Research ID Wiki Opens

Joshin' Joe Campana

The intelligent design community is in a position where we are setting the agenda, now all we have to do is to continuing bringing more meat to the table.

Oh, so that stuff is "meat"? I guess that would explain the blood. But not the smell.

Who is going to step in and provide that measured, mature, and non-rhetorical voice for ID?

Maybe one of the "honest" geniuses in Cornell's IDEA club.

LOL!!!!!!

Anti-ID groups are now parasitical on the claims of ID for their existence.

Lots of text at this site, but no content.

The List of Fundamental Facts is empty.

The list of academic courses teaching ID lists "Lehigh University, Professor Behe, no ID courses."

What's the point? Oh, ID is empty. Point well made!

Unwittingly, they have become pawns and foils for ID theorists and researchers.

Research ID? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Research ID? Isn't that an oxymoron?

— Shalini BBWAD

The cooperation of ID-theoretics, ID-heuristics, and ID-synergistics will be of great benefit to the applied sciences and technological development in the ID-Paradigmatic. Dembski's informational formulations are being used as a metric for robotics and artificial intelligence. More use of ID-paradigmatic research products in technological development is to be expected. The explicit connection in ID-theoretics between biological technologies and human technologies logically leads ID researchers into the field of biomimetics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

— Wiki article on 'ID-technics'

"I also don't think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that's comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it's doable, but that's for them to prove...No product is ready for competition in the educational world." -- Phillip Johnson http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=10&article=evolution

"Intelligent Design itself has no content" -- George Gilder http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/07/27/the_evolution_of_george_gilder?mode=PF

"Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don't have such a theory right now, and that's a problem. Without a theory, it's very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity'-but, as yet, no general theory of biological design." --- Paul Nelson Paul Nelson, Touchstone Magazine 7/8 (2004): pp 64 - 65.

ID's contribution to 'science' seems to be the invention of new meaningless terms while avoiding doing the obvious hard work.

Luskin announced Campana as an ID theorist. Anyone has any idea what makes Campana qualified in this area? Any publications? Any contributions?

Where's the beef?

Luskin announced Campana as an ID theorist. Anyone has any idea what makes Campana qualified in this area? Any publications? Any contributions?

They could start by giving an operational definition of Information. All the ID advocates have given so far are analogies and non-measurable definitions.

Heh, try comparing entries in wikipedia to those in researchID. I just did the entry for J.P. Moreland and found some striking similarities to each other.

Wikipedia:
"Dr. Moreland is a prolific author, lecturer, and debater on a wide range of philosophical, religious, and social issues. He is best known for his contributions to contemporary philosophical apologetics, his critiques of materialism and naturalism, and his defense of Christian theism. Moreland also serves as fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture which is considered the hub of the intelligent design movement."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Moreland

ResearchID:
"Dr. Moreland is a prolific author, lecturer, and debater on a wide range of philosophical, religious, and social issues. He is known for his contributions to contemporary philosophical apologetics, his critiques of materialism and naturalism, and his defense of Christian theism."
http://www.researchintelligentdesign.org/wiki/Biography:J.P._Moreland

I am curious if anybody else can dig up other ripped passages.

[From skimming the website, it appears what they are researching is new ways to string lots of sciency-sounding words together in a way which fills lots of space yet, when read closely, does not in fact convey any actual information.]

An easy way to fool the gullible. Make it sound nice and 'sciencey.'

Check the David Hume entry.

Wikipedia:
"David Hume (April 26, 1711 --- August 25, 1776)[1] was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian who is one of the most important figures of Western philosophy and of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form of skepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of naturalism has no less importance in Hume's philosophy. Hume scholarship has tended to oscillate over time between those who emphasize the skeptical side of Hume (such as the logical positivists), and those who emphasize the naturalist side (such as Don Garrett, Norman Kemp Smith, Kerri Skinner, Barry Stroud, and Galen Strawson).

