Intelligent Design Invading Liberal Classrooms (was: South Parktaunting Scientology)

Robert Grumbine wrote:

In article ,
Seppo Renfors wrote:

cnctut wrote:

[snip]

Who designed the TV prior to 1908? I can trace old TV carcasses from
that period (with small gaps) to the present, but how do I handle
t1908? String theory?

I'm comfortable with the notion of ID and evolution working together.
Certainly, evolution has a place----I am much taller than my
father.;-))

Well, my question remains unanswered in that case. Nor can you blend
the two because ID denies the possibility of evolution - which is at
the very heart of the ID'ers "faith".

If you look deeply enough, you find that ID, as advanced by Behe and
Dembski for instance, does not actually refuse evolution. Both admit
evolution does occur. The 'merely' find 'gaps' which they feel
evolution can't explain. Push come to shove, there are awfully few
of those 'gaps', and none are evolutionarily recent.

Prima face it may be so - however, considering the whole a bit more
carefully and holistically - if a "gap", specially an early gap, is
filled by a "designer" who "designs", which has to be synonymous with
"creates" in this instance, then any "evolution" which follows must by
that act have been "designed" or "programmed" to occur.

Their apparent "acceptance" of evolution is the thin edge of the wedge
- in reality it is to ultimately claim it as theirs, thereby replacing
science with ID over time.

You won't hear about this, or the vast majority of evolution, which
they don't argue, because the major followers and supporters of ID are
the same young earth creationist crowd as lost Edwards v. Aguillard in
1987. (rhetorical statement, not literal, but probably with a fair
literal component too)

This "Intelligent Design" notion is merely the reverse of another
concept, at least some of the creationists used to run. "Science is
just another religion - but the WRONG religion." Unfortunately there
are extremely powerful people around the world who have been taken in
by this latest fundamentalism - the US President, the Australian
Minister for Education are among them. Powerful people is the reason
Edwards v. Aguillard came to be necessary in the first place.

Here is the case in a nutshell if anyone is interested:
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/107/

I can't understand why there are so many people to whom the concept
"we don't know - yet" gives them the hebe-jebes and horrors, so much
so that they need to fill that gap with a deity. They have the wrong
end of the stick in the first place. Religion isn't about "science" -
it is about humanities, abstract concepts about the proper interaction
between humans - but sadly most often it is abused.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
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The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
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In article ,
Seppo Renfors wrote:

[snip]

I can't understand why there are so many people to whom the concept
"we don't know - yet" gives them the hebe-jebes and horrors, so much
so that they need to fill that gap with a deity. They have the wrong
end of the stick in the first place. Religion isn't about "science" -
it is about humanities, abstract concepts about the proper interaction
between humans - but sadly most often it is abused.

From Theodosius Dobzhansky's excellent essay _Nothing In Biology
Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution_
http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml

"Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does
not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary
textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if
symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can
there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the
blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic
deceitfulness.

One of the great thinkers of our age, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote
the following: "Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is
much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses,
all systems much henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order
to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all
facts, a trajectory which all lines of though must follow this is what
evolution is." Of course, some scientists, as well as some philosophers
and theologians, disagree with some parts of Teilhard’s
teachings; the acceptance of his worldview falls short of universal.
But there is no doubt at all that Teilhard was a truly and deeply
religious man and that Christianity was the cornerstone of his worldview.
Moreover, in his worldview science and faith were not segregated in
watertight compartments, as they are with so many people. They were
harmoniously fitting parts of his worldview. Teilhard was a creationist,
but one who understood that the Creation is realized in this world by
means of evolution.
"

Dobzhansky himself was also deeply religious.


I don't know the answer to your question, but have observed that
the people with that problem also reject that either de Chardin or
Dobzhansky were religious.

--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences