Religion of it all

If ID is truly non religious as it claims to be, religion should never come into the debate.

Yet, it still happens that Intelligent Design will call those who accept evolution atheists to give a negative appearance (especially in religious America). Even in the face of many Christian churches (including the Catholic church) accepting evolution as being able to co-exist with their beliefs.

Also, as I said in my last post, they claim that ID should be taught because of the widespread acceptance of creationism--yet if someone draws parallels between the two they are very quick to dismiss any links existing.

It just seems to me that religion shouldn't even be a factor here at all, but the IDers cite religion only when it suits them--again having their double standards.

On a side note, I think everyone should try and get a hold of the paper I just read. Citation below!

ROSENHOUSE, J. & BRANCH, G. 2006. Media Coverage of “Intelligent Design”. Bioscience, 56, 247-252.

Interesting quote

I was reading a paper about including ID in the science curriculum and came across something that amused me. It talks about Michael Behe (the guy who thought up irreducible complexity) and his reasoning for including ID. In the first paragraph he is quoted, this is written:

He also asserted that “the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea” and that “intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.” He added that intelligent design is an elegant theory that is overwhelmingly and sensibly embraced by the public.

Right after this in the next paragraph he says:

Behe invoked the popularity of this idea as justification for its truthfulness. Because opinion polls  (Newport 2004) demonstrated that 45 percent of the American public believed in creationism and one-third were biblical literalists...

So basically he is saying ID is not religious, but it should be taught in schools because the religious concept of creation is believed by 45% of Americans, and 33% believe in taking the bible literally. Yep. Good logic, guy. 

Bill Nye!

Bill Nye won the Humanist of the year 2010 award just recently. It makes me happy!

This is an adaptation of the speech he gave. I think it's fantastic, and it does have some relevant arguments for the Evo ID debate, which is worth a read. I think some of the other points he makes are fantastic too.

Bill Nye is a secret hero of mine. Even living in Australia I still saw some of Bill Nye the Science Guy and I could probably say that it played a small role in where I am today. In fact, I think when I started doing my SciComm degree I said at one point "I could be Bill Nye!". He really is awesome, and we need more people like him in the world.

Quick update

I know I said I'd talk about Gross's frameworks, but I've been very busy with life things, so haven't have a chance to finish off last one and put it into context. Life should be slowed down and whatnot next week though, so hang tight until then! It's a total cliffhanger, I know.

In the meantime, read this. Because it is awesome, and true.

http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/11/08/a-course-on-evolution-should-be-required-for-every-ua-student/

Has some great quotes too.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework--Part 3

Today's post is about Turner's framework of controversies coming about from social dramas.

Human beings act in a ritualistic way. They repeat different acts and place special meanings on these acts without even really thinking about it. These rituals become a sequence of our daily lives, and function to prevent conflict. When these social rituals are deliberately challenged, this is when drama, or controversy, occurs.

So when IDers try and and have ID taught in science classes this is challenging a few social norms. They are challenging the idea of teaching good science in science class. They are challenging the first amendment (ie not teaching a single religion (if you accept the idea that ID is religion)). They are even challenging science's social norms by circumventing the normal methods of science.

These are all factors that can lead to the controversy starting/continuing.

Next will be Habermas and his framework.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework--Part 2

The first part of Gross's 3 frameworks is Gusfield's 'Controversies as clashes of moral orders'.

Now remember here, morals are more on a social scale... So this is basically saying controversies happen when two (social) differences of opinions clash, or when one moral becomes more of a norm and is challenged. I think it can also come about from people having different interpretations of the same moral norm.


So if we look at this just in terms of teaching ID in the science classroom, we find a clear clash of morals. One group believes that ID should be kept out of science, and one believes it should be taught next to genetics 'to be balanced'. You could even say that this is a challenge of the social norm too, because ID has been banned from schools.


Now this is just the beginning of the frameworks, and as I explain more about them the relations will become clearer and you can see why you need all three to analyse.


