Intelligent Design

[Igor Alexander]

Torrent - The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (audiobook):
http://btjunkie.org/torrent/The-Poli...f57e6b3cc0a4cf

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'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design'
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by: Jonathan Wells, Ph.D. - Unabridged (2006)
MP3/64k - Length: 6:13:18

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Book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1596980133/
CD: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0786168404/

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Description:

In the 1925 Scopes trial, the American Civil Liberties Union sued
to allow the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public
schools. Seventy-five years later, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the ACLU
sued to prevent the teaching of an alternative to Darwin’s theory
known as “Intelligent Design”--and won. Why did the ACLU turn from
defending the free-speech rights of Darwinists to silencing their
opponents? Jonathan Wells, a microbiologist with two Ph.D.s (from
Berkeley and Yale), reveals that, for today’s Darwinists, there may
be no other choice: unable to fend off growing challenges from
scientists, or to compete with rival theories better adapted to
the latest evidence, Darwinism--like Marxism and Freudianism before
it--is simply unfit to survive.

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Table of Contents:

Chapter 01 - Wars and Rumors
Chapter 02 - What the Fossil Record Really Says
Chapter 03 - Why You Didn't "Evolve" in Your Mother's Womb
Chapter 04 - What Do Molecules Tell Us about Our Ancestors?
Chapter 05 - The Ultimate Missing Link
Chapter 06 - Not Even a Theory
Chapter 07 - You'd Think Darwin Created the Internet
Chapter 08 - The Design Revolution
Chapter 09 - The Secret of Life
Chapter 10 - Darwin's Black Box
Chapter 11 - What a Wonderful World
Chapter 12 - Is ID Science?
Chapter 13 - To Teach, or Not to Teach
Chapter 14 - Darwinism and Conservatives
Chapter 15 - Darwinism's War on Traditional Christianity
Chapter 16 - American Lysenkoism
Chapter 17 - Scientific Revolution

[Sándor Petőfi]

R e t a r d e d

[Tim Roberts]

It's pretty reasonable for religion to be disallowed from being taught in a science class. If "Evolution" is to be likened to a layman's theory then "Creation" is the layman's brain fart.

[odin]

I recall Carl Sagan once commenting that if creation were taught in science class, evolution should be taught in church.

[Igor Alexander]

2:07 - Richard Dawkins admits the possibility of intelligent design:
YouTube- expelled no intelligence allowed (part 10 of 10) PL

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the following way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization ... [came] to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins

[Igor Alexander]

Originally Posted by Sándor Petőfi

R e t a r d e d

Weren't you just going on in another thread the other day about how only those materialistic Brits could've come up with Darwinism and capitalism?

[Igor Alexander]

Originally Posted by Tim Roberts

It's pretty reasonable for religion to be disallowed from being taught in a science class.

ID isn't religion.

[Igor Alexander]

Originally Posted by odin

I recall Carl Sagan once commenting that if creation were taught in science class, evolution should be taught in church.

Some churches do teach evolution. That's talked about in the audiobook I linked to above.

Refusing to allow any criticism of the theory of evolution effectively raises it to a religion.

[Dendroaspis]

Originally Posted by Igor Alexander

Some churches do teach evolution. That's talked about in the audiobook I linked to above.

Refusing to allow any criticism of the theory of evolution effectively raises it to a religion.

There is no refusal to allow criticism of evolution...it's simply a case of ID failing to meet the standards of a scientific theory. It fails to meet most of the criteria that all other scientific theories must adhere to; most importantly, experimental design and data collection. To my knowledge, and presumably everyone elses, there is no way to design an experiment to test for the existence of an "intelligent designer" (i.e. God), nor any way to observe said designer. By definition, ID cannot be considered scientific. To criticize evolutionary theory, one must be able to offer another scientific theory to compete with it. Simply waving hands and saying "Life is so complex, there must be a designer behind it" doesn't quite do it. In principle, ID is flawed from the beginning, since it presumes itself to be correct without any experimental or observational evidence that cannot be explained by another theory (i.e. natural selection).

The fact is, we don't know that life is all that complex. Sure, to us humans it seems that way. But that's our perspective...we really have no idea how common or uncommon or absolutely rare life may be in the universe. Our notion of complexity is directly proportional to our relative ignorance of it...the less we understand something, the more complex we think it is. It could be an extremely common phenomenon for all we know. The fact that we've been able to observe only a handful of extra-solar planets in our "search for life", out of the trillions of trillions of trillions of planets that may exist in the the Universe makes it seem a little premature to be calling life rare, or even complex.

Evolution itself is not a theory, it's a fact. All the word means is "change over time". We know things change over time; it is observable in microbes (microevolution), and indeed, observable evidence of speciation has been observed in higher organisms such as insects...occuring during our (collectively) lifetimes. The mechanism for evolution itself is simply heritable genetic mutations, which over time accumulate to phenotypic changes in a species or population. We know genetic mutations occur, and we know they can occur in gametic cells and be passed on to future generations. We can engineer mutations into organisms that are then passed onto future generations and change the phenotype of that organism. This is in principle, evolution. Now, we don't call genetic engineering "evolution", since it is directed and purposeful, as opposed to random, but in principle, it's the same thing. Hence, evolution itself is not a debatable topic, it's a fact.

Now...the "guiding force" of evolution...postulated to be natural selection...that is the theory. There is a literal mountain of evidence for it, but yes, like most things in science, it remains a theory. Some people equate the word "theory" with weakness in the validity of an idea, but in reality, all it does is allow for an idea to be falsifiable, however unlikely that may be; or modifiable, in the case of emerging evidence. To label a theory a "fact" would be silly, since by definition facts aren't falsifiable, nor modifiable. If they are...they aren't facts. Science, unlike religion, allows itself to be proven incorrect.

If someone could come up with evidence for a theory by which evolution occurs that competes with the current model, they would be more than welcome to do it. Science is always searching for a "best fit" model for everything, and as it stands, the current theory of evolution by selective pressure is that best fit model, by all available evidence.

The thing about theories...they aren't all that difficult to discredit. If someone wanted to disprove modern evolutionary theory, ALL they would need...is one fact...one piece of hard evidence that showed the theory was fundamentally flawed, and the whole house of cards would tumble. Though evolutionary theory has gone through some modifications since Darwin's time (such as a mechanism for inheritance of traits, etc.), his basic outline of the theory has remained solid, and has remained so for over 150 years or so. In fact, the evidence towards it only keeps growing, as our understanding of genetics, molecular biology, and ecology increases. Pretty convincing if you ask me.

A wise man, I believe it was Dobzhansky, said "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution". Personally, I completely agree.

Originally Posted by Igor Alexander

ID isn't religion.

It isn't science either.