Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What's the Big Deal About Intelligent Design?
The American Spectator ^ | 12/22/2005 12:05:03 AM | Dan Peterson

Posted on 12/22/2005 8:44:09 AM PST by Sweetjustusnow

In the past decade or two, a group of scientists, biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and other thinkers have marshaled powerful critiques of Darwinian theory on scientific and mathematical grounds. Although they generally don't dispute that evolution of some sort has occurred, they vigorously contest the neo-Darwinian claim that life could arise by an undirected, purely material process of chance variation and natural selection.

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevolist; intellegentdesign
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-154 next last
To: fizziwig
Absolutely. One can directly observe weather, availability of food, threat of predators. All things that directly contribute to the success of an individual animal and thereby it's species. We can create an eco-system. This might be small in comparison, but good for testing. Think Bio-Dome run by professionals. We can vary the parameters and build hypothesis and data that can be used to predict further experimentation. One can not scientifically evaluate "Because God made it that way." Divine intervention is not scientific. Unless someone can create a God-o-meter that would measure divine influence.

Frankly: I haven't seen or heard directly from the Almighty since a three day tequilla bender in College.

If ID is true, then try to explain this: Why are there no fossils of modern animals mixed in with dinosaur and pre-dinosaur fossils? I would think ID followers would be out in the fossil beds in the plains states digging up bear, wolf, and bison bones. They aren't. "Assuming every scientist is a fraud doesn't hold water." Also, the environment would have to provide enough food to support the current animal populations plus the extinct animal populations.

101 posted on 12/22/2005 12:16:42 PM PST by GreenOgre (mohammed is the false prophet of a false god.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Mogollon
Now please explain how the Krebs Cycle (also known as the Citric Acid cycle) evolved according to darwinian theory?

Evolution of the enzymes of the citric acid cycle and the glyoxylate cycle of higher plants

The puzzle of the Krebs citric acid cycle: assembling the pieces of chemically feasible reactions, and opportunism in the design of metabolic pathways during evolution.

From bacteria to mitochondria: Aconitase yields surprises

102 posted on 12/22/2005 12:18:46 PM PST by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: ImaGraftedBranch
Wonderful! Unfortunately, evolution will not fit into the test phase. Shall we be done with it then?

Do you have a cite for this assertion?

How do we test ID for validity?

103 posted on 12/22/2005 12:21:33 PM PST by Ol' Dan Tucker (Karen Ryan reporting...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: GreenOgre

"If ID is true, then try to explain this: Why are there no fossils of modern animals mixed in with dinosaur and pre-dinosaur fossils?"

First, there are a number of modern animals that co existed with dinosaurs. Not all life went extinct with the dinosaurs....obviously.

What does this have to do with ID?

Do a google on Behe, a prominent promoter of ID and see if he advocates a young earth. You will find that he does not. Please do some research on this matter.


104 posted on 12/22/2005 12:25:13 PM PST by fizziwig
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 101 | View Replies]

To: ImaGraftedBranch
What a conundrum...A Darwinist inferring that cancer is a bad thing. One would think that cancer fits nicely into evolution. To a Darwinist, that would be a good thing, no?

One would be thinking in very strawman terms. Cancers cells are the suicide bombers of cellular activity, killing their host and dooming themselves.

As for the tagline, I was contemplating a change to "There is no attempt in ID to learn the unknown. Rather, it is an exercise in unlearning the known." However, since this one is still getting attention, it can stay for a while.

105 posted on 12/22/2005 12:27:27 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies]

To: fizziwig
If evolution is false, then bears, for example, had to co-exist with T-Rex. We have lots of T-Rex, Sauropod, Therapod, and other dinosaur family fossils that date back 63 Million plus years, yet not a single lion, tiger, bear, bison, antelope, elephant...... If animals can't evolve into new species over millions of years then were are the fossils? How did modern species co-exist with other now extinct species?

That is my definition of "no evidence".

106 posted on 12/22/2005 12:32:57 PM PST by GreenOgre (mohammed is the false prophet of a false god.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 104 | View Replies]

To: VadeRetro
By the way...What is the meaning of your freeper name?

It sounds familiar...ahhh, yes. From the Latin "vade retro me, Satana!"

Another conundrum. You are full of surprises.

107 posted on 12/22/2005 12:36:11 PM PST by ImaGraftedBranch ("Toleration" has never been affiliated with the virtuous. Think about it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 105 | View Replies]

To: GreenOgre

You did not do the research on ID that I requested. You did not do your homework. You get an F and now have to repeat the 4th grade. Oh well...


108 posted on 12/22/2005 12:36:19 PM PST by fizziwig
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 106 | View Replies]

To: ImaGraftedBranch
evolution will not fit into the test phase

Absolutely false. For example, evolution makes specific predictions about what types of fossils we should find, and what types we should not find. We've discovered lots of fossil evidence which supports evolution, and none which disproves it.

109 posted on 12/22/2005 12:46:17 PM PST by ThinkDifferent (I am a leaf on the wind)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: Cicero
When there is serious debate, children should know about it.

Agreed. If ID is ever a serious scientific issue -- that is if it succeeds as science to the point where it is actually being utilized and implicated by profesisonal scientists in the prosecution of ongoing research -- then it can be included in curricula. In fact at that point "can" is irrelevant. It will come to be included as a matter of course, rather than by means of politically achieved intellectual affirmative action.

In the mean time: tough &*($. We're not budging an inch.

My own opinion is that Darwin will be out the door in about ten or fifteen years, everywhere except maybe in our public schools, where liberal judges will remain adamant.

