Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

[Tyrant]

Again, science doesn't kill God.  Religion and Science are not at odds with each other.  If you want to believe in irrationalities to help you understand the universe you live in you can do that.  Science tries to find the most logical and reliable explanation for a problem or event.  That's it.  These explanations will and do change as more information is known and there is more data to test.  That's the beauty of science.  Religion is dogmatic and stagnant, and depends far to much on outdated concepts.  Religion and Science are not two sides of the same coin.  They are completely different coins.  Actually, one's a coin, the other is a burrito.

  I have to respectfully disagree with you in regards to religion being stagnant. No, the message thereof shouldn't change because, God knows, everything else around us changes. But remember that many religious people not only reconsider their religion in the light of science, but even challenge and reinterpret it because of science. I wouldn't say it's as flexable as science can be, but it's not as rigid as many may think it is.

Well just the way you said that implies that religion has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the direction that science leads it in.

  I've never argued the contrary. I happen to think both are necessary to help us understand everything. And I did say that religion isn't as flexable as science. But that doesn't mean it can't 1) change and 2) allow followers to change with it under the banner of science. 200 years ago I probably would have been jailed or excommunicated or something if I went around saying the Bible might be metaphorical rather than literal. Now, I say it and many agree with me and it's not a radical thought at all.

[PlayMSTie]

What gets lost in all these discussions is this: ID proponents, or at least the majority of them, are not asking that "God created the world" be taught in science class (whereas many creationists do lean in that direction). We want scientific fact taught. ALL of it. Including the fact that scientists do not know for certain how life on earth began. Heck, Richard Dawkins admits that much. I'm a firm believer in "teaching the controversy": ID acknowledges certain patterns in nature and believes they point to design; Darwinian evolutionists (by which I mean evolutionists who hold to a naturalistic theory of the universe) believe they do no such thing. So teach that. All of it. What we know and what we don't know. A science teacher who teaches about evolution and then tells the class that this definitely eliminates the possibility of an intelligent designer is straying from science into philosophy and/or theology, anyway.

[Bairman]

I look at the holes that aren't filled and cannot be filled by science

Yet.

[Bairman]

So teach that. All of it. What we know and what we don't know.

How can you teach what you don't know?  That's such a contradiction in terms I wouldn't know where to begin.

[PlayMSTie]

I mean, teach that there are some questions we don't have solid scientific answers to yet -- for instance, how life originated.

[Ortega]

A science teacher who teaches about evolution and then tells the class that this definitely eliminates the possibility of an intelligent designer is straying from science into philosophy and/or theology, anyway.

This shouldn't even be done.  I remember science classes in high school, and the subject of the possibilty of a creator, or there not being a creator, wasn't even discussed.  Being as that delves into theology, it wasn't part of the discussion.

I'd like to add to that.  I live in The South(Alabama), which is sometimes referred to as The Bible Belt.  I remember on all of our science textbooks, they attached little stickers that read something like this:

pardon me as i might fumble this, as it's been nearly 8 years since i've seen it
" These textbooks contain many references to Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  They may be parents of some children who might find this lacking in knowledge of the creation of life on our planet.  The School Board of Montgomery Public Schools would like students to realize that there are other theories to origin of life, and to accept the theories presented in the textbook with an open mind"

This was done after pressure on the school board from many churches in the area, which after about satiated them for about 3 years, and then they clamored for more, which after a while, the ID thingy reared it head.

While i am an athiest, i still feel that every one is entitled to believe whatever the hell they want.  However, discussions of philosophy and theology don't belong in a science classroom.  Can you pull out a ruler, and measure God?  I didnt think so. 

[Tyrant]

I look at the holes that aren't filled and cannot be filled by science

Yet.

Actually, one of the first things science states is that it will never know everything.

I mean, teach that there are some questions we don't have solid scientific answers to yet -- for instance, how life originated.

  I think the main problem with evolution vs ID and other theories  is that it tends to be  taught as though it were a fact. I've had some teachers in my day who outright told us it was, despite calling it the Theory of Evolution. It's closer to being a fact than most theories, granted, but since we can't invent a time machine and go back in time to videotape the process, it'll be many years before science feels comfortable enough with it to call it a fact (or law).

Maybe the issue isn't so much that it's being taught to the exclusion of other theories, but the fashion in which it's being taught. So long as it's stressed that it's a theory, kids will go their own way in finding alternate theories if they so choose. Just tossing that out there.

[Tripe]

A science teacher who teaches about evolution and then tells the class that this definitely eliminates the possibility of an intelligent designer is straying from science into philosophy and/or theology, anyway.

Yeah this is the tired canard: "Scientists are pushing an atheist agenda" Find me an actual example of that, an actual verifiable example of that.

