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LivLuvAndBootlegMusic said:


Please explain....


How could believing in ID harm a belief system that is based on the supreme authority of God?

Or am I mistunderstanding and you're referring to a more specific situation where Christians that use this belief in science?


believing is fine
and I support that 100 per cent


but the
movement
of requiring that it be incorporated into science classes


that part is what I beleive is very harmful

as I stated here
The whole movement is comprised of conservative Christians that publicly say they agenda is not about supporting their religious beliefs.

(let me add - into science classes)

They are trapped into "bearing false witness".

It is sad for a child in a Christian home to hear their elders make these statements, when it is clear the remarks are falsehoods.
It may cause children to loose confidence in their leaders/ parents.
 
deep said:



believing is fine
and I support that 100 per cent


but the
movement
of requiring that it be incorporated into science classes


that part is what I beleive is very harmful

as I stated here

OK, thanks, that makes perfect sense in the context of science class. I thought for a minute you meant in general, but then I thought that made so little sense you couldn't possibly mean it that way.
 
nbcrusader said:


For me it is the simple mathematical impossiblity of life from nothing over the lifespan of the universe.

Mathematical models which support evolution (such as the estimation of the number of planets that could support life) are flawed in that they only consider certain factors and ignore others that create our unique life-supporting planet called Earth.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that something you consider a flaw in evolution theory? Something you consider a flaw in the theory is not really sufficient argument to include ID in science curriculum. I think it is improbable that somewhere else in the vast universe there is not a planet capable of sustaining life. But I don't have sufficient evidence to support there is really other life out there in a science class. We may continue to look for evidence, but until then...I think the ID proponents should continue to look for the evidence they seek and if it tests out sufficiently, then perhaps that it can be considered with more scientific credibility. I don't know that that because evolution is not capable of answering every question about the origin of life then the answer must be ID.
 
nbcrusader said:


I think this is where we get to the romantic notions of evolution. If we have billions and billions of years (add Carl Sagan voice here), anything is possible.

The complexities of a single cell are such that, if you have all the components right next to each other, and they attempt to form thousands of times per second, the odds that they would form into a cell suggest that is improbable within the entire lifespan of the universe. That's just for one cell.

Even if this occured in stages, the mathematical odd of it occuring do not improve significantly enough to establish clear likelihood of life from nothing.

The Miller experiment, widely cited as evidence of life from nothing, only produced subcomponents of components of a cell. This does not mean we've created a living cell in the lab.
You are neglecting size of universe. The universe has a radius of at least 13.7 billion light years - quite plausibly infinite. Within that set of space and over the course of time the number of permutations is innumerable. It is not a coincidence that we live on a planet that is so ideal for life like us, it was a combination of prerequisite and steady change of the planet by life and evolution of life.

The formula to calculate the formation of life are notoriously innacurate as they rely on unknown factors, such as the number to terrestrial planets that can support liquid water, the elements present, volcanism, the presence of a moon etc. I do not think that it is wise to be using any equation to "prove", that includes the Drake Equation and SETI which is a nice large waste of money.
 
Admittedly, there's still lots of things that science (and, frankly, no one) can answer yet, but that does not mean we should plug the holes with pseudoscience. I find it preferable to say that science cannot answer certain questions at this time. If that conclusion leads some or many people to add a concept of "God" into the equation, so be it...just on their own time. But it's not appropriate for science to make such statements officially, because it is inherently unprovable and completely contrary to the definition of science.

Melon
 
I should also add that regardless of naturalistic formation or deliberate creation it is a fact that evolution occurs. Intelligent Design would not stop evolution from occuring on those varying organisms.

We have more evidence for a naturalistic formation of life on Earth (that has increased since the Miller experiment in the 1950's) than we do for any creator. The oft cited "evidence" for ID is the concept of irreducable complexity notably the ion pumps and flagella within cells, the notion being that they rely on every part ergo they couldn't have evolved they had to be created. This leap is made without looking at the wider picture of earlier forms, of different types and from that single piece of evidence that also fits in with a naturalistic view a designer is inferred.
 
Mathematical models which cast doubt on some parts of the evolution theory do not at the same time lend credence to ID.

If one doubts that evolution is correct, then why only ID as the alternative? Why not the Hindu or Zoroastrian myths? Nobody's yet answered that as far as I can tell. They're all about equally as "scientific."
 
ID is technically nontheistic, it is wrong to frame it strictly as a religious argument off the bat because the adherents take great care not to explicitly spell God as the intelligent designer.

It is not old fashioned young earth creationism. It is more neutral and dressed up in some scientific language but it still retains logical fallacies and selective evidence that make naturalistic formation of life and evolution by natural selection the more comprehensive theories.

It would be wrong to teach children that there is a big controversy within the scientific community over evolution or that Intelligent Design has any clout. Objectively there are no ID papers being published in the scientific literature, they are not being peer reviewed and the ID campaign is being waged through popular literature and politics. It is the antithesis of science and should be kept out of public schools.

I have read a good deal of ID literature and I have to say that it is not inconsistent with evolution. I am not saying that there is any evidence for it - but I am saying that they are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is the best explanation to explain the diversity of life on this planet and the common ancestry of life going all the way back to LUCA.

Intelligent design posits that the first life forms were designed, the logic behind it being cell structures that require all their parts to operate, the presumption being that these forms are the first and that there were not earlier more primitive types. Because of this so-called Irreducable Complexity intelligent design posits the existence of a designer. The problem is that there is no evidence for a designer at all, that is a large part of why it is kept so ambiguous, it is a very large logical leap to take the existence of a designer by using evidence that either exists at the edge of what we know now and haven't explained yet or using evidence that has a sound naturalistic explanation. In the long term intelligent design will become even more untenable as evidence that they once used freely (for instance the eye) becomes better understood through scientific method and explanation for observed fact is found. In the interim it is a hypothesis for complexity in organisms that posits a designer that is not falsifiable, that absence of falsifiability disqualifies it as science and is the reason not to teach it, if we found evidence for designed life in the past it would be revolutionary and everything that we thought we knew would be overturned, there would be accolades and notoriety, is it not strange that over the last century all the evidence that has been found does not show this and in fact fits neatly within the evolutionary biology paradigm.
 
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