Before I finish this post though, I want to look at a couple of quotes.


The first quote comes from The Wedge  Strategy document that I talked about many posts back. The quote basically says that ID needs to "defeat [the]materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution and replace it with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”


That basically gives very good evidence for a clash of moral norms where one really wants to overtake the other (especially when you consider they say they just want a balanced discussion).


The second quote is the one I mentioned last post from the Gross paper:

‘There is a more insidious effect of moral orders: by substituting displays of high feelings for reason, they distort and suppress public debate over the issues that are their concern.’

Now nearly all of this is true for Gusfield in this sense, except for one point. Rather than suppressing public debate, ID proponents are actually creating debate where none exists (or shouldn't). Well, there's no debate in science, but they're fuelling public debate but telling people that there is.

Turner's up next.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework

For the next few posts I thought I'd do a version of the analysis I did the controversy in for my class presentation.

I analysed the controversy using Alan Gross's three interlinking frameworks for examining controversies (the paper is titled Scientific and technical controversy: Three frameworks for analysis if you wanted to find it somewhere).

Basically Gross uses three controversy frameworks made by others, and show how they all interlink to give a greater understanding of a controversy (although he states that these three would still not encompass everything needed for some).

So the three frameworks are:

1. Gusfield framework

This framework says controversies are all about clashes of moral orders. That when people change, challenge, or adapt moral orders different from the norm, controversies arise.

He also makes this statement at one point, ‘There is a more insidious effect of moral orders: by substituting displays of high feelings for reason, they distort and suppress public debate over the issues that are their concern.’ I'll come back to this later.

2. Turner framework

Turner's framework suggests that controversies are all about social drama. When the norms in societies are challenged drama is the result, and this is where controversies arise.

3. Habermas framework

Habermas says that controversies can be broken down into five categories, each which needs a different type of communicative action to be solved.

The five categories with their resolutions are:

• Political--Negotiation

• Ethical--Mutual tolerance

• Moral--Understanding and agreement

• Intellectual--Understanding and agreement

• Scientific--Experiment and controlled observation (with some understanding and agreement)

He also points out the difference between morals and ethics. Ethics are an individual's ideas or choices on what they accept of believe to be true. Morals are on a social scale, as in what is overall accepted socially (social ethics, I guess).

cdesign proponentsists

I promised to talk about this a couple of posts ago and just realised I never got around to it. So it's going to be a bit of history, and a bit of a laugh.

ID came into existence around December of 1987. This was after creationism was banned for violating the Establishment Clause of the US constitution in June of 1987. The court that ruled this decision said that 'alternate science theories could be taught' or something along those lines. Hence the birth of the 'science' of Intelligent Design.

The book Of Pandas and People was being written while all this was going on, and in its drafting stages when the final verdict came out. The book was written by people with relations to the Discovery Institute, and when finally published was the first documentation containing information on ID as we know it.

Unfortunately, this wasn't always the case.

As I stated earlier, this book was having its draft edited when the final verdict banning creationism came out. The book had originally been filled with words like creationism, creationists, and creator. After the ruling, the book was edited again to put a new slant on the creationist movement. That's right, all those creation terms were changed to ID terms... Intelligent Design, design proponent, and designer respectively. No change to the creation content of the book, just putting a new term on it so they could eventually claim that ID wasn't religious and was actually scientific.

But if they changed what the book said during before the second draft, then how do we know that?

Well in one case the word 'creationists' wasn't edited completely correctly. It was only half replaced and ended up as 'cdesign proponentsists'.

This clear link between creationism and ID eventually played a big role in the 2005 court case that banned ID from science classes.

Talk Design

TalkDesign is a website that gives a 'critical analysis Intelligent Design'. It is a subsite of TalkOrigins and, while a bit old, has some interesting and useful posts up about ID.

I thought I'd put up a couple of links to ones I like to get you all started.

Firstly, this is a brief analysis of how the ID movement is basically making a controversy where none exists.

http://www.talkdesign.org/cs/node/42

This second link is a good satire of some of the common ID arguments.

http://www.talkdesign.org/cs/quixotic_message

Enjoy!

