When God said, 'Jesus
Son of Mary, remember
My blessing upon thee
and upon thy mother,
when I confirmed thee
with the Holy Spirit,
to speak to men in
the cradle, and of age;
and when I taught thee
the Book, the Wisdom,
the Torah, and the Gospel;
and when thou createst
out of clay, by My
leave, as the likeness
of a bird, and thou
breathest into it,
and it is a bird
—Qur’an 5:110
That’s one of the cutest images from the Qur’an… Magic Jesus holding on his palm a little clay sparrow he just made, he puffs some breath on it, and it takes off from his hand in a flutter of wings. He smiles as he looks up and watches it fly into the sunlight. This would work great in a Christian rock video. Or Islamic, I mean. Whatever.
Using that logic, you’d also have to eliminate the whole science curriculum. You’d better eliminate the history curriculum as well.
Why? Because there is absolutely no solid evidence for either one. Sure, there is plenty of “circumstantial evidence” supporting their theories, but not proof.
For example, there is only circumstantial evidence for the existence of atoms. That’s why the theory that Dalton postulated for the existence of atoms is called Dalton’s Atomic Theory.
In fact, nothing in science has ever really been proved, nor can it be. The best that we can do is to gather more and more evidence that supports a given theory or law, or conversely, disproves it.
As for the history curriculum, how do you know that George Washington ever even existed? Were you there? Are you not depending on mere circumstantial evidence?
Actually, there is no “circumstantial evidence” at all supporting ID (which isn’t different from Creationism; it’s merely another name for it). The premise the IDers have is that a deity created the universe and since the universe exists, that proves the deity created it.
You seem to be confused by the difference between science and history.
Again, you appear to be confused.
Hie down the road, so to speak, and read the numerous threads explaining in patient detail the way a scientific theory comes about.
The only way Intelligent Design movement will go away is if its supporters suddenly became intelligent. Short of some miracle drug…we may need to wait for several thousand years of evolution.
Unfortunately, years of bad-to-middling lawyer TV shows seems to have left the impression that “circumstantial” means “flimsy”, “hypothetical” or “about as convincing as Tarot cards.”
Formal definitions are available but to gist of “circumstantial evidence” is that it helps one to infer the truth in the absence of an actual witness. In matters of science, you’ll have to decide which is more convincing:
[list=#[li]Scientist: I compiled the findings of various geologists, paleontologists and geneticists and collectively their work strongly implies an Earth which is billions of years old, with a gradual progression of lifeforms slowly changing into recognizable modern forms with many DNA markers in common.[/li][li]Intelligent-design Advocate: God tells me ID is true.[/list][/li]
Technically, the second is eyewitness evidence, rather than circumstantial evidence. I’ll go with the first, thanks.
All I can tell you is, I was an IDer when I joined the SDMB in 1999. I had just been reading Darwin’s Black Box. It was reading the Great Debates here that persuaded me to drop that idee.
So as far as I’m concerned, the answer to the question is yes.
As for my vote, no, ID is not on its last legs. We have plenty of fundies in this country, many who are like one of our recent posters here who actually lacked all shame when he claimed that all facts, anywhere, ever, are in the Bible. And anything that disagrees with the Bible is, thus, not a fact.
ID aint going anywhere as far as I can see… especially as long as people remain both militantly ignorant, and cling to any religious dogma, in toto, because otherwise they won’t become immortal upon their death.
Intelligent-design Advocate: The particular God my church believes in, as opposed to other Gods and even other worshippers of my God, tells me ID is true.
I live in South Carolina. I watched all the ads. I don’t recall ID being mentioned as an issue. (The main issue was school vouchers - for this race and the governors’ race.) This is a very conservative area, and I don’t doubt that most voters are creationists, but that wasn’t an issue in this election. Sorry if I destroyed your OP.
I don’t think that’s a particularly accurate description of ID. It might well be a fair summary of the underlying, unspoken motivation of many proponents of ID, but ID would be more accurately and honestly summarised as something like:
It is possible to develop methodologies that can be mechanically applied to complex systems, that will diagnose conclusively whether or not an intelligent agent was involved in the creation of those systems
and
We have developed and applied the aforementioned methodologies and they have diagnosed that an intelligent agent was indeed involved in the creation of living organisms
This is not to say that I consider these claims true or even honest, but lets at least represent them as they are.
Sorry for not replying back to this before, but this thread had dropped off my radar screen.
Anyway, there’s a quite a bit of whooshing going on here. I guess I should have added some rolleye smilies to make the sarcasm of my previous post more apparent.
For the record, Monty, I’m well aware of what a scientific theory is, and how it comes about. Also, Bryan Ekers, I certainly do not think “circumstantial” means “flimsy.”
To avoid any further confusion, let me make my position perfectly clear. Creationism/ID is, of course, complete and utter superstitious, unscientific nonsense. I did not state, Monty, that there was any evidence whatsoever for creationism/ID, circumstantial or other.
Instead, in my previous post, I was sarcastically responding to diggleblop’s comment that, in his opinion, neither evolution or creationism/ID should be taught in school, because, as he stated, “there is absolutely no solid evidence for either one.”
I was noting that, using such erroneous logic, you could argue that there is no “solid evidence” for any scientific theory, or for that matter, anything in the historical record. After all, scientific theories and the historical record are inherently not provable things.
With respect to the historical record, after all, nobody alive today can vouch by eyewitness account that George Washington ever lived. (Now, I do not for one second doubt that Mr. Washington did actually exist–I’m drawing an analogy here.)
My whole point was that many theories (that creationists do NOT generally question) are also supported by non-flimsy circumstantial evidence. This diminishes them not at all. As an example, I mentioned atomic theory. Like all well-established scientific theories, we have a wealth of circumstantial evidence supporting the existence atoms, and no scientist seriously doubts their existence today. Nevertheless, nobody has ever seen an atom, and conceivably the evidence we have for their existence could someday be reinterpreted and explained by a more robust theory in the future. Indeed, this has already happened. Dalton’s original atomic theory stated that atoms are indestructible, and that all atoms of a given element had the same mass and other properties. Only later did other evidence come to light that was best explained by theorizing that atoms have subatomic structure.
As I stated previously, Monty, you cannot prove theories correct! That’s not how science works. (You can prove them wrong, though.)
I’ll quote from a textbook I used when I taught chemistry:
“A theoryis a tested explanation of the behavior of nature. Most useful theories are broad, with may far-reaching and subtle implications. It is impossible to perform every test that might show such a theory to be wrong, so we can never be absolutely sure the theory is correct.”
While we cannot ever prove scientific theories or laws correct, that is the best way we have of understanding the physical world around us. That being said, for someone like diggleblop to assert that because one of our most powerful and insightful theories supposedly does not have any “solid evidence” (presumably meaning non-circumstantial evidence), it is then comparable to superstitious mumbo-jumbo that is supported by no evidence whatsoever, is the height of folly, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how science works.
Of course you don’t have to go the the Koran for that image. There is something similar featuring Jesus as a child in at least one of the Apocryphal New Testament books, tho’ it’s thirty years since I read 'em and I can’t tell you which.
Theories arrived to by way of scientific method and still held to be true 150 years after Darwin put it forth. If evolution is false, scientific method will show this eventually.
