Posted on 10/18/2005 9:31:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
"If you are placing your faith in an attorney against a well-prepared and intelligent expert witness, you are exercising faith."
Oh, my! You have little experience in the courtroom, I guess. Expert witnesses are frequently outwitted by attorneys in the courtroom. Even if they are true experts, something I do not grant in Behe's case, they are seldom particularly good at getting their knowledge across to a court.
A good attorney can often reduce an "expert" to a blithering idiot, simply by using logic. Happens every day.
Evolution is on trial here. Anyone who claims otherwise is naive.
I see. So you feel it is perfectly okay to set different rules for intelligent design than you would for the theory you have faith in.
That doesn't exactly display objective thinking capabilities.
But then the rest of your post showed how subjective your thought process is.
"Intelligent Design is _entirely_ different from Creationism. ID is spelled with a capital I and a capital D, while Creationism has a big C at the beginning. No similarity at all."
"Evolution is on trial here. Anyone who claims otherwise is naive."
Actually, that's not the case. It is "Intelligent Design" that is on trial here. That is the substance of the case, whether the school board will be allowed to put the disclaimer in its biology books.
You have read the case files, right?
On the surface, it may seem to be a false dichotomy; but is it really? "If evolution is ruled out", ID would the best best explanation absent other alternative explanations. Do you know of alternatives to evolution, besides ID?
If evolution is ruled out (huge "if," but for the sake of argument let's just pretend for the moment that all the evidence supporting evolution magically disappears), then there's still no evidence for ID. As such, ID is still not the "best best explanation".
No explanation totally devoid of supporting evidence could ever seriously be considered the "best best explanation" for describing the natural world. If that's ever the best we have, then we're back at square one.
And that's where the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes in - there's as much evidence for FSM as there is for ID. Taking evolution out of the equation, why should we take ID any more seriously than we take the FSM?
An attorney can find an 'expert' to say anything in many cases. Given that the plaintiffs' witnesses have conceded the point that evolution is not a fact, an alternative viewpoint may very well have merit.
As an aside, if evolutionists have no explanation for the origins of life; they are really in no position to to simply claim that an intelligent designer was not involved.
"And that's where the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes in - there's as much evidence for FSM as there is for ID. Taking evolution out of the equation, why should we take ID any more seriously than we take the FSM?"
Well, Behe says that he doesn't have any idea who the "Designer" is, so it could easily be the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Someone should ask Behe that question.
Myself, I think it was the Invisible Pink Flamingo. There are lots of worshippers of that deity in my neighborhood. They have statues of the IPF in their front yards...not invisible, of course. Who knows how many invisible statues there might be.
So...just how many Flying Spaghetti Monster statues have you seen? I rest my case.
Just as the stork delivers babies, the Invisible Pink Flamingo delivers universes. It's the most logical thing in the world.
Hey,,, those are my words and I've been asking that question for a year or more here.
Who designed the designer? And which one of those designers does the Bible refer to? The one that created us or the one that created him????????????????????????? Or Him, or Him?
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I know you think this is a brilliant argument
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It's not a brilliant argument, it's an obvious conclusion.
If we were designed then so was our designer. There can be no other option or fact!
So you are claiming intelligent design has to prove origins, but evolution does not.
Funny how evols like to hold everyone else to a higher standard than they, themselves, are willing to adhere to.
But a designer would be even more complex, requiring a more complex designer, etc.
Possibly. That's not part of the theory of intelligent design, just as origins are not part of the theory of evolution.
In creationists arguments. . .
::::sigh::::: Even when the difference is pointed out to you between Intellligent Design and Creationism, you refuse to see it.
No it doesn't. It does not say who or what the designer is, just that there was design rather than random changes.
If those claiming design must prove origin (e.g. the designer), then those claiming evolution must also prove origin (e.g. how life came from non-life all by itself).
"Why? Evolution theory doesn't attempt to explain origins.
Because ID is all about proving macro-evolution* (ME) wrong. If ID is able to show that we are designed and thus prove ME wrong then the same question must be asked of the designer. Either the designer was designed or they evolved. (The dichotomy is from the ID camp). Eventually either ID has to admit ME to be possible or admit that the designer is supernatural(God). If they admit that ME works, then their entire thrust to get ID into the schools because of the shortcomings of evolution is shown to be a lie. If they admit the designer is God, then this whole charade if ID not being religious is shown to be a lie.
Evolution on the other hand admits that it is limited to life and life only. The origin, although many scientists feel it does originate from abiogensis, is not a factor in determining whether or not man and other apes are related through a common ancestor or any other conclusion from evolution. *Even though some of the ID admit to an ancient Earth and a common ancestor, their entire IC and CSI is designed to prove that evolution is not able to produce cumulative changes that ultimately result in organisms being classed as members of higher taxa.
Yes it is. Really.
"If evolution is ruled out", ID would the best best explanation absent other alternative explanations.
No it wouldn't. It would be one of many. In order to be the "best best" (?) explanation, it would have to have some actual positive evidence supporting it. And it doesn't.
Do you know of alternatives to evolution, besides ID?
I can think of dozens, if I'm allowed the same groundrules as ID -- that is, the alternative need be only conceptually possible, but not supported by the evidence at this time.
But even if I couldn't, that *still* wouldn't make ID the "winning' explanation by default. Lacking any positive evidence supporting ID, it would not "win" if evolution were to be found to be fundamentally flawed (and good luck with *that* one), because it would remain on par with the equally good alternative of "we don't know", which explains exactly as much as "ID" does -- nothing.
For a complete analysis of this (more rigorous than it really needs to be, but it doesn't hurt to be thorough), see: The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance
As for me, I have never argued that IS must be true simply because evolution is disproved. There are other reasons as well, including the absence of other rational explanations.
Same argument, different name.
[And Behe has never, ever, ever given actual evidence which directly supports ID itself -- he has always attempted to just undermine evolutionary biology.]
I don't think Behe ever claimed that he has.
What, you didn't read the article at the top of this thread?
The real issue is that if the evidence undermines evolutionary biology, it casts doubt on the truth of evolutionary biology.
And yet, that's not that the ID folks claim that they're actually doing. And they have yet to actually come up with anything that "undermines evolutionary biology".
[Furthermore, even his arguments "against" evolutionary biology are fundamentally flawed, and it shouldn't be hard at all to show that to the court as well.]
I don't think it will be nearly as easy as you might think.
Since Behe makes elementary errors, it's easy to demonstrate that he is, indeed, in error.
You ought to keep in mind that only one of the plaintiffs' witnesses claimed that evolution is a 'fact'; and that claim was based only on a perception that it is a fact because it is 'widely accepted'. Miller even admitted that evolution is not a 'fact'.
First, why do you think that that has anything to do with the ease with which Behe's errors can be demonstrated? Second, you're misunderstanding the earlier testimony. Evolutionary biology *is* both a fact *and* a theory. There are "fact" parts and there are "non-fact" parts to it.
Not going to say the defendants are going to win, because you never know what a judge will decide, regardless what the evidence says.
True, I'll agree with you on that one.
The statement of the Dover school board was carefully crafted
...to be misleading...
and I don't think the plaintiffs have shown that it does anything more than state that there are other opinions about 'life' and where one might look for that information if a student is interested.
How disingenuous of you. It doesn't say that there are "other opinions", plural, as if there are many alternative possibilities, the ONLY alternative it mentions is "ID": "Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.", and then points students towards a specific ID book.
Evolution explains origins of species not origin of either life or the universe. You need to deal with that simple concept before continuing your argument.
That's not part of the theory of intelligent design
Please explain to me in layman's terms exactly what is the "theory of intelligent design" and what testable predictions it makes. I really am trying to understand what you're talking about.
No, intelligent design has to demonstrate via evidence and falsifiability criteria that it better and more consistently explains observable phenomena than the Theory of Evolution (without resorting to "and then another miracle occurred and giraffes were made, and then another miracle happened and elephants were made, and then another miracle happend and the Bubonic plague was invented). That's all it has to do. That it does not, has not, and really as of this moment has no serious prospects of so doing makes it next to worthless as a scientific alternative to the TOE.
Every time that I attempt to build a shrine to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I wind up covering it with shaved parmesan and consuming it. Sigh.
His whole "irreducible complexity" dog-and-pony-show is pseudoscience.
Evolution is on trial here. Anyone who claims otherwise is naive.
No, anyone who claims otherwise is familiar with the case.
This case is about whether or not ID was adopted by this school board in a stealth attempt to introduce Creationism into the curriculum. That's the issue of fact for the judge to decide. How does evolution enter into that?
You may want evolution to be on trial here, but wanting something does not itself make it so.
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