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How much do atheists know about intelligent design?

Abe_the_Man said:
I think you are right. I think the reason I didn't really know anything about ID was because it's essentially a non-issue in Canada. I've never seen it mentioned on the news and I don't know anyone who believes it (at least no one who has admitted they do) though maybe I'm sheltered.
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I don't think it's that you're sheltered. It's the same here in Sweden. If it wasn't for the Internet, and me being interested in skepticism and woo-beliefs, I would probably never have heard of it either.
 
I would recommend, if you have the patience, reading the Judge's decision from the trial. It's really good stuff, and I almost feel bad for the cdesign proponentsists because they really didn't have a chance from the get-go. Everything was stacked against them: the law, the science, the facts of the case...everything. But then again, they did get into that position themselves, and they were rightly pwned.

EDIT: adding link
 
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I'm surprised by the number of Christians in the US who have no idea what ID or creationism really are. I have a discussion recently with a guy who equated creationism with belief in God. He was thrown for a loop when this "Darwinist" told him that Darwin believed in God.
 
tomwaits said:
The first I had heard about ID was in my freshman college class "Evolution and Extinction". Our prof started off the class by briefly explaining the basics of evolution and the current issues surrounding it. She mentioned how ID was, to paraphrase her, a load of nonsense. She didn't explain what it was yet, since it was only the first day. So I looked it up, and basically was like "wtf? do people actually believe this?". Evolution always seemed like a no-brainer to me, and I couldn't imagine why people would be offended by it.
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Whereas here in good ole Mississippi I nearly had a riot in my freshman Anthro class when my prof dared announce that evolution theory would be on our exam independent of creationism (not even disguised as ID). I felt so bad for the guy. We spent two class periods discussing that, no, they didn't have to believe in evolution but, yes, they did have to memorize the theory. That's pretty thick. Then, on the flipside, I had an Anatomy and Physiology professor who was also a Pentecostal minister who used class time to promote creationism and also to tell us in no uncertain terms that if we supported stem cell research that it wouldn't be long before women would be deliberately inseminated and farmed for their unborn fetuses for the evil scientists to use for research. I was offended. Can you imagine if an atheist talked about the religious in a classroom like that?
 
Madalch said:
Stockwell Day is not merely a cabinet minister- at one point he was the Leader of the Opposition, and was widely thought to be a potential next-prime-minister. IIRC, he was also the deputy premier of Alberta, much as it pains me to admit it.
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Yup. I'm a transplanted Albertan. I thought I'd left old Stock behind when I moved to Ottawa. Then he had to go national. Arrrrgh!
 
I was going to post something like what Bokonon did. Some people think that ID says that the Earth is 6000 years old. But its most prominent proponents think that all life descended from a common ancestor over the last few billion years. And it's not a theory on its own, the best thing I could say about it is that it's an attempt to falsify the Theory of Evolution. Behe says that certain molecular structures in a cell are too complex to have evolved naturally. Unfortunately for him, plausible natural explanations have been shown that can explain these structures. So until someone finds something that doesn't fit within the ToE, ID clearly should not be taught as science. On the other hand, I would be comfortable explaining it to school kids in the way I've done here.


Bikewer said:
My first exposure to the ID thing was an interview on NPR's Science Friday with one of the promoters; and it was in the context not of biology but cosmology.
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Was that with Guillermo Gonzalez perchance? He's right now the darling of the Discovery Institute, because - you should be shocked! - he was denied tenure at Iowa State University, and his ID book The Privileged Planet may have been considered by his tenure review board in denying it:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/04/silly-creationists-universities-are-for-scientists/


ksbluesfan said:
I have a discussion recently with a guy who equated creationism with belief in God. He was thrown for a loop when this "Darwinist" told him that Darwin believed in God.
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Darwin believed in God when he was younger, but did he when he was older, when OOS was published? I think a stronger argument would be to point out that most Christians in the world, and especially the better educated ones, accept the fact of evolution.
 
Does Intelligent Design encompass Theistic Evolution? On the one hand, Theistic Evolution is a belief that the world was designed by an intelligent being. On the other hand, I don't see the Intelligent Design banner being one that believers in Theistic Evolution would march under easily.

When I was little, I thought that God literally patted man together out of mud, but in junior high, my confirmation teacher taught us about theistic evolution. I felt sorry for the first humans who were presumably told that their parents and relatives didn’t have souls.

My first introduction to hard-core Fundamentalist Creationism came in a persuasive speech in Speech class, senior year of high school (in a wealthy Texas suburb). I was just about ready to spit nails at these blasphemers who had the gall to ignore the whole God is truth bit and make up whatever the hell they wanted.

I mean, if you want to believe that “it’s a miracle” and “God did it” without recourse to scientific means, then that’s cool. I can’t prove you wrong. If you want to make up lies about the ridiculous ages in the Bible being scientifically plausible because of the much higher heat and pressure at the time (because of the water canopy that hadn’t fallen yet and caused the Noatian flood), then…grrrr.

