Embiggener

thats why ID is not science, science has predictive power while ID does not. Science has applications based on those predictions. Evolutionary theory has many applications beyond flu shots. You cant do anything with ID.

leejo

Maybe, but when a theory achieves the level of "doctrine" it ceases to be scientific. Evolution, to some, is a done deal. Proven. Any who question it are ridiculed and called names.

Similarly, 1000 years ago, the sun orbited the earth. This was known. It was fact. Any who dared disagree were punished and ostracized.

A good scientific theory agrees with observation and makes testable predictions. Until it doesn't. Then a new theory comes along. I worry that Evolution's advocates, like Global Warming's advocates, many of whom know jack about science but share a common POLITICAL affiliation, will stifle honest scientific debate.

Somebody got fired from the TX Department of Education. Like most people who get fired, it wasn't because of her performance, or her attitude, or her insubordination. It was because her boss is a brain-dead jerk. Find me 10 people who have been fired and I will show you 10 people who tell this same story. And yet many of you buy the story hook line and sinker. Why? I think it's because the story basically jives with your prejudice.

I don't know why she was fired, and that's all I know (or care) about this. I am certain that there is no credible evidence in this story that the Texas government is conspiring to push ID or stifle evolution, or that the people of Texas are backwards, etc., and I wish people would show more sense and restraint.

tHa_KhAn

Modern science is based on definitive answers. Somethings are accepted because they can be measured to limits of our capabilities. We(Humans) often take credit as being the greatest so throughout history our science has been based on what we can measure, as it should be. So when issues like the origin of our existence come up, how is that measured? It can't be and therefore leaves holes that are filled with pseudo-science from all areas. Since recorded time, humans and animals have essentially been the same. There is little difference from cave drawings to today that cannot be directly attributed to technology. 100 years from now, technology might have progressed so far as to render any notion we had on the subject laughable.

Look at the shifts in history, earth is flat...oh wait it's not. Earth is the center of the universe, oops. Eggs are bad for you, today they are good for you, tomorrow they will be bad. I can play a video game with people a crossed the world, but science still debates whether eggs are healthy for you? Look at alchemy and what it brought to the modern world and look how silly we view most of what they did, yet they had "accepted" documentation for what they did at the time. We live in a time where we are well aware of how off science can be. Because of that, science is sometimes hindered because to reverse a major idea or prove a novel concept there must be exact proof. Evidence that can be duplicated. Take for example many of the "missing links" that further technology has rendered unacceptable.

Then on top of that, creationism/ID is the basis of the entire Christian(and many other) religions. By suggesting that a supreme being did not have a hand in getting the universe started essentially is saying all of those religions are null and void because the supreme being does not exist. That kind of claim needs proof beyond a shadow of a doubt and that kind of proof is not going to be found. And that is the problem with the debate. It's not fueled by science, but by religions. Atheists and Deity based mainly. In this country it's the hardcore atheists versus the Christians. One group despises the idea of supreme being, the other group passionately embraces the idea of a supreme being. Both extremes are pushing their own beliefs on the other. One group uses tradition and beliefs, while the other uses law and science to hide their respective agendas.

I don't believe religion should be forced on anyone. However, the opposite applies as well which is why this topic is always so heated and never ending. Forcing no religion is just as bad and in itself forcing a religion. It's like the line in Episode III of star wars...."Only a sith deals in absolutes"-Obi wan. Which can be viewed as an absolute. Many in the scientific community view religious types as closed minded, when doing so is actually closing their mind to a specific unverifiable possibility. As long as unexplained events happen or exist, there will be room for "unscientific" beliefs.

__________________

AMosely

This is really interesting to me because my first reaction was these two issues are completely separate (though politically they do seem tied), but after thinking about it more they both might be ultimately unprovable in the end - meaning that it is impossible to demonstrate the mechanics of evolution so that someone can see it with their own eyes and accept it. It's also interesting that we both agree that political (and I'd add in religious) affiliation clouds the science surrounding these issues, but still disagree on the issues - I wonder if anyone reading this has not actually made up their mind on the topic of the evolution of species. If true, doesn't our own personal bias stifle debate more than our affilations (which only provide a springboard to bias).

