The issue of Creationist Intelligent Design refuses to go away, with both sides throwing more resources behind their efforts. (I myself believe in one flavor of ID, but not the CID version pushed by the current proponents.)
But the debate rages on:
The Kansas Board of Education debated evolution and intelligent design again on Tuesday.
During the public forum, Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, defended his group from Krebs called a “smear campaign.”
Krebs claimed John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, promoted the idea that anyone who believes in evolution is an atheist.
I don’t believe in CID and I’m not an atheist…
The pro-Creationist ID faction continues to push their (how old is the earth under CID, anyway?) agenda without actually explaining exactly what it all means:
A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound.
“Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute.
There is plenty of real evidence supporting evolution, too.
Finches on Galapagos Islands evolving
A medium sized species of Darwin’s finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.
The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
In the June 11 issue of Nature Genetics evolutionary biologist Jianzhi (George) Zhang presents evidence for one such instance in a gene for an enzyme that helps leaf-eating monkeys digest their food.
Zhang’s initial analysis showed that the duplication occurred about four million years ago, some nine million years after the two main groups of colobines—Asian and African—split into separate lineages.
How closely to Bible lore does ID hew to? Did God create everything in 7 days about 5,000 years ago? I want to see a paper that clearly lays out the argument on Creationist ID as opposed to all the current method that relies on attacking evolution.
Any dynamic system needs processes to maintain and improve it, and life is dynamic, not static. Evolution as an adaptation mechanism is vital to ensure life can survive in the face of an environment subject to change from influences both local (hurricanes and volcanoes) and extreme (asteroid strike).
What if God is in the details? Just establishing a universe with consistent laws and mechanisms that function in a way that fosters life is a divine achievement. Why can’t the “big bang” be the first push of the domino?
i tend to agree with your assessment… as blake said …
“To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”
the devil is in the details 😉
John. Don’t waste your breath trying to debate the fine points evolution with creationist. Ever heard of the saying “Don’t bother to teach pigs to sing. It wastes your time and irritates the pigs.”?
Rather than debate these idiots, it is better to step back and focus on what is considered science, the scientific method, and what is theology.
A respected physic scientist once gave me a saying that I think settles the Evolution vs. ID/Creationism debate. He said “Science is not about finding the right answer. It is about finding the least wrong answer.”
ZZzzz…. Creation Scientist, Intelligent Design. Why do these people insist on trying to make them seem legitimate in the eyes of people who really don’t care? The whole point of religion is FAITH, you don’t need facts to back it up. It would be nice if they could, but it just seems like they are so desperate to convince people to convert to Christianity, it makes them seem so petty to attempt to pretend this is a science.
I have no problem with the teaching of Creation Scientist, Intelligent Design but it has to be in the right setting. The right setting for these is not in a the science class room, but in a religious education class, where a faith based descussion can take place.
And being an atheist just means you rely solely on material reality — measurable, verifiable — you know, all that science stuff. It really is easier, folks.
FRAGaLOT –
Yes. “Faith” and “Logic” are two different things. I have no problem with people believing what they please, or telling me what they believe. But trying to use logic to justify faith is idiotic. You can DISCUSS religion; you can’t DEBATE it.
If I were watching this debate from afar, overseas for instance, I would be enthusiastically rooting for the intelligent design folks. If ID advocates succeed in enacting their full agenda, it could really help other countries get a leg up in certain areas of scientific discovery and achievement, while “scientists” taught in U.S. schools pursue proof of creation.
For example, American volcanologists should stop studying the darn things and use volcanos as a conduit to God, the way Moses had the good sense to do. Let the godless scientists from other countries take seismic readings and study changes in the earth’s crust — American scientists might just get a whole new set of commandments if they’re successful.
The next great potential prophet might even be in Kansas right now, and his future rests on the decisions made by the Board of Education. The scientists in foreign countries are counting on them to make the decisions that are right for everyone.
reasons.org and discovery.org have excellent articles.
I posted a link to one but it got snagged by the spam filter.
ID and creationism are not synonymous. However, the “creationists” that think the world was created in 7-24 hr days are the crackpots. The 7 day – age folks are quite good and science based. Read there stuff before passing judgement.
PS. nice horoscopes on the side panel. Talk promoting superstition!
This whole ID crap is helping to destroy our education system. We need our primary education system to improve not go backwards. We are going to be a third world nation if this crap keeps up.
PS to my #4 comment: Just to clarify, I think creationism is part of the “full agenda” of ID advocates that I mentioned. I’ll be happy to retract this if I see a believer in intelligent design that denounces creationism. Such creatures might actually exist, but I haven’t yet seen evidence 😉
Because of comment irregularities as mentioned by John in another post, comments that were apparently expurgated by the spam filter have been restored to their original order. Unfortunately, comments that refer to a specific prior comment by number are now incorrect. What was once comment #4 is now comment #6, and may even change again before things settle out. Cheers.
Hi. I posed a similar question on my blog. Thought you’d maybe like to hear one of the answers I got:
“Not all CIDs discount science. Just the stupid ones. Smarter creationists understand that time is a human creation. It says in the Bible, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day to God. Therefore, that lends credence to the belief that the earth is more than 5000 years old and more like millions of years (as science has pointed out). In Genesis, where it says that everything was created in 6 days, well, who’s to say that those days are equal to the days in humanity’s understanding. Since a day can be like a thousand years to God, he could have created the earth, then thousands of years later, created the water, then thousands of years later, created vegetation, etc (like science said it happened).
And yes, it is a clever way to get religion taught in schools. If Intelligent Design is going to be taught in public classrooms, then it has to be taught from every religious angle, not just the Judeo-Christian one. And I, a Progressive Christian, fully support separation of church and state. It’s not the school’s job to teach religion, so it shouldn’t be taught in schools. But…. if a bill is ever passed saying that it should be, then EVERY RELIGION’S perspective on creation needs to be taught as well.”
Pretty good, huh?
This is just the old neocon “if you’re not for the president, you’re a terrorist” angled for religion.
#8 – Intelligent Design and Creationism are not the same thing if you listen to the propaganda coming from the ID camp. If you actually study it closer, however, it is the same thing and they damn well know it. ID proponets are just creationists looking for a backdoor into the schools so they can continue the mission of setting humanity back a few thousand years.
Evolution is science.
ID/creationism is hooky spooky witch magic.
One belongs in school. The other belongs in the trash heap of obsolete cultural history.
Wow, not one post from some ID hick!
@15 Yay! I get to be the first “ID hick” to post! Few things 1) to Matt, 12, the Bible was recorded (I didn’t say written, I said recorded) by humans, ergo the “days” of creation are likely literal days – God would have told Adam, “yup, yesterday I made birds and fish, and the day before that the moon, stars, ect.” and he would have meant a matter of hours ago, not ages, because Adam would have been smart enough to understand ages, and God would know if He told Adam days, Adam would understand days – mby this isn’t the most scientific argument, but you would assume that if God was powerful enough to create everything, you’d think he’d be capable of explaining it to his creation. 2) the example of the finches “evolving” smaller beaks is nothing. It is just breeding – if there were flying razors 6 feet above the ground in all locations, all of humanity would very quickly “evolve” to be shorter than six feet, because all the tall people would die, and the genes for height would be removed from the gene pool. Show me an example of a finch adding genetic information to itself, and I’ll take it as proof for evolution – this is just subtraction of information for large beaks, leaving only information for small beaks.
No matter how you slice it, it still comes up evolution. Any heritable fixed change in an animal is evolution. There’s no such thing as “removing” coding for anything.
Bruce IV: for someone who is purportedly an intelligent design advocate, you just gave a pretty compelling arguement supporting evolution – “the example of the finches “evolving” smaller beaks is nothing. It is just breeding.”
Selective breeding based on environmental conditions==Evolution!!!
I do not understand why you keep putting quotes around the word Evolve like you are being sarcastic or something though.
Intelligent Design is pure bunk. It is about as compelling as Scientology’s creation story of the Earth. Why do people always feel the need to assign a higher power to something as natural as an evolving universe? Small mindednes, I guess.
Some theists do not argue for a god of the gaps, but in so doing , they leave nothing for their god to do! And , therefore, just show a need for something to believe in – a placebo- and at best that is what all religion is. Dawkins is right,Ruse is wrong.
