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I think that the same question should be asked of evolution. Be interesting to know if he has any new arguments.

For reference on Intellectual design, so everybody know exactly what we are talking about: http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/released/news/062008b.html"

View it and decide if it is OK for your children to watch!

J,
I recently read Current Events, Conservative Outcomes by Freiman and he believes that ID and evolution work together. In that both ideas blended together make sense but alone both ideas are statistically defunct. He makes note of the random-ness of evolution alone being unlikely and the creationist view of the Bible having little foundation. Blending the two to allow for a creative hand at some point to tweak animals into humans with a soul just seems to work. I am not sure if I accurately represente his argument here but like most complex problems there is not one magic bullet but multiple fixes to be used in combination. Cheers.

There is no more intelligence in intelligent design than there is in any other mythology: it has emotional, psychological, social value. It is not science. It makes nothing resembling a scientific claim. It adds nothing to knowledge. It adds nothing to understanding of any issue which knowledge, science addresses. It's function is nice. It is like telling your daughter that her granny is in heaven. It's not a lie. It is comforting. It may be true even in some way we can never possibly ever "know." It's poetic. It's poetry. I like poetry.

I don't study poetry when I need to fix my car, or sew a button on, or solve the 2 body problem. An atheist, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian can do string theory as well as anybody. Newton was an alchemist which add up to a hill of beans when I do calculus. A Hail Mary pass is not science, and you don't even have to be a Catholic to know that. Intelligent Design isn't even a Hail Mary pass. At least a Hail Mary pass can make a difference, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I just don't understand why intelligent people waste so much time treating it as anything but a joke.

David Hume
what would be the point? if he lost the debate does that mean darwin and co are wrong?

After the famous Scopes Monkey trial. Scopes then debated GK Chesterton, and Scopes lost. How come no one talks about that debate?

David

hannity is on fox, jimmy. and don't blame the internet for taking down all of your comments. it's programmed that way. personal responsiblity, jimmy, personal responsiblity..just because you can leave comment, doesn't mean you should.
and for the record, don't a lot of people in Ireland still believe in faeries even though they also believe in evolution? ah, culture..the beer is good, but I'm more of a Bass fan myself. g'day!

jimmy
and u thought i was a knee jerk reactor

Science talks with the universe, religion talks at it.

then moneek, i think we both agree that there are authoritarians out there who use religion as a system of oppression to impose their linear view of their own lives and wills upon others.
the problem with this discussion between you and myself is how religion and faith get defined historically, religion and tribalism having been the first forms of government.
science disrupts the power process when accountability and i.e. transparency get involved, because authoritarians never want to be found out. [although, i still cannot for the life of me, figure out why the nazis kept such incredible records, except they thought their reign would last for 12,000 years]
i think you and i basically agree in principle about those of faith and those who abuse others need for faith [if i may use that term here, since i, as an agnostic, never felt that need]. i think science is so new to some persons thinking that they're not use to the rigor/focus necessary to persevere by way of actual evidence. and yes, math is hard. tell me about it. but i remain open and flexible. thanks for bringing up this discussion. i hope these issues are discussed further in terms of language and it's mathematical equivalents further, such as with Keith Devlin.

Posted by: chris o

So you are left wondering: What?! Life is meaningless?! When we die, it's over?! It is understandable there is mass resistance to this underlying trajectory of the meaning of evolution.

------------------------

Yep. This is exactly what the cynical neo-conservatives intellectuals behind intelligent design realized as well. They knew they could introduce hogwash and many people would gravitate to it out of existential angst.

But liberal scientists keep thinking that they're actually having a scientific argument -- and they can't figure out why they can't win it! The problem is they don't understand that when they get their panties in a twist arguing that science is not a religion, they're being duped just as much as the religious people who buy ID. The whole thing is a false debate orchestrated by people who no more believe in God than Richard Dawkins -- but who unfortunately understand human beings far better than Dawkins ever will.

J, religion is simply not equal to faith, either way you slice it. It is more related to science. That is truth. I understand the offense, truly. You are entitled indeed. I also hope that you have a 'flexible' day...

hjs you are a scholar and gentle-wo/man. God/Science blesses/bunsenburners you.

Steve
what do you think of this, since most blue states subsidize most red states via our federal taxes, we say if you want our money you have to have a 21st century education, leave ur myths for sunday school and start preparing your students to compete with the rest of the industrialized world?

religion really has nothing to do with it Moneek. Either you've really never spent much time in a lab trying to figure out how to actually design an experiment that actually works and then trying to decipher and properly evaluate the math, or you work in advertising/marketing.

belief should never override the actual facts you have before you. PERIOD. Everything, all details, MUST be accounted for in order to learn how to proceed to the next stage of testing properly.
do I 'believe' this idea in my heart and mind? Absolutely. Do I think that trying to prove the data exists beyond it's actual physical existance to reveal itself? Never. Your use of the word religion is careless, and I think and feel, disrectful to those who are truly faithful, some of which are family members of mine, so I'm quite aware of their feelings.

"Elitism" is NOT a bad thing. The ONLY hope for DUMB people is to be educated by smarter people. I number myself as FIRST in the class of DUMB whenever I subject myself as a student to a teacher who knows more than I do about any subject. The fact that they know more doesn't make them better - it makes them more qualified to be the teacher (in that particular subject matter). In life, sometimes we are the learner, sometimes the teacher. Those who abhor 'elites' & aspire to make everyone 'equal' ultimately wind up imposing something like Mao's 'cultural revolution' or Kim Il Sung's or Pol Pot's genocides. Humanity makes progress & our lives are improved to the extent that we let the best & brightest amongst us flourish in their efforts to understand things & to the extent that we learn from their discoveries.

Life can be hard enough. To think some molecules congealed and started reproducing and mutated and led to plants and animals of enormous variety and ultimately to humans, or not really ultimately in general but from our perspective at least can be impossible to accept for many. Sure you can say God put it in motion but that does not make sense. So you are left wondering: What?! Life is meaningless?! When we die, it's over?! It is understandable there is mass resistance to this underlying trajectory of the meaning of evolution.

So there is a creator, a designer, who loves us. Who created us in his own image, or designed us rather. If we are good, we will have an immortal life in heaaven. There, I feel better already.

jimmy
my knees are fine, but sorry if i misunderstood your point. like wise i did not think LL meant ireland was a LCD just with their catholic tradition. maybe i was wrong on all points.
except the education ones :)

Science is the process of learning how to ask the appropriate question, testing and strict mathematical/statistiacal evaluation, all based on evidence/facts, RELIGIOUSLY (and possibly never coming to a conclusion)

Faith has nothing to do with it.

Gore's Assault on Reason makes a similar point; and suggests that the effort to undermine scientific method leaks into public confusion about scientific evidence for global warming...

re: [21] - Moneek 2008 -
Science is process of learning how to ask the appropriate question, testing and strict mathematical/statistiacal evaluation, all based on evidence/facts.
Religion is a system of beliefs, some more organized than others. Faith defined is "1.unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence" [Webster's 3rd edition dictionary]

Did you know that the Educational Testing Service, writer of the SAT, has banned the words “evolution” and “dinosaurs” from their tests?

The document “ETS State Assessment Programs, Guidelines for Item Writers,” Educational Testing Service, 2005) is sent to question writers who are developing tests for ETS under contract for individual states that use the tests to assess student learning in grades K-12 under state standards.

I completely agree with your guest. As a scientist & engineer with a public education from Tennessee - I thank the result of the scopes trial almost everyday. Keep evolution in the classrooms, please.

well hjs I wasn't the one using Ireland as some sort of lowest common denominator that's "doing even better than us"...but I am glad to see that you're knees still jerkin'.

I've suggested the scientific community "re-christen" the "Theory of Evolution" to "Darwin's Law of Evolution", to eliminate a simplistic attack based on a mis-understanding of the word "theory". See http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/Darwin.htm

This is NOT a religious movement at its core. Though religious people are being used in its implementation, at its core this is a neo-conservative movement, driven by an elitist ideology which holds that both philosophy and science are corrosive to public order and must be obfuscated for the ignorant masses. Science and philosophy both lead to the conclusion that there is no God, which neo-conservatives share -- but which they consider to be deadly when introduced to the unwashed hordes, who cannot digest the truth without reverting to barbarism. That's what intelligent design is about.

By using the term "we don't believe in" intelligent design, we are letting the IDers define the argument IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE. That is, we are letting them define the argument as a religious one, not a scientific one. The sentence "I do not believe in the laws of motion" sounds like nonsense. Believe in? Wrong phrase. Scientists should reframe the discussion this way: "I do not believe that the laws of motion are true" or "reflect the way nature works" and, then, "I do not believe that evolution is a true theory." Once reframed, the discussion shifts to the showing of evidence supporting the theory.

Science is a religion itself.

jimmy

brush up on the facts ireland has more degreed people per capita than most other places including the US and their economy is booming. many US corps have been moving there because of the high degree of high degrees.

As a scientist, I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of "belief" in evolution. Part of the beauty of science is that belief is unnecessary. I don't believe in evolution, but then again, I don't believe in gravity, either. (In the sense that I don't think that our current set of equations describing gravity is the final word.)

I do accept, however, that evolution is currently the best answer to many questions in biology, and if it ever gets replaced by something better, then the replacement will be just as offensive to the creationists as evolution. The point is not that evolution is correct, but that creationism (and yes, that includes Intelligent Design) is wrong.

jimmy

brush up on the facts, ireland has more degreed people per capita than most other places including the US and their economy is booming. many US corps have been moving there because of the high degree of high degrees.

education is why they don't believe in 5000 years old myths.

oh yeah I didn't appreciate the insinuation about Turkey either...Muslim country does not necessarily denote backwardness.

why are we discussing who "believes" in evolution? (now as I listen)

doesn't this suggest that evolution is a belief system? a basis for faith? and by extension a system of belief in opposition to religion?

I would suggest evolution only be discussed as science, not belief otherwise you will always be "battling". People of faith if asked to choose if they believe in their religion or in evolution will reject all science.

ask a better question, get a better answer.

Let everyone think what they want, BUT, anyone who dizbelieves the underlying physics doesn't get to use airplanes, computers, cellphones and medicine anymore.

What's the difference between believing in miracles in the bible and koran and believing in intelligent design?

As far as I'm concerned, if you believe in miracles, you have severe intellectual limitations.

The anti-evolutionists & religious fundamentalists have chosen to reject modern science largely because they are poorly or largely uneducated. Those who master modern science & mathematics will reap the material, economic & technological benefits which flow from this knowledge. Those who choose to reject knowledge will condemn themselves & their progeny to ultimate oblivion. Knowledge is power. Those of us who embrace knowledge & modernity will prosper, those who don't will languish. And if the laggards try to impede our progress, they can contemplate the prospect of bow & arrow primitivists attempting to force their will on advanced technological cultures armed with advanced highly effective weaponry. In short, the rubes are DOOMED to extinction.

we should also talk about the US education system not measuring up to the other richest nations in the world as a reason these myths persist here and not in europe

oooh Ireland has more believers in evolution than we do, and they just started using lightbulbs 3 years ago... Leonard you sound so pompous sometimes, no disrespect of course.

Doesn't this idea of Intelligent Design have roots in some of Isaac Newton's writings?

Please ask the guest about how the Bush administration ignores the reality of scientific evidence for so many things, in favor of the things that the religious right pushes them to support. (evolution, abstinence programs)

The land of "intelligent" design is the province of the lazy.

Please, Leonard, try not to say "do not believe in evolution." Evolution is a proven fact. Belief has nothing to do with it. "Do not agree with" might be a better way to put it.

i forgot to add that another historical viewpoint that might work it's way into why the South in particular, might have trouble in accepting Darwins' Theory of Evolution, there was a great interview on Fresh Air with Drew Gilpin Faust about the culture of death after the Civil War and how that played into the politics there.
The book is called "Republic of Suffering" [link below], and I thought it gave the emotional background as to why some of these people can't come to grips with the science of evolution and leave the whole issue of "meaning" out of it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=
17957712

Just the name "Intelligent Design" seems to be designed to obscure the fact that it is attempting to legitimize myth and sneak religion in schools by cloaking it in seemingly neutral language.

It is quite interesting how the "religious" right uses language to make them seem in the (no pun intended) right. The term "Pro-Life" in the abortion debate comes to mind. It is like they have a need to cloak what they are doing behind seemingly positive sounding words.

i don't know which probablility book you're writing about, but "Out of the Crisis" by Deming, or go to asq.org and start to get informed. a link on amazon and read reviews below: http://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming
/dp/0262541157/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=
books&qid=1213890382&sr=8-1

The people who allowed the stock market to go crazy allow for nodoc [no-doc] to be not used in accounting for a companys' real value, check out the Enron loophole that Congress has been investigating, and countdown with Keith Oberman has been reporting on. My dad once showed me how he could make 1=0 statistically, then right afterwards he told me "Just because I can doesn't mean I should."
The math isn't evil here, the people who took advantage of a country like ours where most people choose not to advance their math skills are the bad parasites.
And I never mentioned a thing about food. Bon appetit!

The math that guides the stock Market? Are you kidding? The market is completely random and is being guided by nothing. Naive mathematicians try to create meaning and order where there is none. Taking an abstraction like Math and applying it to the real world is the real problem; over and over again.

WNYC just had a show on food. The Traditional diets of the world are actually better off than the American 'scientifically' enhanced processed foods. Is this your idea of the advantage of science?

You would be better off reading the Bible or Tolstoy than you would would that Probability book.

David

Intelligent design can't be proven by science since science studies the physical world only. All science can say is that evolution by itself would have been unlikely to arrive at where we are today (as has been done by an experiment that showed it would take 10 million years for a single stomach protein to develop by chance mutation).
But as an idea in theology, it makes sense. If God created the world, evolution is a very elegant and beautiful way to have it develop. Very labor efficient. But it doesn't make sense that God would not guide his creation.
In the Bible, God says to the serpent in the garden '... you shall crawl on your belly and dirt shall you eat ...', and we've seen that snakes have at times develeped hip bones or shoulder bones, and tiny arms, but they never got farther, but stopped (nature channel). This is an example of intelligent design, if by that is meant God's intervention in his physical creation.

one of the problems with ID is that it's statistically defunct, being that in doesn't account for change over time/mutations, so it cannot readily describe even stem cells, cancer, infectious disease or RNAi, much less genetic mutations in general.
When is the scientific community going to start showing how probability, the math that guides the stock market, is the same idea that is used to account for evolution - change over time in a given system - so that the general public will finally put 2 and 2 together*, and realize that holding back genetic studies based on Darwins' Theory of Evolution [which is based on facts], will only make this country l-e-s-s successful in a globalized economy? [*okay, 2 squared if you insist]
If there's one thing many conservatives in this country understand, and the most conservatives of them support, is the concept of greed. They just don't understand that you and I really are on their side..tsk! tsk! [Especially all of you people who claim to be all over six sigma and that.]