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Dumbing Down Of America, 2
Topic Started: May 12 2006, 11:46 AM (5,663 Views)
TexasShadow
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Jane
Eric..
re "straw man" ............

I think it's just a matter of poor teaching, not deliberate.
It happens in religion, too.
And the end result is a bunch of students with mistaken impressions.
Posted Image "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
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ngc1514
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teryt
May 22 2006, 11:21 AM
ngc1514
May 22 2006, 02:01 PM
Until then, it's just creationism in a new guise.

OK, I'll let you self criticize your own statement. What type of logical fallacy is it?

(I'm hearing Jeopordy music playing.) :melodramatic: :whistle:

Logical fallacy? It's only a logical fallacy if not true.

ID requires a designer a priori.
Creationism requires a designer a priori.

If two things are equal to the same thing...

QED
Posted ImageEric
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ngc1514
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TexasShadow
May 22 2006, 11:41 AM
Eric..
re "straw man" ............

I think it's just a matter of poor teaching, not deliberate.
It happens in religion, too.
And the end result is a bunch of students with mistaken impressions.

Jane,

You were not talking about poor teaching, but about what science claims. If you are withdrawing all your comments, fine. If not, my challenges to your statements stand.

I can't correct what you might have been taught as a child. That's the fault of your school system and, possibly, parents. I can attempt to improve your understanding of what science is, how it works and the philosophical basis behind these things.

Unfortunately, the IDers and creationists keep hauling out the same tired strawmen.

Posted ImageEric
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TexasShadow
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Jane
Quote:
 
You were not talking about poor teaching, but about what science claims. If you are withdrawing all your comments, fine. If not, my challenges to your statements stand.

I can't correct what you might have been taught as a child. That's the fault of your school system and, possibly, parents. I can attempt to improve your understanding of what science is, how it works and the philosophical basis behind these things.


you're right. I put it the wrong way.
Posted Image "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Teryt, if you know anything about ID, then you know who Phillip Johnson, the founder of the movement, is, right? Here is Johnson in his own words:

Quote:
 
Phillip Johnson: "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of Intelligent Design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Johnson 2004. Christianity.ca. Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin. "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." Johnson 1996. World Magazine. Witnesses For The Prosecution. "So the question is: "How to win?" That's when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing"—the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do." Johnson 2000. Touchstone magazine. Berkeley's Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson "I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call The Wedge, which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science."..."Now the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, well, where might you get the truth?"..."I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves." Johnson 1999. Reclaiming America for Christ Conference. How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won.


All the references are available here.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Jane, and some others, I think what you mean by random is something else. Whether creation is the answer or evolution the explanation, you still end up with the order or even design you see around you, will all its ugly imperfections--that order exists, it is not random, it is not chaos, that much cannot be denied. Evolution explains the order, what it rejects is purpose, that the design has some extra- or supernatual purpose.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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teryt
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ngc1514
May 22 2006, 04:39 PM
teryt
May 22 2006, 11:21 AM
ngc1514
May 22 2006, 02:01 PM
Until then, it's just creationism in a new guise.

OK, I'll let you self criticize your own statement. What type of logical fallacy is it?

(I'm hearing Jeopordy music playing.) :melodramatic: :whistle:

Logical fallacy? It's only a logical fallacy if not true.

ID requires a designer a priori.
Creationism requires a designer a priori.

If two things are equal to the same thing...

QED

You used these words: "just" & "guise." What does that tend to communicate?
My Boast is Christ :pray:
Soon to have MBA (I'll perhaps be smart then)
Recovering Perfectionist
Christian Hedonist

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abradf2519
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ngc1514
May 19 2006, 01:26 PM
A minor correction: abiogenesis - as it might relate to the initial formation of life on earth - is NOT a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable. Abiogenesis is a line of scientific research that may lead to the creation of artificial life (whatever THAT means!) in the lab, but no matter how many times life is created, we will never know if one of those processes was the process that created life on earth. It's a fascinating field of research, but it is no more a theory than saying "astronomy" is a theory.

Abiogenesis is offered as a possible explanation of how life formed on earth; Evolution doesn't care how it started, just how life developed once it got goin'.

An amazing admission! Abiogenesis is NOT a "scientific" theory, and is not science.

I followed a thread on the Demski blog about this subject, but got lost because I didn't understand the scientific language well enough. The subject of the thread was that abiogenesis was not falsable. I did not have the time to desipher what they were talking about enough to present it here.

I was taught the theory of evolution in public school as a kid. Abiogenesis was the main part of the theory presented.

Seems to me, that if abiogenesis is not a scientific theory, then all you have is the theory that one living thing can change into another over time. This of course does not address the origion of life, and as such there is no scientific explination of how life started. Looks like the unsupportable part of the theory was dropped. Because of ID perhaps? They didn't want to be hippicritical....

So maybe ID could be called "scientific research" too?

Quote:
 
I've asked more than once, but you have yet to provide any evidence showing ID is a scientific theory or offered any suggestions on how it might be falsified. 

As I said before, the "designer" part of ID cannot be falsified. But since we are now confusing "scientific research" with "science", maybe the designer aspect of ID could be called "scientific research" instead of science, and the falsifiable portion could be called science. I showed evidence of this on another thread.

One thing is for sure, ID is NOT religion. As a religous person, I will not accept this label for ID, and no one has yet to prove to me that it is. Just because there is a designer, and this kinda sort sounds like religion, does not mean that it is. ID has sucessfully removed religion, not only by definition, but in research as well.

Quote:
 
Let me ask just a couple:

How do you define irreducible complexity?
How do you decide a system is irreducibly complex?
Is the Intelligent Designer irreducibly complex and, if so, how do you know.  And, if not, was he a design of some more complex designer?

ID lives and dies around the concept of irreducible complexity.  These should be fundamental questions in your theory and fully addressed.  As one of the more ardent ID'ers on here, you must have already reached answers to these questions.  I'd like to hear those answers.


I am not a scientist, but I know these answers are given on the web sites I have provided on other threads.

My understanding is that irreducible complexity is simply something where there is no simpler form of the thing. The example was the propultion system on a single cell organism, I believe it was a bacteria, and how no other simpler form of this system exsisted. A evolutionary scientist offered what he thought was a simpler system, which was basically an excretion system.

To me, they weren't same at all, and I don't know how he could offer such an example seriously, but again, I am not a scientist. I have not yet investigated what the ID scientist have said in response.

The problem is that since we have no actual working model of the evolutionary process in action, that almost anything could be offered up to refute irreducible complexity. We just have snapshots of structures of living things that appear to have changed over time. We do not have anything that shows the actual process in motion.

We do have a lot of things that are irreducibly complex, though...
Alan
Milan, New York, USA
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
What does Johnson communicate?

Or Dembski? From same source: "Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210"

Johnson and Dembski are leaders of the ID movement.

Barbara Forrest, same source, giving "Expert Testimony. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial transcript, Day 6 (October 5) "What I am talking about is the essence of intelligent design, and the essence of it is theistic realism as defined by Professor Johnson. Now that stands on its own quite apart from what their motives are. I'm also talking about the definition of intelligent design by Dr. Dembski as the Logos theology of John's Gospel. That stands on its own." ... "Intelligent design, as it is understood by the proponents that we are discussing today, does involve a supernatural creator, and that is my objection. And I am objecting to it as they have defined it, as Professor Johnson has defined intelligent design, and as Dr. Dembski has defined intelligent design. And both of those are basically religious. They involve the supernatural.""
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
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abradf2519
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cmoehle
May 22 2006, 11:01 AM
Teryt, if you know anything about ID, then you know who Phillip Johnson, the founder of the movement, is, right? Here is Johnson in his own words:

Quote:
 
Phillip Johnson: "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of Intelligent Design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Johnson 2004. Christianity.ca. Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin. "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." Johnson 1996. World Magazine. Witnesses For The Prosecution. "So the question is: "How to win?" That's when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing"—the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do." Johnson 2000. Touchstone magazine. Berkeley's Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson "I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call The Wedge, which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science."..."Now the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, well, where might you get the truth?"..."I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves." Johnson 1999. Reclaiming America for Christ Conference. How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won.


All the references are available here.

Yes here is evidence of a conspiracy! Philip Johnson, who is not a scientist is saying ID is just a ploy to put religion back into the schools! NOT.

These quotes look like an attempt to mix stuff together he said at different times to make it look like a conspiracy.

The reality is that there are real scientists doing real research on ID. They are not trying to force everyone to accept religion, just a competing idea to abiogenesis.
Alan
Milan, New York, USA
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abradf2519
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cmoehle
May 22 2006, 02:55 PM
"Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210"

Demski is only saying that he is a Christian and that he believes that Jesus is the designer. He also says that this does not come into play when he works as an ID scientist.