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, and Joseph Butler."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

ResearchID:
"David Hume (April 26, 1711 --- August 25, 1776*) was a Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume was one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, along with friends Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Many regard Hume as the third and most radical of the so-called British Empiricists, after the English John Locke and the Anglo-Irish George Berkeley.

Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form of skepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of naturalism has no less importance in Hume's philosophy.

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, and Joseph Butler."
http://www.researchintelligentdesign.org/wiki/Biography:David_Hume

Another interesting entry is the Intelligent Design Timeline. Especially interesting is that bishop Paley gets no mention. There is a studious effort to avoid any hint of association of religion with belief that the subtlety and complexity of the natural world reflects an intelligent design. Just who are they kidding!

Hm. I tried to post something here but triggered the "I have enabled a feature that allows your comments to be held for approval the first time you post a comment" filter. I didn't do anything wrong, did I?

In their defense --- at the end of each Featured Research section they have a link to criticisms. For example, under Irreducible Complexity they have a link to "A Darwinian explanation of the blood clotting cascade" by Kenneth Miller. I am cautiously optimistic that they are at least willing to acknowledge critiscim.

In Humanism, Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller states, "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design..."

No, it's not a serious wiki, at least not yet. Look at the entry for "Santorum Amendment." They claim the vote on passage of the No Child Left Behind Act as the vote on the amendment. There are other problems as well, and the entry is barely more than two sentences.

Well hey,

Here's a wiki for Intelligent Design, eh? Then sign up, log in, and put the facts in. Who wants to mention the 1987 cut-and-paste in Pandas? That seems to be missing in the timeline... if they keep removing mention of that then we can let that be known to everyone.

A principle focus of this effort to escape the rhetoric is developing a fulcrum of discussion, so that all sides can speak the same language, instead of talking past each other as participants in debates about ID tend to do.

The cooperation of ID-theoretics, ID-heuristics, and ID-synergistics will be of great benefit to the applied sciences and technological development in the ID-Paradigmatic.

One form that this vapid nonsense is taking in creationist circles is reminiscent of Steve Fuller's baloney: that belief in a universe-designing deity like the Christian God is allegedly a necessary component of the "great minds" and their discoveries which made Western culture and science so knee-slappingly awesome.

Look for this pseudo-sociological whiff of white supremacy to work its way into creationist-approved textbooks in biology and physics, if it hasn't already.

This garbage, of course, ties right in with Lyin' Slaveador Cordova's neverending shpeel about how all those amazing functions of "junk DNA" would have been found oh-so-much-sooner if only the world's scientists had asked themselves, "What would mysterious alien beings with undefined powers and goals have done when creating the genome of chimpanzees???"

The cooperation of ID-theoretics, ID-heuristics, and ID-synergistics will be of great benefit to the applied sciences and technological development in the ID-Paradigmatic.

Hmm. I wonder if the patents have been filed yet.

Instead of ResearchID.org, the nexus for researching intelligent design. they should have started their page with

Wellcome to SimScience 4

SimScience 4 Deluxe Edition is available now! Get SimScience 4 and the ID/creationism expansion pack in one convenient package. Create, grow, and breathe life into your ideal scientific environment. Fight disasters both realistic and fantastic. Govern your own virtual world as you see fit with SimScience 4.

I can see that it will be easy to simply say that any known ID critic is off-limits on the site

Or they can work it like they do the Cornell Creationists web site, which is that you can debate any topic ad infinitum as long as you never ever ask the moderators why (1) they refuse to answer certain direct questions about the sociopathology of the leading promoters of "intelligent design" and/or (2) why habitual and proven liars like Sal Cordova and their false misleading scripts are tolerated in a venue where only "civilized" discourse is allegedly permitted.

My experience is that creationists are happy to have the ID "critics" around as they don't insist on direct, honest answers to the most obvious questions. On the other hand, they love it when folks come in to discuss the "science" which they claim underlies "irreducible complexity" and other vapid ID slogans. They love it because it provides the appearance of substance and scientific controversy.

The genuine controversy -- their utter dishonesty, corrupt behavior and wholesale bigotry -- they loathe discussing those aspects of the ID movement.

Anti-ID groups are now parasitical on the claims of ID for their existence. Unwittingly, they have become pawns and foils for ID theorists and researchers. The intelligent design community is in a position where we are setting the agenda, now all we have to do is to continuing bringing more meat to the table.

As I have already stated during the Intelligent Design explained: Part 2 random search discussion:

Under researchintelligentdesign.org
you will only find a vacuum filled with emptiness

However, for me the issue provides a good opportunity to practice KwickXML formatting.

This non-polemical environment can allow for some accumulation of some of the "critical mass" that ID theorists mention when they speak of scientific research into a new idea.

...we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions...

Publisher: Gale Group, Inc. Type: Thesaurus Categories: Advertising, Marketing & PR Description: The Gale Marketing thesaurus is a subset of the master Gale Business thesaurus in the narrower domain of marketing. This includes terms related to sales, consumers, merchandizing, distribution, packaging, buying and selling, product development and introduction, and types of retailers. Marketing terms pertaining to specific types of products or industries are included. This category doesn't include terms dealing with advertising, since there is a distinct Advertising category.

Excellent.
I've noticed the one thing "ID" doesn't seem to stand for is 'Internal Debate'. When will be treated to a rousing internal debate on the timing and sequence of organisms on the planet? Common descent? The age of the universe? Testable models to evaluate the evolvability of IC systems? A workable definition of IC that doesn't presume unevolvability in its criteria?

When are the ID'ers going to take off the 'kid gloves' with each other and have at it to chop the crap and crud off their pet theories? If they don't like hearing it from ID-critics, exactly where are they getting the necessary critical analysis of their work?

Where's the ID critique of Biotic Messenger Theory? Denton's deistic front-loading? Behe's UR-organism? Dembski's 'No Free Lunch' mischaracterization? There's a lot of junk put out there but I'm not seeing a lot of internal debate within the 'big tent' over the many incompatible ideas. Maybe we should call it the 'big marshmallow' instead; a soft, cushy place where you can fold in a lot of unrelated objects and not worry about them colliding.

This was discussed a while ago at the Right wing/Christian/ID blog Sounding the Trumpet. (An even more amateurish companion to the Cornell IDEA Club's The Design Paradigm.) I mentioned at the time that there was a "Legal" section at ResearchID.org which lacked an entry for the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision.

I see this is still the case. Maybe one of you could contribute a page to the cause. Bonus points if you use the word "Waterloo".

Slapstick. This is just the 21st century's Keystone Kops.

Cognitive-Theoretic program Christopher Langan has proposed a Cognitive-Theoretic Model of cosmology and Reality Theory that has the potential of developing a unique ID research program. * For more information on the Cognitive-Theoretic program, refer to Langan's paper on his model in PCID, "The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory"

