Straight Talk on Intelligent Design

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Well ImFuzzynutz of course they SHOULD teach evolution and science in church. Then they would have a better perspective and maybe wouldn't endorse such unsatisfactory positions. They can't be expected to know anything they're not taught about, and if they were made to think about things the wiser they would be. It makes no sense? On the contrary it makes perfect sense.

I think debt management and world religion courses are also good ideas.


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Kharakov hey let me teach you the truth of god. Or better yet let us teach each other the truth of god. If there is a god who willingly created us then we are both god's creatures. God could exist depending upon one's definition of god but this doesn't mean that invoking god as an explanation fulfills the criteria of what we mean by an explanation.

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pop_terror poses a good question about what intelligence is. Is the situation in Iraq evidence of intelligent design? Is disease? Is evil? Is evolution? Are the people who support evolution evidence of intelligent design?

This kind of brings us back to the essence of the problem in the argument for intelligent design.

Intelligent design is supposed to be an explanation. But now just what is an explanation supposed to be? What does an expanation do?

Explanations have to do two things:

1)They have to respond to needs in the mental realm.

2)They have to respond to needs in the material realm because, as Madonna said, "We are living in a material world."

And, do you know, whether they actually accomplish (1) or not really depends in most cases on whether they accomplish (2).

Phony explanations accomplish (1) without doing anything in terms of (2). The argument from intelligent design accomplishes nothing in terms of (2). It's a phony argument. Just like I said about being lost on the way to Los Angeles and asking for an explanation of directions and being told "there is an explanation" or "god is the explanation" or "god has the explanation." This may be mentally satisfying -- hardly actually -- but it won't get you to Los Angeles. In the same way god as an explanation for the universe may be mentally satisfying for some people but as you think about things your realize it gets you nowhere. You can't do anything with it. It has no material application. It doesn't fulfill the criteria (1) and (2) of an explanation. It just makes you ask "Who designed god?" or "How can a thing design itself?" and we're right back where we started. No explanation there. Worse yet it suggests "Stop asking" which unfortunately is what a lot of people do.

 

ID is not science. It is not testable, and since the "theory" includes a supernatural being, there can be no evidence. And I'm not saying supporters of evolution are objective. You may have realized in the 55 years you've been on this planet that supporters of anything tend to be subjective. However, evolutionists are concerned with science. The people trying to push ID into schools are not concerned with science, they are concerned with religion. If they were concerned with science, they would not push to have an unscientific "theory" like ID taught in science classes. And as for evidence, yes, there is indeed a great quantity of objective evidence that points toward natural selection, microevolution, and macroevolution. But by all means, don't pay attention to it. I would put that far beyond your capacity.

 

Thanks.

 

ID, if it belongs anywhere in education, belongs in a humanities class. If you think that ID ought to be taught in a science class, great! All you have to do is show how ID meets the following conditions:

1) That this intelligent designer's existence or methodology (i.e. how the designer does what it does) can be empirically demonstrated. That is, I must be able to go out into the world and repeat whatever it is you did to reveal the designer's methodology and show that some effect was caused by this designer (RATHER THAN something else).

2) Make successful predictions based on the actions of the designer (RATHER THAN something else).

If ID doesn't add any worldly cash value to your explanations of the origins and current manifestations of life, then it's either senseless jargon or a useless something-extra. ID has no explanatory power.

 

The so-called "Intelligent Design" theory is nothing more than a hollow Trojan Horse falsity by which christianity is seeking entry into the education and science system in an attempt to surreptitiously practice ideological indoctrination over scientific proveability and scrutiny.