Intelligent Design Rant... from a Biology Major.
Intelligent Design.... aka ID... claims that it is objective and undiscriminating science. To theists it would seem so... they use "scientific" terminology ("irriducible complexity") and appear scientific on the surface. However, NO major biology scientist has EVER endorsed ID!!! The reason being that it is NOT science and DOES discriminate!! How convienient that as soon as "Creation Science" was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, all of a sudden, ID pops out of the woodwork. The reason ID claims to be "non-discriminating science" is because they say that life is too complex to have evolved through random mutation... i.e.... to them Evolution is wrong... i.e. all life must have been created, purposefully, through an "Intelligent Designer." (That's the exact term they use.) However, they purposefully avoid giving any info as to who or what the "intelligent designer" is... and furthermore... cannot show evidence or falsifiability for their claims. They claim that the idea of an intelligent designer is not discriminatory, but they fail to recognize how it discriminates against atheists and agnostics. (Of course). ID is a dangerous idea in the US today, because, (most likely due to the appalling typical American scientific ignorance) ID can fool many into believing it IS science. Also, it gets some of its appeal from being an "underdog theory." We, Americans have never liked bowing to authority, never have, and probably never will. This also drives the resistance to American's acceptance of ID as fraud.... because we sooooo like conspiracy theories, and ID is full of them. They label all their opponents as "narrow-minded atheists, whose intellects are too narrow to conceive that the universe may have been designed." (In other words... "Darwinists are out to get them.") Evolution's dominance is "apparently" a conspiracy among scientists to shut-up dissenters. (Naturally this appeals to the American rebel spirit.) Sadly, despite the fact that Evolution has become as widely accepted among academics as the "theory" of gravity, according to the book "Why Darwin Matters", in a 2005 poll 42% of Americans hold strict creationist views that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time", a mere 48% of Americans believe in evolution in its entirity. Sad. Even worse, though all GOOD scientists know that a good scientific theory MUST be falsifiable (which ID is not), 64% of Americans said they were "open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution in public schools" and also "more than half or those individuals sid they think evolution should be REPLACED by creationism in biology classrooms. God! [Pun intended] why are so many evolution-believers silent on this issue? In order to have an educated society, we must confront creationism head-on and expose it to EVERYONE as the pseudoscience it is!!! If you're a member of facebook and want to get show your disgust with "Intelligent" Design Creationism, join my group "PAID: People Against Intelligent Design." This is a discussion, so feel free to add your thoughts and experiences. Have any of you had to battle a fundie head-on about evolution? Have you got any thoughts to share?
Tags: Biology, Creationism, Creationists, Evolution, ID, Intelligent Design, Science
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on -
Yeah... maybe... but as I am an American, I am APPALLED by how scientifically illiterate most of my fellow citizens are! When I did a paper on Creationism vs. Evolution I covered the different types and degrees of creationism and discovered something even more embarrassing than Intelligent Design, Flat-Earthers. Okay, so there aren't many of them, but they basically are the extreme of the extreme of creationism and basically don't accept any science from the last 500 years. Wow. O.o Creationist are both amusing and appalling at the same time. I especially found funny what one of them posted on a facebook discussion about evolution. "Why do people believe in it? It is pseudoscience." Then, of course, several informed people tried to explain evolution to him and he said... "Creation is not pseudoscience. Evolution is, however. It does not use any real methods and science." - So, someone tried to explain the scientific method to this nitwit and all he had to say was: "So you are saying that evolution is NOT pseudoscience? My good sir, you are wrong.
It is pseudoscience. Pseudoscience means "fake science," or science that is wrong. You say that creatures evolved, but the book of truth, the Bible, says it did not." (So apparently he thinks the Bible is an accurate source of scientific info.) When someone tried to point out the contradictions in the bible: "The entire book is full of contradictions,for exzample Jesus of Nazrith, Jesus of Gallie, or my favorite, Thou shalt not kill nd yet there were the Crusades, did they not kill my people (witches) did they not kill jews, did they not kill muslims,or even better than that they killed each other all in thew name of your God?! Did Jesus not say to Love thine enemys?! How about that! You So-Called Christians preach Jesus,s words then go nd kill in his name!!! How do you think Jesus feels about that, do you think Yhwhay is pleased? I can tell you He is not pleased what so ever." He went back on the "The Devil's responsible" thing: "There are no contradictions. Anyone who thinks that there are contradictions is deluded by Satan." He's good for a laugh. LOL!
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on -
i hear ya! it's depressing.
and oh, btw, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Galilee isn't a contradiction because Galilee is a region in which Nazareth is a city. Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Galilee is a difference along the lines of Barack of Hawaii and Barack of America. one is simply more specific than the other but they don't contradict.
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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on
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Yeah... I didn't post the thing about contradictions on the facebook discussion board, so some of the things he's saying aren't accurate. But, it's clear that the fundie keeps missing the point.
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Permalink Reply by Laura on -
I share your frustration. It's unbelievable that so many people are so very ignorant.
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Permalink Reply by Dave G on -
Nice rant!
ID is (and was clearly demonstrated as) just Creationism with a new name, and has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It's a sign of how shameful our education system is that most people don't even know what a theory is, much less that to be considered science it has to be falsifiable.
I know some people who insist that while science is a good thing, all scientists are busy manipulating and falsifying data, to serve their Evil Non-God Agenda.
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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Roney on -
We once had a speaker come into our evolution course and tell us all about various bodily parts that could not possibly have evolved due to the fact that they only work as a whole and cannot result in any gain in reproductive success as a mere part. As undergraduates we promptly refuted each of his claims. Apparently he's been making the same old claims for the past ten years or so, each time scientists figure out how something evolved he simply picks a new body part to focus on.
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Permalink Reply by Aric on -
My 7th grade science teacher tried to teach our class about ID and I told her that ID wasn't science because there were no facts to support it unlike evolution. She tried to argue with me but I refuted all of her arguments. Basically, if your "science" can't stand up to the arguments of a 7th grader (although I was quite a bit more intelligent than the average 7th grader) then it isn't really science.
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