I'm still looking for a reason (see. evidence in support of) for us to give ID even passing consideration next to Evolution.
Through 2 pages, which include direct challenges, there has not been one whit of evidence given that supports ID.
Rekna, if you are indeed going for your doctorate in the sciences (I would also like to know what your undergraduate, Grad and current field were) you know that there is a process for scientific consideration. ID does not and has never met these requirements.
If they did the scientific community WOULD happily includ it, but there isn't. ID is not falsible, it relies UTTERLY on faith. There is no evidence to support it, never has been. It relies completely on badmouthing the evolutionary process. It doesn't say (The eye is too complicated to evolve, here is why...) No, it just says the eye is impossible to evolve so God had to do it.
It's utter bunk and until ID even TRIES to be intellectual about this, it belongs in the gutter. I don't want the upcoming generation to have it's head filled with armchair theology when these arguments had been decided over 60 years ago.
http://ydr.com/story/opinion/58516/
Quote:
Shippensburg professors: ‘Let science be science’
PABLO DELIS
Sunday, February 13, 2005
With this letter we want to express our deep concern and opposition to the Dover Area School Board’s decision to add the concept of intelligent design to the biology curriculum.
As professors of biology, we find the teaching of ID in the schools of Pennsylvania as part of the science curriculum to be inappropriate.
The introduction of the ID concept, taught as if it were a valid alternative scientific theory to classic evolutionary theory, will do a monumental disservice to the students in your district.
With this change in the curriculum, instead of science, students are given fringe beliefs and unsubstantiated speculations.
Administrators or teachers enacting this modification of the curriculum are presenting students with misinformation about the content and process of science.
They are eroding the academic preparation of the students and diminishing their chances for a successful professional and academic future.
The concept of intelligent design is not scientific. ID cannot be investigated using the scientific method. ID is not based on objective evidence. ID cannot be falsified through experimentation or realistic predictions. ID is not a competing theory for evolution. ID has not and is not being taught, as a biology concept, in any university with objective scientific standards. ID is not found in any respectable biology textbooks as accepted science. ID is “modern” creationism. Intelligent design is a veiled strategy to teach religion instead of science.
Arguably, ID may be appropriate in a philosophy or comparative theology course but not as part of the science/biology curriculum.
Theological themes, philosophical arguments, common beliefs, moral points of view and ethical controversies are a fitting part of a well-rounded social/cultural curriculum but not part of science education.
Science is based on a strict series of steps widely known as the “scientific method.”
The teachers in your district, as good professionals, know this very well. The scientific method requires falsifiable hypotheses and objective and accepted testing methodology.
The concept of intelligent design implies by logical inference an “intelligent designer,” supreme being, all mighty, deity. These “ideals” are all various versions of God. Science cannot investigate the belief in God because a supernatural force is, by definition, not amenable to experimentation using the scientific method, and, therefore is not science.
We expect our freshman students to arrive at college with the best possible academic background, including a solid understanding of the scientific method and a clear idea of what science is and is not.
In a time of unprecedented discovery and technical advances, from the human genome to nanotechnology, we should not have to revisit once more these misrepresentations in science.
We should not be fighting cultural and scientific wars that were resolved, in legal and experimental grounds, over 60 years ago.
Let science be science.
For the sake of the students, we urge you to reconsider your decision and return to the original scientific standards of biology in your curriculum.
Pablo Delis is an assistant professor in the Shippensburg University biology department. This letter was also signed by 15 other professors in the university’s biology department.
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This is the school I attended for my undergrad and that I am at now at for graduate. My field for both, Geoenvironmental Studies.
These people know what they are talking about, they devoted their lives to studying it. People who advocate ID have made no such commitment.