It's all about the science, right?

Non-materialist "science" of course. Non-empiric "science" when it's boiled to its essence.

John 1 is a necessary feature for any good science, isn't it? At least it is when science is meant only to be a form of Christian apologetics.

Glen Davidson

They should concentrate instead on John 8:32.

Joe Felsenstein said: They should concentrate instead on John 8:32.

Re: "Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences":

"Do you have a commitment to truth and to following the evidence where it leads?"

“…prepare students to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID)”

Well let's just see how that works out for them. We can monitor all scientific journals for the next ten years and try to determine the number of publications that these attendees contribute. Oh hell, why not throw in ID "journals" as well just for kicks? Of course the scientific contribution could still be assessed, so why not?

Or maybe we should just count the number of Nobel prizes won. That would be a lot easier.

...some of these same students would go on to careers trying to develop ID as a positive research program?

The primary source for that quotation by Dembski is here: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.07.Mike_Gene.htm

"McKeeman can easily list off examples of evident design in nature: suicide bomber lysosomes … glow-in-the-dark fungi … explosive bombardier beetles. (“Chemical weapons! … God already had it in nature!”)"

Given the opportunity to provide examples of the Creator's design work, this teacher comes up with suicide bombers and chemical weapons (or perhaps they were deliberately selected by the writer of the article) ! This says something about the mentality of the writers of this publication. I was also disturbed by the jingoistic tone in the comments section of the article (e.g., host of God's army).

Prometheus68 said: "McKeeman can easily list off examples of evident design in nature: suicide bomber lysosomes … glow-in-the-dark fungi … explosive bombardier beetles. (“Chemical weapons! … God already had it in nature!”)" Given the opportunity to provide examples of the Creator's design work, this teacher comes up with suicide bombers and chemical weapons (or perhaps they were deliberately selected by the writer of the article) ! This says something about the mentality of the writers of this publication. I was also disturbed by the jingoistic tone in the comments section of the article (e.g., host of God's army).

Lugo Martinez (a pseudonym): ...Martinez personally believes that biological life is young, perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but that the Earth itself is old. He believes Noah's flood was responsible for creating the fossil record.

DS said: “…prepare students to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID)” Well let's just see how that works out for them. We can monitor all scientific journals for the next ten years and try to determine the number of publications that these attendees contribute. Oh hell, why not throw in ID "journals" as well just for kicks?

Frank J said: This caught my eye:

Lugo Martinez (a pseudonym): ...Martinez personally believes that biological life is young, perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but that the Earth itself is old. He believes Noah's flood was responsible for creating the fossil record.

It may be just coincidence, but most of us know of another old-earth-young-biosphere creationist with the same last name.

Tristan Miller said:

DS said: “…prepare students to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID)” Well let's just see how that works out for them. We can monitor all scientific journals for the next ten years and try to determine the number of publications that these attendees contribute. Oh hell, why not throw in ID "journals" as well just for kicks?

The whopping two annual research articles from Bio-Complexity will no doubt tip the scales in favour of IDiocy.

DS said: Sorry, neither of these articles involve any living organisms or even any materials and methods sections. They seem to be just theoretical analysis of certain aspects of the genetic code and genetic algorithms. They aren't really research articles at all.

Joe Felsenstein said:

DS said: Sorry, neither of these articles involve any living organisms or even any materials and methods sections. They seem to be just theoretical analysis of certain aspects of the genetic code and genetic algorithms. They aren't really research articles at all.

Whoa there! You just described my entire scientific output as not "really research"!

Joe, sounds like you've got a case of the Rodney Dangerfields.

DS, 'We can monitor all scientific journals for the next ten years...'? Done and done again, for the last several decades at least. Results, less than paltry, and those paltry few, less than poor.

'Scientific output' used in the same breath as the 'DI' conflicts. Better still they are oxymoronic, and as Gregory House says, 'they might not even be moronic'.

What I really dislike about these people is the unnecessary stealth and deception.

I'll grant that there are times and places where stealth and deception may be justified, but that is not the case for expression of fundamentalist Christianity, in the US, in 2013.

It's perfectly legal for all of these teachers to attend the conference, if they use their own time and money. It's perfectly legal for them to preach sectarian dogma on their own time. They can get jobs teaching at private Bible institutions or get divinity degrees and preach sectarian dogma during working hours. Their right to preach sectarian dogma is as strongly protected as it could possibly be, thanks to people like me and most of the other regulars here, who support human rights, including freedom of expression.

