Ben Stein Expelled

[Dumar]

i'll second the recommendation for behe's book. it's indeed influenced my opinion on evolution greatly. a wonderful read for any so interested.

[Faille]

Did they ever start teaching about the Great Noodle?

[Millie]

Originally Posted by lendarios

By reading this paragraph is it implied that you equate religion with the settling down of human population.

Then you're misunderstanding what that paragraph said. I do think humanity's settling down and humanity's spirituality went hand in hand. I don't think spirituality was the "only" reason, or "the" reason why humans civilized themselves. But it was a very critical reason. It was one of many important reasons.

I'm sorry if you read something else into my original statement, but honestly, it's just not there. That wasn't my intent at all.

If that was not your intent then i suggest you go over the way you wrote the paragraph, since more that one individual has come to the same conclusion by reading it.

I have gone over what I wrote several times, and I'll stand by my wording. If a handful of people didn't read it properly, that's not my problem. Others seem to have had no issue figuring out what I meant. /shrug

And honestly, can we get over this topic already? Arguing about the semantics of my statement on the role of spirituality in early human civilization is totally moot, because I've already stated what I meant five or six times over now. What more do you want from me? A formal apology that you missed my point the first time around? Drop it already; it's getting very irritating.

[Laladilya]

Obviously, you need to make a Millie-head comic to explain with more clairity ~

[Gudrid]

The middle ground: ID should be allowed as an elective starting in HS. Let students decide if they want to take/believe it or not.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Laladilya

Obviously, you need to make a Millie-head comic to explain with more clairity ~

Ok, but no banners make baby Jesus cry.

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Gudrid

The middle ground: ID should be allowed as an elective starting in HS. Let students decide if they want to take/believe it or not.

Shouldn't it just be tacked onto any 'religion' classes. I mean it's not like it's some kind of complex theory, it's basically just 'yeah god did it.'

[Gudrid]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

Shouldn't it just be tacked onto any 'religion' classes. I mean it's not like it's some kind of complex theory, it's basically just 'yeah god did it.'

Indeed.

[Ronne]

I hope every day that sometime in my lifetime this whole religion thing finally dies off. I really don't want my kids to have to deal with this crap.

[Millie]

I've read Behe's book, btw, and while it's an interesting read, it's a load of crap. Basically, the thesis of his book is "There are certain structures in cellular biology so complex that they couldn't possibly have evolved; they must have been designed by God."

This is basically a fancy way of saying "I don't understand how this works; therefore I'm chalking it up to God." It's a logical fallacy known as the "appeal to ignorance," or "argument from ignorance."

More on that type of fallacy here:

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Behe himself has been debunked hundreds of times, and has purposely avoided peer review from within the scientific community because his work contains no basis in any sort of experimentation, scientific method, etc.:

Michael Behe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Furthermore, he relies on his credentials as a legitimate scientist (before he turned to creationism) to promote his pseudoscientific theories. This is very dangerous, because people will give him the benefit of the doubt simply because he's an actual scientist. "Oh, he's a real scientist; he must be legit!"

If Behe is to be given any credit, it's that he cleverly reworded 19th Century-era appeals to ignorance and made them seem semi-rational. But that's all he's done. He's just taken old BS and packaged it into a fancier box.

[Dirus]

Originally Posted by Gudrid

The middle ground: ID should be allowed as an elective starting in HS. Let students decide if they want to take/believe it or not.

Fine, as long as you dont get a science credit for it. You could teach ID in a mythology, or religion class.

[Pasteton]

several of the so-called impossibly complex structures (such as i believe the bacterial flagellum) have recently been (through science!) demonstrated as syntheses of various molecules that have their own, logical cellular functions that very realistically could have evolved. it boils down to:

abcabcabcabcabc = too complex to have been formed from a, b, c's.

but has now been shown to have predecessors including 'bca' and 'cab' which had their own functional use and therefore survival benefit, and the % chance of abcabcabcabcabc of forming from them is not 'illogically' low.

i'm going to go ahead and make a hypothesis on my part, and that is that proponents of the scientific method will continue to show empirically the claims of the ID side as being false, while the ID side will continue to hop to different 'proofs', since the only support they can ever generate for their argument is lack of scientific data to the contrary.

[Millie]

I also have no problem with ID being taught in schools, on two conditions:

1) It's an elective; kids don't have to take it if they don't want to.
2) It's not classified as a science class; it's either a religion class or a philosophy class or some sort of humanities class, but it's not science.

Mandatory ID classes would be unconstitutional on the grounds that they would force kids to receive religious education. ID is just a fancy word for creationism, which is a religious belief.

Furthermore, I'm really not sure how one would even "teach" intelligent design. First lecture in the first day of class: "God did it." Then what? Where do you even go from there? Do you just sit around attacking various holes in the modern-day interpretation of evolution, all the while pleasantly ignoring the fact that your own belief system has no basis in observed or observable fact? :\ "Evolution is full of holes! Nevermind the fact that our belief is one big hole!"

[Pasteton]

ID should not be offered in school, even as an elective. school is for educational purposes. ID class would run the risk of forming poor thought frameworks and molest his chances of learning how to think critically, that can affect that person later in life. The only framework in which i'd see ID being validly offered is if the class analyzed id critically (ie for its historical significance, the way a valid religion or mythology class is run, or as an issue of morality, which atleast either way is thought provoking rather than just a fairytale)

[Locithon]

Originally Posted by Astrocreep

theories shouldnt be taught as fact is what Ancient is saying.

Wrong. The word theory in science has a different definition than the one your thinking of, theory essentially means fact..or many facts put together. That's why it's called Einstein's THEORY of relativity.