I too think about the examples of the movements of the universe, and how humanity has slowly come to accept reality - but how? Through physical and visual observation. That kind of truth cannot be arrived at when it comes to the mechanics of the Earth's climate and the evolution of species. Our lifespans are not long enough to witness it, nor can we replay the past beyond trying to piece together physical evidence (which any anthropolgist will tell you is plentiful enough to support evolutionary science).

These are two of the big scientific issues of our time, so it should come as no surprise that they are political, religious and cultural issues as well. I just hope that everyone can try and remember that they are scientific at heart, and to keep their judgements to that area alone.

Kerostasis

So here's the ID speech I wrote for a school project 2 years ago. I don't think the debate has really changed much since then, so it should still be relevant. Tell me what you think of it. (Keep in mind this was a spoken presentation, not a written essay)

---------------------------------

Introduction
Recently, our President was loudly criticized for daring to suggest that even the debate over Intelligent Design be taught in schools. ID is a theory with a lot of enemies. It is also a very important theory to understand today, as it is the center of heated scientific, political, and legal debates as people struggle to either promote or ban its teaching. I have been studying ID for some time now, and while I am not dogmatically convinced of its truth, I believe I understand it well enough to explain and discuss it. ID is a perfectly respectable scientific theory. Let me briefly explain the different meanings of evolution, the core of Intelligent Design, and the falsifiability test. But before you can understand ID, you have to know a little something about Evolution.

Point I–Evolution (Cue Evolution slide)
Understanding Evolution is tricky, because we use the same word to describe 3 or 4 different things. (Cue Triple Evolution slide) This often results in a lot of confusion, especially during debates. To my knowledge there are no officially accepted labels to distinguish the different Evolutions, so I have had to create my own. (Cue P-Evolution slide) The first is the Phenomena of Evolution, which I will write as P-Evolution. We look around us, and we see that creatures slowly change over time. The corn that exists today is quite different than the corn that was here 500 years ago, and we can breed a few thousand generations of fruit flies in a lab and notice that the end result is a little different from what we started with. This is not a theory, this is not a debate, this is simply the fact that things change.
Second, we have the Theory of Evolution, (Cue Evolution– slide) which I will call Evolution minus. You’ll see why in a moment. Here we see that things change, and after studying those changes, we come up with a set of rules to explain how they change. Then, and this is the important part, we make the prediction that those same forces changing our fruit flies into slightly different flies were probably responsible for changing bacteria into humans.
Finally, we have Evolution plus. (Cue Evolution+ slide) Evolution plus takes everything in Evolution minus, and adds on the theory of Abiogenesis, which is the idea that those first bacteria could have been randomly assembled from inorganic proteins, without the need for any outside assistance. Of course, individual people may mix and match their beliefs, but these three are the broad categories you need to be aware of.

Point II-Intelligent Design
So, what is Intelligent Design? (Cue ID slide) ID starts in the same place, with the Phenomena of Evolution. Again, we study those changes, and come up with a set of rules to explain how they change. No difference so far. The rules we come up with are, in fact, almost identical. The difference comes in the prediction. After looking over the rules for change, ID makes the prediction that the forces we can see are not enough! ID predicts that there must have been some other force that we haven’t found yet to complete the transition from bacteria to man. That’s it! That’s the core idea behind ID. Now I know your next question is, “What is this extra force?” Most people have an opinion on this question–that the extra force is a sentient, intelligent designer–but that’s not really part of the theory. The scientific theory merely says that there must be something else. I won’t bore you with the evidence for this prediction today, but if you care you can always look it up yourself.
Like Evolution, ID can be broken down into + and –. (Cue ID+/– slide) ID+ says this additional force is required for all of evolution. ID– concedes that maybe living creatures might have evolved without outside help, but that the origin of the first life definitely required this outside force. So ID– and Evolution– can actually coexist together.

