Why isn't Intelligent design not allowed in public schools?

That's because, A.F., there isn't one there of that particular phenomenon, the professor was only describing what he had seen.

I looked around for pictures and I found this picture of more fully developed legs associated with, already detached from, an extinct species of whale:



Here's the link to the site where I "borrowed" the picture:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Egingeric/PDGwhales/Whales.htm

 

OK.

One way that we know about common descent is through shared genetic homologies. One specfic fact would be that a few percent of our DNA is made up of inserts from retroviruses. Of all the retrovirus inserts in humans and the other apes, a few percent of the genome, I only know of one human insert that is not shared by the other apes. And since biologists consider a single shared insert to be conclusive evidence of shared ancestry, this is fairly powerful evidence. We know they are shared by comparing genetic sequences.


QUOTE] http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/19.html#000005 </font>[/QUOTE]

 

OK.

One way that we know about common descent is through shared genetic homologies. One specfic fact would be that a few percent of our DNA is made up of inserts from retroviruses. Of all the retrovirus inserts in humans and the other apes, a few percent of the genome, I only know of one human insert that is not shared by the other apes. And since biologists consider a single shared insert to be conclusive evidence of shared ancestry, this is fairly powerful evidence. We know they are shared by comparing genetic sequences.


QUOTE] http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/19.html#000005 </font>[/QUOTE]I chopped off most of your reply because you made my point in the first paragraph.

You say, "One way that we know about common descent is through shared genetic homologies."

Then you say, "And since biologists consider a single shared insert to be conclusive evidence of shared ancestry, this is fairly powerful evidence."

You equate what "biologists consider" to what "we know". That is equating an assumption (what we consider) to a fact (what we know). Assumptions that are simply consistent with the facts, not demanded by them, are not facts and it is not honest science to try to pass them off as such.

Would you like to try again?

 

I do not yet want to try again.

The inserts are random and the genome is so large that it appears to be a good assumption. And there area lot of inserts.

I would rather hear an alternate explanation and how you would propose to test such an alternative. You have my original post to you here.
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/5867/12.html#000173

And you have a different explanation of it shortly after. Here.
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/5867/12.html#000177

I would like to hear the alternative answer that shows it to be a bad assumption. And how to test it.

Besides, in essence it is not that assumption that matters. It is what conclusions do you draw from the series of observations outlined in the second linked post above. The assumption is really the conclusion from those observations. What is the alternate conclusion?

[ December 31, 2005, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

A good assumption is like tomorrow: it never gets here.

An assumption that is proven to be true is a fact. An assumption that is proven to be false is a lie. All assumptions, before being proven tue or false, are bad and have no place in science. That is the problem with your logic; it is based on assumptions and not facts.

 

"A good assumption is like tomorrow: it never gets here.

An assumption that is proven to be true is a fact. An assumption that is proven to be false is a lie. All assumptions, before being proven tue or false, are bad and have no place in science. That is the problem with your logic; it is based on assumptions and not facts."

[SIGH]

Let's look back at the paragraph immediately above your post.

I tried to improve my choice of phrasing there so that you would not get hung up up the words and would instead see the logic. It either did not work or you chose to ignore it.

You wanted facts. I gave you facts. Let's try again.

We observe a series of facts related to retroviral inserts, as outlined for you. We try and figure out what conclusion we can draw that best explains these observation. We then try and test that conclusion.

For retroviral inserts, we have a whole host of observations. The conclusion that is drawn is that common descent of the animals involved is the best explanation. We test that conclusion, as outlined in my post, by using other, independent means of investigation. These other methods confirm our conclusion.

Now you do not like the conclusion. So the problem for you becomes how do we explain these observations that gives a different conclusion? And how do we test that conclusion to see if it is right.

What is your alternative?

BTW, here is the set of observations.

It might help you to take a moment to say what retroviral inserts are.

As you well know, a virus uses the machinery of the cell it infects to produce more copies of itself. There is a group of viruses known as retriviruses that can actually insert segements of their DNA into the genome of the cell they infect. AIDS is an example.

These insertions can happen at any location in the host genome. They are random.

