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[Phys-L] Re: compromise on ID ... or not



Jim Green wrote:

Well, John, I think that the rhetoric is getting boring. No one has
explained -- at least to me -- who "they" are or which ID teachings are
"evil." Who is the mystic secret organization -- "the ID guys"? And just
what are the teachings are you moaning about? All we hear is the
chant. "ID is not science." For my education would someone please explain
this -- _coherently_? I am beginning to feel that no one here knows --
certainly not the author of the above. There is just too much flailing and
posturing for a "scientific" discussion.


My understanding of ID is that it states:
Human beings, as well as other living things are far too
complicated, and/or have systems that work too well, and/or interrelate
with each other too well, to have come to be in the myriad forms that
they are through random mutation + natural selection & the other
mechanisms of Darwinian evolution, and as such must have had some
intelligent guiding hand, shaping their formation.

To me, this presents two problems that are anti-scientific that are
independent of any evidence that supports Darwinian evolution.

1. It contains the idea that just because something appears very
difficult to explain through natural, logically consistant laws that it
therefore could never be adequately explained by natural, logically
consistant laws. This is, on the face of it, the antithesis of
scientific reasoning to my understanding.

2. It begs the questions "what is this 'intelligence?", "would not
such a complicated intelligence require an even more complicated, more
intelligent designer itself?" "Is it turtles all the way down then?"
An intelligence that can never possibly be logically explained through
the laws of nature is by definition supernatural and as such is more the
purvue of philosophy and religion, not science.

I would be interested in seeing if someone has developed a good lesson
plan on the nature of science and/or the scientific method which uses ID
as a counter-example, as that is the only place I can see for it in my
physics classroom.

Chris Siren