Point III-Falsifiability
One of the first complaints commonly brought against ID is that it is not real science because it is not falsifiable. That is, you could not design an experiment to prove it false. While I must admit, I cannot think of an experiment you could conduct to prove that no outside force could have interfered with our evolution, the same could be said of Evolution–. There is no experiment you could conduct to disprove the idea that there weren’t any outside forces either. And there certainly aren’t any experiments that could disprove Abiogenesis–we have conducted thousands of experiments that haven’t generated life, and none that have, and yet Abiogenesis is still a scientific theory. In fact, the entire field of Evolution is generally run independent of the falsifiability test. Here, the Viability test works much better–could it happen that way? Lets assume for the sake of argument that Evolution– passes the viability test, and bacteria could evolve into humans without outside help. Then ID certainly passes the viability test, as bacteria could certainly evolve with help if they could do it even without help. So, ID qualifies as science.

Point IV–Flying Spaghetti Monsters
Recently, a third theory has arisen to challenge Evolution and ID. (Cue Spaghetti Slide) Flying Spaghetti Monster theory! Now, I don’t think anyone really takes this theory seriously–it was designed merely to prove a point. But it’s still worth looking at because it does make some interesting points, and because you can never discuss ID for very long before someone will bring it up. The basic idea is that if you are willing to accept theories like ID that are hard to disprove, but don’t have a ton of clear evidence for them, then you must accept any hard-to-disprove theory–for example, the theory that life was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. You can find all of the details at www.Venganza.org, where the theory was first proposed. I could waste an awful lot of time arguing over the logic in that, as well as exactly how much evidence there really is for ID, but I don’t have to. Take a moment to think how this theory interacts with ID theory. There aren’t actually any conflicts in there. Even if the world really was created by a FSM, ID still works just fine. In fact, you could have the Flying Spaghetti Monster create life, conforming to ID-, and then have it evolve according to Evolution–, and you’ve just fit all 3 theories into one neat package. Since FSM Theory doesn’t even contradict ID, there is no real reason to bother disproving it.

Conclusion
In summary, you have now seen the different things we mean with the one word Evolution, and you know how Intelligent Design is different. You know what the falsifiability test is, and why it’s not particularly relevant to either. And you even know about Flying Spaghetti Monster theory. So now it should be no trouble to accept ID as a debatable scientific theory. Having seen the vicious response to our President’s suggestion on teaching ID, it’s unlikely that anyone will tell you about the details of the ID debate. If you want to know, you’re going to have to inform yourself.

__________________

El_Gringo_Grande

Evolution is falsifiable. And with Evolution theory you can make predictions and those predictions can be verified or shown to be false.

In Evolution you can predict that you will find in the fissile record certain traits. Those predictions have been made and in many cases those traits have been found.

With ID you cannot make really make predictions. There is always the "the designer decided to do something else" out.

So ID is not a scientific theory. Simple as that. There is nothing in ID that explains what we know about life convincingly. Even if you where to take ID seriously it is very weak when it comes to explaining anything. It isn't even very good at pointing out the weaknesses of evolution.

__________________
Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Kerostasis

Of all the claims made by the Theory of Evolution, only a handful really set it apart from what I've set forth here as the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design. And while lots of Evolution's claims are falsifiable, those important predictions that set it apart are among the few claims that aren't falsifiable. To clarify slightly -- ID and Evolution do not generally differ in assigning the rules of the mechanics of evolution. They differ in the prediction of what those mechanics are capable of accomplishing, given only Natural Selection and not Artificial Selection. And how exactly do you falsify those predictions?

(Once Artificial Selection is introduced of course, anything's possible, but then you need to identify the external actor who's performing the Artificial Selection.)