The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory by Christopher Michael Langan Abstract---Inasmuch as science is observational or perceptual in nature, the goal of providing a scientific model and mechanism for the evolution of complex systems ultimately requires a supporting theory of reality of which perception itself is the model (or theory-to-universe mapping). Where information is the abstract currency of perception, such a theory must incorporate the theory of information while extending the information concept to incorporate reflexive self-processing in order to achieve an intrinsic (self-contained) description of reality. This extension is associated with a limiting formulation of model theory identifying mental and physical reality, resulting in a reflexively self-generating, self-modeling theory of reality identical to its universe on the syntactic level. By the nature of its derivation, this theory, the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, can be regarded as a supertautological reality-theoretic extension of logic. Uniting the theory of reality with an advanced form of computational language theory, the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self- Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and self-execution (reflexive read-write functionality). SCSPL reality embodies a dual-aspect monism consisting of infocognition, self-transducing information residing in self-recognizing SCSPL elements called syntactic operators. The CTMU identifies itself with the structure of these operators and thus with the distributive syntax of its self-modeling SCSPL universe, including the reflexive grammar by which the universe refines itself from unbound telesis or UBT, a primordial realm of infocognitive potential free of informational constraint. Under the guidance of a limiting (intrinsic) form of anthropic principle called the Telic Principle, SCSPL evolves by telic recursion, jointly configuring syntax and state while maximizing a generalized self-selection parameter and adjusting on the fly to freely-changing internal conditions. SCSPL relates space, time and object by means of conspansive duality and conspansion, an SCSPL-grammatical process featuring an alternation between dual phases of existence associated with design and actualization and related to the familiar wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics. By distributing the design phase of reality over the actualization phase, conspansive spacetime also provides a distributed mechanism for Intelligent Design, adjoining to the restrictive principle of natural selection a basic means of generating information and complexity. Addressing physical evolution on not only the biological but cosmic level, the CTMU addresses the most evident deficiencies and paradoxes associated with conventional discrete and continuum models of reality, including temporal directionality and accelerating cosmic expansion, while preserving virtually all of the major benefits of current scientific and mathematical paradigms.

They seem to have a huge copyleft problem.

Wikipedia says on copyleft:
"The license Wikipedia uses grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom.

To fulfill the above goals, the text contained in Wikipedia is licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The full text of this license is at Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License."

That sound okay doesn't it? The ResearchID Hume discussion page says:
"Also, I just read the GNU Free Document License, under which this Hume bio is covered at Wikipedia.org. It looks like we're Ok to copy and use the text, because our site is covered by the same license. But, we should cite the name and web address of the document source. I have no problem with consulting their info, I just wanted to check the license and make sure we didn't get caught legally "with our pants down" if we were copying it."

But in Wikipedias copy of GFDL it says on 4 Modifications:
"# A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
# B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement."

And it goes on to list 13 more requirements, most of which ResearchID doesn't seem to fulfill on this wiki page alone.

Perhaps one could bury ResearchID under a lawsuit if one wishes. Or at least continue to point out how lying and unskilled their 'research' is.

I've noticed the one thing "ID" doesn't seem to stand for is 'Internal Debate'. When will be treated to a rousing internal debate on the timing and sequence of organisms on the planet? Common descent?

Where's the ID critique of Biotic Messenger Theory? Denton's deistic front-loading? Behe's UR-organism? Dembski's 'No Free Lunch' mischaracterization? There's a lot of junk put out there but I'm not seeing a lot of internal debate within the 'big tent' over the many incompatible ideas.

On SPSCL:
"By distributing the design phase of reality over the actualization phase, conspansive spacetime also provides a distributed mechanism for Intelligent Design"

That breaks both energy conservation and the no hidden variables requirement in local descriptions in quantum mechanics. Thank you for playing. Please try again.

What we'd need, of course, is for some of the well-heeled contributors to ID's PR machine to put up some grant money, if they were really going to get serious about ID. I wish they would, since I doubt that any IDist (like Behe) would be much of a loss to non-biological science, and if they were harmlessly trying to come up with evidence for ID they'd have less time to act as shills for religious indoctrination in the schools.

But of course Ahmanson and the rest aren't going to waste money researching what they know to be religious apologetics. And we have yet to see IDists do research on their own, other than trying to fit the data into spaces that won't allow for evolution.

And if they're going to ban "the polemical", they've just admitted that they've set up another AIG or ICR, with prior commitments to non-science agendas deciding whether or not a person can "do ID science". Thus they aren't going to allow skeptics, as well as we can determine, so that any discussions are likely to be worthless. Of course, as there is no rigor in its core ("we default to God as the Cause"), they can't even begin to accept scientific criticism.

They go through the motions which surround science, but not the scientific processes. It appears that they really do think that science consists in writing papers, conforming the data to preset opinions, and praising their particular "theory". Why do they suppose that it all looks like a theological endeavor?

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Ironically, Campana is right, that we are becoming "pawns and foils" for ID scammers, when we constantly obssess over the designer's identity, how ID "is" creationism, and missing so many opportunities to show how ID is a scam. And on close inspection, one that provides no comfort to YECs other than "don't ask, don't tell."

Thanks to anaencephalic idiots like the IDEA club and the weird Coulter woman, by the time I graduate from Cornell my degree is gonna be worthless :(

What we'd need, of course, is for some of the well-heeled contributors to ID's PR machine to put up some grant money, if they were really going to get serious about ID. I wish they would, since I doubt that any IDist (like Behe) would be much of a loss to non-biological science, and if they were harmlessly trying to come up with evidence for ID they'd have less time to act as shills for religious indoctrination in the schools. But of course Ahmanson and the rest aren't going to waste money researching what they know to be religious apologetics. And we have yet to see IDists do research on their own, other than trying to fit the data into spaces that won't allow for evolution.

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

Erm... maybe I just started to check out those nutcases because you guys made it comically appealing, but ... they make no friggin' sense, I got a headache!!! I just came back from Research ID. I went to their silly webpage to see if they had any intentions of making sensible research and they aren't even trying. I find it funny that they go: "Option 1: Treat the ID hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis that is relevantly analogous to other scientific hypotheses, such as the big bang theory, the theory of continental drift, or Darwinian evolution.

Option 2: Instead of treating the ID hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis, treat it as what I call a metascientific hypothesis that can influence the framework from within which we do science in a given domain.

I will reject option #1 in favor of option #2, at least insofar as we require that scientific explanations provide a detailed, scientifically explicable explanation of natural phenomena."

So I will now ride my pink unicorn back to my bench, just to tell my cultures that from now on I'm doing metascience... I'll just ask my e. coli's what's the structure of my protein and then listen to the voices in my head, no NMR necessary.

Money is not the problem: Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker Laurie Goodstein, NY Times, December 4, 2005

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

— wamba

Option 1: Treat the ID hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis that is relevantly analogous to other scientific hypotheses, such as the big bang theory, the theory of continental drift, or Darwinian evolution. Option 2: Instead of treating the ID hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis, treat it as what I call a metascientific hypothesis that can influence the framework from within which we do science in a given domain.

From Dr. Elsberry's write-up, referenced in his recent URL: Rob Koons, ID advocate and conference organizer, said that for ID to become a progressive research program, it would have to do more than criticize "Darwinism".

And as I recall, Koons then went on to criticize 'Darwinism' and evolutionary theories while attempting to make a case for design. It was at that point I lost a great deal of respect for Koons as a philosopher (a least one with some ability for self-evaluation) and began to think of him as a "design cheerleader". Maybe he's better at his job in his main field but it's clear that biology and philosophy of biology is not his bag.

They appear to have made several breakthroughs in this field, among them the invention of the terms "ID-programmatics", "ID-innovation detection" and "ID-technics".

From Dr. Elsberry's write-up, referenced in his recent URL: Rob Koons, ID advocate and conference organizer, said that for ID to become a progressive research program, it would have to do more than criticize "Darwinism".

I think I should become an ID researcher, its a cushy job, you get to make it up as you go.

For my first paper I will solve the whole mechanism issue:
"Systematic induced mutation and the search for divine radiance."

I'll argue that radiation which is already know to induce mutation, could be used to induce specific controlled mutations when applied precisely. This divine radiance directs the true course of evolution.