Nice little summary of ID in science class

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827833.000-creationism-lives-on-in-us-public-schools.html


This article shows a few of the key points since the 2005 court trial that banned ID from being taught in science class. It shows that they clearly haven't given up, but I love the last line in the article because it's so true. I just wonder when the Discovery Institute will realise they're not fooling anyone (stay tuned for a post soon on 'cdesign proponentsists' because I only recently found out about this and it's fantastic)


Now I just wish that story had come out a couple of days ago, so I could have integrated it into my presentation last night on the Evol-ID controversy in relation to being taught in schools

What if they got their proof?

So imagine somehow that ID got proof, beyond any doubt, that an organism was designed. They came up with a perfect definition of what to look for in a designed organism, and found it in something.

What would happen then?

So what? It was designed, great. Who designed it? You'd have all the religions claiming it was their god who created/designed it. You'd have the UFO conspirators claim advanced races of aliens designed them and us and everything else and that we should hail our alien designers and overlords. There'd probably even be a war or something (although maybe I'm going a little over the top there).

You might even get a new type of religion or pseudo-science along the lines of 'God must have been intelligently designed--hail God's God'.

And from all this, what would science do? Probably just have lots of debate, undergo a paradigm shift, and start looking for those traits in other organisms and look at the world with new knowledge.

Interesting thought

I found this article on the web today that brought up an interesting point.

The author of the article suggested a shift in paradigm to look at evolution in a new way. Rather than the simple, single directional 'survival of the fittest' paradigm, he suggested that the evolutionary paradigm should be looked at as having two driving forces. These are (from the article):

• the individual/self-interest/survival of the fittest/genetic heritage; and
• the community/benevolence/mutual aid/cultural heritage.

The first point is the normal/current evolutionary paradigm I referred to above. The second point, however, suggests that natural selection is not driven solely by the suitability of each single organism, but that the community an organism lives within will also drive its evolutionary pathway.

I found this to ring true with humans especially. We've basically ruined the idea of natural selection applying to us by creating things like hospitals and seatbelts. If you consider culture within the definition of evolution though, then we would still fit under natural selection in some sense.

And these ideas apply to animals too really. Many species will help other animals in their population when they're sick or injured or young or if it gives them a mutual benefit as well. These populations may end up with a better chance of surviving then those who don't.

It's just a way of looking at evolution that I hadn't thought of before, but one that makes a lot of sense in some ways.

The last of risks... I suppose

I just realised that this post never went up even though it was supposed to go with my last post...

But yes, the final part of risk that I want to discuss is the idea of decisions under ignorance. Except I guess in this sense it is more of an argument under ignorance...

A large argument that comes from proponents of ID is the idea of irreducible complexity. This basically means that some organisms have parts that are made up of many systems working together, or a system with many different parts. The system is so set in how it works that there's no way that the trait could have evolved, as without one part of the system, it would be useless and non functional.

Evolutionary scientists have already shown how these types of traits can arise. For example, a component's original function may have been completely different, but was assimilated into a system to gain a new function. One part may be useful but not necessary, until other parts are removed. Most genes control more than one trait.

Yet even in light of these kinds of explanations, the arguments for irreducible complexity continue. No effort if made to find this information to see how true their claims are. This isn't the only ID argument where this happens either. I guess it really comes back a bit to the not being able to trust 'experts'.

More on Risks

I want to talk about this controversy in terms of the frameworks for controversy we discussed in the course, but before that I am going to do a couple more posts on risks.


I think one of the biggest risks I've failed to include in any posts on the topic is the one involved in Pascal's Wager. Of course, this makes the assumption that anyone who accepts evolution is an atheist (which a lot of ID proponents would argue to be true), and as I've stated, I don't agree with this. Ignoring that, however, I shall talk a bit about the risk involved here (and how you could consider it to be wrong).


So Pascal's Wager goes something like this (from our lecture):

	God Exists	God Doesn't Exist
Theist	Infinity	2
Atheist	0 (or negative infinity for hell?)	10000000 (or any finite value)

This says that no matter how much satisfaction you'd get as an atheist for being right about God not existing, it would never be as good as the infinite happiness granted by heaven, so you should believe in God.


Of course, then what happens when you consider that you might be worshipping the wrong god? Or that a God may reward atheists who have still led good lives? Or you consider the 'God Doesn't Exist' benefit to be highly negative, because you've 'wasted' your life worshipping. Perhaps it's as Richard Dawkins suggests and God may punish blind or feigned faith. Just makes you wonder where the risk really lies.

Science of evolution

After the last couple of posts on proofs, I wanted to examine the science used in evolution a bit.

It could be argued that the science behind evolution is equally non-scientific as the science behind ID. If you think about it, replicating the primordial soup (and the pre-life world conditions), creating life from scratch, and waiting around for it to evolve in some way would take far too long to feasibly be possible. Does that make it not testable? Not falsifiable? If so, then it's not really science...

Fortunately, as discussed before, we can design experiments in a different way that test evolution without having to resort to recreating life from scratch. We can observe current organisms and past organisms and from these make falsifiable hypotheses. We can make models from our ideas and use them to make predictions about the future. If they don't correctly predict what happens, we can then look and see what's wrong to change the hypothesis.

This is what separates evolution science from ID science.

More on proofs

After the last post talking about proofs, I found something else I'd made a note of in my book to mention on the subject.

Another reason non-proofs may necessarily not be disproofs depends on the experimental design. An experimenter may be flawed in their thinking when creating the experimental parameters, or they may simply be testing the wrong thing without realising it. Or hey, I guess they could be realising it and doing some dodgy stuff to make it seem like their testing the right thing. Sometimes it really pays off to examine the experiment design closely and make sure scientists are really doing what they're saying, and that the results support their claims.

Especially when the science is coming from sources that are a bit questionable or lacking in credibility.

Non-proof != Disproof

In our last class we discussed a bit about proofs and the idea that a non-proof isn't the same as a disproof. Disproofs can be very difficult, because you have to show something will never happen under any conditions. A non-proof is just shows that it doesn't work/happen under the conditions you tested. It does not mean it never happens. It could just mean you failed at experimenting. Unfortunately a lot of science can be lost like this.

Once I thought about it a bit though, in relation to the evo-ID debate, I realised this same sort of idea can be applied. If there is proof a creator of some kind exists, then that still doesn't rule out evolution. As stated back in the first post, s/he may have created life, and then decided to let it evolve on it's own. Unless of course we can talk to it and are scolded for considering evolution...

 The reverse also applies. If every piece of evidence for evolution ever needed was found (fully complete fossil record, every genome in existence sequenced and compared, etc.), it still would not disprove a creator. That would need proof of the origins of life, because evolution is only the mechanism for change and speciation.

What is ID really looking for?

While reading some of the stuff on Talk Rational I had an idea... Or maybe I read it there... Can't quite remember. But basically my thoughts were something like this. 

All the ID experiments observe aspects of nature and life and suggest that the only way these could come about is by design: Such complex body parts, such diverse life, and even using 'junk' DNA as evidence for a creator. Now I thought 'Well if that's the evidence that indicates there's a creator, what would you be looking for if there wasn't one?' To me, most of the evidence they give is anti-creator. The receptors in our eyes are back to front and the image is received upside down (with only the brain to compensate). There's a lot of DNA that seems to be leftover from having a use in other (more ancient) species, but serves no function in humans. Why even create fossils if dinosaurs never existed? You really need to go to those kind of lengths to 'test faith'? (Although I think that's more creationist than ID, so that's cheating a little.)

My point is, if things were designed intelligently, there would be nothing redundant. You don't see human designing cars or electronics with cords or motors that don't connect to anything or serve a purpose. Our car seats don't face backwards and have mirrors there for us to see forwards.

