[quote author=Lord[nK] link=topic=12814.msg128241#msg128241 date=1126820725]
This country was founded on the fact that we wouldn't force our beliefs on anyone in any way what-so-ever.  However patriotic the pledge may be, it shouldn't be recited in schools.

This kind of crap should also be kept out of schools.
[/quote]
Ok, should the pledge still be recited if "under God:" was in it?  If no, why not?

As far as intelligent design, its more likely than not that there is some sort of higher power.  It's extremely more likely that someone/thing (God) @ least laid the framework for earth & the universe.

The universe is infintely more complex than we can comprehend & if we don't follow an "intelligent design" theory that would mean that the universe & all came from something so SIMPLE we cannot imagine it.  & since science says nothing can come from nothing...,yeah you get where I'm going with that.

Word trust, word.

Ha, I like how the scientific people were saying that there is no scientific evidence that there is a intelligent designer, I like to believe that there is no scientific evidence that science really works.  Who knows, it could just be a bunch of coincedences compiled together to form one huge deception.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=12814.msg128244#msg128244 date=1126821996]
Word trust, word.

Ha, I like how the scientific people were saying that there is no scientific evidence that there is a intelligent designer, I like to believe that there is no scientific evidence that science really works. Who knows, it could just be a bunch of coincedences compiled together to form one huge deception.
[/quote]

Science is all theories, meaning not facts. For example, Gravity has never been proven.

Intelligent design is really very silly. Sorry, it just is. I don't mean to offend. Try to explain ID without introducing God/Deity: you can't. Instant & obious sign that it's just bad science. For one, who designed the designer? As for this "extremely more likely" business, please quantify the likeliness, and explain your rationale. Please also state whether you question microevolution, macroevolution, or both.

I refer you to this excellent article: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/wackononsense.pdf.

Please also note that I understand what a theory is, and that I understand that evolution is a theory, and that it is not proven, and that it cannot be proved absolutely. I would be ready to accept radical new evidence that cast doubt on evolution. However, givent the overwhelming body of experimental and fossil evidence supporting evolution, I highly doubt that such new evidence will be found.

I beleive in evolution, at least to an extent. It doesn't disprove the Christian God, and it's already accepted by many Christian churches that the bible has many metaphors and stuff shouldn't be taken exactly.

Besides, intelligent design in itself is not a bad theory. I can readily admit that there are things in nature that are the result of intelligent design. There was a cloned sheep, and there are all sorts of genetically engineered crops.

Man is an intelligent designer.

Applying the intelligent design theory to everything does not really answer any important questions. All it does is introduce a "designer" who will then have to be explained in some other way. Perhaps through evolution. It could be that mankind evolved from basic cells, then performed genetical engineering to improve ourselves. Except, things got out of hand and society plunged back into darkness for thousands of years, forgetting all about our great genetical engineering marvels.

If you accept ID you accept God, if you accept God then you generally accept that God is infinte.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=12820.msg128274#msg128274 date=1126834032]
If you accept ID you accept God, if you accept God then you generally accept that God is infinte.
[/quote]

You do not have to accept any theory as a whole. Genetic engineering is intelligent design. We are the designers of the world. There is no god.

What designed the atoms that make up this world then?  I'm quite sure they didn't just HAPPEN to form on their own.

[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=topic=12820.msg128264#msg128264 date=1126831008]
I beleive in evolution, at least to an extent. It doesn't disprove the Christian God, and it's already accepted by many Christian churches that the bible has many metaphors and stuff shouldn't be taken exactly.
[/quote]
Don't say stuff like "the bible shouldn't be taken exactly" unless you're prepared to back it up.  I'll go to the grave arguing that point.  (Sure, there are a lot of instances where that's true.  But there are others where it is not).

[quote author=Arta[vL] link=topic=12820.msg128259#msg128259 date=1126830601]
Please also state whether you question microevolution, macroevolution, or both.
[/quote]
I question macroevolution.  There is no overwhelming experimental evidence (there CANNOT be such a thing), and the fossil evidence is sketchy at best.  A couple of transitional fossils here and there are certainly not grounds for being dubbed "overwhelming."

I haven't had a chance to read your article, Arta, but I'm sure I will soon.  Meantime, I'd like to suggest an excellent book, Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe.  It presents an ID argument without suggesting a god, although yes -- an ID argument breaks down without some type of eternal being.