It isn't good enough for them. They can't stand the fact that the rest of us have rights too. They are obsessed with sneaking their narrow dogma into taxpayer funded schools. And they'll resort to any trick to do it.

By the way, who wants to bet that one or more of these teachers probably used work time and/or or public funds intended for continuing professional education to attend this?

harold said: What I really dislike about these people is the unnecessary stealth and deception. I'll grant that there are times and places where stealth and deception may be justified, but that is not the case for expression of fundamentalist Christianity, in the US, in 2013. It's perfectly legal for all of these teachers to attend the conference, if they use their own time and money. It's perfectly legal for them to preach sectarian dogma on their own time. They can get jobs teaching at private Bible institutions or get divinity degrees and preach sectarian dogma during working hours. Their right to preach sectarian dogma is as strongly protected as it could possibly be, thanks to people like me and most of the other regulars here, who support human rights, including freedom of expression. It isn't good enough for them. They can't stand the fact that the rest of us have rights too. They are obsessed with sneaking their narrow dogma into taxpayer funded schools. And they'll resort to any trick to do it. By the way, who wants to bet that one or more of these teachers probably used work time and/or or public funds intended for continuing professional education to attend this?

Frank J said: This caught my eye:

Lugo Martinez (a pseudonym): ...Martinez personally believes that biological life is young, perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but that the Earth itself is old. He believes Noah's flood was responsible for creating the fossil record.

It may be just coincidence, but most of us know of another old-earth-young-biosphere creationist with the same last name.

Joe Felsenstein said:

DS said: Sorry, neither of these articles involve any living organisms or even any materials and methods sections. They seem to be just theoretical analysis of certain aspects of the genetic code and genetic algorithms. They aren't really research articles at all.

Whoa there! You just described my entire scientific output as not "really research"!

Joe Felsenstein said:

DS said: Sorry, neither of these articles involve any living organisms or even any materials and methods sections. They seem to be just theoretical analysis of certain aspects of the genetic code and genetic algorithms. They aren't really research articles at all.

Whoa there! You just described my entire scientific output as not "really research"!

harold said:

Joe Felsenstein said:

DS said: Sorry, neither of these articles involve any living organisms or even any materials and methods sections. They seem to be just theoretical analysis of certain aspects of the genetic code and genetic algorithms. They aren't really research articles at all.

Whoa there! You just described my entire scientific output as not "really research"!

The real villain here is, not surprisingly, the creationists. Creationists have a massive history of mimicking theoretical, mathematical research. We're all familiar with this. They're always trying to come up with some glib "theoretical proof" that biological evolution can't occur. Uncountable distortions of 2LOT, the entire works of William Dembski, etc. Since they already have a gazillion pages of claims of that nature, many of us take claims like those made about this conference as implications that they're going to do what Douglas Axe sort of pretended to do once in a while, and do some actual experimental research.

Power grabs, not power games. They want the authority of science transferred to religious and corporate elites, and they believe they can achieve this easily, without doing any real work, without discovering anything or formulating a testable hypothesis and backing it up with experiments, without being scientists.

harold said: Creationists have a massive history of mimicking theoretical, mathematical research. We're all familiar with this. They're always trying to come up with some glib "theoretical proof" that biological evolution can't occur. Uncountable distortions of 2LOT, the entire works of William Dembski, etc.

diogeneslamp0 said: Power grabs, not power games. They want the authority of science transferred to religious and corporate elites, and they believe they can achieve this easily, without doing any real work, without discovering anything or formulating a testable hypothesis and backing it up with experiments, without being scientists.

diogeneslamp0 said: Power grabs, not power games. They want the authority of science transferred to religious and corporate elites, and they believe they can achieve this easily, without doing any real work, without discovering anything or formulating a testable hypothesis and backing it up with experiments, without being scientists.

As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.

apokryltaros said:

diogeneslamp0 said: Power grabs, not power games. They want the authority of science transferred to religious and corporate elites, and they believe they can achieve this easily, without doing any real work, without discovering anything or formulating a testable hypothesis and backing it up with experiments, without being scientists.

And I forgot this darling gem from Discovery Institute luminary, Bill Dembski

As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.

