Intelligent design belongs in Church not Biology class.

[John Dibble]

I don't see why Intelligent Design, once it develops scientifically sound observation techniques, can't be used in biology to establish that evolution does not follow Darwinian logic.

The problem is how would you go about developing those techniques. Without any proof of existence and involvement of the designer, Intelligent Design doesn't even deserve the status of theory(scientifically speaking, it is a hypothesis, and yes there is a difference). How could you possibly go about proving the existence of such a divine entity? That's pretty much why it's considered pseudoscience - there's no scientific way to show the involvement of a designer.

[John Dibble]

In response to DanielX, i think you're referring to natural selection which doesn't allow for new genetic material to be produced from nothing, but allows for rare, helpful genetic material to become dominant in a population.

Well, there's also mutation - new traits can be introduced through it. Mutants with beneficial mutations will then spread their new gene through the idea of natural selection.

[John Dibble]

However, I must point out one flaw in the arguments of my side.  The stating of the fact that evolution is only a theory.  Well, general relativity is also a theory.  What many us would call theories are actually in science hypothesises.  A hypothesis must go vigorous testing before it can become a theory.  That is all.

I completely agree. The common understanding of the word "theory" is different from the scientific one.

Quite right. Stuff like this goes hypothesis->theory->law. Hypothesis only has a few observations to back it up, but nothing completely solid and little if any study done. Theory has a larger number of observations and study to indicate it is at least partially correct. Law has had enough done to where it can be certain all aspects of it are correct.

There was the law of gravity, but it got bumped down to theory because we don't understand fully it's mechanics and effects in certain situations(moving close to light speed or ultra-high gravity, if I'm not mistaken). So, gravity is only a theory.

[John Dibble]

Quite right. Stuff like this goes hypothesis->theory->law. Hypothesis only has a few observations to back it up, but nothing completely solid and little if any study done. Theory has a larger number of observations and study to indicate it is at least partially correct. Law has had enough done to where it can be certain all aspects of it are correct.

There was the law of gravity, but it got bumped down to theory because we don't understand fully it's mechanics and effects in certain situations(moving close to light speed or ultra-high gravity, if I'm not mistaken). So, gravity is only a theory.

There's no difference between theory and law in that context. It's the THEORY of General Relativity, and Quantum THEORY.

Law is reserved for things we have pretty much a complete understanding of, theory is only partially understood or proven.

[John Dibble]

I think Evolution is real. Man did come from monkeys, and the Democratic Party is proof of that!

You know, that goes both ways.

[John Dibble]

jesus existed but was a magician (yes believe it or not there is proof)

HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY THAT? deny the power of God?

Keep in mind that not everyone believes in God, or at least the same God you do.

[John Dibble]

Intellegent design is just a word for the Genesis version of man's creation without actually saying it so it won't violate seperation of Church and State.

Just correcting your logic here - Intelligent Design makes no mention of any particular God or religion, it simply states that an outside force(probably divine in nature) was the cause for gradual changes in species.

[John Dibble]

HOWEVER, it does need to be taught in either English (as in the Bible is a great work of literature) or History classes.

We did Genesis in my senior year English class. The teacher(who was Christian, btw) asked that we look at it as literature and for people to seperate their beliefs from that when reading it. Man we had a fun debate on that, because since he took it as literature he ripped it a new one and 2/3 of the class argued with him and just couldn't seperate their beliefs from it at all. That and the debate on A Modest Proposal were the two best discussions of the year.

[John Dibble]

HOWEVER, it does need to be taught in either English (as in the Bible is a great work of literature) or History classes.

We did Genesis in my senior year English class. The teacher(who was Christian, btw) asked that we look at it as literature and for people to seperate their beliefs from that when reading it. Man we had a fun debate on that, because since he took it as literature he ripped it a new one and 2/3 of the class argued with him and just couldn't seperate their beliefs from it at all. That and the debate on A Modest Proposal were the two best discussions of the year.

hahaha . . . we did the first 3 chapters of Genesis in one of my college classes.  Our teacher was obsessed with sex, and she went through those chapters pulling out all the sexual induendo's.  While on one had it was amusing to see this old lady look for sex in all the wrong places, she was totally out of line, and heard about it in many of our test papers.

Our teacher was more pointing out inconsistencies or just plain bad writing and whatnot. One thing I loved was he commented on when God started having "The Lord" in front of it(it initially didn't) - "So since when did this guy become a Lord?". Of course what was really great was talking about the seventh day - why did God rest? Was he tired? If he can get tired he must not be all powerful? You can imagine the outrage of some of the students at hearing that, lol.

[John Dibble]

"They contain mats of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria that produce food for use by themselves and other bacteria in the mat, and they also produce oxygen through photosynthesis.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-earliest-evidence-life-billion-years.html#jCp"

That means that COMPLEX life came into existance immediately after a prolonged and massive repeated bombardment of the Earth and the Moon.  That implies a creator.  Not simple life, but incredibly complex life came into existance immediately after a prolonged life-extinguishing bombardment of Earth.

Hold on there cowboy. Quote mining out of context is a bad thing done by intellectually dishonest people. Let's look at the full paragraph:

"Microbial mats still form today in a few places such as the Pilbara. They contain mats of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria that produce food for use by themselves and other bacteria in the mat, and they also produce oxygen through photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are believed to have created the Earth's oxygen around 2.4 billion years ago."

You've completely changed the context of the quote by removing those two sentences. The sentence you quoted is referring to the mats that exist today, not the ones from 3.5-3.7 billion years ago. Nowhere in the article does it state when photosynthesis is suspected to have evolved, only that cyanobacteria would have been doing it by 2.4 billion years ago. All the article states is that there may have been life, with no note of the degree of complexity, at 3.5-3.7 billion years ago.

[John Dibble]

I don't think you really read the articles in question, either that or you have no understanding of what they are saying. IF life formed multiple times and was wiped out multiple times - which is a big if that the articles you link do not conclusively state as having occured - it only implies that primitive life forms more easily that we might have thought. It in no way implies an intelligent creator. None of the articles you link do.

Additionally, the articles do not state that later impacts (those happening after 3.8 billion years ago) were great enough to vaporize the oceans or turn the Earth's crust molten. (you wouldn't be able to detect evidence of molten droplets if the entire crust was molten) They also do not state that life during those periods got wiped out.

You're trying to fit a square peg through a round hole - I suggest you give up, as you are only displaying your own ineptitude.

[John Dibble]

I am going to throw Darwin's Doubt onto the pile. I listened to the author on the Michael Medved show and found him to be other than in the kook category. His gig in substantial part is that the host of the new phylums that popped out in the Precambrian age in an instant of geologic time, with exponentially more complexity (90 cell types rather than six, complex eye structures, etc), cannot be explained by normal Darwinian mutation mechanisms. The changes were just too drastic and too quick and seem, well, to have been as if "designed."  I am probably going to get the book.

The moral of the story to me here is that the gaps in the theory, and what we don't know, do in fact need to be discussed, as opposed to it all being treated as holy writ - just like the global warming issue. Awareness of ignorance is the first step to knowledge, and that goes for the intellectual elite as well.

Stephen C Meyer the author is a Christian advocate of intelligent design and indeed is one it's most vociferous as one of the founding fathers of you will of the 'Intelligent Design' movement. He has been flogging the same 'teach the controversy' bull for the past two decades.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/07/doubting-stephen-meyers-darwins-doubt.html

Whatever. Let's teach the "unresolved" issues in the theory however. And yes, it would be good to get a response from the evolutionary biology experts about the various gap assertions. And no, having gaps does not lead to the conclusion that some mastermind preprogrammed it. There isn't any evidence for that. If a mastermind did it, it is probably more likely to be space aliens than God to my little skeptical un-mastermind, but I digress.

And yet that is exactly the conclusion that Meyer and his ilk are pushing. Their logic is entirely "you can't explain this, therefore design (and therefore God, but we won't say that so it doesn't look like we're pushing religion)" - it's obviously fallacious, but they don't care.

[John Dibble]

While I think most of us here on atlas can understand intelligent design, I don't think many high school students will be able to fully grasp the difference between it and the God of Christianity which is what most of them have been exposed to their whole lives. In college courses though, it's almost impossible not to teach it. There's still too much randomness in our universe to prove intelligent design though. A more simple approach would be William Paley's watch maker theory.

Actually, it's quite possible not to teach it in college courses which is why most of them don't. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory - it proposes no mechanism by which the designer works and makes no testable claims, so there's no way to gather scientific evidence for it. It simply posits "complexity therefore design" with nothing to back it up.

[John Dibble]

While I think most of us here on atlas can understand intelligent design, I don't think many high school students will be able to fully grasp the difference between it and the God of Christianity which is what most of them have been exposed to their whole lives. In college courses though, it's almost impossible not to teach it. There's still too much randomness in our universe to prove intelligent design though. A more simple approach would be William Paley's watch maker theory.

Actually, it's quite possible not to teach it in college courses which is why most of them don't. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory - it proposes no mechanism by which the designer works and makes no testable claims, so there's no way to gather scientific evidence for it. It simply posits "complexity therefore design" with nothing to back it up.

My degree is in religion. In our religion and science course it was almost impossible not to talk about intelligent design. We spent two weeks on it.

I don't think that could be classified as an actual science course, and most science courses would not involve discussion about intelligent design as part of their standard curriculum.

[John Dibble]

Protein and DNA are not the same thing. You haven't the faintest clue what you are talking about. You are scientifically illiterate and not even remotely qualified to talk about the implications of scientific papers.

[John Dibble]

Behe's Challenge: Evolve Me a Cilium
   or Chaos Theory Me a Cillium
     ---
   so far zilch for smart humans
   so far zilch for chaos theory
   so far zilch for evolution theory
     zilch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella