Why should ID be taught in science classes...

Hey, Beretta, we have some unfinished business.Come to the new topic, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? and show us just how superior your ID science is to real science. If you want it taught to our kids, then you need to show us just how it works. And just who was it who discovered that Piltdown was a hoax? Was it a creationist? They were around back then, you know, lots of them. No, it wasn't. It was scientists. And what was the result? Piltdown was immediately dropped by the scientific community. Maybe not by some textbooks, but then those weren't and still aren't written by scientists, but rather by professional textbook writers who usually get it wrong.What do we see when creationists' hoaxes are exposed? Are they ever exposed by creationists? No, they are not. Again, it is scientists who expose creationist hoaxes. Does the creationist community drop the exposed hoaxes? No, they just ignore the truth and keep telling the same old lies as if nothing had happened. For decades after those hoaxes had been exposed as the complete frauds they are.Science works. Creationism doesn't.OBTW, the year after Osborne made a subsequent discovery that proved that his "Nebraska Man" was not an anthropoid ape, he published a retraction and the scientific community immediately dropped "Nebraska Man" -- not that everyone had accepted the original claim anyway. Only the creationists keep it alive in order to spin their own lies about it.Science works. Creationism doesn't. What "scientific evidence supporting {ID}"? Care to present any?Start by going to the new topic and presenting how ID's supernatural-based science is supposed to work.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Fix Link

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

OK, thanks for presenting one of the creationist hoaxes. The Internet has thousands of sites filled with them; they're refered to here as PRATTs ("point refuted a thousand times").But the real question is still: how is ID science supposed to work?A primary goal of ID is to change science fundamentally so that it makes use of supernaturalistic explanations, in particular "goddidit". So how are scientists supposed to do science when they are not only allowed to use "goddidit", but are even expected to use it? I've asked you that question before, but the topic closed before you would answer. So I opened a new topic specifically for that question: "So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work?". Come on over.The science classroom is where students are supposed to learn about science and to learn the scientific method. If ID is taught there, then we must know what the ID "scientific method" is. If students are going to be taught to use "goddidit", then what kind of science will they end up practicing? If you are going to push for ID to be taught, then you must know that answer, or at least have given it some very serious thought.Now, if you are well read in the ID literature, then you must already know what the ID "scientific method" will be and how it will work. I mean, certainly the key ID creators and proponents have worked that all out, right? I mean, if this were a true paradigm shift then they would have worked it out and presented it in their writings, right?Personally, I believe that even they have not worked it all out, or at least will not present it. No more than a creationist would publish an honest examination of the evidence.I stated before that adopting ID would kill science. You scoffed that that statement. I have offered support for my position; you have offered none.Come over to the "So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work?" topic and support your position. That's what it's there for.PS
Read that topic's OP for a brief description of how science currently works. That will give you an idea of the kind of description of the ID "scientific method" you would need to offer.In other words, no more PRATTs, please.Edited by dwise1, : PS

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

{sigh} Beretta, Beretta, Beretta, ...Why must you insist on taking all these PRATT-falls? I have seen Chevy Chase. You are no Chevy Chase.Bananas are an example of human design. God didn't do that one, Man did. That has to be one of the most idiotic claims that creationists have ever come up with, more idiotic even than "then why are there still monkeys?". That some many creationists have glommed so eagerly onto it speaks volumes of the intellect of the creationist community. I can't help but notice how desparately you are clinging to it. Recognize it for the sheer crap that it is and drop it like a turd. Sheesh! I answered that in the OP of the So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? topic. Supernaturalistic explanations are untestable, how could scientific methodology based on supernaturalistic explanations possibly work? Please describe how any experiment could be devised and conducted to test a supernaturalistic hypothesis?Furthermore, having a "answer" like "Goddidit" brings scientific inquiry to a screeching halt. Not only does it remove an incentive to answer a question that's already been "answered", but that "answer" provides incentive to look no further. The god of ID is the same one as the god of "creation science": the God of the Gaps. The God of the Gaps exists and operate within the gaps of our knowledge. God of the Gaps theology says that if a natural cause for something is found, then "God didn't do it" and the realm of the God of the Gaps has been diminished. This leads to the idea that science attacks God as it advances human knowledge. It ignores the idea of God as "Sovereign over Nature", who is able to use Nature to His own ends, such that a natural cause of a phenomenon does not in the least bit rule out God ultimately being behind it.But, you see, neither ID nor creationism believe that. They believe that finding natural causes serve to disprove their god. Which is true of their God of the Gaps.So, as Wakefield observed at the end of his article on investigating Gentry's polonium-halo claims, when a scientist sees a mystery, he wants to solve it. But a creationist to whom that mystery is proof of God will want to make that mystery remain a mystery. The text of that observation is the last one in my signature.Whether God was involved or not is totally irrelevant to questions of how the natural universe works. The question of whether or not God exists (or in which of the multitude of different forms attributed to "God") or whether this "God" was involved is strictly a matter of theology and philosophy, not of science. While science does not involve itself in philosophical materialism (the theological/philosophical idea that the supernatural does not exist), it must for extremely practical purposes employ methodological materialism, which is that it restricts itself to only those kinds of explanations that it could possibly deal with, which are naturalistic explanations. Science could not possibly deal with the supernatural, so it must preclude appeal to supernaturalistic explanations. One the big fundamental lies of ID is to accuse science of philosophical materialism and to then use that as justification to reform science so that it will be forced to use supernaturalistic explanations, specifically "Goddidit". No, you did not answer it.I did explain why including supernaturalistic explanations would kill science: in the should creationism be taught in schools?, in the So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? topic, and here. What part of my explanation do you not understand?Please take it to the So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? topic, where discussion of it will be on-topic.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

