Intelligent Design Class to be taught at Cornell University

It all depends upon what stage your scientific investigation is at. If you're at the very beginning, which is what you seem to be saying with your repeated claims of "early days", then you have observations or evidence for which you advance a hypothesis for investigation. At this stage it would be proper to ask what evidence or observations your hypothesis was formulated to explain, and what type of evidence you'll be seeking to verify your hypothesis.It will always be early days for ID because no actual scientific investigative work is being done. This is clear from the lack of answers to simple questions like what type of evidence it is seeking.--Percy

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And yours implied it would always be so. That pseudoscience could never...er...evolve

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I didn't imply it...I stated it.Pseudo science can never be science and is not behind proto science on some progression towards real science.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-27-2006 04:32 PM

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You mean to tell me that evolutionary ideas haven't been around for ages too?

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Not at all.Of course, "evolutionary ideas", as it were, have clear led to a huge increase in our understanding of life, especially within the last 150 years or so.The ToE is an incredibly fruitful theory which has spawned many related fields of research.ID has not, to date, increased our understanding of any part of nature, even though it has been around for millenia.

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Evolution has been around in the modern science time for 150 years or so. No so ID.

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Sure it has.Read cut-n-paste from the wiki I provided.

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One would expect there to be a little catching up to do.

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Read the wiki. It's been around since 500 BCE, at least. It was a view that was definitely popular among Darwin's contemporaries as well.It's all there in the wiki, ian.

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Whilst it might seem impossible now, all it takes is for a little head of steam to build up and human pride (A "Giants of Science" laureate glitters enticingly) and natural inquisitiveness can be expected to release the brakes

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Like I said.ID is just the same old stale Creationist arguments using the "incredible complexity" of the bacterial flagellum (modern) instead of the "incredible complexity" of the eye (100 years ago).

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I agree. Not just in terms of PR but evidentially etc.

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Successful at PR?Only among the people educated in Biology does the ToE enjoy widespread acceptance, and the less educated a person is and the more fundamentalist Christian a person is, the less likely they are to accept the science.

Let's see.You don't want to provide evidence of the designer. Why not? I would say that this is directly related to saying there is a designer at all.How about evidence on how the 'designer' did things. What was the methodolies used?? what traces of this tampering are left? How can this
manipulation be distinguished from naturally occuring processes?If a designer is required for life, where did this designer come from? DId it develop naturally? If it did, why would we need a designer for life on earth? If it did not. who designed the designer??

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If only it were so simple Jar. This little portion of the thread is dealing with whether SETI is science. Either life arose naturalistically (religious belief currently) or as a result of intelligence (also a religious belief), then the foundation for SETI is religious not scientific.

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You are confusing Methodological Naturalism with Ontological Naturalism.The former is the method used by scientists which states that nature is composed of that which we can observe with our 5 senses, and it ignores the existence of the supernatural.The latter is the philosophical position that there exists nothing but the natural/the supernatural does not exist.Science is based upon the first but NOT the second.Also, God could have poofed the first life on Earth into existence and it wouldn't change a single thing about the ToE.It wouldn't make the ToE religious in the least.

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Give it (ID) 150 years and we'll see.

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It's already had quite a lot longer than that, actually.

Sorry Ian.. I totally forgot I posted here... [/qs]I didn't start this one and if a person can't even get that simple fact straight then they are unlikely to be able to engage on the rather more subtle aspects of evidential ID[/qs]I was replying to you seming willingness to provide evidence of ID...
"I would be more than happy to oblige"... thought I was taking it a little OT, so suggested you start a new thread. ahhhh so now you're not "more than willing to oblige"... you should be careful about the promises you make. right I take it you're referring to... right.. so again, you seem unwilling to oblige. why then did you breate the pretence that you were both willing and able? I don't think I took a cheap shot, you said you were willing to present evidence of ID, I asked you to present that evidence, now, by your own admission, you have neither the evidence nor the ability to present it. that was the intent behind my recent entry... nothing more.
I think it is a "fair stab" for me to engage you if you claim to be able to present evidence for something like ID.

well then, it really should not be taught since there is barely any evidence and showing the designer is the biggest and most obvious i'm not sure what science you are talking about, its not the science that people produce. If ID has no evidence or answers no questions that other theory have been able to, then it should not be taught as a science class

The observation would be "evidence of design in nature" (by comparing attributes in nature against attributes apparent in known intelligent design). The hypothesis is "intelligent design might be inferred to have occurred". RjB's argument was that one had to show evidence of the designer itself (which has nothing to do with the hypothesis) before being allowed to discuss how the evidence supporting the hypothesis might be assembled.I held that unless that objection can be shown to be relevant (and disussion on it has been prohibited) then the objection must be laid aside for the purposes of discussion. I've inserted a couple of words to highlight the logical error in your reasoning.This message has been edited by iano, 02-May-2006 03:43 PM

As noted elsewhere, the attributes in nature are very different from the attributes from known design. They natural "designoids" are evidence for a design process that is very unlike the processes used by the only known intelligent designers.Thus there is no reason, as yet, to look further. We have a process, an untelligent one, that produces attributes that match nature and a known intelligence that produces attributes different from nature. The present reasonable (to me)conclusion to be drawn is that nature suggests that no intelligence (of the only known form) is involved.

