Intelligent Design cannot be taught in schools!

[Deeps]

Evolution can be meausred Intelligent design .... not so much.

In the last 2 weeks the patriot act has been stopped from expanding and now this.

A shift toward the blue state ideas.

Hopeful.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

and of course Bush's ratings surge to balance out that (small) bit of good news

take what you can get I guess eh?

on a related note, Impeach Bush, part XXVI:

http://alternet.org/story/29826/

[gentlemonkey]

I wonder what Adam and Eve would think?

[KarinGarage]

yeah that's good news.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Very good news! Of course it's a bloody secularised version of creationism; they courts have been saying the same thing for the last fifteen years. ID has never passed muster in any respectable referreed journal because it can't stand up to the simple process of scientific falsifiability.

Pity so much energy has to be wasted time and time again to put this animal back in its cage.

[SmoothedShredder]

Whatever... if you asked me if people were intellegently designed, and I had no idea about the present pop culture relation with religon, then I would say yes. My body's fucking cool, it does things even when I'm not paying attention. Even things I don't plan on doing,

The current problem with this subject is with the concept of 'intellegent'. To me it is argued against by prosecuturs who would fall for the belief held by the majority in "christian" ideology (who are proposing the theory). They state that ID is embodied by some sort of form who is the dictator or opporator of all thats intellegent...

What I see as 'intellegent' is the reactonary effect of an organisim to continually strive for

'success' in 'life' with some effort to work against the static, while all the while the system maintains an ultimate state of balance allowing it to a) exist and change. Within this system small variations happen for no other reason than tiny programs which are desingned to run their course, adjusting to variations they encouter along the way, and passing of recorded data to the next offspring for future 'evolution'. The christain definition of life would limit the defintion of 'life' as those organisms who can achieve these small levels of variation or sucess, where I would also include planatary systems, and events that can only be witnessed over the scale represented over geologic time periods as 'life'.

What is important to what I'm trying to say is that I'm not wholly willing to deny the concept of intellgent design, and therefore would think it is of value to be discussed in an educational system. But more importantly is the underlying point to the current manifestation of the theory which is suseptable to the same weekness the in the Christian theology that the design isn't possed by some 'human-like' being who is/has push/ed/ing the buttons, but rather like some gresive (as opposed to regresive) program which is inherently a 'design' due to the complexity/repetition/symetry/ and magnitue of its existance (wherever you want to draw the line). It would then be difficult in my perception to discard this concept as unintellegent.

I mean, it's all a matter of perception... but ultimately I believe there's NO subject matter which does not have a place in a classroom... they're only words people, what do you have to be afraid of...

or one of my older fav's

We belong to the Earth, the Earth does not belong to us. - Chief Seattle

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Thank you for putting it so well. I don't have issue with the innate intelligence of self-organising systems (autopoeisis), but only with the insistence on a theory (typically theological) that mandates that some singular intelligence is directing it all from some removed vantage point. What concerns me especially is the way that people take the kind of power they imagine the universe to be predicated on and project it into the world around them (say, by taking up crusades of every sort).

That is, taking a definition of power that means making people do things whether they would want to or not.

And yes, classrooms are special precisely in that there are places where these sorts of ideas can get worked with. I think that's exactly why there's such a dynamic home-schooling movement in these circles, to keep the kids away from uncomfortable questions.

[SteveThe Owl]

As always, Garry Trudeau nails it right on the head:

www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20051218

[SmoothedShredder]

that mandates that some singular intelligence is directing it all from some removed vantage point.

yeah, I see this myth as the problem too... especially since most religions I've heard of subscribe to this - vantage point/humanesque character at the centre. This is what I see at the centre of the problem of understanding existance from here... there's lots in Deep Ecology which gets around this lack of/humancentric perception.

Edited December 21, 2005 by Guest

[SmoothedShredder]

Oh yeah, cursades stink.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

cursades

. This serendipitously reminds me of the character Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged in book three of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who's so bored and resentful of being immortal that he sets it as his eternal task to personally insult each and every being in the universe.

The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly. It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of a complex sequence of events which had involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he ever dreamt existed, and though his life had now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.

He hadn't been blown up now for five years.

Since he had hardly seen anyone since he and Ford Prefect had parted company four years previously, he hadn't been insulted in all that time either.

Except just once.

It had happened on a spring evening about two years previously.

He was returning to his cave just a little after dusk when he became aware of lights flashing eerily through the clouds. He turned and stared, with hope suddenly clambering through his heart. Rescue. Escape. The castaway's impossible dream - a ship.

And as he watched, as he stared in wonder and excitement, a long silver ship descended through the warm evening air, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.

It alighted gently on the ground, and what little hum it had generated died away, as if lulled by the evening calm.

A ramp extended itself.

Light streamed out.

A tall figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway. It walked down the ramp and stood in front of Arthur.

"You're a jerk, Dent," it said simply.

It was alien, very alien. It had a peculiar alien tallness, a peculiar alien flattened head, peculiar slitty little alien eyes, extravagantly draped golden ropes with a peculiarly alien collar design, and pale grey-green alien skin which had about it that lustrous shine which most grey-green faces can only acquire with plenty of exercise and very expensive soap.

Arthur boggled at it.

It gazed levelly at him.

Arthur's first sensations of hope and trepidation had instantly been overwhelmed by astonishment, and all sorts of thoughts were battling for the use of his vocal chords at this moment.

"Whh ...?" he said.

"Bu ... hu ... uh ..." he added.

"Ru ... ra ... wah ... who?" he managed finally to say and lapsed into a frantic kind of silence. He was feeling the effects of having not said anything to anybody for as long as he could remember.

The alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to be some species of clipboard which he was holding in his thin and spindly alien hand.

"Arthur Dent?" it said.

Arthur nodded helplessly.

"Arthur Philip Dent?" pursued the alien in a kind of efficient yap.

"Er ... er ... yes ... er ... er," confirmed Arthur.

"You're a jerk," repeated the alien, "a complete asshole."

"Er ..."

The creature nodded to itself, made a peculiar alien tick on its clipboard and turned briskly back towards the ship.

"Er ..." said Arthur desperately, "er ..." "Don't give me that!" snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through the hatchway and disappeared into the ship. The ship sealed itself. It started to make a low throbbing hum.

"Er, hey!" shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly towards it.

"Wait a minute!" he called. "What is this? What? Wait a minute!"

The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak to the ground, and hovered briefly. It swept strangely up into the evening sky. It passed up through the clouds, illuminating them briefly, and then was gone, leaving Arthur alone in an immensity of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.

"What?" he screamed. "What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!"

He jumped and danced until his legs trembled, and shouted till his lungs rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no one to hear him or speak to him.

The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each other.

...

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

As always, Garry Trudeau nails it right on the head:

www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20051218

Nice one. Weren't Trudeau and Bush classmates at Yale? Maybe the universe does operate on a principle of complementarity.