I’m not quite so angry about it now that I’m not a theist.
 
CurtC said:
...the best thing I could say about it is that it's an attempt to falsify the Theory of Evolution. Behe says that certain molecular structures in a cell are too complex to have evolved naturally. Unfortunately for him, plausible natural explanations have been shown that can explain these structures. So until someone finds something that doesn't fit within the ToE, ID clearly should not be taught as science. On the other hand, I would be comfortable explaining it to school kids in the way I've done here.
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I don't agree with your logic there. If some evidence is found that can't be explained by the current Theory of Evolution, then the theory must be modified to include that fact, or another scientific theory must be developed that explains all the current evidence plus the new evidence. Even in that case, ID is not a scientific theory: it is not predictive, it does not explain all current scientific evidence that TofE explains, and it is not testable..
 
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CurtC said:
Darwin believed in God when he was younger, but did he when he was older, when OOS was published? I think a stronger argument would be to point out that most Christians in the world, and especially the better educated ones, accept the fact of evolution.
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Darwin never claimed to be an atheist. Later in life, he was somewhere between a deist (along the lines of Jefferson) and agnostic, but never an atheist.
 
The "theory" of intelligent design usually consists of two things, both of which are attacks on evolution and not in any sense evidence for a designer.

  1. We haven't found any intermediates between example A and example B, therefore there must not be any.
  2. Structure X is statistically impossible based on the probability of it happening randomly.
Of course (1.) is simply because we can't find out every single thing that happend in the many hundreds of million years since life first appeared on earth, and (2.) is based on the faulty assumption that evolution is random. However, both can be padded with scientific-sounding jargon and actual research to make them look like they are true to those not familiar with how science works, which is to say, most people.
 
juniper_ann said:
Does Intelligent Design encompass Theistic Evolution? On the one hand, Theistic Evolution is a belief that the world was designed by an intelligent being. On the other hand, I don't see the Intelligent Design banner being one that believers in Theistic Evolution would march under easily.

When I was little, I thought that God literally patted man together out of mud, but in junior high, my confirmation teacher taught us about theistic evolution. I felt sorry for the first humans who were presumably told that their parents and relatives didn’t have souls.

My first introduction to hard-core Fundamentalist Creationism came in a persuasive speech in Speech class, senior year of high school (in a wealthy Texas suburb). I was just about ready to spit nails at these blasphemers who had the gall to ignore the whole God is truth bit and make up whatever the hell they wanted.
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I don't see how theistic evolution would work alongside intelligent design, if (big if) people really paid attention, and if people also stopped to think about the price of alliance in what some think of as a cultural and religious battlefront. Unfortunately, I think many people who think they are embracing or at least including something like theistic evolution play into the hands of the liars who have just pasted a fancy new jacket on the same old book.
I mean, if you want to believe that “it’s a miracle” and “God did it” without recourse to scientific means, then that’s cool. I can’t prove you wrong. If you want to make up lies about the ridiculous ages in the Bible being scientifically plausible because of the much higher heat and pressure at the time (because of the water canopy that hadn’t fallen yet and caused the Noatian flood), then…grrrr.

I’m not quite so angry about it now that I’m not a theist.
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I'm no theist either, but I have always been pretty "Christian friendly" owing to a good experience with my own Christian education and those who were responsible for it, and ID still makes me angry, both for myself and for the principles of honor and truth that I believe they truly held. I could never wrap my little brain around old Jehovah, but I do believe (unlike some of the atheists around here, ti seems) that it's quite possible to be a Christian without being either a fool or a liar, and it saddens me to see how many people who should know better are betrayed.
 
How much do I, an atheist know about Intelligent Design? Enough to know that the cdesign proponentsis will lie as often as they need to to "win".

And no, "cdesign proponentsis" isn't a typo, at least not on my part. Watch this clip and get ready to scrape your jaw off the floor.

 
bruto said:
I'm no theist either, but I have always been pretty "Christian friendly" owing to a good experience with my own Christian education and those who were responsible for it, and ID still makes me angry, both for myself and for the principles of honor and truth that I believe they truly held. I could never wrap my little brain around old Jehovah, but I do believe (unlike some of the atheists around here, ti seems) that it's quite possible to be a Christian without being either a fool or a liar, and it saddens me to see how many people who should know better are betrayed.
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I know what you mean, but I think a lot of that apparent anti-Christian sentiment springs from the format here. We are disembodied avatars with, if not unidimensional, at least oversimplified personalities. We are not like the people we know and meet every day. Each topic is a single topic. Each poster can be reduced to their view on that topic. I seriously doubt that many of even our most rabid anti-theists behave that way toward Christians or other theists in the real world. This is their place to let off steam and to expostulate.

I've always been of the opinion that everybody is skeptical about some things and nobody is skeptical about everything. To me a skeptic is a person who recognizes the value of critical thinking and tries to apply it to most situations. Nobody does it all the time. In the real world, we tend to be more accepting of each person for who they are, warts and all.

