Any discussion with a scientist about an intelligent creator wanders off into him quoting the most bizzare verses of scripture he can recite from a religion that has barely been around as long as your average Sequoia tree. And he thinks its the only way an intelligent creator will be viewed by the “ignorant masses” if not for his steadfastness at thought control.

It will be the contemporary scientist attempts at thought control that will be quoted in the future. By our descendants wishing to demonstrate the bizzare ways of our ignorant ancestors.

But also part of science is spending decades, thousands of people and millions of dollars researching something, only so it can be digested in colorful terms in Scientific American, so people can tell you that after reading it and based on their intuition you’re wrong.

When a proposition gets a rejection letter, you have to note which of these two departments sent it.

I’m a rabid agnostic, so I get very uncomfortable when anyone says that a theory is “certain” or “indisputable”. It’s only indisputable given certain parameters and presuppositions. For science, those at least include causality, a degree of uniformity in physics over space-time, and the idea that our senses and brain can be trusted to perceive and interpret experiments. Those happen to be presuppositions that I’m mostly comfortable with and not willing to abandon for practical reasons, but I don’t take them as absolute or universal.

It’s fairly easy to demonstrate that the Bible is a human document containing human mistakes (unless you believe that God likes contradicting himself). It also chronicles the evolution of the concept of God. However, the fact that the human experience of God evolved does not mean that God evolved, nor does it prove that there is no God. It only indicates that even if there is such a thing as divine inspiration, it must be converted into human terms in order to be consumed, and is therefore fallible.

For myself, the concept of God seems superfluous and anthropomorphic, but so does a lot of poetry that nevertheless communicates something meaningful.

And speaking of anthropomorphic, “Intelligent” as we think of it makes ID paint God in our image more than anything I’ve ever heard. The hubris to think that intelligence is anything above and beyond the universe that created it!

But we also know that if we’re looking at the history of the universe, classical pyhsics is not enough. What if you’re looking at the history of species? Darwin explained that traits are passed, but not the exact mechanics. And his methods for determining those were crude by today’s standards.

Today we splice DNAs and map genomes to understand those relationships. We can compute the diversity between species. That’s your E=MC equivalence, your high energy particle accelerator.

And then there’s our wanting to harness it like nuclear energy, or … well, there is that matter of a bomb. That’s where we get GM crops, cloning sheep and using animals to produce theraputic drugs.

I think the double helix is the answer you’re looking for.

It does.

Nobody’s in denial, nobody’s hiding anything, nobody’s making anything up.

ID is proposed as an altnernative not because the current science does not work, but because people who are not deeply familiar with the science can be convinced of pretty much anything. Like if someone tried to convince me that a “hemi” is a good thing to have in my car, they could easily do it, if I either trusted them or really wanted a “hemi” for cultural reasons … because I don’t have a clue as to what it is. Creationists often say scientists are arrogant for saying that the science is complicated, but sorry guys, it is. It can be learned by anone, but one has to spend the effort.

ID is not proposed, then, because biological science is flawed in this way, because it is not. It is not an honest effort at an alternative. It is simply a trick! Really, nothing more than a trick, to introduce god into the science classroom.

Shameful!

I don’t believe the creation story is bunk because every ancient civilization has one and they are all similar, just as most civilizations developed similar dragon myth/legends, so did they all develop the same or similar creation myth/legends. Probability says that can’t happen, not even with infinite possibilities, the probability is astronomical, IMO.

Just like I believe our methods of dating bones and whatnot is off, I have started to believe that the creation myths are part of the answer to what is missing in science’s big bang and theory of evolution.

But science does build on a specific type of theory, one when can be repeatedly tested, peer reviewed and used to make predictions. And in science, there are a lot of interesting ideas, propositions, investigations and yes, even hoaxes (remember tabletop cold fusion?), that are not accepted as theory simply because they fail that test.

We can always come with a different set of idioms in which both theories have equal footing. But why would we want to call that science?

An inquisitive scientist shouldnt object to differing conclusions being brought forth in debate. Forget about ID bein mentioned in the science class for a moment. Ask yourself the motivation behind why it cant even get in study hall or the lunchroom.

Suddenly you see the roles of the heresy and non conformity police have a new home in todays “scientific” community.

What kind of revision do you expect?

Think of computers for a second. The 4lb Duo Core notebook I use today is such a long way from the beige 8086 PC I got when I was a kid. Yet, the fundamentals are all the same. CPU, fast access storage, read-only storage, slow (but large) storage, I/O cards on a bus, peripheral connectors, power, etc.

We know the specifics will change, there will be something better by the time I finish writing this comment. Just like we know the details of how a given specie, or mechanism works, will become clearer.

But we have high confidence that the theory as a whole, will not change any time soon. Neither will the fundamentals of the Von Neumann machine.

Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.