Quite briefly, this is my position on ID (it would go better in the SQP forum):

* Life either was designed by an intelligent being or it randomly, spontaneously evolved into being.
Assuming the former:
* An appropriate question to ask is, "What created this being?"
Furthermore, "what created the being that created this being?"
* Eventually, you end in a looping paradox, unless at some point, there existed a being who is eternal.  That is, the being does not experience time, existed before the universe, and will exist after the universe.
* Since time is a property of the universe, but this being does not experience time as we do, it is reasonable to assume that this being does not exist as part of the universe but, since we assume the being created life, the being can interact with the universe.
* If the being exists independently of our universe, it is fruitless to attempt to gauge this being based on our universe's laws.  We would be able to see "miracles" or other "divine intervention."
* If the being does not experience time as it is a property of our universe, it is reasonable to conclude that this being can intervene in our universe at any time it wants.  Given this, the being would be able to know all there exists to know in the universe (have the characteristic of omniscience) as well as be able to physically interact at any place and at any time in the universe (the characteristic of omnipresence).
* Finally, if the being exists independently of our universe and can move about and interact with it at will, it is not a stretch to reason that this being also has the ability to manipulate matter on both micro and macro levels (after all, it did create life) -- the characteristic of omnipotence.

That designer certainly looks like a god to me.

Darwin's theory doesn't have anything to do with God, or even the evolution of humans from apes, or anything of that nature. Why was he brought up?

[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=topic=12820.msg128281#msg128281 date=1126835324]
Darwin's theory doesn't have anything to do with God, or even the evolution of humans from apes, or anything of that nature. Why was he brought up?
[/quote]
Who brought up Darwin?

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=12820.msg128282#msg128282 date=1126836104]
[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=topic=12820.msg128281#msg128281 date=1126835324]
Darwin's theory doesn't have anything to do with God, or even the evolution of humans from apes, or anything of that nature. Why was he brought up?
[/quote]
Who brought up Darwin?
[/quote]

I just skimmed your post, as it wasn't in response to something I said, and I saw the thing about Darwin's Black Box.

[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=topic=12820.msg128284#msg128284 date=1126836926]
I just skimmed your post, as it wasn't in response to something I said, and I saw the thing about Darwin's Black Box.
[/quote]
The book talks about a major pitfall of evolutionary theory, and that is biochemical systems within the body of irreducible complexity.  He calls them "Darwin's Black Box" because, like a function should be a black box to its user, Darwin talked about how organisms evolved, not how the systems composing those organisms did.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=12820.msg128274#msg128274 date=1126834032]
If you accept ID you accept God, if you accept God then you generally accept that God is infinte.
[/quote]

And that's the problem Crazed, not everyone accepts the Christian God to be their God, or believe in relgion thereof.

Intelligent Design refers to the Christian Bible, and as such is using symbols and exercising religion in a public sanction.  I don't think you can argue otherwise.  If so, I'd love to hear it without controdicting yourself, since you already seem to be very enthusiastic that it refers to Christianity anyways.

Hell, if we teach Intelligent Design in public schools, why don't we teach the theories of Judism, Muslim, Budism, and all othe religions which present different theories in how life began.

Evolution is backed up by scientific facts and I do believe evolution is taught in science (biology).  Biology is not a class for relgious theories (though it gets tossed around quite a bit, though never explicitly taught legally).  And that brings me to my next point.  Evolution is a THEORY, and it explicitly states on many modern texts that it is a THEORY, very clearly and explicitly.  A theory is not something that needs to be accepted, but it is definitely something that should be taught as it is a foundation for biology which is backed by tons of logical evidence.  I don't see any evidence for Intelligent Design other than arguable philisophical rhetoric.

In response to the Kansas school board requiring teachers to spend (a significant portion) of class time, lecturing on intelligent design:

www.venganza.org

(read it closely!)

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=12820.msg128279#msg128279 date=1126834884]
If the being exists independently of our universe, it is fruitless to attempt to gauge this being based on our universe's laws.  We would be able to see "miracles" or other "divine intervention."
[/quote]

Why should this not be extended into "it is fruitless to build any theories based on an intelligent designer"? If the theory ends up in this world being driven by miracles, controlled outside our universe, what purpose does it serve us?

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=12820.msg128279#msg128279 date=1126834884]
I question macroevolution.  There is no overwhelming experimental evidence (there CANNOT be such a thing), and the fossil evidence is sketchy at best.  A couple of transitional fossils here and there are certainly not grounds for being dubbed "overwhelming."
[/quote]

The overwhelming experimental evidence is in support of microevolution. Perhaps overwhelming is too strong a word to use to describe the fossil record, but it is most certainly compelling. It is most certainly not 'sketchy'. The article I linked to is excellent, and I recommend that you read it before we continue, otherwise, I'll just end up duplicating parts of it here.

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=12820.msg128279#msg128279 date=1126834884]
I haven't had a chance to read your article, Arta, but I'm sure I will soon.  Meantime, I'd like to suggest an excellent book, Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe.  It presents an ID argument without suggesting a god, although yes -- an ID argument breaks down without some type of eternal being.
[/quote]

This point -- indeed, that book -- is specifically addressed by that article. Suffice it to say that biological complexity is not, in actual fact, irreducible.

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=12820.msg128279#msg128279 date=1126834884]
Quite briefly, this is my position on ID (it would go better in the SQP forum):

* Life either was designed by an intelligent being or it randomly, spontaneously evolved into being.
Assuming the former:
[/quote]

I'm not going to address the rest of your argument, because it is founded on this assertion, and this assertion is deeply erroneous. First, evolution is anything but spontaneous. Second, I do not accept your assumption. It is not rational. It is not supported by any physical evidence.

The grounding base of a logical argument must be something real. A physical, observable phenominon. It need not necessary be measurable (eg, emotion), but it must be observable. If you base logic on logic alone, or on assumptions that are unsupported by observation, you cease to debate about the real world, or real phenomina. I do agree that 'pure logic' debates can be good fun, but they have no place in a debate of a scientific nature.

Your argument also contains numerous other assumptions (assertions cannot begin with the word 'if'!)

[quote]
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as
complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human,
could spring up by chance.
Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random
mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution
does not depend on chance to create organisms,
proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection,
the principal known mechanism of evolution,
harnesses nonrandom change by preserving “desirable”
(adaptive) features and eliminating “undesirable” (nonadaptive)
ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant,
natural selection can push evolution in one direction
and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly
short times.
[/quote]
This argument assumes that there is something from which to select.

[quote]
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution,
but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher
orders of life.
[/quote]
This isn't even the right question to ask, and he address the speciation part.  MICROEVOLUTION IS SPECIATION.  There is NO DEBATE about MICROevolution.  He doesn't address the "higher orders of life" part.  How convenient.

He finally comes to the Irreducible Complexity argument in question 15.  He addresses the suggestion of the bacterial flagellum by referring to simpler flagella.  That's fine.  What about blood clotting?  We have a system of blood clotting that takes something to the order of 12 steps, any of which missing leads to no clot being formed (I could be off on the number, I have to find the book).  The IC argument that is not addressed in this article speaks to this: having any number of the steps involved in the blood clot procedure, but not all or not in the right order, would give no advantage to survival and would not be a causal factor involved in selection.

[quote author=Arta[vL] link=topic=12820.msg128337#msg128337 date=1126868305]
This point -- indeed, that book -- is specifically addressed by that article. Suffice it to say that biological complexity is not, in actual fact, irreducible.
[/quote]
No Arta, you saying so and the guy who wrote the article saying so (it's not even an academic article!) is not sufficient.

Here I thought you might have a conference paper or journal article.  But the file is called "wacko nonsense."  Not very credible.

It was an article in New Scientist. That's credible enough for me. It does have a stupid name.

Higher orders of life?

Irreducible complexity: By simply selecting a different complex thing, you miss the point.I don't know much about blood clotting, but perhaps if you clarified on the steps inolved, I could speculate.

What about the rest of my post? :)

Groknipotence.  Only MyndFyre comes close to grokking me.

First this language I must write to you in is bound by time.  All your words have tense to them.  Until you shed your tense-based language and thinking, you cannot grok.

The universe "without time" is even tensed, but try to imagine it as MyndFyre described.  I created the physical laws which would create the universe as you know it, including your own piddly existences.  If I choose to create you by means of what you call evolution, that's my business too.  After all, they're my laws.  Had I installed different physical laws, you would accept them as readily as you accept them now, and except during discovery you would have no reason to question them.

Why must evolution not be my creation?  You humans amuse me.