Belief in evolution around the world (1 Viewer)

[ElendilPeredhil]

My aren't we the angry young leftist?

1. I'm not religious, I just dont believe in your darwinism and athiesm bullshit.
2. ITS A FIGURE OF SPEECH DUMBASS .. tell me what you think this looks like
http://www.missouri.edu/~anthmark/courses/mah/images/apeman.jpg
3. America is a good country, and surprisingly their freedom of speech laws are better than ours.

Seeing as how you probably don't know what the cambrian explosion was (until you google it after reading this), or that evolutionary theory is only that, a theory, in truth even Darwin himself recognized that things like the cambrian explosion and lack of observable evolutionary occurance could debunk his theory, and yet out of the theory emerge countless idiots with no real scientific knowledge who unquestioningly obey it. Thus your last 3 words apply to you, not me.

Also evolution is about the survival of the fittest correct?

Look up the definition of theory, as in 'evolutionary theory'.
Also try 'plausible', as in, 'more plausible than creationism!'

 

[SashatheMan]

Btw people, there is a difference between monkeys and apes. please don't use that interchangably.

we could say we evolved from monkeys, but our closest ancestor is a chimp which is part of the ape family ( not monkeys) and when we talk about what we evolved from its better to talk about the more recent evolutionary split, because if yuo want to take things as far back as monkeys, we can also start talking about the split of single cellular organisms in the ocean that humans would one day evolve from.

 

[bshoc]

Look up the definition of theory, as in 'evolutionary theory'.
Also try 'plausible', as in, 'more plausible than creationism!'

Exactly, its a theory, which you can level three critical arguments against, as opposed to religion, which cannot really be disproven, based on the claims made.

 

[Calculon]

That's because the nature of claims religion makes are constructed such that they can't be disproven.

 

[crazyhomo]

Exactly, its a theory, which you can level three critical arguments against, as opposed to religion, which cannot really be disproven, based on the claims made.

In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation.

a theory is a theory, it doesen't matter what you sucker people into believing is scientific or not.

what are you doing posting on a high school forum when science so desperately needs you?! there are dozens of idiots out there who think that scientific theory needs to be falsifiable. it is time for you to set them straight

 

[daledugahole]

I think people should believe what they want to believe just give them all the facts. Make an informed decision not an ignorant one.

I think one of the worst things you could do is stop someone from learning certain things. I know of schools in Australia that don't teach evolution. Personally I go to a Catholic school and I do biology therefore I learnt all about evolution, genetics ect. In no way did my school try to influence anyones thoughts on the subject. We were simply given the facts and left to make our own decisions.

Personally I believe in evolution because at this stage the facts seem to point in that direction ie. DNA comparisons, comparitive embryology, fossil evidence, geographical evidence, comparative anatomy.

And the fact is yes we are more closely related to chimps than any other animal. All the amino acids in our bodies match those of chimps. If you go back to what the world was like when life first began then you would realise that a human or any other evolved organism we see today could not have survived in those conditions. Humans have only been on earth for a very short time in comparison to how old the earth is.

 

[ElendilPeredhil]

Exactly, its a theory, which you can level three critical arguments against, as opposed to religion, which cannot really be disproven, based on the claims made.

Religious claims are based on the supernatural. They are based on an assumption of a supernatural 'something' whether you want to call it God or just be weasely and call it the creator, and thus you are right, can't be disproven.

However, the fact that it can't be disproven doesn't mean its true.
You can't prove that the mankind didn't come about when faeries had sex with homo habilis, therefore: we are the descendants of faeries.

 

[datadog]

There's nothing like a bit of LEFTISTS = BAD diatribe to lift my spirits. Dance monkey, dance!

Don't worry, 'believing' in evolution shouldn't get in the way of believing in some kind of god. Just take your creationism with a sprinkling of OMGSCIENCE and call it a day.

 

[The Brucemaster]

There's nothing like a bit of LEFTISTS = BAD diatribe to lift my spirits. Dance monkey, dance!

Don't worry, 'believing' in evolution shouldn't get in the way of believing in some kind of god. Just take your creationism with a sprinkling of OMGSCIENCE and call it a day.

Well said my good man, well said...

 

[ElendilPeredhil]

There's nothing like a bit of LEFTISTS = BAD diatribe to lift my spirits. Dance monkey, dance!

