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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design

by John Cole|  November 22, 20055:31 pm| 39 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Science & Technology

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The good folks at Radio Open Source, who I have worked with in the past (and who are involved in that little imbroglio with another group with whom I am associated), is having a big special on Intelligent Design. I was asked to be on the show, but I will be off doing other things, but should you have a question or comment you would like aired, go put it in the comments section.

You can find the links to listen along there.

*** Update ***

Bwahaha:

Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”

“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. “Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

Hehe.

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Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    SomeCallMeTim

    November 22, 2005 at 5:35 pm

    Good man, John. Lydon hosts an excellent program, and they should be getting a lot of support from the Net.

  2. 2.

    JWeidner

    November 22, 2005 at 5:43 pm

    As a side note to this, I just saw on MSNBC that the University of Kansas is going to offer a class that treats ID as mythology….

    A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”

    “The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. “Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

  3. 3.

    scs

    November 22, 2005 at 5:54 pm

    Intelligent design is mythology

    I disagree. ID is a ‘pseudoscience’, like phrenology. Let’s all use more accurate terms I say.

  4. 4.

    Lines

    November 22, 2005 at 6:00 pm

    The bumps on my head told me to bomb Iraq

  5. 5.

    scs

    November 22, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    The old “bump blaming” defense huh? It seems to work well, unless you’re in Texas.

  6. 6.

    JWeidner

    November 22, 2005 at 6:17 pm

    Intelligent design is mythology

    Actually, I think I like ID better as a mythology. I much prefer to think that Zeus is watching over us all, ready to smite us with a thunderbolt.
    Much cooler to have a legion of gods ready to interfere in day to day business, creating heroes, and seducing ladies.

  7. 7.

    ppGaz

    November 22, 2005 at 6:17 pm

    The old “bump blaming” defense huh?

    Perfectly legitimate, if the Democrats had access to the same phrenology charts that you did.

  8. 8.

    John S.

    November 22, 2005 at 6:18 pm

    ID is a ‘pseudoscience’, like phrenology.

    I can dig it.

  9. 9.

    scs

    November 22, 2005 at 6:21 pm

    I can dig it

    .

    Alright! One convert. And ppGaz, blame the Senate Phren Comm. for not sharing.

  10. 10.

    TallDave

    November 22, 2005 at 6:28 pm

    They should really keep ID in Sunday school and seminaries. Its proponents have some very nicely constructed arguments and raise some legitimate concerns with evolution, but in the end it’s nonfalsifiable.

  11. 11.

    The Disenfranchised Voter

    November 22, 2005 at 6:35 pm

    Once again liberal academia is imposing its leftist agenda upon the population. I’m sick of these intellectual bastards pushing facts and studies down my throat. All the evidence for ID that I need can be found in one book, and that book is the word of god.

  12. 12.

    Mike S

    November 22, 2005 at 7:11 pm

    heh

    John Calvert, an attorney and managing director of the Intelligent Design Network in Johnson County, said Mirecki will go down in history as a laughingstock.

    “To equate intelligent design to mythology is really an absurdity, and it’s just another example of labeling anybody who proposes (intelligent design) to be simply a religious nut,” Calvert said. “That’s the reason for this little charade.”

  13. 13.

    SeesThroughIt

    November 22, 2005 at 7:43 pm

    Hahaha! Good on ya, K.U. Hate your basketball team, am a new fan of your religious studies department.

  14. 14.

    W.B. Reeves

    November 22, 2005 at 7:55 pm

    I disagree. ID is a ‘pseudoscience’, like phrenology. Let’s all use more accurate terms I say.

    How “inflexible”.

  15. 15.

    Michael Newdow

    November 22, 2005 at 8:08 pm

    What? There is RELIGION being studied at a public university?

    Taxi! To the courthouse, and step on it!

  16. 16.

    Brendan Greeley

    November 22, 2005 at 8:36 pm

    Hey guys, this was great. We had a technical problem, but Chris read some of jweidner’s comments on the KU course out over the air. You can get the audio here.

  17. 17.

    Sojourner

    November 22, 2005 at 8:41 pm

    Once again liberal academia is imposing its leftist agenda upon the population. I’m sick of these intellectual bastards pushing facts and studies down my throat. All the evidence for ID that I need can be found in one book, and that book is the word of god.

    Worse than that – liberal facts.

  18. 18.

    Ancient Purple

    November 22, 2005 at 8:44 pm

    Worse than that – liberal facts.

    GASP!

  19. 19.

    Gold Star for Robot Boy

    November 22, 2005 at 9:29 pm

    …it’s just another example of labeling anybody who proposes (intelligent design) to be simply a religious nut,” Calvert said. “That’s the reason for this little charade.”

    Well, yeah.

  20. 20.

    Steve S

    November 22, 2005 at 10:14 pm

    Someone better get David Horowitz on the phone to tell him about the evil Liberal professors at KU!

  21. 21.

    knayte

    November 22, 2005 at 10:37 pm

    This news makes me giddy like a little school girl. I actually attend the University of Kansas. Kinda picks me up after the horrible last two days of basketball.

  22. 22.

    knayte

    November 22, 2005 at 10:42 pm

    Actually, now that I think about it, I could very easily see this class being extremely political and vitriolic. I don’t think I would want to take this course. I imagine the people who will take it will be smug, self-righteous pricks. And I say this as a person who loathes ID.

    At any rate, I’m still rather proud of my school for the idea.

  23. 23.

    Sine.Qua.Non

    November 22, 2005 at 10:44 pm

    I don’t know.

    Yesterday, I was summoning the spirits of thesis writing, and they managed to come through and I finished that bastard. You know, it had nothing whatsoever to do with 10 months of research, book summaries, point and cross point validation, organization, analysis, a solid hypothesis, and writing ability. NONE I TELL YOU!

  24. 24.

    Jackmormon

    November 22, 2005 at 10:49 pm

    Is ID even sufficiently developed to be a mythology? Complex enough to be a pseudoscience? From everything I’ve read about it, it takes scientific evidence and then pushes too far into fantastical first causes. It’s too hedged about with polemics and logical games to inspire the imagination, to my eye.

  25. 25.

    Richard Bennett

    November 22, 2005 at 11:11 pm

    It would be more appropriate to teach ID as an example of propaganda, and it’s followers as examples of brainwashing. To call it simply “mythology” is to be too kind.

  26. 26.

    JWeidner

    November 23, 2005 at 12:08 am

    We had a technical problem, but Chris read some of jweidner’s comments on the KU course out over the air.

    Thank you Zeus, you have brought me fame and fortune!

  27. 27.

    Jcricket

    November 23, 2005 at 1:20 am

    Ra-men.

  28. 28.

    bago

    November 23, 2005 at 4:30 am

    This is truly a class that will be touched with his noodly appendage.

  29. 29.

    Slartibartfast

    November 23, 2005 at 7:34 am

    Another practice that isn’t science is embracing ignorance. Yet it’s fundamental to the philosophy of intelligent design: I don’t know what this is. I don’t know how this works. It’s too complicated for me to figure out. It’s too complicated for any human being to figure out. So it must be the product of a higher intelligence.

    What do you do with that line of reasoning? Do you just cede the solving of problems to someone smarter than you, someone who’s not even human? Do you tell your students to pursue only questions with easy answers?

    There may be a limit to what the human mind can figure out about our universe. But how presumptuous it would be for me to claim that if I can’t solve a problem, neither can any other person who has ever lived or will ever be born. Suppose Galileo and Laplace had felt that way? Better yet, what if Newton had not? He might have solved Laplace’s problem a century earlier…

    Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem…

    From Natural History (hardcopy); written by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. There’s also a series of position papers (from opposing points of view) on their website (link on front page). I haven’t waded through all of that yet.

  30. 30.

    BlogReeder

    November 23, 2005 at 9:36 am

    John, you have to be really careful with this kind of reckless blogging on things you don’t know about. ;) I mean look at what happened to Scott Adams.

    Intelligent design part 2

  31. 31.