@17 – I want to know where the finch got the genetic code to build a beak in the first place – Creationist view would be that there was one finch-type at creation, with all the code for subsequent varieties, which are subsets of that original – a small beak would be one variety, a large another, the original would have had the genetic information for both. I have no objection to specialization through natural selection, its the larger “molecules-to-man” view I have trouble with
@18 – I find it interesting that evolutionists accuse Creationists of small-mindedness. The supernatural, by definition, is outside of science – it is what cannot happen by the laws of nature. Thus, creation cannot scientifically happen, because God is outside of science and nature. However, I think it is small-minded to say that the supernatural does not exist, thus God cannot create. What if it does? By the same token that it cannot be proved to exist scientifically, it cannot be disproved scientifically – it is outside the realm of science. Assuming that nothing can be real that is outside the realm of science, and thus, evolution (the only explanation of origins that can be shoehorned into science) is the only valid theory, seems rather small-minded. Yes, you need faith to accept CID – it depends on the existence of the supernatural. But, if you accepted the premise for a minute, even for the sake of argument, you’d find that there is scientific evidence supporting the position. As it stands, if science is all that is true, than the earth cannot be merely thousands of years old, and any evidence that points in that direction must be re-interpreted.
#19, there’s nothing worse than a god with nothing to do! He probably just sits around Heaven, eating Cheetos and getting fat while he watches our pathetic little lives in 3D Celestial Vision(TM). Once every few decades he has a democratic American election in which to interfere, but otherwise we serve the “couch potato” of deities 😉
Ahh yes, you want to know WHAT evidence … of course … all of this is directly copied from answersingenesis.org (good site, has some good arguments for CID – lot of them theological, but some scientific)
1) The almost complete absence of evidence of erosion or soil layers or the activity of living things (plant roots, burrow marks, etc.) at the upper surface of the various strata (showing that the stratum did not lay there for thousands or millions of years before the next layer was deposited).
2) Polystrate fossils (usually trees) that cut through more than one layer of rock (even different kinds of rock supposedly deposited over thousands if not millions of years). The trees would have rotted and left no fossil evidence if the deposition rate was that slow.
3) Soft-sediment deformation—that thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks (of various layers) are bent (like a stack of thin pancakes over the edge of a plate), as we see at the mile-deep Kaibab Upwarp in the Grand Canyon. Clearly the whole, mile-deep deposit of various kinds of sediment was still relatively soft and probably wet (not like it is today) when the earthquake occurred that uplifted one part of the series of strata.
4) Many fossils that show (require) very rapid burial and fossilization. For example, soft parts (jellyfish, animal feces, scales and fins of fish) or whole, large, fully-articulated skeletons (e.g., whales or large dinosaurs such as T-Rex) are preserved. Or we find many creatures’ bodies contorted. All this evidence shows that these creatures were buried rapidly (in many cases even buried alive) and fossilized before scavengers, micro-decay organisms and erosional processes could erase the evidence. These are found all over the world and all through the various strata.
5) According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.
6) The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field (“dipole” and “non-dipole”) is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field’s total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.
These are just a sample. There’s more on the site. CID does handily solve some interesting scientific questions badly explained in an evolutionary worldview.
Bruce,
There isn’t a “beak” code at all. What happens is as variations in born individuals (mutations both minor and major) provide advantages, those variations gain a foothold in the gene pool due to their survival benefit. Hard horny lips become beaks, light-sensitive patches become eyes, fluffy hair becomes feathers.
Now, you say that evolutionists call creationists small minded. Did you read my post? Do you have any answers for any of the questions I asked? Do you have any comment on my thoughts on the nature of evolution? To accuse someone of small-mindedness while ignoring comments from someone else is picking your battles and pretending that they are the only ones that count.
I’m always curious why so many people have chosen to believe the Hebrew story of creation, while rejecting others. Did you reject the Maya creation story based on the evidence, or simply because most ot their religious texts were burned by the Christians when they evangelized the Americas?
P.S. to my #24….. there is small-mindedness, and then there’s small-mindedness.
Intelligent design is creationism wrapped in a white lab coat.