Kansas State School Board At It Once Again

There is no other sde, there is no debate. There is just science and a few "Christian" sect's religous beliefs. The latter do not belong in public school science classes.When the "ID movment" produces some science, get back to us.

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This is not an anti-evolution bill. It's not getting rid of evolution; it's adding alternative theories. What exactly is wrong with introducing the other side of the debate?

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Because the legitimacy of a scientific theory (eg ID) is determined by science not school boards or legistlative bodies. The very fact that ID proponents skip peer review by scientists and go straight to political bodies demonstrates how weak their supposedly scientific theory is. Science class should reflect what is being used by scientists and supported by positive evidence. Theories taught in science class should also be testable, something that ID is not.Simply, your "other theories" are not science and therefore should not be taught or even mentioned in science class. If proponents of ID think otherwise then they need to present their case to scientists, not schoolboards or state legistlators.

The objection is that science class is for teaching the facts and principles and theories of science. Unable to find acceptance in scientific venues, Creationists instead directly lobby school boards for representation as science without ever having achieved scientific status. Unable to convince experts, they instead lobby the non-scientists of school boards claiming unfair treatment by scientists.Concerning the debate itself, it isn't a scientific debate. There is no controversy within science. There aren't different groups of scientists fighting it out in journals and at conferences. There's only conservative Christians working hard at putting a science-like veneer over Creationism in order to make it easier to fool non-scientists into thinking Creationism is scientific.An advanced physics class in high school might study dark matter, and if only WIMPs were covered as a possibility then that would be wrong because MACHOs are also a possibility considered by scientists. It is a current debate going on within science right now, and this debate stands in contrast to the claims of Creationists that there's a scientific debate going on about Creationism. Both WIMPs and MACHOs should be covered in science class when studying dark matter because science hasn't yet settled the issue. But Creationism should not be covered when teaching evolution because science long ago settled this issue by rejecting Creationism.A comment about Creationism's science-like veneer. This hasn't proved successful as courts have repeatedly ruled that Creationism is thinly veiled religion. It seems that creating alternative journals and conferences and calling them science isn't fooling the legal system. This lack of success is why Creationism has changed horses from YEC to ID.If Creationists would cease their efforts at inserting religion into science class then the debate would drop completely out of the public eye.--Percy

To paraphrase Iam Plimmer, should we also be teaching airline pilots how to levitate?

Well first, there is not yet a debate. There are not even other theories, just wild speculation.I have no problem seeing Creationism or ID brought up in a philosophy class, or even as examples in a science class to show the difference between unfounded speculation and Science.If and when someone from either group actually develops a theory that has any real form or can be supported by any evidence, then I believe that debate can be started. But as things stand now there is absolutely nothing to debate regarding either ID or Creationism.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This has become an all too-common tactic to blame it on the Christian right. Not only does this commit the ad-hominem logical fallacy, but it generalizes the ID side to right-wing Christians only. Had you read this article, you would find the opinions to be much more diverse than right-wing Creationists vs. "true scientists."

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Thursday's hearing brought out about 150 residents, mostly from Manhattan, Topeka and Lawrence. They represented the diversity of the debate: defiant creationists and unapologetically secular professors, as well as Christian evolutionary biologists, scientists who reject the theory and professors who worry new standards would disadvantage students in an increasingly high-tech society.

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Once again you show that you haven't been reading the article.

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The 26-member committee, made up of scientists and educators... [emphasis added]

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Also, many scientists are getting involved in these hearings, as well, so to say that science isn't being presented in this debate is just plain false. This argument has become almost as bad as the argument that the 2nd law of thermodynamics refutes evolution. This argument has been refuted at length many times, and I partially covered it above, but allow me more thoroughly address this.The criteria for creationism is strictly Bible-based and very specific, while the criterion for much ID is much broader in that it refers to just a designer.

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Access Research Network - Intelligent Design FAQ
Shorten a long ass link by AdminJar. Kindly use code to shorten these in the future.

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Legally, scientific creationism is defined by the following six tenets:

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-The universe, energy and life were created from nothing.
-Mutations and natural selection cannot bring about the development of all living things from a single organism.
-"Created kinds" of plants and organism can vary only within fixed limits
-Humans and apes have different ancestries.
-Earth’s geology can be explained by catastrophism, primarily a worldwide flood
-The earth is youngin the range of 10,000 years or so.[1]

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Intelligent design, on the other hand, involves two basic assumptions:

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-Intelligent causes exist.
-These causes can be empirically detected (by looking for specified complexity).

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Referring to the legal system seems to contradict what you said earlier. You criticize ID for being too "political," but at the same time you make a reference the decision of a political institution to support your case against ID. You can't have it both ways. Putting that aside, though, although the courts outlawed creationism, they explicity said that it wouldn't be unconstitutional to teach critiques of evolution and other theories in a secular context. That's exactly what separates ID from creationism.

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Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center - Does ID want to sneak creationism through the "back door" (into science and schools)?
FAQ: Does ID want to sneak creationism through the "back door" (into science and schools)?

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Creationism is saying something very different from intelligent design. Creationism posits that a supernatural being created life. This is the very reason why the Supreme Court declared creationism to be religion in Edwards. v. Aguillard. Intelligent design theory makes no appeals to the supernatural nor can it tell the identity of the designer. Thus, teaching intelligent design theory cannot entail teaching creationism, or religion. ID proponents do not desire to bring religion into the classroom.
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Furthermore, the Court stated that it was not unconstitutional for a legislature to pass a bill which "require[d] that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught," because "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction." (Edwards at 593 - 594).

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Intelligent design actually tends to have a more agnostic leaning (and I wouldn't recommend equating agnosticism and religion). Although discrediting it as religious propaganda is the all-too-easy argument to make, honest critics of ID will even admit that such a characterization is false.

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Center for Science and Culture - Top Questions
Frequently Asked Questions | Center for Science and Culture

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4. Is intelligent design theory the same as creationism?

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No. Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he "agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement." Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.

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This message has been edited by AdminJar, 04-20-2005 03:04 PM

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This has become an all too-common tactic to blame it on the Christian right. Not only does this commit the ad-hominem logical fallacy, but it generalizes the ID side to right-wing Christians only. Had you read this article, you would find the opinions to be much more diverse than right-wing Creationists vs. "true scientists."

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This still doesn't get by the fact that ID proponents have skipped the usual path for theories being taught in science, which is acceptance by the scientific community before being included in school curriculums.Why aren't ID proponents lobbying the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health instead of school boards and state legistlators? Is it because they know what they are presenting is not science? I think so.

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Also, many scientists are getting involved in these hearings, as well, so to say that science isn't being presented in this debate is just plain false.

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The question is whether or not these scientists are actually presenting science. The criteria for a true scientific theory is not the letters after your name but whether or not the theory is testable through the scientific method. ID is not testable as it stands now.

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Referring to the legal system seems to contradict what you said earlier. You criticize ID for being too "political," but at the same time you make a reference the decision of a political institution to support your case against ID. You can't have it both ways.

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The criteria for creationism is strictly Bible-based and very specific, while the criterion for much ID is much broader in that it refers to just a designer.

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It refers to an unevidenced designer whose existence must be taken on faith. At this point it makes little difference if the designer is biblically based or not.These hearings would not have happened if ID proponents and Creationists had lobbied scientific bodies instead of political bodies. None of these cases were started by scientists supporting evolution.

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Intelligent design actually tends to have a more agnostic leaning

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Doesn't matter, it is still a philosophy and not a science.

