Should teaching science in schools be banned in favor of religion?

[Gabu]

ID is a science as it predicts evidence that suggests we did not find ourselves in the universe by chance. It is testable from a couple avenues.

http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm

I'm also looking for a chapter from a guy's PhD dissertation in biology, I believe. I'll tack it on if I can find it later.

I'm afraid that I'm going to have to side with jfern on this one, at least from the angle of holding the opinion that intelligent design is not science due to my belief that it is not, in fact, testable.  That article you posted is very long and impressive-sounding, but I did not detect a whole lot of real meat to it, and it seems to be attacking evolution a lot more than promoting intelligent design.

It doesn't do a very good job of presenting both sides of the argument, either, something I consider absolutely crucial for me to consider it an objective article.  While this obviously does not immediately refute anything, it does put doubt in my mind initially regarding its credibility.  It does make the admission that intelligent design predicts nothing, but really, you can't very well make any sort of argument whatsoever that it does.  I will nonetheless give it credit for that, though.  However, I still got the sense that that article displays the age old problem of having a conclusion in mind and then going to look for evidence - a very unscientific approach.

Taken section by section, here's my analysis of what it has to say in its attempt to show that intelligent design is testable:

Falsifiability

Essentially, stripping away everything else, the article appears to be claiming that Occam's Razor can be used to falsify intelligent design.  This is a completely false claim; Occam's Razor is not a scientific theory and is merely a statement about what Occam felt was common sense: that the simplest theory, or in his words, the theory that requires the least amount of assumptions, is most likely to be the correct one.  One should note the presence of the qualifier "most likely" - Occam's Razor says nothing about what is correct, only what is most likely to be correct.  It offers no proof for this claim, which is, of course, perfectly allowable because, it's not supposed to be something scientists use to verify scientific theories.

Quite frankly, I can't see how intelligent design is falsifiable.  Even if you can show that everything in the entire universe can be produced through a series of mutations, that doesn't prove that it was produced in that fashion.  It may well have been created by some intelligent designer even so.  We really can't know (at least at this point in time), and it's debatable if we can ever know for sure.

The rest of this section is committing one gigantic burden of proof fallacy by making numerous attacks on evolution and those who believe in evolution, ignoring the fact that evolution's merits (or lack thereof) say nothing about intelligent design's merits.

Confirmation

Here's this section in a nutshell:

Blah, blah, blah, Contact, SETI, blah, blah, complexity, intelligent-sounding names.

I'm being facetious, of course, but really, this section says both a ton and extremely little at the same time - somewhat of an argumentum ad vis (argument by quantity), if you will.  The only actual important bit that it offers is the idea that finding something irreducably complex would be confirmation of intelligent design.  What it doesn't mention is whether it's possible to conclusively prove whether or not something is irreducably complex.  In the section on falsifiability, he states that evolution is not falsifiable because it's impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that something is irreducably complex.  Then, in this section, he merrily asserts that finding something irreducably complex will confirm intelligent design.

Unfortunately for the writer, this is a blatant contradiction, and, sadly, he can't have his cake and eat it too.  Either evolution is unfalsifiable, or intelligent design is not confirmable.  He has quite effectively shot himself in the foot without even batting an eyelash.  Asserting these two mutually exclusive ideas to both be true seriously damages his ability to appear to have written a completely objective article.

Regarding which one of the two is true, I personally currently feel that intelligent design is not confirmable, barring the chance of actually finding the creator and having him give you a demonstration.  I say this not simply because I want it to be true, but because I can't see how it's otherwise possible to prove a biological construct to be irreducably complex.  It seems to me that it could very well be the case that we simply don't understand the evolutionary steps that led to the construct.

I will concede that this does imply that evolution is not falsifiable, which is certainly an argument against evolution as a scientific theory, but I am not going to fall into the trap that the writer of this article fell into so many times of considering an argument against evolution to be an argument in favor of intelligent design.  It's not.  The truthfulness of the two theories are entirely detached and unrelated from one another, and his article would be a lot more effective if he purged it of all irrelevant material attempting to disprove evolution.

The rest of this section is essentially a lot of irrelevant mindless chatter that need not be discussed.

Predictability

The article displays multiple paragraphs to essentially just concede the point that intelligent design does not predict anything.  There's no point in attempting to show what it already admits.

Explanatory Power

Yeah, okay, I'll concede this point.  Intelligent design does explain a lot of things if it's true.  I can't really dispute this point.

What I can note, however, is that this quality, while necessary for something to be a scientific theory, is not nearly sufficient for something to be a scientific theory.  Intelligent design is not falsifiable, is not confirmable unless someone can show how you can prove absolutely conclusively that something is irreducably complex, and does not predict anything.  The fact that it would explains things if it were true is, therefore, entirely irrelevant.  All things considered, I maintain that intelligent design is not a scientific theory.