Then depending on my mood I can argue that this divine radiation comes from:

a) Space aliens and there diabolical plans for goats.
b) The Sun, which explains why the first religions focused on sun-worship, and our need to re-evaluate these traditional beliefs.
c) The center of our galaxy, and how the future of space exploration is essential in bringing us closer to God. Also I could discuss the polytheistic ramifications of multiple galaxies, and our need to prepare for the inevitable intergalactic holy war.
d) Dark matter, and how this unexplained phenomenon which constitutes the greater potion of our universe is actually the presence of God himself.
e) A reflection and refraction of energy from the creation of the universe itself, and how the phrase "let the be light" at the beginning of Genesis is a direct reference to this divine radiance.

Wow, I'm probably the most successful ID theorist yet.
Book deals and lecture circuit here I come.

Whoops. That should have been under my name, obviously. Not that it matters much.

Re "e) A reflection and refraction of energy from the creation of the universe itself, and how the phrase "let the be light" at the beginning of Genesis is a direct reference to this divine radiance."

Actually, "let there be light" is just a reflection of that point in time in which atoms formed leaving the universe transparent since light could then get through without being deflected, refracted, refried, or discombombulated while in route.

Wow, I'm probably the most successful ID theorist yet.

Just remember to substitute phrases like "divine radiance" for something like "the radiance explosion", and you're on yer way to the top, kid.

I've noticed the one thing "ID" doesn't seem to stand for is 'Internal Debate'. When will be treated to a rousing internal debate on the timing and sequence of organisms on the planet? Common descent?

Well, there was that rousing debate about common descent on UD not long ago.

The one thing "ID" doesn't seem to stand for is 'Internal Debate'. When will be treated to a rousing internal debate on the timing and sequence of organisms on the planet? Common descent? Biotic Messenger Theory? Denton's deistic front-loading? Behe's UR-organism? Dembski's 'No Free Lunch' mischaracterization? There's a lot of junk put out there but I'm not seeing a lot of internal debate within the 'big tent' over the many incompatible ideas.

Thank you!!! I've been getting very tired of being nearly the only one here or at Talk.Origins making such points.

ID is not only not suitable for public schools, it is unsuitable for any school where fair play, truth, and plain dealing are considered virtues.

Well, I think what people are really trying to express is that churches are a more appropriate venue for ID. This has nothing to do with whether or not actually teaching ID in churches good idea; it's just observing, if you are going to teach it, this would the correct venue. People have a constitutional right to teach bad theology in private churches if they so desire. They just don't have the right to teach bad science in public schools.

They just don't have the right to teach bad science in public schools.

In conclusion: Personally, I find it highly unlikely that my advice is actually going to be put into effect. The fact that I'm here means that I'm an optimist about these kinds of things. But I think that there are lots of reasons why they might not. I strongly suspect, despite what some speakers have said, that there are a priori but unspoken commitments that people here are just not willing to violate. In particular, I think there are a lot of people here who are unwilling to accept the fundamental philosophical commitment science must make to intelligible causal factors (theological or otherwise). To do so would open a big can of theological worms that a lot of people don't want to get into, and I understand why not. And lastly, I don't have a lot of faith, to use a loaded word, that people who take ID theory seriously are actually going to be able to generate novel, testable hypotheses based on their beliefs. However, I'm struggling to remain open-minded, and I welcome any efforts anyone wants to produce along these lines.

Another thing that annoys me is when people say, "Go teach ID in Sunday school." While there's not much we can do legally about it outside of public school, as you suggest, it is just as morally wrong to teach ID ("unanswered", as IDers want) anywhere. Now that the "common ancestry" of ID and classic creationism is well-established, the secret that needs to be exposed is that ID is a virtual admission (and an occasional public admission) that the timelines and "independent abiogenesis" events favored by most people sympathetic to ID are simply unsupported, and that science is correct on these issues at least.

I've been waiting for someone to explicitly note that the content of the second quoted paragraph is inconsistent with the stated desiderata of the first quoted paragraph, as it it is itself quite polemical in tone.

They just don't have the right to teach bad science in public schools.

