Inteligent design, what's the deal?

[Hypharse]

When you say that one can believe in evolution and intelligent design at the same time without contradicting oneself, it does not matter if your intentions are good or not, you are just doing the above to people who are really scientific. You get to offend many people who have serious careers in the fields of science.

So, please… I’m asking a serious please from the heart here, ok? Please don’t feed the hatred anymore. It tends to generate mutual prejudice between scientists and creationists, which is all unwanted. I will defend your right to express your ideas to the very end even if I disagree with them, but I also think that people who have put a lot of effort into studying our world don’t have to hear things that will make them feel like they’re being mocked.

I had to go to class so I missed Ren’s response.

How does it offend people in fields of science to ponder what lies beyond known science? This is the goal of EVERY scientist. It is not mocking them. I am a scientist I believe. I have degrees in biochemistry, computer science, and computer engineering. I know plenty of other scientists and have talked with them about this topic. They don’t feel people believing in a God is mocking them at all. I certainly don’t feel that way.

People have always used religion to describe things they do not understand. When that thing becomes understood it does not necessarily make that belief foolish. It is only foolish if you say your God made it that way and there is no other possible way. Many religious people are like that and I despise them as much as any of you. My way of looking at things is more lenient. Imagine everthing we know as a sphere of knowledge. Everything outside that sphere I attribute to God. As the sphere grows the part attributed to God shrinks. This does not mean that God suddenly didn’t do the things we attributed to him. He never did those, but he built the base that those things resulted from. As the sphere grows the base he created gets more and more visible. We are allowed to search for reasons to push out the sphere. That is why it is not mocking scientists. I believe in searching for logical truths as much as anyone out there. It is only mocking them if you say they are not allowed to do things because those are 100% sacred.

About the ID in schools, you can talk about the limits of evolution without even bringing up religion. I think even asking kids to come up with their own theories about creation would probably be fun and thought-provoking for them. You can say that won’t work because it’s not a Utopia, but admitting defeat beforehand is not a better option. I know personally how inept the public school is. That was my main target with the differing interpretations. Many teachers/administrators don’t bother or know how to do proper research of a topic. This is how you get things like that school board administrator that outlawed the use of dihydrogen monoxide because of it’s danger to humans.

[Sinistral]

I said nothing about me personally accepting or rejecting the different parts. I believe in evolution. What you are describing fits under the history scale definition I provided does it not? I believe that to be the case as well.

As far as the actual topic. The main reason for some of ID being taught in school is is to show that there are boundaries to what we know and do not know in science. That reasoning I believe. I do not believe they should teach it with a religious intent. That part has nothing to do with religion.

Go read my thing on HIV and tell me how that fits into your historical thing. I talked about a lot of things in my post that you conveniently skipped over :P. You’re making up terms about the field. The problem with teaching ID without religious intent is that it is religious in the first place and therefore cannot be separated from its religious intent.

If you have a degree in biochemistry, do me the favor of explaining the oxygen dissociation curve of hemoglobin and the Michaelis-Menten equation.

I really hate people talking about “the limits of evolution” in the manner its being presented because of how the media essentially uses that same saying as a discredit for it which like right now, is not presented with a shred of support.

[Cless_Alvein]

I don’t see how mixing theology and scientific reasoning offends scientists any more than mixing chocolate and strawberry ice cream offends people who dislike chocolate or strawberry flavoured ice cream. Granted, it will no longer be “science”, but philosophy, but I don’t see how it can offend anyone if explicitly stated that it is not science but only a possibility (i.e. a subject for discussion in philosophy class), as Hyphrase already stated many times.

[Hypharse]

It fits into the historical scope because that list was inclusive to the right. Historical includes micro and macro evolution just extended into the past. Your example of HIV is micro/macro evolution no matter if you look at it from the virus or the human’s point of view. I am reorganizing how to look at the field to prove my point. I am not adding any false information.

The oxygen dissociation curve is a measure of the amount of oxygen attached to the hemoglobin group. Hemoglobin can attach to 4 O2 groups. The actual curve is graphed using the saturation (percentage from 0 to 100%) against the partial pressure of Oxygen. The chemical environment of Hemoglobin is such that for each O2 group that attaches it is easier for the other O2 groups to attaach. This means that the oxygen dissociation curve for hemoglobin will start out flatter at the beginning until one O2 group attaches then it quickly gathers the other 3 O2 groups. The Michaelis-Menten equation deals with the effect of substrate concentration on the reaction of 2 enzymes.

I really hate people talking about “the limits of evolution” in the manner its being presented because of how the media essentially uses that same saying as a discredit for it which like right now, is not presented with a shred of support.

aah, now do you see what I mean about people changing the definition to fit their desires? My limits of evolution are just what it does not explain. I don’t use that to make any assumptions about the rest of evolution being false. Many people do though.

[ClothHat]

I don’t see how mixing theology and scientific reasoning offends scientists any more than mixing chocolate and strawberry ice cream offends people who dislike chocolate or strawberry flavoured ice cream. Granted, it will no longer be “science”, but philosophy, but I don’t see how it can offend anyone if explicitly stated that it is not science but only a possibility (i.e. a subject for discussion in philosophy class), as Hyphrase already stated many times.

What gets taught in philosophy classes doesn’t really offend scientists, where did you get that?

[Kraken]

Step A) Make Universe
Step B) Make Life
Step C) Watch Life evolve
Step D) Make Burritos
Step E) Make Nachos
Step F) Success!

Step 1: Make Universe
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!

[Ren]

We don’t get offended by people having new ideas. We love that. Science only evolves through novelty that comes from fresh minds. The point is that the ones who help sicence develop do so not by giving opinions, but by showing facts that add to the knowledge.

We do get offended by people who want to teach, or support the teaching of, something that is purely philosophical while simultaneously saying “this idea has the In Dubio Pro Reo advantage of not being disproven by science, and since they’ll never be able to test it, we can always believe in this without worry of being shown some truth that will make us cry.”

I am not against teaching Intelligent Design. But I think that besides not being taught in Biology classes, it should also not be taught by making parallels with the scientific model of evolution. Otherwise, it’ll look like a competition of both for the right to hold the “major truth”, which is what I’ve already called unwanted thing in this thread.

Oh, and Hypharse, now I’m interested in knowing how old you are, what articles you published and where, and also which college or colleges you went to. When you speak you don’t sound like someone with so many degrees in scientific areas.

I think so specially now that you said you have a degree in CS. Back to that metaphor of the rigged slot machine you used, if you really had a degree in CS you wouldn’t have used that not even for a philosophical argument.

My field of research is artificial neural networks, which includes a deep analysis of pseudo random patterns and also selection of successful beings in a competitive enviroment through time. I have a safe ground to talk about these matters. If someone had set evolution to have specific results, no matter how complex these would be, evolution would work as per the model of Lamarck, not Darwin’s.

Instead of ‘survival of the fittest’ it would be ‘unfit become fit’. It wouldn’t be selective, it would simply propagate the degree of distributed unfitness of being in an ecossystem and make it so that each generation would have only the specific mutations that would make them more apt to survive and mate. But reality is different: mutations happen at random and those with the benefic ones get to generate offspring more than those who have none, or handicapping ones. That is why we can safely say that evolution is random, and not a play of loaded dice.

[Hypharse]

Novel ideas come from creative people that question. That is why I am for teaching kids what evolution does not support. Open their minds to what science does not know and it may peak their interest to study it.

When you speak you don’t sound like someone with so many degrees in scientific areas.

Care to expand on your reasoning for that?

[Ren]

Just read the post above yours again.

And having kids to question scientific matters is a must, but doing so by teaching them something that isn’t science is not. Once again, do not mix neocreationism with science in a class. When you say that kids should learn ID so as to learn how to question science you are mixing the things even if ID isn’t taught in the Biology class.

You still haven’t enlightened me as to your academic background.

[Hypharse]

where did I say to teach them what is not science?

[Ren]

where did I say to teach them what is not science?

Oh, it was like, in all the posts that you said they should be taught ID, even if not in a Bio class.

And thanks for avoiding the most sensitive questions. I doubt you have degrees in Biochemistry and CS. You are still giving me the impression that you don’t understand what you are talking about when you try to be scientifical, you don’t know even a handful of scientists and you may even have googled for that explanation on the oxygen dissociation curve.

[Hypharse]

If you really did read my posts you would have seen this up above.

As far as the actual topic. The main reason for some of ID being taught in school is is to show that there are boundaries to what we know and do not know in science. That reasoning I believe. I do not believe they should teach it with a religious intent. That part has nothing to do with religion.

You have made me repeat myself over and over so who is not understanding who?

To rehash it again I do NOT agree with teaching religion in biology class. The purpose of teaching ID for some people is to show them that evolution isn’t the end all of science history. That is what I agree with. Again, that has nothing at all to do with religion.