And I suggest reading The Development Hypothesis, an 1852 (yes, before "On the Origin of Species) essay by Herbert Spencer, where he points out this contrast between what is demanded by the anti-science party and what they provide.

While not a preoccupation; this question has been with me for many years and each time I bother to do some thinking about it, I end up with the same conclusion: Magic is the only 'process' known to man capable of producing the desired result.

What amounts of time, resources and effort to produce just one beetle species? Taking into account facts like species don't live in a biological vacuum; they live in a complex and ever changing environment. Just consider the number of bacterial species required by any animal species for digestion, availability of required nutritonal resources and so on and on.

And that's just the beginning, biology itself. The solar system and our planet is not a static foundation for life. Did anybody yet write the book I'd love to read about it all?

Besides, of course the other method that we know: nature itself responsible for all of that wonderful world we live in. Ave-inspiring.

Rolf said: Besides, of course the other method that we know: nature itself responsible for all of that wonderful world we live in. Ave-inspiring.

Sometimes a promoter of the analogy of design goes a little too far, and points out that no human has ever been able to design something even approaching the complexity of life.

This topic indicated that there might be an education policy shift over at the Discovery Institute so I went to their web page and looked up their education policy statement. The existing one is dated Feb 2013 and they have dropped the paragraph where they refer to intelligent design as a scientific theory. The language is still wormy, but they no longer refer to intelligent design as a scientific theory that can be taught in the public schools. It is a change that they are not drawing attention to. I quote the old and the new policy statements in a thread up on talk.origins

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/talk.origins/_UKCQLy_THM

Link to their existing education policy statement:

http://www.discovery.org/a/3164

Does anyone have their older education statement from before 2004 when they added the "mandate" and "require" paragraph? I remember noticing that the ID perps had added that first paragraph when Dover was becoming an issue. Mandate and require were not issues when the ID perps ran the bait and switch on the Ohio board in 2002. I recall that at that time the ID scam wing's education policy statement was part of a section that was something like questions about the CSC or something like a FAQ.

Ron Okimoto said: This topic indicated that there might be an education policy shift over at the Discovery Institute so I went to their web page and looked up their education policy statement. The existing one is dated Feb 2013 and they have dropped the paragraph where they refer to intelligent design as a scientific theory. The language is still wormy, but they no longer refer to intelligent design as a scientific theory that can be taught in the public schools. It is a change that they are not drawing attention to. I quote the old and the new policy statements in a thread up on talk.origins https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/talk.origins/_UKCQLy_THM Link to their existing education policy statement: http://www.discovery.org/a/3164 Does anyone have their older education statement from before 2004 when they added the "mandate" and "require" paragraph? I remember noticing that the ID perps had added that first paragraph when Dover was becoming an issue. Mandate and require were not issues when the ID perps ran the bait and switch on the Ohio board in 2002. I recall that at that time the ID scam wing's education policy statement was part of a section that was something like questions about the CSC or something like a FAQ.

harold said:

Frank J said: This caught my eye:

Lugo Martinez (a pseudonym): ...Martinez personally believes that biological life is young, perhaps 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but that the Earth itself is old. He believes Noah's flood was responsible for creating the fossil record.

It may be just coincidence, but most of us know of another old-earth-young-biosphere creationist with the same last name.

It is a weird coincidence. I was under the impression that he intensely disliked the DI, though. But you never can tell.

Ray Martinez: "Since neither Meyer nor Dembski have ever taken a clear position concerning the MAIN question of the Creation/Evolution debate (how species appear in nature), unlike myself (special creation), both men are, like I said, inexcusably dishonest and cowardly. Imagine that; all the books, papers, and essays these two men have published yet never have they told us how species appear in the wild! Moreover, your siding with them, at my expense, despite the fact that I am clearly known to advocate the creation concepts, can be explained easily by the fact that Meyer and Dembski accept the concept of evolution (species mutability) to exist in nature, unlike myself. Evos always stick-up for fellow evos----it's that simple. So you're in bed with two dishonest cowards, not me. Ray (species immutabilist)"

It's a very, very common last name, and if that particular form of dogma is endorsed by at least some Seventh Day Adventists, also a large group of people, it may be coincidence. Or not. (The Seventh Day Adventists manage to be associated with a well-respected medical school and medical center; there must be some flexibility of dogma at some level.)