Don't worry, 'believing' in evolution shouldn't get in the way of believing in some kind of god. Just take your creationism with a sprinkling of OMGSCIENCE and call it a day.

what? I think I missed your point in all that humour.

But yeah, evolution doesn't actually disprove God, it;s just as easy to say 'Evolution is how God created the world, the Garden of Eden is just an allegory etc.

 

[lengy]

A key strategy of the intelligent design movement is convincing the general public that there is a debate among scientists about whether or not life evolved, in order to convince the public, politicians, and cultural leaders that schools should "teach the controversy."[58] However, there is no such debate within the scientific community; the scientific consensus is that life evolved.[59][60][61] Intelligent design is widely viewed as a stalking horse for its proponents' campaign against what they say is the materialist foundation of science, which they argue leaves no room for the possibility of God.[62][63]

The intelligent design controversy centers on three issues:

Whether Intelligent design can be defined as science
Whether the evidence supports such theories
Whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate and legal in public education
Natural science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation alone (sometimes called empirical science). Intelligent design proponents seek to change this definition[64] by eliminating "methodological naturalism" from science[65] and replacing it with what the leader of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, calls "theistic realism",[66] and what critics call "methodological supernaturalism," which means belief in a transcendent, non-natural dimension of reality inhabited by a transcendent, non-natural deity. Intelligent design proponents argue that naturalistic explanations fail to explain certain phenomena, and that supernatural explanations provide a very simple and intuitive[67] explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Proponents say that evidence exists in the forms of irreducible complexity and specified complexity that cannot be explained by natural processes.

Supporters also hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools, saying that teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding creationist beliefs. Teaching both, intelligent design supporters argue, allows for the possibility of religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote such beliefs. Many intelligent design followers believe that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase theism from public life, and view their work in the promotion of intelligent design as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over intelligent design, though others note that intelligent design serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent intelligent design proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society.[68][69][70]

According to critics, intelligent design has not presented a credible scientific case, and is an attempt to teach religion in public schools, which the United States Constitution forbids under the Establishment Clause. They allege that intelligent design has substituted public support for scientific research.[71] Furthermore, if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system, including admittedly silly ones like the Flying Spaghetti Monster "theory" (a deliberate parody of intelligent design). There are innumerable mutually-incompatible supernatural explanations for complexity, and intelligent design does not provide a mechanism for discriminating among them. Furthermore, intelligent design is neither observable nor repeatable, which critics argue violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. Indeed, intelligent design proponent Michael Behe concedes "You can't prove intelligent design by experiment."[72]

Though evolution theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. The inference that an intelligent designer (a god or an alien life force)[55] created life on Earth has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids.[73][74] In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable, and also violates the principle of parsimony. From a strictly empirical standpoint, one may list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques, but must admit ignorance about exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

The criticism of intelligent design has not been limited to scientific community; some religious individuals and groups have objected to intelligent design as well, often on theological or moral grounds.[75] Many religious people do not condone the teaching of what is considered unscientific or questionable material, and support theistic evolution which does not conflict with scientific theories. An example is Cardinal Schönborn who sees "purpose and design in the natural world" yet has "no difficulty... with the theory of evolution [within] the borders of scientific theory."

[edit]
Defining intelligent design as science
The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for the investigation of phenomena and the acquisition of new knowledge of the natural world, without assuming the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural, an approach sometimes called methodological naturalism. Intelligent design proponents believe that this can be equated to materialist metaphysical naturalism and have often said that their own position is not only scientific, but that it is even more scientific than evolution, and want a redefinition of science as a revived natural theology or natural philosophy to allow "non-naturalistic theories such as intelligent design".[76] This presents a demarcation problem, which in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. For a theory to qualify as scientific it must be:

Consistent (internally and externally)
Parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations, see Occam's Razor)
Useful (describes, explains and predicts observable phenomena)
Empirically testable & falsifiable (see Falsifiability)
Based upon multiple observations, often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments
Correctable & dynamic (changes are made as new data are discovered)
Progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
Provisional or tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting certainty)
For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer criteria that are met, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a couple or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any meaningful sense of the word. Typical objections to defining intelligent design as science are that it lacks consistency,[77] violates the principle of parsimony,[78] is not falsifiable,[79] is not empirically testable,[80] and is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive.[81]

In light of its apparent failure to adhere to scientific standards, in September 2005 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying "intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent."[82] And in October 2005 a coalition representing more than 70,000 Australian scientists and science teachers issued a statement saying "intelligent design is not science" and called on "all schools not to teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science, because it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory."[83]