Granted, it would be up to the ID-ers to demonstrate otherwise in order to get their hypothesis moving. Finding something that wasn't well explained by ToE. It is for them to fight for IC or to trace a line showing a chain of intelligent design attributes. I posed the latter as a potential area for investigation.The issue in recent discussion was whether or not demonstrating the actual designers existance was necessary. I held it was irrelevant.

You've misunderstood RickJB's point. He was drawing a distinction between inferring a designer of things like cars and computers, since we already know that the designer of cars and computers exists (he is us), and inferring a designer of things like universes and biological organisms, since we've never seen these things designed, and we're not aware of any candidates for the designer of such things, plus there are natural explanations for these things.RickJB's point was that concluding a designer from examining biological organisms is not at all the same thing as concluding a human origin for cars and computers. Is isn't a logical error in reasoning. Based upon the observation that neither creationism generally nor ID specifically has engaged in scientific investigative work up to this point in time, it is therefore assumed that this situation will likely continue on into the future. In other words, I believe that IDists will continue focusing their efforts not on scientific research, but on the lobbying of the public, of legislatures, of state and local school boards, and of textbook publishers. Put another way, I believe they'll continue to do just what they're already doing and not anything else. This is a good starting point. Science begins examination of ID by questioning the initial observation. What is the "evidence of design in nature"? Can you take it beyond the argument, "Anyone looking at biological organisms can see that they were obviously designed"? To give you a flavor of what I'm looking for, Dembski provides an example of such an attempt when he introduces concepts like specified complexity, but he's been unable to apply his concept to actual lifeforms. How would you propose showing that biological organisms are designed?If life is too complex to have arisen on its own and required a designer, then the alien race that designed us must itself have had a designer, which in turn must have had a designer, and which in turn must have had a designer, and so forth ad infinitum. It's an infinite regress unless you say that at some point the designer was God, and that's why, ultimately, ID is religion and doesn't belong in science.--Percy

Hardly.... I don't think so - see above. First provide a creator then you may progress. Repeatedly stated.As I said before IF it were possible to analyse our designs and come up with say 400 attributes common to intelligent design AND each (or very many) of these attributes were found operating in nature at the same points (timing, function, redundancy etc) along a hypothetical yet-calibrated-against-humans design methodology, THEN we have a theory supported by evidence: Intelligent design theoretically occurred in those objects investigated. At that point ToE and ID could slug it out for the title.There is no requirement to have a designer, to comment on other possible attributes of the designer, where that designer came from. You would simply have a theory with evidence supporting it. That is, I thought how science works. You follow the evidence to where it leads. If something new comes up, a new angle and that leads to the conclusion "intelligent design" then so be it. You don't dismantle a potential conclusion by lobbing in the pile of difficulites it may generate. RjBs argument about producing God first is a kindergaarten level attempt at short circuiting discussion. His conclusion might be that one cannot conclude. But that pre-supposes that the case CANNOT be made. Which is one I read you yourself making all too frequently this for example... As a means to an end it strikes me as a remarkably adroit move. Get folk interested, get folk working, get funds. You seem to concentrate your efforts on repelling the D-Day invasion. You might do better to carry out some daylight bombing missions on the factories which are aimed at producing the weaponry for said invasion. Repeating the mantra "the invasion CANNOT happen" is not an effectual of repelling it I'm of the opinion (though I have not enough science to demonstrate it) that there is a little more to it than this. See above: analysing the methodology of a known intelligent designer, extracting out nodal points, comparing. I'm aware that ToE has the Ace card of "given time anything can have the appearance of design" with which to counter the ID picture built up. But ID might be able to utilise aspects of an object which according to the ToE model, are inexplicably redundant or just plain inexplicable - but which fit quite elegantly into a design methodology. This is science philosophy at work Percy. Not science. Blind science doesn't care which conclusion is arrived at. Only that the basis for having to arrive at that conclusion follows the methodology of science. Arrival at Aliens-R-us would be a naturalistic and scientific conclusion to draw if the evidence led one to conclude that. One is not forced to God - the Aliens might very well have arisen naturalistically - as the 'scientifically-based' SETI project blatantly and blindly assumes.

ianoLet us analyze this shall we? How do you determine that these attributes are of an intelligent design if you do not explain what the what constitutes intelligence or even design? You cannot refer to human intelligance or artificial design that we produce because we are not discussing human intelligence or design. Then please drop the intelligent part of intelligent design and then explain what the criteria are for determining that something is designed in nature. We cannot say it is supported until we show that the "design" is intelligent. Evidence cannot support something to which we have no operational definition else there is no way to determine that the evidence supports it. Bullshit! If this were true then we could state that astrology and alchemy have as good a foundation as cosmology and chemistry.This message has been edited by sidelined, Tue, 2006-05-02 11:37 AM

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Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation . . .Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.Richard Feynman