Just another trick used to discredit ID.
Alan
Milan, New York, USA
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
You aren't accusing me of trickery and deception, now, are you, Alan?

Are you not familiar with Phillip Johnson and his role in the ID movement? He is its founder. Are you accusing him of trickery and deception, Alan?

I see you recognize Dembski. He is one of the leading ID proponents. He says what, his beliefs do not come into play when he works as an IDer? He says just the opposite: "But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ."

Why do these revelations bother you so?
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ngc1514
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Quote:
 
An amazing admission! Abiogenesis is NOT a "scientific" theory, and is not science.


Ummm... Alan... I said abiogenesis is not a scientific theory; I didn't say it wasn't science.

Quote:
 
I was taught the theory of evolution in public school as a kid. Abiogenesis was the main part of the theory presented.


One of the main reasons to eschew public school "education." You do understand that because some poorly paid, overworked "science" teacher working from a textbook written not to teach, but to be accepted by school boards around the country makes a glaring error in science - that doesn't mean what you have been taught is correct. Education BEGINS when schooling ends.

Quote:
 
Seems to me, that if abiogenesis is not a scientific theory, then all you have is the theory that one living thing can change into another over time. This of course does not address the origion of life, and as such there is no scientific explination of how life started. Looks like the unsupportable part of the theory was dropped. Because of ID perhaps? They didn't want to be hippicritical....


What theory says anything about "one living thing can change into another over time?" We've already discussed what evolution is, but let me remind you: evolution is defined by science as the change in the allele freqency of a gene over time.

I challenge you to find any book on evolution that claimed knowledge of how life started on earth. You're making things up, Alan! Abiogenesis is not now, nor was ever, part of evolutionary theory. If I may quote from Wikipedia:

Quote:
 
Three years earlier, Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published in 1859), had presented an argument that modern organisms had evolved, over immense periods of time, from simpler ancestral forms, that species changed over time. Darwin himself declined to speculate on some implications of his theory - that at some point there may have existed an ur-organism with no prior ancestor and that such an organism may have come into existence, formed from non-living molecules.


Abiogenesis was not part of Darwin's original formulation of evolution nor has it ever been part of the theory. BLAM! "Got me another straw man, paw!"

Quote:
 
So maybe ID could be called "scientific research" too?


Of course it could - if someone were doing actual research. Scientific research is a very broad field of endeavor that just means attempting to learn things about the universe.


Quote:
 
As I said before, the "designer" part of ID cannot be falsified. But since we are now confusing "scientific research" with "science", maybe the designer aspect of ID could be called "scientific research" instead of science, and the falsifiable portion could be called science. I showed evidence of this on another thread.


EVERYTHING in science is subject to testing and falsification. Withholding the designer from testing and falsification just proves ID not a scientific theory. I don't care if you don't wish to call it religion or not, just that you not call it a scientific theory. It ain't.


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ngc1514
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teryt
May 22 2006, 04:41 PM

You used these words: "just" & "guise." What does that tend to communicate?

It attempts to communicate the fact that ID is just creationism in another guise!

Are you arguing it isn't or just getting all squirrely over linguistics?

"Just creationism" signifies that creationism is another in an almost endless sequence of ex nihilo acts of divine creation offered up by most religions.

"Guise" signifies that the failed attempts of the creationists to get their religious belief into the schools has morphed creationism into something now known as ID. See Chris' quoting of Phillip Johnson to further clarify.

Again, are you offering that creationism and ID are not the same thing?



Posted ImageEric
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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There are good and bad reasons to be skeptical of intelligent design. Perhaps the best reason is that intelligent design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program. Thus far philosophical, theoretical, and foundational concerns have tended to predominate. From the vantage of design advocates, this simply reflects the earliness of the hour and the need to clear the decks before a shift of paradigms can take place. Give us more time, and we'll deliver on the program. That's our promise. Skeptics are at this point in their rights to refuse such promissory notes, albeit without sabotaging our efforts to make good on this promise.

--William A. Dembski, IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN A FORM OF NATURAL THEOLOGY?

William Albert "Bill" Dembski " (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and neo-creationist known for advocating the controversial idea of intelligent design in opposition to the mainstream theory of evolution through natural selection. Currently, Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and the first director of the school's new Center for Science and Theology. It has been announced that on 1 June 2006 Dembski will become research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.[1] The Southern Baptist Convention operates both seminaries."
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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