Intelligent design critics also say that the intelligent design doctrine does not meet the criteria for scientific evidence used by most courts, the Daubert Standard. The Daubert Standard governs which evidence can be considered scientific in United States federal courts and most state courts. The four Daubert criteria are:

The theoretical underpinnings of the methods must yield testable predictions by means of which the theory could be falsified.
The methods should preferably be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
There should be a known rate of error that can be used in evaluating the results.
The methods should be generally accepted within the relevant scientific community.
In deciding Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District on December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that "we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

[edit]
Peer review
The failure to follow the procedures of scientific discourse, and the failure to submit work to the scientific community which withstands scrutiny, have weighed against intelligent design being considered valid science.[84] To date, the intelligent design movement has yet to have an article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.[84]

Intelligent design, by appealing to a supernatural agent, directly conflicts with the principles of science, which limit its inquiries to empirical, observable and ultimately testable data, and which require explanations to be based upon empirical evidence. Dembski, Behe and other intelligent design proponents say bias by the scientific community is to blame for the failure of their research to be published. Intelligent design proponents believe that the merit of their writings is rejected for not conforming to purely naturalistic non-supernatural mechanisms rather than on grounds of their research not being up to "journal standards". This claim is described as a conspiracy theory by some scientists.[85] The issue that the supernatural explanations do not conform to the scientific method became a sticking point for intelligent design proponents in the 1990's, and is addressed in the wedge strategy as an aspect of science that must be challenged before intelligent design could be accepted by the broader scientific community.

The debate over whether intelligent design produces new research, as any scientific field must, and has legitimately attempted to publish this research, is extremely heated. Both critics and advocates point to numerous examples to make their case. For instance, the Templeton Foundation, a former funder of the Discovery Institute and a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that they asked intelligent design proponents to submit proposals for actual research, but none were ever submitted. Charles L. Harper Jr., foundation vice president, said that "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review."[86]

The only article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that made a case for intelligent design was quickly withdrawn by the publisher for having circumvented the journal's peer-review standards. Written by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture Director Stephen C. Meyer, it appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in August 2004. The article was literature review, which means that it did not present any new research, but rather culled quotes and claims from other papers to argue that the Cambrian explosion could not have happened by natural processes. The choice of venue for this article was also considered problematic, because it was so outside the normal subject matter. (see Sternberg peer review controversy) Dembski has written that "Perhaps the best reason [to be skeptical of his ideas] is that intelligent design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program."[87] In a 2001 interview Dembski said that he stopped submitting to peer-reviewed journals because of their slow time-to-print and that he makes more money from publishing books.[88]

In the Dover trial the judge found that intelligent design features no scientific research or testing.[89] There, intelligent design proponents referenced just one paper, on simulation modeling of evolution by Behe and Snoke, that mentioned neither irreducible complexity nor intelligent design and that Behe admitted did not rule out known evolutionary mechanisms.[89] But in sworn testimony Behe said "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."[90] As summarized by the judge, Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed articles supporting his claims of intelligent design or irreducible complexity. In his ruling, the judge wrote "A final indicator of how ID has failed to demonstrate scientific warrant is the complete absence of peer-reviewed publications supporting the theory."[84]

Despite this, the Discovery Institute continues to insist that a number of intelligent design articles have been published in peer reviewed journals,[91] including in their list the two articles mentioned above. Critics, largely members of the scientific community, reject this claim, pointing out that no established scientific journal has yet published an intelligent design article. Instead, intelligent design proponents have set up their own journals with "peer review" which lack impartiality and rigor,[92] consisting entirely of intelligent design supporters.[93]

[edit]
Intelligence as an observable quality
The phrase intelligent design makes use of an assumption of the quality of an observable intelligence, a concept that has no scientific consensus definition. William Dembski, for example, has written that "Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature." The characteristics of intelligence are assumed by intelligent design proponents to be observable without specifying what the criteria for the measurement of intelligence should be. Dembski, instead, asserts that "in special sciences ranging from forensics to archaeology to SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), appeal to a designing intelligence is indispensable."[94] How this appeal is made and what this implies as to the definition of intelligence are topics left largely unaddressed. Seth Shostak, a researcher with the SETI Institute, disputes Dembski's comparison of SETI and intelligent design, saying that intelligent design advocates base their inference of design on complexity — the argument being that some biological systems are too complex to have been made by natural processes — while SETI researchers are looking primarily for artificiality.[95]

Critics say that the design detection methods proposed by intelligent design proponents are radically different from conventional design detection, undermining the key elements that make it possible as legitimate science. Intelligent design proponents, they say, are proposing both searching for a designer without knowing anything about that designer's abilities, parameters, or intentions (which scientists do know when searching for the results of human intelligence), as well as denying the very distinction between natural/artificial design that allows scientists to compare complex designed artifacts against the background of the sorts of complexity found in nature.

