Owlish Mutterings

sorry, I had a feeling I did that, the postings were so short in the area, i clicked under the wrong one. damn me!

1) It is possible to believe in a God who created the universe and never directly intervened on Earth afterwards. Such a believer would regect ID.

again, this is one and the same. If god created the universe, then he created the laws under which it operates, whether or not he intervened later or not is irrelevant to the arguement. My last sentence is my arguement that both can be had. But a beleif in God is saying that a higher intelligence/being created this world, and in doing so *had* to create the laws under which it operates. You can either let this be the end of his involvement, and Evolution carries forward from here, OR you can say he had more direct invovlement later in the creation of species, etc. in which you have the popular ID arguement. Again, you advocate some form of ID.

Evolution is a scientific theory based on the idea that given initial conditions (laws of the universe), life evolves and mutates into forms better suited to its current environment.

Both are compatible because Evolution (and all the other science trying to figure out why the universe is like it is) has yet to discover why those laws of the universe are the way they are. In my view, these laws are the reason I (and many others) believe in a god. Though my god has nothing to do with what all these crazy Earth religions call god, and if someone can prove something about these laws that doesn't introduce more questions, I'm willing to change my mind.

So, my real intent on what I wrote is that Evolution and ID are bedfellows depending on what your initial religious beliefs are. If you don't believe in a God, then Evolution is the only part you listen to (and your still trying to figure out where the inital conditions come from, but it ain't god). If you do, then you inherently believe in some form of ID, the extent of which depends on how much you understand how the scientific process works(or is supposed to work).

2) Public schools should teach things that will help children grow up to be useful citizens. [if they should exist at all]. We can disagree on what that entails, but religious indoctrination should never be part of it. Teaching religion is one thing, teaching religion as science is something else.

I agree with this, and have two rebuttals. First, your looking at it from your side of the arguement. ID'ers believe ID is science and thus should be taught as such. Non-ID'ers believe it is not science, but religion and should be taught as religion. Some are aregueing it is b.s. and should not be taught at all. Some ID'ers believe Evolution is complete b.s and should not be taught at all. So really you have four views on the subject(which you can't have in America, so both ID'ers are grouped together and two Non-ID'ers are grouped together).

My point in this one is that the only reason we are having this arguement is because two opposing views don't like each other and both want to force their view on everyone else. Whether or not your right or not seems irrelevant (as has been stated, you can't prove ID wrong until you can prove there is no god. Nietzsche is dead; so I guess god wins? I dunno). But if both sides feel this strongly about this, why aren't they questioning the concept of public schools when its obvious the public has such disagreements in what should be taught. If your an ID'er, then you should be sending your kids to a religious based school, and if your a non-ID'er you should be sending your kids to a non-religious based school. But you can't have this with just one (public) school, so shouldn't you now start advocating dismantling of the public school system in order to send your kids to a school that will teach in accordance with your views?

My second rebuttal is that public schools do very little to teach children how to be useful citizens. They begun to fail at this a long time ago. Not that private schools are necesarily any better at this goal.
What schools DO do is educate children as to the workings, beliefs, ideas, etc. of the world.
Intellectual thought, the process of thinking things through and coming up with your own answers, melding the taught and the self-taught into a way of analyzing the world around them is not taught in school. I think it should be. I don't know how they could do this. I think this comes from a peaked interest in the working of the world around them, but being lectured to by a teacher about how the way things are is not the way to get this accomplished, thats for sure.

Parents, family, society, religion, etc teach children how to be useful citizens. They build on the knowledge that *should* be imparted on them as to civic history, science, anthropology, etc. by their schooling.
They also impart their prejudiced views as to how government should rule (socialism, communism, republicanism, liberalism, libertarianism, fascism, etc), people should behave, etc.
Good parents, families, societies, religion have children who can reject what these sources taught them and come to their own conclusion, whether it is the same or not does not matter. But they should also teach them that those that think differently are not necesarily wrong, they just view the world differently and should be debated, not to prove your point, but so that both sides may learn from eachother somthing about the people and the world around them.

and while I realize none of this will probably make much sense..., its hard to compress thoughts down, but I guess thats why conversations involve more than one iteration of questioning...

Hmm. Ok, yes, it is possible for someone to believe both that God created the universe 6 billion years ago, and that he has been guiding the evolution of life ever since, to lead to us. But that's a religious belief, not a scientifically disprovable theory, and as such has no business being taught as science. Which you somewhat understand when you say: "you can't prove ID wrong until you can prove there is no god."

I really don't care that people who believe the dinosaurs were wiped out in the Great Flood don't want science taught in schools.

And if Intelligent Design is taught in our schools, I want the Truth of His Noodly Holiness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, taught as well.

Owlish wrote: ".... help children grow up to be useful citizens. [if they should exist at all]."

I tend to be in favor of children existing.

Yeah, yeah, the schools, not the kids.

But that's a religious belief, not a scientifically disprovable theory, and as such has no business being taught as science.
right, but religious people believe this as much as they believe in science, so to them it should be taught as science.

thus the folly of public schooling. If 51% of the population wants it taught, they have the power of the vote.

I too would like the Truth of his Noodly Holiness taught as well.

Do you suppose we can get Sunday renamed to NoodlyDay? That would just be cool.

Steve, ID specifically claims that The Designer interfered with evolution at specific points, that evolution could not have produced the results we see if it had proceeded according to natural law. That makes ID completely incompatible with evolutionary theory, and indeed with any sort of science.

The idea that God set the initial conditions - the laws of physics and the various physical constants, and then left things to run - is known (in this context) as Theistic Evolution, and it is completely compatible with evolutionary theory and science in general. But it's not ID, not even remotely, and ID is incompatible with Theistic Evolution as well.

Also, ID is not science. There are specific requirements of scientific theories and ID fulfils none of them. Anyone who claims that ID is science is either ignorant or lying. It really is as simple as that.

(The requirements are: A scientific theory must explain something, it must make predictions, and it must be falsifiable. ID doesn't and isn't.)