Agreed. A brief discussion of ID could serve to :1. Present the difference between philosophical materialism and methodological materialism.2. Demonstrate why supernatualistic explanations have no place in science, hence the practical need for methodological materialism. Would also be a way to introduce basic scientific method.3. Present the idea that science could not possibly be used to prove or disprove God and that all attempts to do so would be highly suspect. This in turn would teach that science is not antagonist towards religion, maybe along the lines of "religion saying that God created and science explaining how."

What I'm basically saying is that by briefly discussing ID, it would be an opportunity to cover some concepts with the class. Basically a "here's why these statements are wrong". Kind of goes with my attitude that science education should not just tell you the findings of science, but rather must also teach how we had arrived at those findings. Not only does that defuse most creationist claims, but it also makes learning science so much more interesting; my sister's son once told me that he hated science class because all they did was to memorize a lot of unrelated facts, whereas in my family we all loved science because we would also look into where those facts came from.For an example of a concept that could be covered, one of the big bitches that ID has with science is that it is materialistic. We frequently see the cdesign proponentists parrotting this as caricaturizing science as "molecules to man, matter is all there is". They are of course wrong and misrepresenting what science actually says. This was presented to me as philosophical materialism vs methodological materialism, so the terms used in the philosophy of science may be different; sorry if my terminology is the source of confusion. Philosophical materialism would indeed be the view that "matter is all there is" and that is what ID accuses science as teaching. But they're wrong, because what science actually teaches is methodological materialism, in which science chooses to limit itself to only dealing with the material universe.Again, a brief discussion of ID allows the teacher to present and discuss the difference between philosophical materialism and methodological materialism so that the students can learn that there is a difference. Obviously not to IDists nor to cdesign proponentists. Nor would it have been to any students who had already been exposed to ID rhetorics. OK, however. The main point being to touch on the relationship between science and religion (eg, Wikipedia article at Relationship between religion and science - Wikipedia) to show that there should be no inherent conflict or antagonism between the two. As it is, some theists, especially among fundamentalist, as well as some atheists/agnostics do believe such a conflict exists, so I would think that it would be beneficial to defuse the situations that would cause. It should also enable the students to take a more mature view of that question and hopefully make them less likely to fall for "creation science's" either-or rhetorics. I may be a bit overoptimistic here, but we've got to try something to promote the truth.PSIn a report on NPR's Monday All Things Considered, an evangelical Christian minister turned environmentalist started off (at about 05:00 in the audio) stating "I was one of those very conservative evangelicals who thought to be faithful you had to be at war with science."To me, this demonstrates a prevailing fundamentalist attitude towards science.You can listen to "Mayors Take Action as Texas Slacks on Climate" at Mayors Take Action as Texas Slacks on Climate : NPR.PPS
To amplify on the preceding, in the Fundamenalism section of that Wikipedia article, Science_and_religion, we find:

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Most significantly, {fundamentalists} are openly hostile to the scientific community as a whole, and to what they call "scientific materialism".

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"scientific materialism" links to the article on Naturalism at Naturalism (philosophy) - Wikipedia whose 3rd and 4th paragraphs read:

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Many modern philosophers of science use the terms methodological naturalism or scientific naturalism to refer to the long standing convention in science of the scientific method, which makes the methodological assumption that observable effects in nature are best explainable only by natural causes, without reference to, or an assumption of, the existence or non-existence of supernatural notions. They contrast this with the approach known as ontological naturalism or metaphysical naturalism, which refers to the metaphysical belief that the natural world (including the universe) is all that exists, and therefore nothing supernatural exists.