I just feel that if things were indeed designed, they could have been designed better.

Amusement

I found a couple of pictures/comics on the Internet which sum up a couple of points quite nicely. Click for enlargement.

Firstly...

Quite self explanatory really...

And secondly...

It's funny how IDers ignore evolution/science in times as these.

Anyway, that's just a bit of a side note. More posting soon!

Intelligent Design in schools

There is a simple and good reason why Intelligent Design should not be taught in a science class in school. It's just not science. Even ignoring the obvious creation background and religious undertones, what they advocate isn't science. Their 'science' can't predict future events... it can't be falsified... you can't even tell if you are right or wrong for that fact. There's no way to prove it at all really (a post or two on proofs soon!). The only way this should be taught in a science class is to show an example of bad scientific methods.

Teaching ID in a science class would be like teaching caveman in an English class. To the ignorant/gullible person it may give the illusion of being appropriate, but in the end any real look at it will show how short it falls. It's only seen as science to those who want to see it as science and believe that it's a real argument.


Also, as all the bigwigs at the Discovery Institute are very Christian and believe it was their god that is the designer... I think it's safe to say that none of them would want On the Origin of Species to be taught as an alternate to The Bible (again, probably unfairly creationist... but it's true).

Why Intelligent Design is scary.

The discovery institute is the main driving force behind the intelligent design movement. One of their main goals has always been to get intelligent design taught in schools next to evolution. I'll talk about that a bit later, but in my researching about that, I came across document from their planning department. How wrong I was thinking simply that their only goal was to simply have design taught in schools... Have a look at the summary table below. Sorry about the poor quality (it makes my eyes bleed), apparently they don't have high res scanners. According to their goals, they don't want to just stop at getting design taught in school, they want a complete upheaval of modern science to redefine everything by creation. To me the document just reads like they want world domination. And of course, the discovery institute is run by self proclaimed Christians--they're trying to send us back to the middle ages! Back when the Catholic church ran society. At least that's how it reads to me.

Evolution could be a monopoly

Ok so I had my facts clarified by an economics-knowing friend and feel as if I can make this analogy now.

If we look at science and religion (for simplicity sake) selling the knowledge of evolution and creation respectively, then agreeing with one idea, is essentially buying it. Using that, we can say that it seems to me like evolution currently has the monopoly on modern society. As science and technology grow more and more, people are increasingly accepting evolution. It also receives high levels of acceptance in social circles and all forms of media (even if just passively).

If this is the case, that would make the creation movement the small advocacy group trying to stand up in the market. In monopoly situations, the smaller groups have to have loud voices, so it's known that they're in competition (or that there actually is competition) with the large monopoly. This is why they have to argue so much more furiously than evolution. This also explains in part the development of the intelligent design argument over the creation one, to make it sound more like science, and give the impression that they're in direct competition.

My friend summed it up well in saying: 'They're trying to remain relevant in an increasingly scientific world. As more people understand how the work works due to scientific innovations they struggle to remain relevant with their scientifically unfounded principles'

Youtube fails me

Ok so this morning I wanted to do a little test on youtube. It's the first time I've noticed a science and technology category. I thought 'Well news sites usually have no science in their sci and tech sections, so let's see how youtube goes...' I left on the basic filters, which I think are 'most viewed' and 'today'. On the first page, there were 2 things (out of 24) I would consider science videos. The second was a puzzle about a defective periodic table, sitting at number 22. This video was at number 11... I feel like my IQ dropped a little.

The risk information vacuum of evolution

In class, we discussed the concept of a 'risk information vacuum'. The idea came from the book Mad Cows and Mother's Milk. Basically, the vacuum is the space where information is not shared between experts and the public. Basically, the information from science isn't properly communicated to the public, and the fears and wants of the public aren't communicated back to the scientists.

I was thinking about the evolution creation debate and I found it somewhat hard to really identify properly. I'm not sure it even existed. At the very least, it doesn't seem to exist any more. Not in terms of what the public seems to want to know... Evolution is fairly widely accepted. It's penetrated into most aspects of culture now, and most people understand somewhat the ideas of it and natural selection (at least here in Australia that seems to be the case).

However, I do think that the creationist movement seems to be trying to pretend there is a vacuum to put their information into. It seems by telling people that evolution isn't widely accepted by science or that scientists don't really know anything about it yet, they feel they are filling this gap between science and people that doesn't really exist.

These tactics also reminded me a little of something in economics my old house mate had told me about once. So next post I'm going to cover evolution as a monopoly (I think I've got the behaviours of the groups right for a monopoly).

Who really is the expert?

In this debate, I think the question of expertise is an important one. It's obvious that on each side there are experts for that field. But really, those experts are most likely only knowledgeable in their field. How qualified would a proponent of intelligent design be to actually talk about evolution? Having a real degree or being well researched in all the ideas. Or the opposite--how many evolutionary geneticists would have read the bible or have a solid understanding of the entire theory and history of intelligent design ideas. Even then, I would suggest that of those who do cross over from their side of expertise, very few have studied the other side with and open mind and no jaded eyes. Just something to think about really.


On a side note, I've changed all of my fonts down a size because I think it looks nicer (=

The risk of evolution

When talking about controversies, risks can be looked at in two ways. First there are the risks that you normally think about - those involving some sort of danger or loss. These risks aren't overly relevant to the evolution-creation controversy, as there isn't really any danger or potential for harm that comes from taking once side or the other (except maybe from the point of view of a creationist looking at an evolutionary atheist - going to hell is bad for your health).

The second kind of risk, and the one that is probably more relevant to this controversy, is the uncertainty risk. These risks involve being uncertain about the outcome of the event. Uncertainty applies to this controversy in that we can't really prove either side wrong currently. There's no proof a God doesn't exist, and there's no proof evolution and natural selection don't occur (and there's more and more proof that natural selection makes new species). It's also uncertain in saying that we don't know what evidence will come up in the future to change how we understand these two lines of thought as they currently are.


Edited afterthought:


I suppose in this case there is another level of risk involved. The risk of the other side winning this debate. If science wins and creationism is completely ignored, then there is the chance other aspects of religion will fall within society too. The reverse is also true, if creation wins over evolution then we may find that other debates such as the origins of the universe/earth or GM foods (I use these examples because they are also being discussed by other class members) may become more controlled by religion, or that religion may once again dictate how society progresses as it did in centuries past.

Talk of unicorns and things to come

After our lecture last night talking about experts and analysing risk in our controversies, I was thinking about how this applied to mine. So coming up in the next few posts, expect to see some of these ideas cropping up. I think the 'risks' as we discussed them (which I'll probably explain if I remember) are still in my controversy, but in a different way to normal. I'll be bringing in some of the discussion on experts too, questioning the legitimacy of both sides on the debate. I guess I'll probably give an overview of what the whole controversy seems to be at some point soon too.


For now, I'll explain a bit why things such as Intelligent Design are often considered pseudoscience by 'experts'.


Things that are classed as pseudoscience, such as astrology or ghosts, find themselves within this category because they often fail one part of the scientific method. You can't falsify them. A key part of the scientific method is being able to say something is wrong or untrue. It's very difficult to prove something is true ALL the time, but if something can be falsified, then we can assume that it's not right. These pseudosciences can make a lot of claims which seem to follow the scientific method, but once you actually scrutinize them you can see they fall short.


For example, I could say that there's no such thing as Tinnitus. Instead what is really happening is that a tiny invisible unicorn is dancing around inside your ear canal singing happy songs. Unicorns are magical creatures too, so they can't just be washed out or blown out. Now while this may seem like a good proposition, you can't *really* prove it wrong. There's no way to test it, because I can just keep saying "The unicorn is invisible, you can't see it" or "It's magical and hiding from you". So unless you can then explain to me how magic (something else that doesn't exist) works, and how we can counteract it to make the unicorn visible and catch it to prove it is/isn't there, this isn't really a scientific theory.