This view is deluded. If evolution disappears from science it will also (with some lag time) disappear from science texts.

Look, textbooks are often wooden, stupid, boring, badly written and inadequate. But there's no freakin' conspiracy. Authors seek to include in textbooks those ideas that are actually in science.

Now granted that it might (and does) happen sometimes that some minor theory or illustrative example might persist as a stock textbook cliche even after being falsified and abandoned by working scientists. But this notion that a MAJOR theory could be cast aside by science and yet remain in science textbooks. Well, that's just whacked. It's genuine unhinged paranoid conspiracy stuff.

The fact that you, and so many other antievolutionists, could seriously entertain such a notion should be an indication that you're overdue for a reality check.

110 posted on 12/22/2005 12:58:24 PM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 81 | View Replies]

To: ImaGraftedBranch
Back in the early days of freepdom there was an email field next to the username field tagging each post. Those not wanting to provide their real email addies used it to say something or other silly, often in extension of their freepnames.

My freepname plus the extra nonsense in the email field said "VadeRetro MeBillary." "Billary" is a contraction of two names well known in politics in the late 90s. I gave it a total of about 20 seconds of thought with no idea I'd be freeping so much for so long.

111 posted on 12/22/2005 1:04:11 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 107 | View Replies]

To: ImaGraftedBranch
BTW, the history of life on Earth does not depend in anyway on the stuff you were rambling about in that post. You have a funny idea of what determines what goes into science class.
112 posted on 12/22/2005 1:11:09 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies]

To: Sweetjustusnow

I didn't renew my American Spectator subscription about five or six years ago.

I always like confirmation I made the right decision.


113 posted on 12/22/2005 1:22:00 PM PST by ml1954 (NOT the disruptive troll seen frequently on CREVO threads)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Stultis
In the mean time: tough &*($. We're not budging an inch. . . .

The fact that you, and so many other antievolutionists, could seriously entertain such a notion should be an indication that you're overdue for a reality check.

This pretty much confirms what I said: That Darwinists are stubborn, closed-minded, permit no argument, and readily turn to insults if any of their views are questioned.

Actually, I'm not an anti-evolutionist. I think some aspects make sense, and no one disputes that there is a tremendous variety of species in the world, from the lowest and simplest to the highest and most complex. For the last 2500 years or more this pattern was referred to as the "great chain of being."

I just think it's sad that monomaniacal Darwinists permit no competition, and eagerly turn to activist judges, with the help of the ACLU, to impose their beliefs on everyone else, like it or not, no questions permitted.

114 posted on 12/22/2005 1:22:17 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 110 | View Replies]

To: Rudder

In one section he lists the objections by scientists, and they all fall under one statement: "ID is not science." Of, he proceeds ahead while ignoring that very critical point.

Leave it to a lawyer to ignore how 99.99% of scientists define science, disagree with their conclusion that something is not science, and attempt to provide his own definition...a megalomaniacal lawyer, that is.

115 posted on 12/22/2005 1:36:41 PM PST by ml1954 (NOT the disruptive troll seen frequently on CREVO threads)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: fizziwig

"It is precisely because intelligent design relies exclusively on scientific methods"

The article lost me right there.

Intelligent Design is not, in any way, shape, or form, science. They need a falsifiable test for things such as "irreducible complexity" and "intelligent design."

Scientific hypotheses and theories are never proven. They are DISproven.


116 posted on 12/22/2005 1:39:42 PM PST by BeHoldAPaleHorse (MORE COWBELL! MORE COWBELL! (CLANK-CLANK-CLANK))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse

"Intelligent Design is not, in any way, shape, or form, science. They need a falsifiable test for things such as "irreducible complexity" and "intelligent design."

What is the falsifiable test for "un intelligent" spontaneous formation of life from those pesky building blocks of life hanging around out there?

Ahhh, there is none, its just pure speculation......the creed of the Naturalists.


117 posted on 12/22/2005 1:56:44 PM PST by fizziwig
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 116 | View Replies]

To: Cicero
it's sad that monomaniacal Darwinists permit no competition

Again. This is delusional. There are few professions more competitive, and virtually none more open to new ideas, and absolutely none in which the actual emergence of productive new ideas is so rapid, as science. And you ignore this completely, and ludicrously pretend as though scientific competition occurs in the secondary school science classroom and curricula! Wakeup. That's were the OUTCOME of the competition gets reported, not where it occurs!

You apparently want "outcomes based solutions" to scientific competition, including for those ideas that haven't even entered the competition where it really counts.

118 posted on 12/22/2005 1:58:22 PM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 114 | View Replies]

To: Cicero
Look, let me put it this way, you're literally complaining about ID not being allowed to "compete" in the curricula. This is like complaining that the Red Sox aren't allowed to compete on the Sports Pages because the newspapers are always reporting losing scores! The competition doesn't occur on the Sports Pages; it occurs on the baseball diamond.
119 posted on 12/22/2005 2:10:25 PM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 114 | View Replies]

To: ThinkDifferent
For example, evolution makes specific predictions about what types of fossils we should find, and what types we should not find. We've discovered lots of fossil evidence which supports evolution, and none which disproves it.

Let's try that another way:

For example, evolutionID makes specific predictions about what types of fossilsdesign characteristics we should find, and what types we should not find. We've discovered lots of fossildesign evidence which supports evolutionID, and none which disproves it.

120 posted on 12/22/2005 2:23:32 PM PST by ImaGraftedBranch ("Toleration" has never been affiliated with the virtuous. Think about it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 109 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-154 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson