of one facet, but it’s not an attack on faith itself, nor on the concept of God, nor on the concept that God created everything. He just may have done it through evolution and the big bang. Many scientists are religious. Search for Einstein quotes and you’ll see references to God.
– People have no idea the scales on which the universe works. It can swallow any odds you throw at it. If the conditions supportive to life arising by chance seem unlikely, what would you peg them at? What are the odds any given star would have a planet with these conditions? One in a million? One in a billion? That seems conservative enough for me. Well, the Milky Way has billions of stars. And there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars. Even incredibly remote odds can be swallowed by the immensity of the universe without flinching.
The same thing goes for time. If things can evolve even a little bit in ways that are observable to us (and they have) then why can’t these things add up over millions of years? Once again, our brains don’t fathom the immensity of just how long that is because it just becomes an abstraction at that point. We can’t relate to it on a visceral level.
So we have our body of knowledge on what happens to life over time, well supported by the fossil record, and we have our body of knowledge on what happens to our universe over time, supported by our knowledge of physics. Just because it gets a little murkier as we trace backwards ever farther does not mean it’s invalid, it means we don’t know . . . yet. We have no reason to believe we’re on the wrong path because the parts leading up to it are well supported.
Jeez, I think I’ll stop before I end up writing a book!
Sorry guys…
Circular Argument!
Posit: Creationist claim the bible to be “the LITERAL word of god”, and “god created the universe,etc…”
Ok, where in there does it say “and god created evolution”?
Doesn’t!
You say, “god created the perfection of man”, have you REALLY looked at the useless and non-functional parts of the human body?
We use (in most cases) what, 30 % of the brain?
Don’t have the eye-sight of a partially blind bat. Hells-bells boys, if a god created our eyes, wouldn’t the almost always work as well as an eagle? Instead, we have cataracts, near/far-sightedness, coloe-blindness, etc. Pretty good record for a god, don’t ya think?
Anyway, to the circular part…
god created the universe.
it must have been created, how else did it get here.
And, since it was created, god must have created it. ad nauseam.
Personally, I have trouble believing ANY of those myths…
wether christian, protestant, mormon, greek, roman, viking, or any other…
they’re all equally valid, and equally useless, in my eyes.
As Robert A. Heinlein once wrote (Notebooks of Lazurus Long)
“What are the FACTS?
Get the FACTS.
All else is OPINION” (Emphasis added)
Good luck trying to unscrew the inscrutable…..
This is the problem with creationists thinking. They can simply say things like “God created evolution..” to cop out of any reasonable argument about this subject.
Someone on here gave the hint that God (or some intelligent being) started everything off on Earth, and evolution took over afterwards. That sounds reasonable, but who’s to say that whomever this intelligent entity was made the choice to create life on this planet?
Why did he wait billions of years to create man, when other animals existed before us? So much for us being created in God’s image when there’s been so many other creatures who lived long before we had.
You know it could also be that some alien being billions of years ago took a pit stop on this planet, took big shit on a rock, left smelly heaping pile of DNA, and left. Fast-forward several billion orbits around the sun later, and here we are.
Creation Scientists, Intelligent Design is all the same thing. It’s simply ancient religious ideas disguised as a ‘new’ science. What I don’t understand is why they have to pretend to be a science to prove them selves to scientists. It’s faith based, they don’t need to be factual, tangible, nor logical.
But what IS insulting is the fact they don’t follow the scientific method, and pretend to be scientists over a SINGLE subject that isn’t scientific in the first place. Like posers trying to fit into a group of people they CLEARLY don’t belong in.
The theory of evolution is, um… a THEORY. We know that micro-evolution (variation among species, or horizonal transition) has and does occur, however, there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE for macro-evolution. Yet a large percentage of teachers preach that vertical evolution is a verified fact, and as evidenced by this forum, they have won many converts.
IS there an Intelligent designer? Look around, open your eyes. The alternative is laughable (a dumb, non-designer?) This world is too incredible to be a product of chance.
Two more thoughts:
The “Big Bang”? When was the last time you saw ANYTHING get made from an explosion. Explosions destroy things.
God is your creator. Whether or not you believe in Him does not change that fact. You might reply, “Show me your God!” There are many things that you have not seen and yet you believe in them ((evolution for one)). But I am quite sure that one day you WILL see God.
Pat,
You’ve contradicted yourself. How can the big bang be demonstrated to have happened when, as you’ve stated, we have no idea what was going on billions of years ago
What was not sufficient in the original post?
…Science does not know exactly as a fact what happened 13 billion years ago. Or even 10,000 years ago. By using analysis of records though we have a pretty good idea.
Through hypothesis and experimentation it has been demonstrated that the universe began with the Big Bang. I am not an astrophysicist so I will not attempt to explain it.