Now often when a virus will infect an individual and that individual will survive. Occasionally, the virus will infect a germ line cell (cells that make sperm or eggs) and manage to insert a segment of its DNA into the cells genes without killing the cell. Every once in a while, this germline cell that survives will then be used in reproduction successfully.

When this happens, that little segment of viral DNA is now present in every cell of the off spring. And rarely, the genes of this individual will spread through the population until every member has the viral segment.

It is a rare chain of events that leads to a segment of viral DNA becoming fixed into a poplation, but it has happened often enough for a few percent of our DNA to be made from these inserts.

This rarity is one reason for my special challenge on this regarding YE. While a few percent of our DNA is such inserts, we all share the same ones. What this means is that they all had to be present by the time of our most recent common ancestor. I would assume that you think that this is Noah. So, no new inserts since Noah but a few percent of our genome was filled with such inserts in the previous ten generations. Why would they have been so common only to become so rare?

This is on top of the common descent difficulty for YE. How else could these inserts be so widely shared between the species? How did they all get the same, exact sequences at the same exact insertion points over and over and over?

We need a YE explanation that acounts for all aspect of our observations and a means to test it.

 

It seems to me that on this thread we are debating the relative merits of evolution versus intelligent design. I feel that the question of teaching Intelligent Design in a public classroom can be addressed in a much simpler way than that but yet much more complex.

In science classes teachers teach generally accepted or perhaps new theories in various areas. These are compared using the scientific method and facts plus assumptions are used. My understanding is that there are facts and solid scientific arguments for both of these theories.

One of my personal issues is that last word in the previous sentence. Teaching Intelligent Design requires assuming the the creation story in Genesis is a theory not something accepted through faith. Will Christians accept treating the Bible as a theory? Will some bright young Christian kid wildly wave her hand and say "We learned all about that in Sunday School class?" I'm aware that Intelligent Design supposedly isn't the same as the Christian story of creation but does anyone really expect that connection not to be made.

Are we prepared for that bright young Moslem or Hindu child making a paralel statement involving their faith.

Finally, what if at this point it is concluded by the teacher based on current science (and the textbook) that evolution is the best current theory and that Intelligent Design isn't supported by the scientific facts?

Are we ready for our children to be told that at least one important part of the Bible is not true based on their public school science class. The Bible should be accepted on faith with the support of available facts. Since ID Science isn't as well developed as Evolution Science (my guess) we (and our children) lose with this approach. Five years from now that probably won't be the case.

 

If I were a science teacher working in jr high or high school I would have a day of discussion about the disgreements over evolution, I would stress that in this class we will not be asking anybody to give up any religously held beliefs, but we will be asking them to learn what the science is saying; they would not be required to believe the science is true.

 

That would be fair.

I don't think many can question the fact that empiric evidence certainly supports and old earth with some evolution.

It seems the question here has to do with how this is taught. Since many find teaching Godless evolution as unchallenged fact to be offensive, and since there ARE many antiChristian liberals who would like to do as much damage to Christian culture as possible I support the inclusion of alternatives to evolution.

And as I said we have precedent in the example of homosexuality and mental illness. It is not classified as such due to the fact that many find that classification offensive.

 

Actually, CM, I think the psychiatric profession as a whole really has decided that homosexuality isn't a mental illness.

Based on biblical revelation, homosexual behavior is a sin.

I'm not qualified to state catagorically that homosexual orientation is a mental illness.

 

ID should be taught in the public schools...in comparative religion or philosophy classes.

 

Paul,

That is a convoluted issue. But the point is that culturally we try to accomodate groups of people who are offended by certain classifications in society.

The fact that this is a deeply important issue for so many should make school systems sensitive about how it is taught.

Secondarily, since I see much of our educational system as actively anti-Christian, I personally would support the inclusion of ID taught as an alternative.

 

The term design implies intelligence or purpose; the adjective intelligent is added to emphasize that it comes from a thinking agent or agents. We often use extraneous terms for emphasis, such as "deliberate plan", "willful intent", "random chance" and "believing Christian" and there is nothing wrong with using such emphasis in speech or writing.

"Unintelligent design" is a contradiction in terms, unless you are using intelligent in a strict sense. In that case, "unintelligent design" might be a synonym for poor design, such as a child or a careless person might make.

In the ID conversation, "intelligent" is not used in this strict sense, but more generally to mean conscious or deliberate.

