I heard on my local NPR station this morning that all three of the Kentucky Republican gubernatorial candidates--Gov. Ernie Fletcher, Ann Northup, and Billy Harper--pledged in a debate last night to support the teaching of "intelligent design" in public school science classes.
The ironic thing about "intelligent design" theory is that it's fraudulent Christianity just as much as it's fraudulent science.
As religion, "intelligent design" is a fraud on the Bible and a fraud on the biblical ideas of God's role in shaping the world. There's good reason for that. "Intelligent design" ideas are shaped much more by the imperative to create a religious response to modern science than they are to the religious vision of Christianity. As a result, there's precious little Christianity in "intelligent design."
As science, "intelligent design" is a fraud on scientific method because it begins with pseudo-religious speculation rather than experimentation. To function as science, "intelligent design" advocates would have to design experiments that isolate the "hand of God" in the big bang, the formation of human eyes, and other manifestations of God's impact in the shaping of creation. If the Christian god did create the universe, this shouldn't be hard to do. After all, the evidence of God's work should be everywhere.
But I'm not holding my breath.
In endorsing "intelligent design," Republican gubernatorial candidates are pledging themselves to both religious and scientific ignorance.
Unfortunately, that's not a surprise.
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Evolution has plenty of problems as well, but I would fill the entire screen with that discussion. I watched the debate last night, and the responses from the candidates have been spun. Anne Northup sounded confused, so I'll leave her out of the discussion. Harper and the Governor, however, did not emphasize that creation should be taught in science classes. They also said that it should be left up to the local school administrators and not be mandated by state government. This sounds like acceptable policy to me. You can't fault a candidate for telling their honest beliefs. At least they didn't give phony answers. I can't remember which candidate, but one discussed teaching creation through philosophy. The conversation moved to virtue and teaching young students how to think for themselves. This seems to be the greater problem. These days, students are taught what to think, and not how to think.
You just throw it out there but dont really explain why intelligent design is against religion. Can you please explain your reasoning?
My emphasis is on the intelligent design ideas concerning the big bang. To the extent that intelligent design accepts a big bang billions of years ago, it gets away from a literal acceptance of the biblical time line. The religious problem here is that the Biblical time line grounds the whole architecture of Christian eschatology. If you get away from Genesis and Eden, you lose the motivation for a concept of original sin. Likewise, losing original sin undercuts Jesus (because Jesus is supposed to be about redeeming original sin). To my mind, intelligent design saves God by giving up the substance of Christianity. Religiosly, it's pretty much of a fraud.
"To the extent that intelligent design accepts a big bang billions of years ago, it gets away from a literal acceptance of the biblical time line."
You seem to be really reaching in order to make your point because few who believe in intelligent design accept a big bang theory. And those who do believe that the biblical timeline uses the term "day" as one of God's days which can be far and away from man's perception of time. So I'm still not seeing how intelligent design is against religion, since the point you are making applies to a very small portion of the christian population.
I don't think that's the case at all. There's a clear distinction between an "old earth" and a "young earth" hypthesis in the intelligent design materials I've seen and the balance of opinion seems to be with an old earth, "big bang" kind of theory. It's the same when discussions of evolution come up in my classes. As for the "length of the day" idea, that seems like an obvious manipulation of the material from the Bible.
I've been around and in religion my whole life, and you are the first to say any of this. To be honest I think you're way off base, and you are not really proving that this is a valid argument or what your sources are. Do you accept this kind of writing from your students?
Does your church preach anything as lame and tepid and "intelligent design?"
I suppose, judging from your answer, that you do accept such work. Attacking a church as lame and tepid isn't exactly the way to prove your point.
You should check out this url from the Discovery Institute, a leading promoter of the Intelligent Design scam--http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=565
In the first paragraph of their statement on whether Intelligent Design postulates a "supernatural creator," they claim that "the scientific theory intelligent design does not address metaphysical and religious questions such as the nature or identity of the designer."
Or
"[T]he concept of design implies nothing about beliefs normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of a Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source."
Thus, my point stands. "Intelligent design" is not articulated in relation to Christian theology. According to the Discovery Institute, a pagan, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, or Muslim could accept "Intelligent design" just as well as a Christian. Accepting intelligent design means giving up most of what is particular to, and vital in, Christianity. That's why intelligent design strikes me as a religious fraud as well as a scientific fraud.
Yet intelligent design acknowledges that there is a creator, which is extremely vital to religion. There are various beliefs as to what happened after that. But the original idea still stands, A theory which acknowledges that there is a creator and may not adhere strictly to a certain doctrine doesn't make it a fraud.
On the other hand: God does not believe in atheists, therefore atheists do not exist.
A "creator" is not vital to religion if it's not a vital creator. Likewise, a creator is not vital to Christianity if it's not the Christian god. A creator that could be the creator from any religion is too limp and tepid to be the creator of any religion in particular. As I said in the top post, intelligent design is a religious fraud as well as a scientific fraud.
Its not a very convincing argument and I wouldn't accept such research from my students.
What's the counter-argument for Intelligent Design correlating with Christianity? It's not just be cause the ID people postulate an "intelligence" in the design of the universe, is it?
Yet intelligent design acknowledges that there is a creator, which is extremely vital to religion.
I don't know of any religion that accepts a belief in any creator.
They tend to be very specific about who the creator is, why their own version is the truth and all other views are heresy.
That's a good way to put it.
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