As a means of criticism, certain skeptics have pointed to a challenge of intelligent design derived from the study of artificial intelligence. The criticism is a counter to intelligent design claims about what makes a design intelligent, specifically that "no preprogrammed device can be truly intelligent, that intelligence is irreducible to natural processes."[96] This claim is similar in type to an assumption of Cartesian dualism that posits a strict separation between "mind" and the material universe. However, in studies of artificial intelligence, while there is an implicit assumption that supposed "intelligence" or creativity of a computer program is determined by the capabilities given to it by the computer programmer, artificial intelligence need not be bound to an inflexible system of rules. Rather, if a computer program can access randomness as a function, this effectively allows for a flexible, creative, and adaptive intelligence. Evolutionary algorithms, a subfield of machine learning (itself a subfield of artificial intelligence), have been used to mathematically demonstrate that randomness and selection can be used to "evolve" complex, highly adapted structures that are not explicitly designed by a programmer. Evolutionary algorithms use the Darwinian metaphor of random mutation, selection and the survival of the fittest to solve diverse mathematical and scientific problems that are usually not solvable using conventional methods. Furthermore, forays into such areas as quantum computing seem to indicate that real probabilistic functions may be available in the future. Intelligence derived from randomness is essentially indistinguishable from the "innate" intelligence associated with biological organisms, and poses a challenge to the intelligent design conception that intelligence itself necessarily requires a designer. Cognitive science continues to investigate the nature of intelligence to that end, but the intelligent design community for the most part seems to be content to rely on the assumption that intelligence is readily apparent as a fundamental and basic property of complex systems.

[edit]
Arguments from ignorance
Eugenie Scott, along with Glenn Branch and other critics, has argued that many points raised by intelligent design proponents are arguments from ignorance.[97] In the argument from ignorance, a lack of evidence for one view is erroneously argued to constitute proof of the correctness of another view. Scott and Branch say that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance because it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: lacking a natural explanation for certain specific aspects of evolution, we assume intelligent cause. They contend most scientists would reply that the unexplained is not unexplainable, and that "we don't know yet" is a more appropriate response than invoking a cause outside of science.[97] Particularly, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to assume a dichotomy where either evolution or design is the proper explanation, and any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for design. In scientific terms, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for naturalistic explanations of observed traits of living organisms. Scott and Branch also contend that the supposedly novel contributions proposed by intelligent design proponents have not served as the basis for any productive scientific research.

Intelligent design has also been characterized as a "god of the gaps" argument, which has the following form:

There is a gap in scientific knowledge.
The gap is filled with acts of God (or Intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or Intelligent designer).
A god of the gaps argument is the theological version of an argument from ignorance. The key feature of this type of argument is that it merely answers outstanding questions with explanations (often supernatural) that are unverifiable and ultimately themselves subject to unanswerable questions.

[edit]
Improbable versus impossible events
William Dembski formulated the universal probability bound, a reformulation of the creationist argument from improbability,[98] which he argues is the smallest probability of anything occurring in the universe over all time at the maximum possible rate. e.g., one part in 10 to the 120 power, which represents a refactoring of his original formula that value of the universal probability bound was 1 in 10150.[99] Dembski (2005) re-factored his definition to be the inverse of the product of two different quantities, 10120 and, the variable rank complexity of the event under consideration.[100]

In "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences", John Allen Paulos states that the apparent improbability of a given scenario cannot necessarily be taken as an indication that this scenario is therefore more unlikely than any other potential one: "Rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been [randomly] dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_religion

The only thing pseudo is 'god's' existence.