At least, that's what I hope.
 
sthomson said:
I don't agree with your logic there. If some evidence is found that can't be explained by the current Theory of Evolution, then the theory must be modified to include that fact, or another scientific theory must be developed that explains all the current evidence plus the new evidence. Even in that case, ID is not a scientific theory: it is not predictive, it does not explain all current scientific evidence that TofE explains, and it is not testable..
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I agree with everything you said there, so I don't know why you disagree with something I said. ID is not a theory. At best, it's an attempt to falsify the Theory of Evolution by finding something that can't possibly have happened naturally and gradually.
 
Tricky said:
Each poster can be reduced to their view on that topic. I seriously doubt that many of even our most rabid anti-theists behave that way toward Christians or other theists in the real world. This is their place to let off steam and to expostulate.

I've always been of the opinion that everybody is skeptical about some things and nobody is skeptical about everything. To me a skeptic is a person who recognizes the value of critical thinking and tries to apply it to most situations. Nobody does it all the time. In the real world, we tend to be more accepting of each person for who they are, warts and all.

At least, that's what I hope.
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That's true for me at least. I am an atheist and anti-religion, but I am sure not anti-my-Christian-friends. They know where I stand, but we also respect each other and we just go about our daily lives in peace with each other. And things that I can discuss here are rarely brought up in real life. If it is brought up we know each other well enough to discuss it respectfully from both sides. My Christian friends never tries to convert me, I give them the same respect (which is why we are still friends I guess). But on here... All things that are brought up here, I see as fair game for me to comment on if I feel like it, and then I will be honest with what I think. It's as you say, the forum is (among other things) a place to 'let off steam'.
 
-Fran- said:
I both thank and curse the Internet for letting me find out about such things. Now, I am no longer surprised and am cynically waiting for it to reach Sweden. I am sure there are already people here believing in things like that, there is everywhere. But so far this is not something that people in general seem to know about, or think important to consider, and there's no debate about it at all in the media. Real science isn't challenged by it here in any way that could be said to be a threat, and there are no groups working actively with an agenda like that. There's no demands to push it into the schools, etc etc... At least not that I know of at the moment.
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Oh dear. No groups actively working with such an agenda in Sweden? Well, there's
always Mats (Ljugar-Mats) Moléns organisation Genesis to get you started,. He even has his own Creation museeum in Ume.

CredoAkademin is another one.

Dunno if Crister Renard can be considered an orgnaisation as such, but defintely a creo trying to peddle his bovine fecal matter to the school system.

And yeah there's more like this I'm afraid...

ETA: Not much, considering the impact cretos have in other nations, but they do exists even in Sweden.
 
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Here is everything there is to know about ID:
A Mysterious Being created the universe using a Mysterious Method, for Mysterious Reasons. The identity of the Mysterious Being is unknown. Please pick up your complimentary Bible on the way out.
 
asmodean said:
Oh dear. No groups actively working with such an agenda in Sweden? Well, there's
always Mats (Ljugar-Mats) Moléns organisation Genesis to get you started,. He even has his own Creation museeum in Ume.

CredoAkademin is another one.

Dunno if Crister Renard can be considered an orgnaisation as such, but defintely a creo trying to peddle his bovine fecal matter to the school system.

And yeah there's more like this I'm afraid...

ETA: Not much, considering the impact cretos have in other nations, but they do exists even in Sweden.
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Thanks for the links. I stand corrected! I really didn't know they were organized like this. But yes, I did say I thought there would be people here as well that believed in it, as there is everywhere, but that I don't think they have any particular impact here (yet -.-) the way they seem to have in the USA. You don't see them on TV or in newspapers to any noteworthy extent, and so on. But I didn't know it was even this much, so thanks for the info.

ETA:
Guess I can stop waiting, uh? -.-
 
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-Fran- said:
Thanks for the links. I stand corrected! I really didn't know they were organized like this. But yes, I did say I thought there would be people here as well that believed in it, as there is everywhere, but that I don't think they have any particular impact here (yet -.-) the way they seem to have in the USA. You don't see them on TV or in newspapers to any noteworthy extent, and so on. But I didn't know it was even this much, so thanks for the info.
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Well, idiocy is a unversal constant, so I am not surprised to find some Creto-orgs in Sweden. The biggest danger (to be a bit melodramatic) does not seem to be the introduction of creto-"science" or ID in public school, but more of having the so called "confessional" (is that properly translated?) private schools peddling YECism, and similar garbage.

And no, they're quite, quite unnoticed these people for the most part. I learned about Mats Molén when working at TietoEnator, seing one of his books in the public library thingy (basically, the company set up some space, and gave some money for book purchases, as well as allowing people to donate books for this "library". Someone donated Ljugar-Mats' book and I became aware of organised crationism in Sweden =))
 
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