Christians are often accused of having a "God of the gaps" explanation, in which God's intervention is invoked whenever we cannot find a natural, causal connection between two events.

But I think it is just as biased to have a "Law of the gaps", in which an as-yet-undiscovered natural law is invoked when all the evidence would otherwise suggest that an intelligent agency was at work.

Please do me a favor and re-read my post about the [man found dead in a chair], with a knife protruding through the back of his chair and his spine. You do the thinking: Is it more likely that his death was the "product of natural mechanisms" or that someone stabbed him in the back?

I wrote that illustration to show that some things are plainly the result of agent causation. How does one determine that this is more likely the case? You look for known laws or principles; look for probability and the occurrence of normal chance events. If those are present, there is no need to posit intentional activity.

For more a detailed step-by-step example as you requested, you might like to read my article, [Can Intelligent Design Be Falsified?]

Evolutionists do not like to have the Intelligent Design sieve applied to abiogenesis, because the small probability of abiogenesis and the lack of any known natural means of creating optically pure amino acids on a pre-biotic earth tends to suggest that life was most likely designed.

--
Eric Pement

 

In other words, it simply says there are some things for which no explanation exists. But it goes further. It declares that it can tell that there will no discovery of a future explanation and therefore there must have been an intelligent designer.

That is the non-scientific leap.
</font>[/QUOTE]No, that's not what it says "in other words." ID says that there are some things where agent causation is the best explanation. It does not state that (for example) all deaths must either be "accidental" or from "natural causes," ruling out murder a priori.

Have you ever read The Design Inference, or have you only read about ID from secondary sources?

Where on earth did you get the idea that "it can tell that there will no discovery of a future explanation"?? I would really appreciate if you could quote title and page number (or chapter). Thanks in advance.

My understanding of ID is somewhat different from yours. I would understand that ID comes into play after the body has been examined, and absolutely after some facts are already known.

It would ask, in effect, "Given a wound made by a knife, it is possible that the wound resulted from natural causes?" (gravity, man falls on the knife) Is chance involved in any way? Is there a small probability that the man died from tossing the knife in the air? (And so on. You know the drill... I hope.)

If forensics determines "motive" at all (and I don't know that it does), it surely cannot do so infallibly. We all know that the criminal justice system occasionally incriminates some innocent persons, and also that our system sometimes miss people who are actually guilty. True enough?

Why do you seem to be so opposed to ID theory when it would seem that you ought to endorse it? For example, the ability to recognize (say) that a sand castle was designed is surely superior to saying that no comment can be made on the origin of a sand castle. And while we cannot say why a particular sand castle was designed (hmmm ... recreation? contest? impress my mom? home for a sand crab?) there is no reason to toss out the evidence of design for lack of this ancilliary information.

ID does not claim to tell you the number of designers. I'm a computer programmer. I can look at source code and tell you instantly that (a) it didn't write itself, and (b) it wasn't generated by random magnetic fluctuations. I think I'm intellectually justified in realizing that it was written by mortals, but most of the time I cannot tell you how many were involved.

As for myself, I wouldn't invoke ID for the antelope/cheetah speed differences. Actually, I'd be more prone to invoke natural selection on that one. The faster cheetahs get the slower antelope; the fast antelope survive and the slow cheetahs go hungry, and so forth.

Neither is history. Neither are the laws of logic. But that doesn't mean that scientists cannot use them when called for. We use ID principles when looking for cheaters at casinos, for alien communications in the SETI Project, and for plagiarism in student papers. To me, ID is much like a formal means of the process of elimination. There is no reason not to use it where it can be applied, and I resist attempts to censor this inquiry from consideration.

I respect your opinions. Thanks for talking.

--
Eric Pement

 

"The term design implies intelligence or purpose; the adjective intelligent is added to emphasize that it comes from a thinking agent or agents. We often use extraneous terms for emphasis, such as 'deliberate plan', 'willful intent', 'random chance' and 'believing Christian' and there is nothing wrong with using such emphasis in speech or writing."

There was a question in there for you.

I understand those attributes. I understand your assertion.

The question was can you provide for us an example of something for which intelligent design is the answer, how you can tell and how you can test.