 

[ElendilPeredhil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_evolution
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia on 'Intelligent' Design
A key strategy of the intelligent design movement is convincing the general public that there is a debate among scientists about whether or not life evolved, in order to convince the public, politicians, and cultural leaders that schools should "teach the controversy."[58] However, there is no such debate within the scientific community; the scientific consensus is that life evolved.[59][60][61] Intelligent design is widely viewed as a stalking horse for its proponents' campaign against what they say is the materialist foundation of science, which they argue leaves no room for the possibility of God.[62][63]

The intelligent design controversy centers on three issues:

Whether Intelligent design can be defined as science
Whether the evidence supports such theories
Whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate and legal in public education
Natural science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation alone (sometimes called empirical science). Intelligent design proponents seek to change this definition[64] by eliminating "methodological naturalism" from science[65] and replacing it with what the leader of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, calls "theistic realism",[66] and what critics call "methodological supernaturalism," which means belief in a transcendent, non-natural dimension of reality inhabited by a transcendent, non-natural deity. Intelligent design proponents argue that naturalistic explanations fail to explain certain phenomena, and that supernatural explanations provide a very simple and intuitive[67] explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Proponents say that evidence exists in the forms of irreducible complexity and specified complexity that cannot be explained by natural processes.

Supporters also hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools, saying that teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding creationist beliefs. Teaching both, intelligent design supporters argue, allows for the possibility of religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote such beliefs. Many intelligent design followers believe that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase theism from public life, and view their work in the promotion of intelligent design as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over intelligent design, though others note that intelligent design serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent intelligent design proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society.[68][69][70]

According to critics, intelligent design has not presented a credible scientific case, and is an attempt to teach religion in public schools, which the United States Constitution forbids under the Establishment Clause. They allege that intelligent design has substituted public support for scientific research.[71] Furthermore, if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system, including admittedly silly ones like the Flying Spaghetti Monster "theory" (a deliberate parody of intelligent design). There are innumerable mutually-incompatible supernatural explanations for complexity, and intelligent design does not provide a mechanism for discriminating among them. Furthermore, intelligent design is neither observable nor repeatable, which critics argue violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. Indeed, intelligent design proponent Michael Behe concedes "You can't prove intelligent design by experiment."[72]

Though evolution theory does not seek to explain abiogenesis, the generation of life from nonliving matter, intelligent design proponents cannot infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. The inference that an intelligent designer (a god or an alien life force)[55] created life on Earth has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids.[73][74] In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable, and also violates the principle of parsimony. From a strictly empirical standpoint, one may list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques, but must admit ignorance about exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

The criticism of intelligent design has not been limited to scientific community; some religious individuals and groups have objected to intelligent design as well, often on theological or moral grounds.[75] Many religious people do not condone the teaching of what is considered unscientific or questionable material, and support theistic evolution which does not conflict with scientific theories. An example is Cardinal Schönborn who sees "purpose and design in the natural world" yet has "no difficulty... with the theory of evolution [within] the borders of scientific theory."

[edit]
Defining intelligent design as science
The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for the investigation of phenomena and the acquisition of new knowledge of the natural world, without assuming the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural, an approach sometimes called methodological naturalism. Intelligent design proponents believe that this can be equated to materialist metaphysical naturalism and have often said that their own position is not only scientific, but that it is even more scientific than evolution, and want a redefinition of science as a revived natural theology or natural philosophy to allow "non-naturalistic theories such as intelligent design".[76] This presents a demarcation problem, which in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. For a theory to qualify as scientific it must be:

Consistent (internally and externally)
Parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations, see Occam's Razor)
Useful (describes, explains and predicts observable phenomena)
Empirically testable & falsifiable (see Falsifiability)
Based upon multiple observations, often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments
Correctable & dynamic (changes are made as new data are discovered)
Progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
Provisional or tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting certainty)
For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer criteria that are met, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a couple or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any meaningful sense of the word. Typical objections to defining intelligent design as science are that it lacks consistency,[77] violates the principle of parsimony,[78] is not falsifiable,[79] is not empirically testable,[80] and is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive.[81]

In light of its apparent failure to adhere to scientific standards, in September 2005 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying "intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent."[82] And in October 2005 a coalition representing more than 70,000 Australian scientists and science teachers issued a statement saying "intelligent design is not science" and called on "all schools not to teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science, because it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory."[83]

Intelligent design critics also say that the intelligent design doctrine does not meet the criteria for scientific evidence used by most courts, the Daubert Standard. The Daubert Standard governs which evidence can be considered scientific in United States federal courts and most state courts. The four Daubert criteria are:

The theoretical underpinnings of the methods must yield testable predictions by means of which the theory could be falsified.
The methods should preferably be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
There should be a known rate of error that can be used in evaluating the results.
The methods should be generally accepted within the relevant scientific community.
In deciding Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District on December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that "we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

[edit]
Peer review
The failure to follow the procedures of scientific discourse, and the failure to submit work to the scientific community which withstands scrutiny, have weighed against intelligent design being considered valid science.[84] To date, the intelligent design movement has yet to have an article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.[84]

Intelligent design, by appealing to a supernatural agent, directly conflicts with the principles of science, which limit its inquiries to empirical, observable and ultimately testable data, and which require explanations to be based upon empirical evidence. Dembski, Behe and other intelligent design proponents say bias by the scientific community is to blame for the failure of their research to be published. Intelligent design proponents believe that the merit of their writings is rejected for not conforming to purely naturalistic non-supernatural mechanisms rather than on grounds of their research not being up to "journal standards". This claim is described as a conspiracy theory by some scientists.[85] The issue that the supernatural explanations do not conform to the scientific method became a sticking point for intelligent design proponents in the 1990's, and is addressed in the wedge strategy as an aspect of science that must be challenged before intelligent design could be accepted by the broader scientific community.

The debate over whether intelligent design produces new research, as any scientific field must, and has legitimately attempted to publish this research, is extremely heated. Both critics and advocates point to numerous examples to make their case. For instance, the Templeton Foundation, a former funder of the Discovery Institute and a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that they asked intelligent design proponents to submit proposals for actual research, but none were ever submitted. Charles L. Harper Jr., foundation vice president, said that "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review."[86]

The only article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that made a case for intelligent design was quickly withdrawn by the publisher for having circumvented the journal's peer-review standards. Written by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture Director Stephen C. Meyer, it appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in August 2004. The article was literature review, which means that it did not present any new research, but rather culled quotes and claims from other papers to argue that the Cambrian explosion could not have happened by natural processes. The choice of venue for this article was also considered problematic, because it was so outside the normal subject matter. (see Sternberg peer review controversy) Dembski has written that "Perhaps the best reason [to be skeptical of his ideas] is that intelligent design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program."[87] In a 2001 interview Dembski said that he stopped submitting to peer-reviewed journals because of their slow time-to-print and that he makes more money from publishing books.[88]

In the Dover trial the judge found that intelligent design features no scientific research or testing.[89] There, intelligent design proponents referenced just one paper, on simulation modeling of evolution by Behe and Snoke, that mentioned neither irreducible complexity nor intelligent design and that Behe admitted did not rule out known evolutionary mechanisms.[89] But in sworn testimony Behe said "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."[90] As summarized by the judge, Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed articles supporting his claims of intelligent design or irreducible complexity. In his ruling, the judge wrote "A final indicator of how ID has failed to demonstrate scientific warrant is the complete absence of peer-reviewed publications supporting the theory."[84]

Despite this, the Discovery Institute continues to insist that a number of intelligent design articles have been published in peer reviewed journals,[91] including in their list the two articles mentioned above. Critics, largely members of the scientific community, reject this claim, pointing out that no established scientific journal has yet published an intelligent design article. Instead, intelligent design proponents have set up their own journals with "peer review" which lack impartiality and rigor,[92] consisting entirely of intelligent design supporters.[93]

[edit]
Intelligence as an observable quality
The phrase intelligent design makes use of an assumption of the quality of an observable intelligence, a concept that has no scientific consensus definition. William Dembski, for example, has written that "Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature." The characteristics of intelligence are assumed by intelligent design proponents to be observable without specifying what the criteria for the measurement of intelligence should be. Dembski, instead, asserts that "in special sciences ranging from forensics to archaeology to SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), appeal to a designing intelligence is indispensable."[94] How this appeal is made and what this implies as to the definition of intelligence are topics left largely unaddressed. Seth Shostak, a researcher with the SETI Institute, disputes Dembski's comparison of SETI and intelligent design, saying that intelligent design advocates base their inference of design on complexity — the argument being that some biological systems are too complex to have been made by natural processes — while SETI researchers are looking primarily for artificiality.[95]

Critics say that the design detection methods proposed by intelligent design proponents are radically different from conventional design detection, undermining the key elements that make it possible as legitimate science. Intelligent design proponents, they say, are proposing both searching for a designer without knowing anything about that designer's abilities, parameters, or intentions (which scientists do know when searching for the results of human intelligence), as well as denying the very distinction between natural/artificial design that allows scientists to compare complex designed artifacts against the background of the sorts of complexity found in nature.