A good reason not to take the bible literally

Here is a somewhat amusing letter addressing what can happen if you take the bible literally...

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted fan

Creationism then...

Even though it's denied, you can see that intelligent design is based from creationism. This view is pretty widely accepted as far as I know. Intelligent design was basically a concept put forth so creationism would be accepted more easily. Creationism started to be seen as being representing a particular religious belief, so intelligent design was made to be the new face. With this change, explicit references to God were removed, and a veil of using the scientific method were introduced to attempt to make the idea more accepted.


But what is creationism?


I'm going to take some notes from the National Centre for Science Education website (http://ncse.com/) as they have very nice information on creation and intelligent design. They're basically (as their tag line says) about keeping evolution in schools.


NCSE's definition of creationism goes something like this:

"Creationism" refers to the religious belief in a supernatural deity or force that intervenes, or has intervened, directly in the physical world. Within that broad scope, there are many varieties of creationist belief. Some forms of creationism hold that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth.

This definition is good in terms of arguing about evolution and is how creationism is most often used now, but it doesn't fully cover creation. 


Creationism is a religious belief that takes a literal interpretation of the bible and says a supernatural being, often the Christian God, created the universe and everything in it.

Making a world.

So today I'm going to do a little bit of talking about intelligent design so everything is clear before I start talking about the debate between evolution and creation.

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

 This definition was taken from the intelligent design website www.intelligentdesign.org.


Now on its own, this definition isn't so bad. If you believe it, its what you believe - if you don't you say 'oh that's just some religious belief about god creating everything, not science'. This is where the trouble begins.


Intelligent designers are claiming that this 'theory' is something that is tested very following the scientific method. Again from the same website:

The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information...When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

 This approach in itself is flawed. The first problem is, there is no debating listed as part of the process, they just draw conclusions (unless this has been simplified for easier understanding). The other problem is the arbitrary things they are searching for. What exactly is "complex and specified information"? And who are they to judge what is complex and what is not?


Intelligent design also likes to separate itself from creationism, and says that you can only be an 'honest critic' if you can acknowledge the difference between the two. I can do that, but it doesn't mean that I don't think they're still running for the same team. I'll talk a bit more about creationism next time, and leave you with this clip. It has some potentially offensive language, so not appropriate for work or children.





The segment I want starts at around 1:20 but I couldn't find the clip on its own or figure out how to cue it at the right segment, so you can watch it all or just skip to there.

What is a theory?

Now before I get onto talking about and defining the other side of this argument, I'd like to talk a bit about theories. Often it's said by creationists and those who support intelligent design that they "do not believe in the theory of evolution". Now I have two problems with a statement like that, and I want to explain them a bit and why it's pretty much wrong.


The first problem is using the word theory. The use of theory in this way (or in the context in which it is used) really seems to belittle the scientific meaning of the term. A theory isn't a wishy washy guess that is agreed on by a few people, it is an idea that has been thoroughly debated, is highly supported by evidence that explains most or all observations, and can make predictions about future observations. Even beyond this misconception though, the bigger problem is that evolution isn't really considered to be a theory any more by science. It has been so widely observed, and so widely agreed on, that it's considered to be a fact now. A fact in science is when a theory is considered to be so correct, and with so little remaining doubt, that there seems no reason left to continue testing. It's the same as saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun is simply a fact. I also think this applies to natural selection in its most basic form (if you don't take it as the mechanism for developing new species). A faster cheetah will get its dinner more often than a slower one or a tree that grows taller will get more sunlight, and it's these organisms that will go on to reproduce over the other, weaker, ones.


My other problem with this statement is the word believe... But I guess that's just me being fussy. It's probably no different to someone saying 'I don't believe in aliens'. There is 'evidence' for both aliens and evolution (although one is concrete and the other is sketchy (not respectively)). What people really should say is something like 'I don't believe the evidence for aliens correlates to that conclusion'... or something along those lines, but perhaps less wordy.