However there are like in the case cited by Ortega, many instances of Creationists trying to insert theology into a classroom where it doesn't belong.

ID is not science and forcing it into the science curriculum takes away from time better spent acquainting children with a sound grounding in concepts that are useful to understanding the world around us. Giving certain students who subscribe to it the grounding in a particular theology should be reserved to either other classes on the time table or ones given by the places of worship of that particular theology.

Oh and Tyrant, your post illustrates what I'm talking about very well,  there are two meanings of Theory; the general meaning and the one as pertains to science.

Science will never use the phrase fact of anything, a Scientific Theory is a fact as it is falsifiable and has stood up to the rigorous testing required to be called a Scientific Theory. I mean consider the theory of gravity, it's never going to have a name changed to The Fact of Gravity.

[torgosPizza]

Actually, one of the first things science states is that it will never know everything.

Who is this "science" and where do they state these things? I'd like to write them a strongly worded letter.

[Tripe]

He's a nice guy, a bit pedantic at times, but nice.

[DarthChimay]

What gets lost in all these discussions is this: ID proponents, or at least the majority of them, are not asking that "God created the world" be taught in science class (whereas many creationists do lean in that direction). We want scientific fact taught. ALL of it. Including the fact that scientists do not know for certain how life on earth began. Heck, Richard Dawkins admits that much. I'm a firm believer in "teaching the controversy": ID acknowledges certain patterns in nature and believes they point to design; Darwinian evolutionists (by which I mean evolutionists who hold to a naturalistic theory of the universe) believe they do no such thing. So teach that. All of it. What we know and what we don't know. A science teacher who teaches about evolution and then tells the class that this definitely eliminates the possibility of an intelligent designer is straying from science into philosophy and/or theology, anyway.

See, the problem there is that the controversy ID proponents consistently bring up are the same tired canards that have been around for up to a century, and none of them hold any water. Sure, there are controversies, but to understand those controversies (such as natural selection vs. sexual/genetic selection; there's some very interesting scientific papers out there), one needs to know the basics of evolution. As far as how life originated, that is not part of evolution. Evolution, by definition, only works when there is life. Abiogenesis is its own quite robust field of study.

Also, seeing patterns do not mean there is a design there. We see patterns all the time. Is the potato in Conor's blog post that's shaped like Jar Jar Binks evidence of some Lucasian intelligent design theory? No. It's just pareidolia. Same with the supposed design we see in nature. Of course things look like they are perfectly designed for their environments; they evolved into the environments.

Now, I'm not familiar with any science teacher who has done what you illustrate above. I've never heard of a single case, because you're right; bringing it up isn't science. There's absolutely no reason to bring it up, either to say there isn't one or there possibly is one. Science is about the natural world; intelligent design tries to insert the supernatural into science, thus making it not science. Things that are not science do not belong in the science classroom. Q.E.D.

If you want to get into some of the specific "controversies" you've heard, I'd love to discuss them. I can even get into more detail on abiogenesis, if you wish. I love talking about this sort of stuff.

[BathTub]

It's annoying how often the theory and laws misconception comes up, because it gets repeated over and over again.

Here is a recent post at Pharyngula where he covers the issue.

A portion.

Right off the bat, he makes the common error of assuming there is some universal authority that ranks scientific ideas into "laws" and "theories", with laws having some objective priority. This is not true. It's largely arbitrary. If you come up with a description of something that can be typically written out in a short and easily testable mathematical formula, it tends to be called a law: for example, Newton's laws, including F=ma, etc., or the ideal gas law, PV=nRT. Laws tend to be short and simple. This is not always true, of course (arbitrary, remember?): for example, Ernst Haeckel called his description of the relationship between development and evolution the Biogenetic Law, which has the virtue of being a counter-example that is neither mathematical nor in any way formally correct.

Theories, on the other hand, tend to be descriptions of more complex phenomena, and are often not easily reducible to a formula: for example, cell theory, germ theory, and the theory of evolution. They are neither more nor less true than a law, and a scientific theory is nothing like the colloquial meaning of "theory", a guess. Theories can also encompass many ideas that we call laws. Evolution, for instance, includes concepts like the Hardy-Weinberg Law and Dollo's Law.

I recommend the entire article he's responding to one of the many creationist emails he gets regularly.

[Tyrant]

Actually, one of the first things science states is that it will never know everything.

Who is this "science" and where do they state these things? I'd like to write them a strongly worded letter.

Okay, scienTISTS. Scientists state that our science will never know everything.     Life would get pretty boring if it ever did.

[
Bob Science.  He delivers water to local businesses.

  Yes, and Bob Science.

[Tripe]

That's his stage name, his birth name is Roberto Evilution

[Tyrant]

And now I have a name for the kid Pak and I will never have. Thanks, Tripe!