Title Author Date

Intelligent Design in the science classroom Gallien , Joe Apr 18, 2002

In Ohio, a controversy has arisen pertaining to the allowance of Intelligent Design into the science classroom. What is Intelligent Design? It is the premise that life is the direct result of an intelligent source but it does not concern itself with the designer just the design. Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism. It is NOT based on any religious doctrine. It IS based on what scientists observe when peering through today’s powerful microscopes.

As Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin’s Black Box: ”Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.

Title Author Date

Intelligent Design in the science classroom Gallien , Joe Apr 18, 2002

Part 2:

Intelligent Design-type processes are already used in fields such as SETI, archeology, anthropology, forensics and arson investigation. Each of those fields depends upon our ability to differentiate intentional design from natural processes. Intelligent Design just extends those principles to biology.

The fact is life exists. If, as the evidence is showing, it couldn’t have arisen via purely natural processes, what are the alternatives?

Science is ultimately the search for the truth through our never-ending quest for knowledge. If there were any chance at all that we are here via intelligent intervention, any chance at all, to not pursue that line of research would be an injustice not only to science but also to all of mankind.

y'all be cool

Title Author Date

Intelligent Design in the science classroom Perakh, Mark Apr 18, 2002

In fact, the so-called Intelligent Design theory is pure creationism feebly disguised in quasi-scientific clothes. There is plenty of direct statements by the ID adherents clearly showing their religious motivation. The allegedly scientific arguments by the IDists have been shown by experts in math. statistics, bilogy, information theory, etc, to be unsubstantiated. In particular, Behe's irreducible complexity concept is built on sand and fails on all accounts. Cheers, MP

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Intelligent Design in the science classroom Atheologian , May 08, 2002

It's nice to see a website devoted to the fair scrutiny of religious apologetics. The articles are in-depth and entertaining, although it takes some time to read them all (but they're worth it!). The good thing about them is that the authors don't take an anti-religious stance, but try to objectively evaluate their opponents' arguments. It would be interesting to see replies from Behe, Dembski, Ross, et al.

Concerning John Paul's letter. He writes:

"What is Intelligent Design? It is the premise that life is the direct result of an intelligent source but it does not concern itself with the designer just the design."

Indeed. And I would say that it is one of its weaknesses. It makes ID "theory" unfalsifiable. Anything is compatible with the ID notion. E.g. one just cannot disprove IDT by pointing at flaws in the "design" of the organisms, because, as someone said, "bad design is still design". Of course, if IDists would specify just who the Designer is (e.g., Yahweh), that would make their hypothesis falsifiable, and more than that - falsified (because, it seems to me, Yahweh wouldn't create badly designed organisms). Well, of course there are other options. Maybe aliens did it.

So, we don't know WHO that Designer was, HOW he did his work, WHY he did it. What do we know? Nothing, except that life was somehow "designed". And how do we know this?

"The fact is life exists. If, as the evidence is showing, it couldn't have arisen via purely natural processes, what are the alternatives?"

See how it works: we _know_ something because we _don't_ _know_ what the alternatives are! Typical "God of the gaps" argument. Now neo-Darwinism might be falsified by showing that there are systems which couldn't have arisen by evolution in principle. Behe tried to do this, but he failed. Other such arguments are refuted in the articles on this site. So if IDT is based on our lack of knowledge of some mechanisms, then the whole "theory" boils down to simple statement: "Evolution did not do it". IDT becomes synonymous with anti-evolutionism, plain and
simple. It's not clear how it is to be taught in school. At first teacher explains what the evidence for evolution is. And what then? Should (s)he just say: "Hey, of course you've seen all this evidence for evolution, but there's an alternative theory. It says that all this evidence doesn't matter because there are people who can't imagine just how all this complexity could've arisen by chance"?

"Science is ultimately the search for the truth through our never-ending quest for knowledge. If there were any chance at all that we are here via intelligent intervention, any chance at all, to not pursue that line of research would be an injustice not only to science but also to all of mankind."

Of course there _is_ such a chance. There's also a chance that John Paul is a little green man from Mars. But we don't take this chance seriously, now, do we?

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Intelligent Design in the science classroom Sutera, Ray Aug 08, 2002

Atheologian writes:
<alternatives are! Typical "God of the gaps" argument.>>

Quite true. And similar invalid reasoning used by ID creationists results in a logical paradox that reads: By virtue of the fact that something is unexplained, it is therefore, explained. IOW, a (perceived) non-explanation effectively provides a sufficient counter-explanation in and of itself! How's that for an anti-science attitude??!!!