"'Unintelligent design' is a contradiction in terms, unless you are using intelligent in a strict sense. In that case, 'unintelligent design' might be a synonym for poor design, such as a child or a careless person might make."

I believe that what I was saying was clear in context. [Pehaps not since this is the second time on this thread I have had to go back and provide more information where I thought the context was clear.] Let's change the wording to natural causes then.

How would you tell the difference between an intelligently designed attribute of life and one that was the product of natural causes?

I don't think that you could find anyone who really thinks that life does not bear the mark of some kind of design. The conflict comes because almost all scientists in relevent fields find no reason that this design could not have happened through natural processes of selection.

But since you brought up "poor design," there are many cases of sub-optimal design in living organisms that might point to design by natural means. Unless you think our God was "careless," as you put it, in His design.

"Christians are often accused of having a 'God of the gaps' explanation, in which God's intervention is invoked whenever we cannot find a natural, causal connection between two events."

And I agree that such a belief is dangerous. If you put God into the holes of your own ignorance than you just may eliminate your need for God as those gaps get filled.

"But I think it is just as biased to have a "Law of the gaps", in which an as-yet-undiscovered natural law is invoked when all the evidence would otherwise suggest that an intelligent agency was at work."

You are comparing apples and oranges.

If you play God of the Gaps, then you lessen God as those gaps are filled.

But that is just what you are trying to do, it seems. You cannot point to anything that is unequivically designed so instead you try and play games around the edges for things that are not yet fully explained. It is still a God of the Gaps. There can be no such analogous Law of the Gaps because rather than weakening your position, you strengthen your position as continued research fills in areas in which your previously lacked knowledge.

"Please do me a favor and re-read my post about the [man found dead in a chair], with a knife protruding through the back of his chair and his spine. You do the thinking: Is it more likely that his death was the "product of natural mechanisms" or that someone stabbed him in the back?"

An analogy totally lacking in relevance.

Your dead guy has an easy forensic case. I am still looking for how you determine intelligent design in biological structures.

"For more a detailed step-by-step example as you requested, you might like to read my article, [Can Intelligent Design Be Falsified?]"

Where is the example? All I see is another analogy that is not like biology.

In addition, the explanation preceeding the analogy does not even seem to jive with your above comments. In your comments here you said "The term design implies intelligence or purpose; the adjective intelligent is added to emphasize that it comes from a thinking agent or agents. We often use extraneous terms for emphasis, such as 'deliberate plan', 'willful intent'..." But there is nothing on your blog about any of this. Instead of seeking positive evidence for design, it instead delves into probabilities and chance. And, unfortunately, simple but pervasive mistakes are often made when ID/YEers try and calculate such probabilities.

So I am still looking for an example of unequivocal design and howw you determined such and how you plan to test such.

"Evolutionists do not like to have the Intelligent Design sieve applied to abiogenesis, because the small probability of abiogenesis and the lack of any known natural means of creating optically pure amino acids on a pre-biotic earth tends to suggest that life was most likely designed."

Really? They have no earthly idea on how to get the molecules to have the same chiral orientation?

Another poster has told me that she loses interest real quick when I do the unthinkable, namely provide a list of references to support my assertions. So I'll leave you with one ... for now.

Ricardo, A., Carrigan, M. A., Olcott, A. N., Benner, S. A.. 2004 “Borate Minerals Stabilize Ribose” Science January 9; 303: 196

It turns out that this common material both catalyzes and stabilizes the formation of right handed ribose sugars, just like in RNA.

The same chemicals that react to form the ribose will also react to form adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil, the four nucleobases.

If you add a little phosphate to the mix, the ribose sugars and the nucleobases will combine to form nucleotides. Now, as it turns out, in the presence of clay (specifically montmorillonite) these nucleotides will begin to polymerize and make RNA.

But there is another important aspect of the clay. Fatty acids are delived to earth from space and are also made on earth, hydrothermal vents being an example location. This same clay that will catalyze the formation of RNA will also lead to a spontaneous process in which small vesicles are formed with the fatty acid making a wall and trapping water and the RNA molecules inside.

So we see that two ubiquitous substances such as borate and clay can catalyze the reactions and processes that lead towards something resembling a cell. But there is one more key peice to this puzzle.