***
I do know that using the Hubble Telescope and radio telescopes have enables scientists to gather the evidence to reconstruct the universe up to milliseconds before the Big Bang. It is with reasoning that they have come up with the evidence backed theory of the Big Bang even if they were not present to witness the event. And that is one heck of a lot more evidence then any creationist argument has presented. As I pointed out above, I am not an astrophysicist, nor an astronomer or cosmologist so I can only give the basics of what I understand.
“I’ve been asking all day and the best you can come up with is that it’s your own personal subjective belief and perception. … Mere opinion.”
Do you believe that there is life on other planets or in galaxies other than our own? You must, since you would say there is a definite probability that earth is not unique in posessing life. Would you be able to provide proof of this life, or would we be forced to rely on your opinion and assumptions?
What seems reasonable or plausible to me is not necessarily the same to anybody else. It helps breed skepticism, which I hope you will agree, is a good thing.
“There is this thing called Google. Do a search and you’ll find numerous articles about life created without God.”
It is not my responsibility to do your research when debating a topic. Like I said, post a link and I’ll be more than happy to look at it.
“Merely mocking someone’s asinine “lack” of a belief system to get a laugh is NOT using an ad hominem attack.”
“… I was just imagining someone like Mike driving a car. He’d be mystified by the complexity of maps, and would assume that the unknown course of action would be the best way of reaching his destination. Obviously the unknown route would be more plausible than the known route. He’d throw the map out the window as he started driving across some old guy’s lawn.”
“You’ll also learn other fun facts you should have learned in high school, e.g., the earth revolves around the sun and man really went to the moon.”
Implying I am a fool, therefore my belief or argument must be equally foolish is exactly what an ad hominem is. And yes, your posts do have a hysterical tone to them. You seem to be taking this topic much more seriously than I am… perhaps it’s some hidden need of yours that you have to prove all people who believe differently than you wrong. I chould give a shit less if you believe what I do, but that won’t stop me from posting it.
calm down… go drink some beer.
“Why did he wait billions of years to create man, when other animals existed before us? So much for us being created in God’s image when there’s been so many other creatures who lived long before we had.”
FARTaLOT,
You are confusing religious dogma for the general idea that an intelligent being created the universe we know. They are not necessarily the same.
Ok Pat, explain to me how you can demonstrate the occurance of an event when you don’t even know the conditions under which it supposedly occured.
If we say that you can see as far back in time as it take light to travel to you from another point in space. And we also say that light travels faster than the physical matter that makes up the earth. How then, could it ever be possible to look through a telescope and see the moment just before the big bang, while we are sitting on a piece of that matter, billions of years after it supposedly happened?
note: I do not claim to be an astrophysicist either. 🙂
The theory of evolution is, um… a THEORY.
It is a scientific theory, which is different than the common meaning of the word theory. It is the best supported theory by far based on the evidence we have, which is quite substantial.
We know that micro-evolution (variation among species, or horizonal transition) has and does occur, however, there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE for macro-evolution.
You say no scientific evidence with such certainty. Ignoring or dismissing evidence you don’t like doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or isn’t vald.
Micro-evolution over long periods of time IS macro-evolution. If animals can change a little over a hundred years, can’t they change more over a thousand? Can’t they change a lot over tens or hundreds of thousands of years? To the point where they are no longer genetically compatible i.e. can’t interbreed i.e. are now independent species?
And there is plenty of evidence of macro-evolution. It wouldn’t be presented as a near certainty if it wasn’t. Science, unlike religion, is a pure meritocracy. There is no dogma. If there are errors they will be shaken out over time. Evolution has it’s current stature because of the large body of evidence behind it.
IS there an Intelligent designer? Look around, open your eyes. The alternative is laughable (a dumb, non-designer?) This world is too incredible to be a product of chance.
That’s the tornado in a junkyard argument, a “common sense” argument that sounds good to people who are already skeptical, but which carries no scientific weight. It does nothing to refute any evidence science puts forward, it just reinforces what people want to believe. Science carries more weight than rhetoric and spin.
The “Big Bang”? When was the last time you saw ANYTHING get made from an explosion. Explosions destroy things.
Tornado in a junkyard. The Big Bang theory didn’t appear out of thin air. It was one of many competing theories about the origins of the universe and it survived on its merits. It may still be replaced at some point but it still agrees with a good deal of our current scientific knowledge.
God is your creator. Whether or not you believe in Him does not change that fact.
Whether you believe in evolution or not will not change it’s validity. And belief in evolution is not mutually exclusive with belief in God.
I realize there wasn’t much point in putting together a serious response to that post, but I did it anyway.
Well if there’s one thing I AM certain of, it’s that the Origin-of-the-Universe question will be setttled once and for all right here, on the Dvorak blog.