— Lenny

Sure they do --- there's no law against it. ;>

Actually I believe there are state laws against it in several places

ID is not only not suitable for public schools, it is unsuitable for any school where fair play, truth, and plain dealing are considered virtues.

Peters says neither intelligent design nor scientific creationism have fertile research programs that can match Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian models of evolution. "The Darwinian models have led to progressive research and new knowledge," he says. "They also have proven themselves fertile for predicting what we would find in the fossil record, and for predicting random variation in genes that have led indirectly to research on new medicines. The Lutheran understanding of God's creation leads us to commit ourselves to the best science. ... Nothing less than hard-earned empirical truths about the natural world will measure up."

hmm, interesting. Which laws in which states did you have in mind? I can't recall seeing a discussion about laws regarding "bad science" before. religion in public school, of course, but not "bad science" per se. Please, if you could be more specific i sure would like to see this detailed a bit more.

— Sir Jam of Toe

I've been waiting for someone to explicitly note that the content of the second quoted paragraph is inconsistent with the stated desiderata of the first quoted paragraph, as it it is itself quite polemical in tone.

Bad science, of course, would fail that requirement.

Actually I believe there are state laws against it in several places.

hmm, i must have missed the discussion of standards on PT. If you recall when it was, or find the direct link, post it?

— Toe Jam, Esq.

In thinking about state science standards, couldn't somebody accuse me of teaching bad science when i do a lecture on lamarckism, even if it is in a historical context within a science class?

I am thinking of the recently proposed law in . . . Wisconsin, IIRC . . . that would allow only peer-reviewed science in classrooms. And IIRC it had several imitators in other states.

None of them went anywhere.

Alann's satire prompts a question I've wondered about for a long time. One of the key notions in neoplatonism is that of emanation. Does anyone know if this word was selected as the original name for radon as a joke based on this previous usage? (Wouldn't it be funny if radon were divine? :))

As long as you're not presenting it as a valid alternative to "Darwinism" that's supported by the evidence, but instead teaching the general idea as part of the lesson in the history of science and evolution I don't think anybody would have a reasonable ground to stand on with such an accusation, and furthermore if the information you present is simply a factual description, context shouldn't matter.

so technically, science standards are not laws, yes?

Under researchintelligentdesign.org you will only find a vacuum filled with emptiness

ID-synergistics From ResearchID.org, a nexus for researching Intelligent Design All divisions of the ID-paradigmatic have the potential of conceptually reseeding and refeeding themselves and each other. Informational and biological advances in our own knowledge and technology brought about by ID will enhance our ability to detect design and apply ID premises to other fields of science. The generation of new ideas by ID-theoretics and ID-heuristics, and the resulting conceptual frameworks for a field, will cast light into various scientific fields by the synergistical relationship among the other sub-fields under the ID-paradigmatic. This dynamism will bring new scientific insights. Synergistic aspects of ID premises can be clearly seen by anyone who is actually "looking under the hood" of the ID-Paradigmatic. ID-synergistics also explores the advantages to science for an "umbrella approach" to all designed realities. This "umbrella approach" is a conceptual cooperation between sciences that study human design (engineering, technology, forensics) and those that study hypothetical design (biology, physics, cosmology). How will the resulting collaboration impact science? It is worth noting that in at least one case this synergistic relationship has already brought utility. The fact that William Dembski's informational formulations involved in design detection are being used as a basis for an artificial intelligence metric is very enlightening on this point. Dembski himself sees the inherent potential of ID to work synergistically, and he thought it possible that modified versions of his formulations could be used to gauge the extent of intelligence from the specificational-informational qualities of a design. So, here we have a synergistic result of ID-theoretics, ID-heuristics, ID-detection, and current technological research. This is one cue that ID can function synergistically in a repeatable fashion.

researchid should not be mistaken for

real ID research

research ID should not be mistaken for real

ID research

"Emotion and dogma rush in to fill the gap of uncertainty," Philosophy of Composition, E.D. Hirsch Jr.