__________________

sordavie

Very few contemporary philosophers of science still believe the claim that falsifiability is the citerion to demarcate science from nonscience. That idea was due to Karl Popper, who argued that there is no solution to Hume's problem of induction. (It was originally thought that science proceeds by induction; but Scottish philosopher David Hume posed an argument against induction in the 18th century.) Roughly, Popper thought falsifiability filled the role that induction was supposed to play in science.

Unfortunately, developments in the philosophy of science has always been slow to reach the scientists. That's to be expected, however, and Popper's views were and are still well entrenched in the scientific community. The question "what is science?" is a philosophical, not a scientific, question; and just as highly skilled orators typically do not know much theory behind the language they are so good at--that is, they do not know much linguistics--scientists typically don't know much of the theory behind science.

If you ask a scientist what science is, they'll probably give you a speech much like the ones in this thread about science--some mixture of induction and falsifiability. But there are insurmountable philosophical probems with this characterization of science--it can't be right. See Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and various works by Paul Feyerabend. Although Feyerabend's philosophy of science is still seen as somewhat radical in the philosophical community, I think many currently hold something in the area of what Kuhn thought.

What does that mean for the claims made in this thread? Even if ID is not falsifiable and evolutionary theory is, one cannot justifiably infer on this alone that ID is not a scientific theory while evolutionary theory is. So that argument is a bad one. Similar points apply to the idea that scientific theories yield predictive or practical applications.

That's not to say I think ID should be taught in science classrooms, and it's not to say I think ID is a scientific theory.

PS. Kero your characterization of ID is pretty far off out in left field.

__________________

Kerostasis

I'll grant you that it's not what is commonly taught as ID in high school science classes -- or rather, what would be taught if the typical forces behind ID had their way. But that doesn't mean it's inaccurate. When I was studying ID at the time, I basically distilled all the fluff around the issue down to what seemed like the core principle of the idea, kept the most reasonable arguments for it and dropped the rest, and called that my own.

__________________

El_Gringo_Grande

Actually your basic definition of ID isn't any different from the basic definition of evolution. What it sounds like you are getting at is Emergance. And from what I understand some (many?) evolutionists are also looking at this.


Maybe you are not getting at that. But it sounds like it.

__________________
Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Kerostasis

I'd never heard of Emergence before, but it looks interesting. I'll have to examine that.

And I don't think you could say my idea isn't any different than the basic principles of evolution, but I did intentionally make it very similar to aid in focusing only on the most important points of disagreement. I'm glad you like it. Its always nice to independantly land on something that the scientists are also working on.

__________________

Gabriel87

Ok, I don’t like getting in to discussions like this on the web but I will say 3 things.

1) I believe in evolution and intelligent design Yes one thing can evolve from another and something new can be made by mating 2 or more things, but when you come down to the basic structure of it. The very basic molecules of life, you will always have the question of what created it. Even when it comes to ID you will still have to answer that very same question. After all how could ID create its self if it never existed in the first place?

2) A theory is something that has yet to be proven as a fact(a.k.a. scientific)

3) Science is based on facts and nothing but. Think about it, years ago the atom was considered the smallest thing in the world. To suggest other wise would be ridiculous and maybe even insane. Until they broke it apart and discovered the protons, neutrons, and electrons in side of it. Then they became the new smallest things in the world. And as you can see this pattern is still continuing.

I suppose a better example would be the old idea of the sun rotating around the earth. To challenge it would have you jailed or even killed.


Fortunately for me in high school I had teachers who did not care what the parents thought about this. We got very in depth with ID, evolution and Darwinism. We would learn each one individually. Then we would learn and express ideas on how these three things could and couldn’t work together.

As for the ID part of the course. We talked about the basic differences and similarities of different religious ideas of ID.

To me this is the best way students could learn. And apparently the parents loved the way it was being taught too.

__________________
|TG|Gabriel87
Favorite quotes and sayings:

Teacher,” Tommy you got a fairy godmother.”
Tommy,” No, but we got an uncle we keep a close eye on.”

*If anyone knows or has seen Markopilot please let him know that his gunner misses him and would like to talk to him agian. He knows me by Gabriel87.

sordavie

I should have been more specific Kero. ID that's taught in high school science classes is also pretty far out in left field. There is an ongoing research program on this subject in the philosophical community. That is, afterall, where the origins of ID come from. (The historical origins come from William Paley's teleological arument--aptly named the watchmaker argument--and the debate now rests over the cogency of versions of the fine-tuning argument. Here's a very good reference from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/te...cal-arguments/) What I meant was that your characterization of ID is pretty far afield from what ID is actually based off of, i.e. teleological arguments researched by philosophers.

ID is a thesis, which states that there is an intelligent designer and it designed the universe. The conclusion of these teleological arguments is that the universe is designed. That appears to imply that there exists a designer. So, to be more clear about what ID is, we might put it this way: ID is the thesis that the conclusion of some teleological argument is true. Or, in other words, the teleological arguments give us reasons to believe ID. This clearly distinuishes ID from creationism, for those of you who appear to confuse the two.

The question now becomes: Are the teleological arguments scientific arguments? I think this is a much more fruitful question than the questions that have come up: Is ID falsifiable? Can ID produce practical predictions? Since it's pretty apparent that falsifiability and predictiveness are not good criteria to demarcate science from nonscience (much of theoretical physics will fail these criteria), nobody's going to get anywhere by asking whether ID satisfies these things. This is why the debate over whether ID is a science or not hasn't gone anywhere and nobody's given any real good answer either way (either that or they strawman ID). So, I think it's time to start asking some other questions and see what other criteria we can come up with. Unfortunately, philosophy of science and the question of demarcation is out of fashion these days amongst philosophers, so not much work is being done on it. Still, if we look at what makes an argument a scientific argument and then ask ourselves if the argument for ID (the teleological argument) is a scientific argument, we might make better progress than what we've currently got.

That's just my take on the issue. I'm inclined to think the distinction between science and nonscience is pretty arbitrary. This generalizes: the distinction between academic fields is pretty arbitrary. That's not to say there are no distinctions. But, how finely grained we want to make distinctions and then place a label on them is arbitrary. In the end, this may undermine what I said in the paragraph above, since the distinction between a scientific and a nonscientific argument is also arbitrary. But, it is interesting that some versions of the teleological argument do make use of clearly scientific results--results that scientists have figured out by doing science and results that scientists primarily agree with.

__________________

sordavie

I take it people have been mischaracterizing evolution in exactly the way you've done so (not to pick you out in particular or anything). On this mischaracterization, people seem to think that evolution is compatible with intelligent design. They are not compatible however. Natural selection is fundamental to evolution. That natural selection is false is fundamental to intelligent design. They cannot be compatible. However, intelligent design is compatible with something that, to our appearances, looks like evolution.
These are the common use of the words 'theory' and 'fact' but they are not how an academic uses them. A theory is a compact statement about how things are. A fact is how things are. So, a theory can be a statment of a fact. A fact can be nonscientific (for instance moral, mathematical, historical, literary, religious facts). This is how scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, etc use these two words.

To apply the common definition of these words to technical uses by academics is to commit the fallacy of equivocation.

I don't know what you think a fact is, but your characterization of science is pretty far off. Science is a methodology or research program which tries to find out what facts (that is, how things are) there are. Characterizing what methods are scientific methods is very hard to do, but roughly your characterization of science is backward. Science is based off observation, experimentation, mathematical models, etc... None of these are facts. The idea is that using these things we can get to the facts. Science doesn't start with facts. The hope is that it ends with facts.

I teach undergrads, mostly freshmen who are right out of high school, and that might have contributed to my cynicism; but I have completely no faith in secondary school education (and not much more at the college level).

__________________