    Dexter

    November 23, 2005 at 10:04 am

    Its proponents have some very nicely constructed arguments and raise some legitimate concerns with evolution, but in the end it’s nonfalsifiable.

    I agree. It has its place, but maybe not in a science class. It’s not science, but it’s also not the crazed “mythology” that some on the left call it.

  32. 32.

    Walker

    November 23, 2005 at 10:41 am

    Its proponents have some very nicely constructed arguments and raise some legitimate concerns with evolution, but in the end it’s nonfalsifiable.

    It is more than just the lack of predictive power.

    ID proponents have sophisticated logical fallacies that are hidden because they break the big question up into smaller questions. Their research into the smaller questions looks like real science. In Dembski’s case, his papers on random walks in a uniform probability space is legtimate (but not interesting) mathematics. However, the individual pieces don’t fit together to give the result they claim it does.

  33. 33.

    Jcricket

    November 23, 2005 at 11:16 am

    I would alter this statement as follows (additions in bold)

    Its proponents have some very nice sounding arguments that appear to raise some legitimate concerns with evolution, but in the end the arguments fall apart under scrutiny.

    Seriously. There are two classes of ID claims. Those that are scientific (Bacterium Flagellum, Irreducible Complexity, evolution not observed, radioactive dating problems, fossil record gaps, etc.) have all been shown to be false or a misrepresentation of the facts about evolution they claim to “refute”. And those that are not scientific (God guided evolution, science is a religion, etc.), which simply have no place in science class.

    Moreover, even if any of the specific criticisms of evolution raised by ID proponents were true, that wouldn’t point to a fatal flaw in evolutionary theory. Merely some more facts that need to be better explained. Think about other areas of science: The existence of black holes required a change in our understanding of gravity, time, etc. but not an elimination of Newtonian mechanics as a theory that explains most of the ordinary world’s workings. Light itself has properties of both particles and waves, but that lack of clarity doesn’t cause us to posit that it’s simply not possible there’s a scientific explanation for that.

    If you read the scientific literature on evolution (something Scott Adams apparently thinks isn’t credible because it’s not written for lay people) you’ll see lots of controversy and discovery “around the edges” – designed to investigate specific unsolved issues in evolutionary theory, or to extend the theory into new areas (like how trade markets “evolve”).

    The basics of evolution are simple, and easily understood. The support for evolution is deep and overwhelming (1000s of peer-reviewed articles, and nearly 150 years of research in many different fields). The ability to explain the details is compromised only by the false controversy that ID has created.

    BTW, Stephen Jay Gould did some great lay-person writing on Evolution, as did Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Even Carl Sagan had some great stuff (“Demon Haunted World”) about science vs. psuedo-science, and why the latter is so appealing to lay people.

  34. 34.

    BIRDZILLA

    November 23, 2005 at 3:02 pm

    All the evolitionists can show for their efforts are a few bone fragments and some fossels with out one single bit of proof to support this evolutionay poppycock idea

  35. 35.

    Slartibartfast

    November 23, 2005 at 4:22 pm

    Yes, they have “a few” bone fragments in the same sense that there are “a few” pieces of rock orbiting between here and Saturn.

    They can spell (and think!), however, which goes a long way toward making an actual point.

  36. 36.

    The Disenfranchised Voter

    November 23, 2005 at 10:41 pm

    All the evolitionists can show for their efforts are a few bone fragments and some fossels with out one single bit of proof to support this evolutionay poppycock idea

    How can I possibly make parody posts of the religious right when the actual posts by the religious right are such tough competition?!

  37. 37.

    Slartibartfast

    November 23, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    How can I possibly make parody posts of the religious right when the actual posts by the religious right are such tough competition?!

    The religious right posted here? All I saw was a lone idiot.

  38. 38.

    The Disenfranchised Voter

    November 23, 2005 at 11:42 pm

    Sorry, a representitive of the religious right. You are correct he/she was a lone idiot, but then again isn’t the religious right just a plethora of “lone idiots”? Heh.

  39. 39.

    BIRDZILLA

    November 24, 2005 at 11:07 pm

    The kansas JAYHAWK to evolutionists NUT CASES

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