About my qualifications. They are true. I have already justified myself once. If you want to continue with baseless personal accusations then take it private not on a public forum.

[Ren]

I’m based on the fact that you boasted having degrees and now you don’t want to speak about it. Are you actually ashamed of having graduated? Anyway, if what you said is the case, then please send me a private message with references to articles you have published, and links to the college or colleges where you have graduated.

If you read everybody else’s posts in the thread, you’d see so many people saying in chorus: Intelligent Design is not science! Even if it isn’t religion as well, it must not be taught in Biology classes, nor taught in a way that makes comparisons between it and scientific evolution. You yourself have said that ID is philosophical/religious in the first post of the 2nd page.

[Hiryuu]

The problem with the whole argument is that people blur the lines between this philosophical discussion and the scientific discussion and thus by bringing the philosophy back into play, you merely prolong the problem, if only by giving it credit by mentioning it in such a context. If people were to stop having that discussion, the entire debate about the place ID should occupy in the classroom would be over.

I stopped reading the posts after this post, since it looks like the thread has degraded into an argument, but I do want to address this point since it (apparently) directly refers to what I said.

Are you saying that because some people are idiots (blurring the line, etc. etc.), that non idiots (me), cannot discuss the matter of God at ALL, not even in completely non-scientific, philisophical contexts? I’m having a very difficult time grappling with what you’re saying (and I may be COMPLETELY off-base with what I think you’re trying to say here… if so, please correct me), but if you think everybody should just stop having philosophical discussions about existential matters, then I can’t say anything except that I disagree.

[Hypharse]

I am not ashamed of where I graduated/am going right now at all. I am proud, but I don’t think it is right to encourage you to make accusations like that of people. Answering you would only encourage it. I did not say the degrees to boast. Degrees are not something to boast about. The only reason I have all of them and am getting another is I just like learning. Even outside of class/work I read a lot of technical books. I’d take classes my whole life if I could. I just mentioned them to show that I do know something about people in science since it was in response to your saying I was mocking people in science.

One final time. I am NOT for teaching ID as is in a science class. I never was, never will be. The part about teaching where evolution does not explain things I am all for teaching. Don’t call it ID, don’t call it anything, just teach it.

[Sinistral]

The oxygen dissociation curve is a measure of the amount of oxygen attached to the hemoglobin group. Hemoglobin can attach to 4 O2 groups. The actual curve is graphed using the saturation (percentage from 0 to 100%) against the partial pressure of Oxygen. The chemical environment of Hemoglobin is such that for each O2 group that attaches it is easier for the other O2 groups to attaach. This means that the oxygen dissociation curve for hemoglobin will start out flatter at the beginning until one O2 group attaches then it quickly gathers the other 3 O2 groups. The Michaelis-Menten equation deals with the effect of substrate concentration on the reaction of 2 enzymes.

You can do better than that, I’m sure.

And MM is only used in 1 enzyme and you can use the curves you get from that to compare different enzymes, btw.

And Hiryuu: I don’t mean people aren’t meant to discuss ID and how it helps bring meaning ot their lives. When I said discussion, I meant the debate about its relation to and purpose in science, in other words, what’s going on right now in the courts.

[Hiryuu]

And Hiryuu: I don’t mean people aren’t meant to discuss ID and how it helps bring meaning ot their lives. When I said discussion, I meant the debate about its relation to and purpose in science, in other words, what’s going on right now in the courts.

But I agree with you about what’s going on right now in the courts. =P

I’m just trying to keep people from taking cheap shots against religion in general because of all this. There’s a big difference between saying “Intelligent Design in a public school’s science classroom is stupid” and saying “Intelligent Design is stupid” (since again, in its broadest meaning, it encompasses way too many possibilities to just equate it with Creationism). (I’m not saying anybody flat out said anything was stupid, I can’t remember, I’m just pointing out that they are two completely different things).

[Cless_Alvein]

What gets taught in philosophy classes doesn’t really offend scientists, where did you get that?

I don’t see any mass movement by the scientific community to ban all philosphy classes

[Ren]

I’ll make it clear then: I am against making comparisons between Intelligent Design and evolution in class, be it Biology class, Philosohpy class, Religion class or whatever. Teach neocreatiosnim as much as you want, but don’t wrap it in a mantle of “oh let’s see the limits of science”. The boundaries of science should be discussed in classes of Science. Intelligent Design should be discussed outside those classes.

[ClothHat]

Uhhh, yeah, that’s what I just said.