As a means of criticism, certain skeptics have pointed to a challenge of intelligent design derived from the study of artificial intelligence. The criticism is a counter to intelligent design claims about what makes a design intelligent, specifically that "no preprogrammed device can be truly intelligent, that intelligence is irreducible to natural processes."[96] This claim is similar in type to an assumption of Cartesian dualism that posits a strict separation between "mind" and the material universe. However, in studies of artificial intelligence, while there is an implicit assumption that supposed "intelligence" or creativity of a computer program is determined by the capabilities given to it by the computer programmer, artificial intelligence need not be bound to an inflexible system of rules. Rather, if a computer program can access randomness as a function, this effectively allows for a flexible, creative, and adaptive intelligence. Evolutionary algorithms, a subfield of machine learning (itself a subfield of artificial intelligence), have been used to mathematically demonstrate that randomness and selection can be used to "evolve" complex, highly adapted structures that are not explicitly designed by a programmer. Evolutionary algorithms use the Darwinian metaphor of random mutation, selection and the survival of the fittest to solve diverse mathematical and scientific problems that are usually not solvable using conventional methods. Furthermore, forays into such areas as quantum computing seem to indicate that real probabilistic functions may be available in the future. Intelligence derived from randomness is essentially indistinguishable from the "innate" intelligence associated with biological organisms, and poses a challenge to the intelligent design conception that intelligence itself necessarily requires a designer. Cognitive science continues to investigate the nature of intelligence to that end, but the intelligent design community for the most part seems to be content to rely on the assumption that intelligence is readily apparent as a fundamental and basic property of complex systems.

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Arguments from ignorance
Eugenie Scott, along with Glenn Branch and other critics, has argued that many points raised by intelligent design proponents are arguments from ignorance.[97] In the argument from ignorance, a lack of evidence for one view is erroneously argued to constitute proof of the correctness of another view. Scott and Branch say that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance because it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: lacking a natural explanation for certain specific aspects of evolution, we assume intelligent cause. They contend most scientists would reply that the unexplained is not unexplainable, and that "we don't know yet" is a more appropriate response than invoking a cause outside of science.[97] Particularly, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to assume a dichotomy where either evolution or design is the proper explanation, and any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for design. In scientific terms, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for naturalistic explanations of observed traits of living organisms. Scott and Branch also contend that the supposedly novel contributions proposed by intelligent design proponents have not served as the basis for any productive scientific research.

Intelligent design has also been characterized as a "god of the gaps" argument, which has the following form:

There is a gap in scientific knowledge.
The gap is filled with acts of God (or Intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or Intelligent designer).
A god of the gaps argument is the theological version of an argument from ignorance. The key feature of this type of argument is that it merely answers outstanding questions with explanations (often supernatural) that are unverifiable and ultimately themselves subject to unanswerable questions.

[edit]
Improbable versus impossible events
William Dembski formulated the universal probability bound, a reformulation of the creationist argument from improbability,[98] which he argues is the smallest probability of anything occurring in the universe over all time at the maximum possible rate. e.g., one part in 10 to the 120 power, which represents a refactoring of his original formula that value of the universal probability bound was 1 in 10150.[99] Dembski (2005) re-factored his definition to be the inverse of the product of two different quantities, 10120 and, the variable rank complexity of the event under consideration.[100]

In "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences", John Allen Paulos states that the apparent improbability of a given scenario cannot necessarily be taken as an indication that this scenario is therefore more unlikely than any other potential one: "Rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been [randomly] dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_religion

The only thing pseudo is 'god's' existence.

Succinctly put.

 

[bshoc]

There's nothing like a bit of LEFTISTS = BAD diatribe to lift my spirits. Dance monkey, dance!

What have leftist done that has been so GOOD?

Don't worry, 'believing' in evolution shouldn't get in the way of believing in some kind of god. Just take your creationism with a sprinkling of OMGSCIENCE and call it a day.

No, this is nothing about whether god exists or not, its about whether people will blindly accept a flawed, somewhat disproven scientific theory, this debate is entirely scientific from my perspective, as you said god can be left in or out of evolution, it doesen't make a whole lot difference.

 

[crazyhomo]

its about whether people will blindly accept a flawed, somewhat disproven scientific theory

no, seriously, why aren't you a biology professor? those morons still seem to think evolution has a leg to stand on. we need you to show them this evidence you have amassed, since they have clearly not read it. if they had i'm sure they would've rejected evolution as you have done. it's such a shame that these academic types spend their time reading "peer-reviewed" shit, when there are forum posters on the internet who know the score

 

[Aznpsycho]

Quiet crazyhomo, your communist homosexual agenda shall be crushed by bshoc's completely rational arguments.

EDIT: The lack of evidence for Intelligent, as opposed to your unintelligent, design, is merely a gigantic joke played upon you secular heathens that you have yet to get.

 

[datadog]

What have leftist done that has been so GOOD?



No, this is nothing about whether god exists or not, its about whether people will blindly accept a flawed, somewhat disproven scientific theory, this debate is entirely scientific from my perspective, as you said god can be left in or out of evolution, it doesen't make a whole lot difference.

So what, do we have some alternative to evolutionary theory? This is kind of why I oh-so-cleverly touched on I.D; there has yet to be a theory to match evolution in terms of believability. Show me some other explanation that can match it and maybe what you're saying might carry some weight.

y'see, this is how science works in the tiniest of nutshells - we formulate theory based on data gathered from experimentation. The only viable 'alternative' to evolution is ID - with no testable hypothesis (and thus is not a true scientific theory from step one), so you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little partial to evolutionary theory. I mean, if that’s the best alternative explanation, you would have to be wilfully retarded to just ‘not believe’ in evolution.

You're hinging your whole outlook/'argument'/whatever on the idea that nothing is to be taken for reality. This is a good thing to an extent, however if you were to be truly consistent in your opinions, you would be denouncing existence itself and falling into solipsism, which would naturally make you a tool. To be honest, I doubt you feel quite as passionate when declaring that soil doesn't really have the same consistency us crazy lefties believe it to have.

Sorry, kiddo. Your posts are endearing and you seem like a teenager who has just recently grasped the concept that not everything you're told is true. You'll grow out of it, you jaded soul, you.


also: "What have leftist done..." made me lawl.

 

[HotShot]

bah evolution is just as wacked out creationism.

think about why do animals evolve? changing environment rite? why does the environment change? - oh wtf why would the environment change? obviosly there must be external force? either animals changed it (like us humans) or it was changed by supernatural forces i.e creationism.

there is nothing wrong in saying that both exist that we were created and the rest evolved. because humans as far i am concerned havent evolved for about thousand years.

most or some other creatures would have evolved within this time period.

 

[ElendilPeredhil]

bah evolution is just as wacked out creationism.

think about why do animals evolve? changing environment rite? why does the environment change? - oh wtf why would the environment change? obviosly there must be external force? either animals changed it (like us humans) or it was changed by supernatural forces i.e creationism.

there is nothing wrong in saying that both exist that we were created and the rest evolved. because humans as far i am concerned havent evolved for about thousand years.

most or some other creatures would have evolved within this time period.

LMAO...thanks for that.

What other creatures have evolved during a thousand year time period? Examples? Humans haven't 'evolved', per say, for a lot longer than a thousand years, silly. I assume you are thinking of the kind of evolution rhat results in extra fingers or getting rid of a tail )) etc. Humans certainly have undergone social evolution...and a certain amount of physical upsizing, as over the generations we've become taller and taller. The Japanese are the most obvious, they are on average significantly taller than they used to be a hundred years ago.
The fact is that humans have evolved in the past, and the fact that they have stopped means only that they have reached their pinnacle, the form that suits the world they live in.

Why would the enviroment change? Please Hotshot, read a book. That question, to be properly answered, requires an essay I don't have time to write.

Why do you get taller? There's no reason for it, it needs external force. It must be God, stretching you as you sleep.

 

[crazyhomo]

think about why do animals evolve? changing environment rite? why does the environment change? - oh wtf why would the environment change? obviosly there must be external force? either animals changed it (like us humans) or it was changed by supernatural forces i.e creationism.

just so you aren't out of the loop on this, supernatural forces are no longer used to explain the weather. seems no one got around to telling you this

 

[Libbster]

evolution can be observed. the misuse of anti-biotics in hospitals have created superbugs from what were relatively easy to cure bacteria. ZoMG liEk eVoluTIoN

hence intelligent design is bullshit, along with a whole host of other reasons.