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This distinction between approaches to the philosophy of naturalism is made by philosophers supporting science and evolution in the creation-evolution controversy to counter the tendency of some proponents of Creationism or intelligent design to refer to methodological naturalism as scientific materialism or as methodological materialism and conflate it with metaphysical naturalism. These proponents of creationism use this assertion to support their claim that modern science is atheistic, and contrast it with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports "theistic science" or pseudoscience.

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Edited by dwise1, : PSEdited by dwise1, : science education needs to teach where those conclusions come fromEdited by dwise1, : PPS

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

No, of course a real scientist wouldn't. A real scientist would already know how to properly practice his profession. A real scientist would know that religion has nothing to do with the scientific method. Yes, in his personal life he may need to ponder the relationship/interactions-within-society between science and religion as he deals with his own religious beliefs and religious life, even though in his professional life he knows that religion plays no role in science. And as he interacts with his non-professional life with people of other professions or none and especially with people of various religious persuasions, then he will also need to deal with questions of the relationship between science and religion.In short, science and religion are both very much part of society and play parts in nearly everybody's life, so all the time there is between them either a relationship or interactions.There is no relationship between me and my ex, but there is a history. Similarly, while one might argue that there is no relationship between science and religion, there is still a history. And that history creates consequences in the present. That link provides more detail, but simplistically speaking in the West we went from a pre-scientific view in which religion was in charge of all knowledge, both religious and "scientific", and then over the centuries science effectively usurped a lot of the knowledge territory once held by religion. While we view that as a natural and sensible progression, many in the religion camp, especially fundamentalists, view it as a hostile take-over and a "long war against God" (the name of a late-1800's book that the late Dr Henry Morris would use) and they still hold a lot of animosity towards science of that. So science, feeling that it's doing nothing at all wrong, is bewildered by religion's open animosity, much as my ex absolutely despises me and has gone out of her way to express how she feels, while I have absolutely no idea what the frak her problem is.However, the topic here is not what real scientists think, nor is it about what society thinks. Rather, it is about science education. Now, real scientists already know what's what, but students don't. They still need to learn that. While going through things like the relationship between science and religion and their common history or the difference between philosophical and methodological materialism may be a waste of time for a real scientist, those are very important lessons for science students. Especially since almost all of fundamentalist religion's animosity towards science and most of their complaints and arguments against science are squarely on their ignorance, wouldn't it be a good idea to try to help them disspell some of that ignorance? True, those who are completely pig ignorant and damned proud of it probably won't be swayed, but those on the fence that the creationists keep seeking to sway will be less likely to be so swayed if they have a better understanding of science -- with a better understanding they would be better able to see through the creationists' lies. Rather, the notion I would want to see disspelled is that science and religion are totally incompatible and inherently hostile towards each other. A person can indeed be both a scientist and deeply religious at the same time. Science is not inherently hostile towards religion, nor should religion be towards science. If more people could come to realize that, then we wouldn't be seeing anywhere near as much of this creationism/ID nonsense.For example, there's Carl Drews, a fundamentalist Christian I met on-line. He has never seen any conflict between his faith and science. However, he has very definite problems with creation science and the extent to which it leads other Christians to abandon truthfulness. His research into creation science claims has repeatedly shown him that those claims are false and that creationists routinely misquote and misrepresent their sources. This issue of truthfulness and other Christians' abandonment of truthfulness ended up driving him from his church. In relating his story at No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.theistic-evolution.com/mystory.html:

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I went to good public schools. I remember Mr. Reed, my 8th-grade science teacher, explaining to us about science and religion. He told us that science is not qualified to speak on matters of faith, and demonstrated this with a few gedanken (thought) experiments. He explained some of the differences between the two realms.

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It wasn't until sometime in high school that I first heard the idea that the theory of evolution and the Bible are in conflict. This idea puzzled me. "What's the problem?" I thought. "God said, 'Let there be light, earth, plants, and animals' and evolution produced all these things." I didn't know it at the time, but that was my first simple definition of theistic evolution.

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What I was saying is that we need to produce more students like Carl.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

But while the true believers are lost causes, we can still innoculate the vast majority from the true believers' lies.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

This topic isn't about science, but rather about science education. About how we are to teach science to the students.Keep religion out of science. Yes, of course! Been my position all along.Lie about science being the enemy of religion? Being antagonistic towards religion? Hell, no! Does no good whatsoever.Let the natives know that science is not their enemy, despite the lies their preachers tell them. Let them know that they don't have to reject religion in order to accept science, nor do they have to reject science to accept religion -- well, if their religion does require them to reject science, but then that would be the mark of a false religion.In the public school science classroom, we will always have students with a religious background. Do we teach them that science is their enemy? Or that science is not antagonistic towards their religion, it just does not use religion because it cannot? Throw down before them barriers to their learning science or show them that the way is clear?What good could possibly come from inciting the natives to further violence against science?

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)