I'm aware of the slant the article places on the facts. You must consider why, if the IDists are actually true scientists, they are taking their arguments to school boards instead of to scientific journals and conferences. It is because they aren't actually doing any real science.There is not any debate within science. This is not a case of one set of scientists precluding representation of the theories of another group of scientists. There is no group of scientists working on ID theory. There are only evangelical Christians trying to introduce their views into science classrooms.As I mentioned in my earlier post, setting up shop with their own conferences and journals has not fooled the American legal system, which regularly found Creation Science to be thinly veiled religion, and it is unlikely to work with ID, either. ID has an obvious motivation for avoiding any association with these failed efforts of YEC Creationism, but they're still not going to fool anyone. Every time there was court case almost all those testifying for Creationism were affiliated with evangelical religious or theological institutions, while those on the other side represented a large number of different secular institutions and were members of a wide variety of religions, including no religion. If ID ends up in court like Creation Science did, ID's origins from within evangelical Christianity will be obvious from the backgrounds of those representing it. One of the primary promoters of ID, Dembski, is now director of the Center for Science and Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. What does this seminary have to say about itself? Well here, read for yourself at About Baptist Seminary | Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: Wow, sounds like a real bastion of science, doesn't it! That's where your great ID leader is now, running a department at a seminary. I guess he decided to pass over all those prestigious opporunities to join the faculty at MIT and CalTech and Stanford and Carnegie Mellon because of this stunning opportunity at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm sorry that you've been taken in by this article, but there is no legitimate scientific research going on in ID. Its a religious idea, not a scientific one. I don't know where your confusion lies, so I'll just repeat what I've already said. The efforts of ID resemble the earlier efforts of YEC Creation Science by focusing their efforts on special pleadings before school boards and legislatures for representation in science classrooms, instead of actually doing science. Like YEC Creation Science before it, ID tries to portray the debate as one between groups of different minded scientists while denying the close religious affiliations. Like YEC Creation Science before it, outside the lay public ID will fool very few people, including the American legal system.If there were really groups of ID scientists out there engaged in legitimate research, their papers would be in journals, and some of them would be here now engaged in a scientific debate on the merits, and we would all be excited about this new direction in biology. But there aren't any real ID scientists out there. There's only evangelical Christians doing their best to make ID look like science.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 04-21-2005 09:55 AM

Itsd also the case that, given their emphasis in complexity, ID should be leaning on statisticial models and information theory to construct its argument for a) design being detectable and b) design having been detected. But there does not appear to be any such investigation.An ID theory, if validated, could still be used to support a non-theological cosmology. For example, there is the hypothesis that "we" are ourselves simulations that exist in a Matrix-like simulated reality created by our own machine-life heirs. Conceivably, intelligent design could tease out the fixed rules of the simulation, if they are there. This would allow for a designed experiential universe without god. But it is plain, by the very fact that this sort of angle is NOT being examined, that the point of ID is to support religion. It is not a genuine investigation of our world conducted honestly for the purpose of understanding it better.

The Kansas City Star did not take a definitive position on whether ID or evolution was right, and it's a reputable newspaper. This is an unsubstantiated claim.

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Page not found - Texas A&M College of Science

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Two of the nation’s top scientists will visit the Texas A&M University campus next week to discuss one of the hottest topics in modern science as part of the annual Trotter Endowed Lecture Series.

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As recipients of Texas A&M’s 2005 Trotter Prize, Dr. William Dembski, an associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University, and Dr. Stuart Kauffman, director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary, will address the origin of life in a public lecture Monday (April 4) at 7 p.m. in Rudder Theatre. The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception in the Rudder Exhibit Hall.

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Two central questions will form the basis of their scholarly debate: What are the defining features of life, and what causal processes can originate life and subsequently increase its complexity? For Dembski and Kauffman, the answers depend largely on approach, not to mention widely differing perspectives.

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http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/...
{Shortened display form of URL, to restore page width to normal. - Adminnemooseus}

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National Public Radio program Justice Talking will host a debate on intelligent design and how to teach evolution in front of a live audience Tuesday, April 19, 2005 7:30 PM at The National Constitution Center, featuring Discovery Institute senior fellow Dr. Paul Nelson, a proponent of the theory of intelligent design, and philosopher Dr. Niall Shanks, a defender of Darwinian evolution. The debate is free and open to the public.