[Gabu]

I would have voted yes for science but I decided not to because of how the topic writer falsely defined science in this topic.  ID and creationism are much more scientific than evolution.

That's a rather bold assertion.

Evolution has been called, by evolutionists, a "fairytale for grown ups.”

Who are these evolutionists who have called it that?

So, yes, I think schools should teach scientific theories like creation or ID instead of religious ones like evolution.  You can teach evolution in a philosophy or comparative religions class, but please do not mix your religion with science anymore.

Define what a scientific theory is.

Evolution and all the theories accompanying it (like the big bang) are not scientific.

Define what "scientific" means.

If the big bang actually happened, then that means that all matter in the universe was once hydrogen or helium.  Explain to me the evolutionary process from hydrogen to human?

John Dibble has covered this one.

The odds against the universe assembling itself out of an explosion are in insurmountable.  A centillion years would not be enough.

Very low odds are not equivalent with impossibility.

It is impossible for even the "simplest" of a lifeform to assemble itself out of inorganic matter.  Even when given the most generous assumptions for a primordial earth, the odds of that happening are much greater than 1 in the number of pica-seconds that have passed since the alleged big bang.

See above.

Take this into consideration.  Today evolutionists witness the "changes" in microscopic bacteria that can reproduce several millions of times in a single year.  Yet, even after millions of generations these bacteria are still the same bacteria they were a hundred million generations ago.  If a "simple" bacterium is still a bacterium after millions of generations.  How do ape-like primates evolve into humans in only about 200,000 generations?

The fact that the vast majority are not observed to evolve does not mean that none are able to.

As I said before, if evolution were true and really happened, we wouldn't exist today.  There simple hasn't been enough time, under evolutionary guidelines, for humans to evolve in only 3 billion years.

No, there hasn't been under enough time under what you perceive as the necessary guidelines - guidelines which you have likely set specifically so you can say that there hasn't been enough time.  It's very easy to reject everything that might prove you wrong and then claim that you're right; sadly, it does not mean that you are.

And the so-called evidences for evolution are not so.

Okay, let's go through examples you've provided.

Radiometric dating doesn't work.  Only dates compliant with the evolutionary theory are accepted.  All other ones are thrown out.

That's a rather bold assertion.  Do you have any proof?

Carbon-14 dating doesn't work.  Coal, oil, and diamonds whenever tested, reveal traceable amounts of C-14.  Even dinosaur bones, when found unfossilized, date between 9,000-30,000 years old, not 65 million or more.

That's because Carbon-14 dating is not meant to work for anything prior to a few thousand years ago.

By the way, Carbon-14 dating is a form of radiometric dating.  Smooth work bolstering your credibility by mentioning it after "radiometric" dating as if it's separate.  Do you even know what radiometric dating is?

All the evidence, scientific, biological, geological, historical, archeological points to a recent creation, not billions of years of random chance.

All of the evidence that you have accepted as valid, which I would wager is not exactly a whole lot.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that some people want to live lives in rebellion against God, so they come up with all sorts of crazy and zany theories to explain away God's direct role in their existence.  God has given us all the free will to do that, but we will all be judged.

Nice job, you've managed to fit the fallacies of both ad hominem and appealing to consequences of a belief in one tight, two-sentence paragraph.  It's a pity that neither tactic refutes any argument.

So mock me all you like (that is all evolutionists can do, because all of their arguments are scientifically invalid) write smart-assed letters to the liberal, God-hating editors of you local newspapers, and post more God-hating rhetoric on web-forums like this one, but remember this:
There is no escaping the judgment and if you deny God for evolution, you will be judged a fool very harshly.

Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin!

Wow, you've now completed the trifecta in this paragraph by using all of ad hominem, appealing to consequences of a belief, and appealing to fear.  You get an A.

[Gabu]

Oh boy, the creationist senatortombstone is back. I don't think I'll bother arguing about it this time, though I'm curious as to how creationism is somehow scientific.

Before I explain, why don't you explain how hydrogen evolves into humans.  Because in order for evolution to be true, we had to have evolve from hydrogen.  If you cannot explain, then admit your beliefs are religous and stop masquerading them as scientific.

Here is another good example of how evolutionist can only berate and not debate their opponents.

Fine then. FUSION. Fuse two hydrogen atoms, you get helium. Fuse a hydrogen atom with helium, you get the next element. Fuse two heliums together or one hydrogen with one of the third element you get the fourth element. And so on and so forth. Just noticed Emsworth said the same thing.

I've tried explaining the whole thing to you before but it's like explaining things to a brick wall.

Don't you know that fusion isn't a scientific theory?

I'd love to know what he thinks a scientific theory is... given that he thinks creationism is scientific, I have a feeling a scientific theory is defined as "one in accordance with the Bible".