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HARRISBURG, PA., Dec. 20 - A federal judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school board's policy of teaching intelligent design in high school biology class is unconstitutional because intelligent design is clearly a religious idea that advances "a particular version of Christianity."

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"I can't lock up his guns. They belong to him, and he has a right to use them whenever he wants to use them."

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Yeah-uh!

Judge strikes down ID in PA.

I'm glad to see reason prevail for once.

Flame suit on.

-Zeke

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"I can't lock up his guns. They belong to him, and he has a right to use them whenever he wants to use them."

Yes, you can! He's ELEVEN.

What an extraordinary example of lack of any good judgement.

-Zeke

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I just want to know how something can exist without being created.

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*** You are ignoring this user ***

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*** You are ignoring this user ***

Ah.

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I just want to know how something can exist without being created.

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I´m not saying children should be indoctrinated with creationism in public school, but they also shouldn´t be indoctrinated with something that goes against their family´s core beliefs.

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Something can not be made of nothing according to science.

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Only according to classical science. At the quantum level crazy shit can and does happen. Particles can spontaneously appear and disappear.

That is going to keeping me chuckling all day!

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I just want to know how something can exist without being created.

Yes, we'd all like to know that. The only honest answer that anyone on this planet can give you right now is "we don't know".

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I just want to know how something can exist without being created. So if the Big Bang created the Earth, then what created the Big Bang? That is all I want to know, and then I´ll be ok with it being taught as science.

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Exploring the Big Bang and similar theories is science, but it's not proven fact, and teaching as such only comes off as brainwashing, telling children that what their mommy & daddy taught them isn´t true.

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ID arguments always take the form of "evolution can't explain X, so X must be the result of a higher power."

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The old analogy is that if you see a working clock then you assume someone designed said clock and that it did not spontaneously occur. The thing is, you cannot draw many conclusions beyond the simple existence of the clock maker. Was it a man, woman, or maybe even a machine? Was it a moral person or a mass murderer? There is no evidence from the created thing to suggest any of this- only that the maker exists.

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we observe x through science which implies a specific design

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This is how social conservatives keep their cause alive, by making up pretend assaults on their beliefs.

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they truly believe that the world has some agenda against their rightous cause,

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The old analogy is that if you see a working clock then you assume someone designed said clock and that it did not spontaneously occur. The thing is, you cannot draw many conclusions beyond the simple existence of the clock maker. Was it a man, woman, or maybe even a machine? Was it a moral person or a mass murderer? There is no evidence from the created thing to suggest any of this- only that the maker exists.

Bzzzt. The flaw in your logic is that we know man makes clocks (we have evidence of that) but we don't know that anything made man, or even that anything made anything which led to man.

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If so, their delusional paranoia undermines their cause.

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Exploring the Big Bang and similar theories is science, but it's not proven fact, and teaching as such only comes off as brainwashing, telling children that what their mommy & daddy taught them isn´t true.

Your assertion that the Big Bang is taught as fact isn't how I was taught, nor does it appear in any science textbook I've ever read.

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As a better example of Jeff's point, the children of some fundamentalists get told at home that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, and became extinct only at the time of Noah and his flood.

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For the record, not MY point- he was responding to Billy's statement.

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Oops, sorry.

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Science tells us that we exist in one of the most ideal planets in the galaxy, universe, and solar system. Science tells us that the laws of physics that govern us are perfecly suited to support life.

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Ok, well you left out my next line:

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The only question ID really asks is whether or not our existence and the world around us equate to the clock.

I mention this because you make it sound as if I'm an ID proponent ("The flaw in YOUR logic"), which I'm not.

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It's funny, because this very concept is one of the ideas that, when I was very young, gave me the epiphany as to precisely how we could have evolved without a creator.

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Not all scientific *theories* are testable.

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if you are not an ID proponent, you're certainly "playing one on TV" for the purposes of our discussion. I'm happy to debate this with you, with the understanding that you're not squarely in the ID camp.

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Observations need not be tested all, because they're observations, things we see. "Did you see the bacteria in the petri dish die faster than it did with the placebo? Yes? Good, the antibiotic works." Observations are themselves part of the testing of hypotheses, not something to be tested.

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more evidence than the ID theory has (that being zero)

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assuming a layman like myself can make sense of it.

Hah, nice jab. I think you've probably got a better handle on science than I do.

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I have read summaries of several ID papers (none in their entirety,) but you're going to have to explain the term "scientific backing" to me for me to answer your question. Scientific backing, to me, means evidence, and I've seen nothing that comes close to evidence to support ID. Everything I've read from Dembski and other ID proponents has zero scientific evidence. Show me scientific evidence in any ID material, and I'll be happy to read it.

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- explain current observations
- be verifiable
- make a testable prediction of something that's not been observed yet (otherwise it could have been tailored to fit what we already know).

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We also cannot make a testable predicition of the Big Bang, since it was a non repeatable one time occurance.

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There are actually a whole lot of testable predictions that can be measured with things like radio telescopes. Stuff like background radiation. Astronomers and astrophysicists are constantly reporting about the results of those kinds of tests.

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If we decide the evidence is strong that there is an Intelligent Designer, what tests would we be able to run, what would we expect to find upon further investigation, to support the theory?

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Science tells us that we exist in one of the most ideal planets in the galaxy, universe, and solar system. Science tells us that the laws of physics that govern us are perfecly suited to support life

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If you say one thing, there's always the God cop out: "well, God made it that way".

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There is absolutely no way you can disprove that the universe was created by an extra-universal being because he could conceivably manipulate any possible thing in our reality.

And if that's true, why bother studying science at all? It's liable to change at any second.

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the ID proponent would say that the BB can exist only because God manipulated it to exist. We would assume that since they're saying that God enhances science, that would lead us to more scientific revelation.

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Any speck of magic throws off the whole shooting match.

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Not if the universe was spoken into existence with the laws of science in place.

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We would assume that since they're saying that God enhances science

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It is well within ID that God set things up in the beginning and the stepped away.

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In particular, if that's the case, then it's not at odds with the concept of evolution.

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Not to rehash, but then how does that put it at odds with current scientific ideas, evolution in particular?

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I don't miss that point, but the vocal proponents seem to not believe that. And those are the people we have a problem with.

I can abide by a scientific discussion of the failings of evolution, and they do exist, but the current vocal proponents seem to have no such interest. They specifically want to undermine evolution, or so it would seem.

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Is the currently proposed ID nothing but creationism in sheep's clothing?

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I can abide by a scientific discussion of the failings of evolution, and they do exist,

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It completely short-circuits science. It does not provide any testable theory and exists only to compete with a more plausible approach that can be tested.

At its base, it still subverts science with magic.

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I think the Big Bang is the Big Cop-out. "There was a huge explosion a long time ago, and now we exist". That only explains an observation. It doesn't explain why. God explains why.

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How does saying god explains why isn't a big cop out as well?

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Not because it makes logical scientific sense, but because it makes sense within their own soul.

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Your argument about the knowledge that man makes clocks is a good answer to this latter statement, though I don't really think definitive. I'd like to hear more disccusion.

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Have you looked at the scientific backing for ID? It's certainly there- the question is whether it means what ID proponents say it means.

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Admittedly, I haven't read the "Pandas" book. Does it contain anything like that? I'd be interested in knowing.

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in fact, the judge ruled that ID is not science.

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Not if the universe was spoken into existence with the laws of science in place. As long God is not actively manipulating and changing said laws, we can study and measure and quantify to our hearts content.

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to fix up "global worming".
(...)
BBB really hated what David Lynch did with it...

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This is one of the foundations of the scientific method. A theory must (as I understand it):

- explain current observations
- be verifiable
- make a testable prediction of something that's not been observed yet (otherwise it could have been tailored to fit what we already know).

I have no patience to wait until I read the rest of the thread before I nitpickingly correct this:
not verifiable, but falsifiable: something that cannot be 'shot down' by a piece of observation is not a scientific theory.

When I am posting already, let me add: ID defitively fails this test. Whatever we observe, it can be attributed to Creator. If ID proponents specified exactly what their thinly disguised Christian God did, without changing it to fit advances in science, than perhaps we could talk.

Even Jeff's concept of ID (which, I think, reflects more his honesty, intelectual and otherwise, than the sad reality of actual ID agenda) is untestable, therefore unfalsifiable, therefore outside of realm of science. As I said a number of times, many scientists engage in entertaining speculation about possibility that our Universe (or even the infinite Multiverse (set of universes) postulated in many different hypoteses) was created, but that interesting pastime does not pretend to be science.

What is missing from both the classic 'watch argument' and Jeff's with game of cards is that neither man of watch materialized all of a sudden out of thin air; we know mechanisms both came to being.

And for the ideal planet: ask Inuit, Berbers of Katrina victims how ideal it is...

Edit: Heh, as I thought, everything I said was said by others....

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If ID proponents say that evidence for God exists through science, then it'd be really cool to see this exhange of ideas delt with scientifically bewteen those on eithre side rather than trying to attack/defend evolution.

I very much doubt ID proponents share your enthusiasm for real scientific debate You give them way too much credit.

I strongly agree with Bitt's and others' observation that all ID is saying is "I don't understand it, therefore it is a result of intelligent design and/or intervention". How long will the lack of understanding of a particular phenomenon persist?

Consider astronomy: before 15th century planets moved in complicate, intricate system of epicycles, obviosly a work of God. Kopernik (Copernicus) untangled them into circles, and 15th century 'ID-ers' burned Giordano Bruno at stake for supporting that untangling, but soon accepted it in the form of 'celestial spheres', as more precisely described by Kepler (who offered accurate kinematics, but not dynamics of planets' motion); then Newton described their dynamics in a single equation barely ten characters long, introducing gravity; Einstein offered explanation of gravity, one we are still trying to reconcile with our knowledge of sub-atomic world; the jury is still out on that one.

For caveman with freshly acquired capacity for wondering everything was clearly a work of god(s)/spirit(s)/...

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And that's why people believe in God. Not because it makes logical scientific sense, but because it makes sense within their own soul.

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Science tells us that we exist in one of the most ideal planets in the galaxy

Science tells us no such thing.

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You might be able to make a case for claiming that the process of evolution has tailored us to be ideal for the environment in which we live.

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a planet that gets obliterated, which happens a lot more often in other areas on the galaxy

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in fact, the judge ruled that ID is not science.

And the irony of all this is that science isn't something that can even be ruled upon by a judge or jury. Scientific theories stand on their own evidence and require no judgement, merely the results of reproducible observations and experiments.

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I don't see why the two have to be mutually exclusive. I believe in God and I believe in evolution.