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Plus, in addition to these two examples, every time someone published a reply to one of the works by an ID scientists, that would count as debating ID. Saying that there is no debate is just your own extreme viewpoint. After I spent more than half of my lenghtly post showing how terrible this argument is and refuting it with multiple pieces of evidences, you refuse to refute the majority of my counter-argument and instead reiterate what you just said. On top of that, you've given no proof that ID is thinly-veiled Creationism (except for Dembski, which is only one exampe, but I'll refute that later in the post); you only claim that this is true. Given all of that, you can not continue to compare Creationism and ID and argue for the link between the two. Even Answers in Genesis and Institute for Creation Research know that creationism and ID are different, but you can't see the truth on this one. This claim about creationism and ID is just becoming so frivolous now that I'm starting to get personally offended by it. This is yet another argument I've seen before and has been refuted. Dembski can be both a Christian and a scientist, but he knows to keep the two separate, just like Kepler, Morse, Pasteur, Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Maxwell, Faraday, and Bacon. I think he once talked about what ID means (and doesn't mean) to the Christian world, but never about what Christiany means to ID (that is, he doesn't base claims off of the Bible rather than science). Furthermore, your quote about Southwestern's mission is a blatant use of a straw man. That quote was never intended to be applied to ID at all; it's just a general statement of the school's mission.Now you can try to rehash and reword this religion argument meant here, but there is still one problem you haven't addressed: that you are using the ad hominem logical fallacy (and a generalization as well). That's what this argument basically boils down, and unless you can show me that this is not using the ad hominem logical fallacy, this argument can not stand. Once again you continue your unsubstantiated claim about this article's credibility. Relying on such weak and low attacks to make your point true shows the weakness of your position. You seem to forget that there are scientists who are attending these hearings, scientists who are on the committee, etc. (unless you want to claim that the Kansas City Star lied). The scientific debate is being played out within these hearings. Furthermore, any action to add ID (and any curriculum change of any type) to the curriculum would have to go through the school board, regardless, regardless of how credible ID is, so ID's credibility and the proposal to add it to the curriculum could be considered separate from each other.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 04-21-2005 04:38 PM

Okay, have it your way, there's no slant in the article. In that case you're misinterpreting the article as implying that there is a true debate within science. I didn't say there wasn't any debate. There is very much a debate. But the debate is between Christian evangelicals and science, not between scientists of opposing viewpoints. There is no debate within science. There are no ID scientists publishing their papers in journals and presenting them at conferences and clashing with other scientists of more traditional viewpoints. As I said before, "This is not a case of one set of scientists precluding representation of the theories of another group of scientists. There is no group of scientists working on ID theory. There are only evangelical Christians trying to introduce their views into science classrooms." Well that's just peachy! Join the long list of the easily offended.If you think I'm not addressing your points it's probably because I see them as orthogonal to the key issue. The views of science are what gets taught in science class. ID is not a view of science. It should therefore not be taught in science class. Yes, we know. He keeps them separate by being a Christian and not a scientist. We know he's not a scientist because he's published no papers in the technical literature, presented no papers at conferences, and his views have had no influence within evolutionary biology. No, Commike37, it isn't. There is no debate within science. If you think there is then I suggest you try to find papers in the technical literature about ID by people like Dembski and Behe and Meyer. The debate at these hearings is between scientists and evangelical Christians.--Percy

See Page not found · GitHub Pages for a discussion of Dembski in which Salty (aka John A. Davison) participated at Panda's Thumb.--Percy

In Lansing, Michigan, a Christian legal defense team is now defending the rights of teachers to teach ID. It appears two teachers were teaching evolution and ID and the school superintendent forced them to stop presenting ID. It ludicrous that this fight has been taken to the individual schools. I guess if you don't have the science to back up your beliefs you can just sue!Full story here:
http://www.wftv.com/education/4405490/detail.html

It looks even worse than you think. According to reports on The Panda's Thumb Michigan’s Impending ID Lawsuit the teachers included:

Sigh! Is there any hope that the youth in our society will be able to get a good science education! I thought it interesting that a Christian legal defense group was coming to bat for the teachers. Hmmm, I thought the ID was supposed to be a non-diety!