In the 1980s it was discovered that RNA could act as something more than a messenger. RNA can perform biological functions similar to proteins. (The first such discovery came when Tetrahymena, a single celled organism, was found to use some RNA as enzymes.) RNA can both replicate itself and perform protein-like functions such as acting like an enzyme. In these forms, they are known as ribozymes. The RNA can store genetic information, copy that information, and carryout protein-like cellular functions. So once we have the RNA inside the fatty acid walls, it is possible that they could perform life functions without the need for DNA and proteins. In this scenario, they would evolve later.

So you see that there is a solution, with lab support and evidence in extant life.

 

Its not allowed in schools because it has the word intelligent in the title description.

Ba doom doom

 

Better yet, every student should be given at least 80 hours of classroom instruction on philosophy and in particular the philosophies pertinent to this debate before learning any theory on origins.

There are three basic philosophical premises for determining what is "true": naturalism, spiritualism, and supernaturalism.

Naturalism either declares that all truth is explainable by natural laws and causes or else it completely separates the spiritual from the natural a la gnosticism in such a way that God (if there be one) never intercedes in the natural world (if he actually can).

Spiritualism contends that only the spiritual is "real" and that the natural world is a created illusion thus you can "make" your own reality.

Supernaturalism holds that both the spiritual and natural are real and that they are inextricably interwoven.

Evolution is based on the wholly unscientific premise of naturalism. It makes "scientific" arguments but ultimately it argues for naturalism and against supernaturalism.

Intelligent design attempts scientific explanations based on the also wholly unscientific premise of supernaturalism- that a creator exists and, whether knowable or not, is a possible cause for things in nature that exhibit design attributes. The fact that reverse engineering is used to study dna lends support to the notion.

UTE loves to argue the scientific arguments based on the assumption of evolution/naturalism. He implicitly demands that you accept naturalism as the only governing framework for explaining things like retroviral inserts... and brushes off any suggestion that assumes anything but naturalism for the source.

The fact remains that evolution is founded not on science nor observation. It is founded on a philosophy- a metaphysic of its own. Evolutionists routinely dismiss or deceptively deny that it is a faith based system... but it is and thus should not be taught to any impressionable individual unless they have been thoroughly informed of the non-scientific foundational, "blind" presuppositions it is founded on.

If evolution were taught honestly... it would not be necessary to teach any form of creationism. It could be learned in its proper context rather than as "fact".

 

This isn't exactly true. They may be able to occur at most or even all locations but there is evidence to suggest that they are more likely at some locations than others.

Thus, if creation and thus the genomes were pristine when Adam fell, you open a whole new avenue of explaining how some inserts are found in the same location of creatures that share a common genetic design but not ancestory.

There is every bit as much proof that this was the case, since all inserts are not shared, as UTEs contention for common ancestory... basically nothing but speculation dependent on what you presuppose about theories on origins.

Retroviral inserts as proof for common ancestory is not proof for evolution... the conclusion depends on the assumption of evolution/naturalism.

 

You'll probaby be ignored by the others, desertwoman, but you've hit one of the nails on the head!

Between you and Scott, I think you just about have this thing sewn up.

 

This isn't exactly true. They may be able to occur at most or even all locations but there is evidence to suggest that they are more likely at some locations than others.

Thus, if creation and thus the genomes were pristine when Adam fell, you open a whole new avenue of explaining how some inserts are found in the same location of creatures that share a common genetic design but not ancestory.

There is every bit as much proof that this was the case, since all inserts are not shared, as UTEs contention for common ancestory... basically nothing but speculation dependent on what you presuppose about theories on origins.

Retroviral inserts as proof for common ancestory is not proof for evolution... the conclusion depends on the assumption of evolution/naturalism. </font>[/QUOTE]It is necessary to blythly assume that all the tests scientists have done that show retroviral inserts going into genes on a random basis are atypical and that somehow, something about infecting a laboratory animal makes the viruses go in randomly whereas in the wild they zoom into the same spot on the genome every time. Bear in mind that in the laboratory things are more uniform by default compared to life in the wild.

Somewhere I saw somebody accuse evolutionists of making unfounded assumptions as if that were an an unscientific thing to do. They don't really do that, but you do it in front of our very eyes!