David, David, David. When will you realise that the definition of science IS philosophy. Trying to claim that ID is not 'real science' is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one.

It is ironic that you make a philosophical claim after trying to steer the thread back to 'science' and away from philosphy.

Grey/Alan Grey, your "argumment" is that creationists, who believe the literal description of the origins of life as described in Genesis, also believe in Intelligent Design. As far as I can tell, you justify this by asserting that creating the earth in six days is in itself a form of intelligent design. Making this connection allows you, in your view, to go ahead and make the statement that "Actually kenny, over 80% of the american population believe that ID is correct. I wouldn't call that a 'small number'."

(Somewhat ironically, you added "Why the constant need to overstate your case?")

You now ask:

>>what logical reason do you have from excluding either of the two explanations that God guided evolution or god created as per the bible from the set of explanations that fall under the description that Intelligent Design is responsible for human life? Both attibute it to intelligent design although they disagree on the method.<<

Your logic appears to be : "The six-day creation story is a form of Intelligent Design, therefore Creationists may legitimately be assumed to be of a like mind to those who ticked the box 'Evolved, God Guided'"

The reason I would exclude them from this category is that Creationists, by definition, do not believe in evolution, therefore would not allow themselves to be grouped with those who believe that mankind evolved, whether "God Guided" or not.

Incidentally, I don't believe you are actually serious about this, you just like hearing the sound of your own voice. But I'll play along.

I'm not saying Hume's view was devoid of reason, but that it was not an exercise of his expertise. You have written nothing that supports the contrary. Repeat "it's absurd" as many times as you like, it won't make it true. Hume did not restrict himself to knowledge of particular causes, but if he had that would remove (again) any claim to him being an expert on this issue. Being unable to know a cause for any event leaves open the possibility that the event was uncaused.

Self-contradictory? Yeah right. If it's analytically false then break it down for us. Remember, the question is not whether it's absurd to say there are no causes, it's whether the same can be said of something arising without a cause.

But you seem to only care about winning the point. If Hume's statement is expert opinion then this must be subsequent and prevailing expert opinion: "The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.", per Bertrand Russell.

"The uncertainty principle is to do with knowledge and so does not apply"
This is silly, if it doesn't apply here then whole "energy field" bit similarly falls apart.

You disagree with it all huh? So you think components of biological systems evolve separately and that evolution is incompatible with religion. Welcome to the atheist club! And that evolution is concerned with how life began? Sorry, but that and the "evolve separately" point make it abundantly clear how ignorant you are about this.

"So are you are saying that there is no evidence that evolution can generate IC systems?"
No, I'm merely halting your movement away from my claim that ID is unnecessary to explain IC.

BOAZ, more later, possibly tomorrow.

Pericles: Let me put it in a simple logical format for you as you seems to be struggling.

Intelligent Design is the position that intelligence is responsible for certain features (in this case that intelligence was involved in the design of human life in some way) (lets call this position ‘ID’)

The (non-exhaustive) set of possible explanations that are consistent with position ID then include the following.
1) The flying spaghetti monster did it with his noodly appendages
2) Aliens did it via controlling mutation
3) Aliens did it via direct genetic engineering
4) The Christian God did it via creation ex nihilo (Biblical Creationists)
5) The Christian God did it via controlling mutation (God guided evolution)
6) Odin did it via reforming matter into human life.

Your argument seems to be that ID must be equivalent to Evolved, God guided. This however is obviously not the case. Behe believes in common ancestry, Dembski does not. Both however believe that an intelligent agent was involved in the process.

To put it in another way. Squares, rectangles and trapeziums are all quadrilaterals even though they do not all have the same number of sides of equal length.

They are lumped into the same set on the broad category (having 4 sides) but do not get lumped in the same set when a narrower category is used (having the same number of sides of equal length).

ID is a broad category. The particulars of method the intelligence used in a narrower category.

Incidentally, I can’t believe you can’t grasp this simple logical relationship.

grey, its very simple.

if you had properly read the questions in the poll you are refering to, then you would know that the people responding favorably to the 'literal creationist' position believe that not only was the universe created around 10,000 yrs ago, as per genesis, but that life was created in its present form.

repeat: 'in its present form'

proponents of god guided evolution and id such as behe, aknowledge the timescale of existence and the fact, repeat fact that organisms in the past were different from those alive today. please note i havent said evolution is fact. merely that organisms were differnent in the past, which we explain through evolution, and which the id crowd explain through microevolution with the designer initiating the larger steps.

how can these possibly be consistent ideas?

on a side note. the 11 parents who challenged the school board at dover high school in america (the current id trial) are all devout christians who see no conflict with evolution. as are the majority of parents at the school wo do not support the teaching of id, and are in fact considerably angry that 2 fundamentalists who were ellected to the school board without disclosing their intentions on introducing id, have highjacked their childrens education. it seems likely that they will be voted from the board before the court even reaches its judgement.

behe's testimony didnt go so well either. its one thing to claim scientific basis to id. its another to have to qualify this under oath.

I am in concurrence with Alan Grey's post prior to this one.

I remember in my high school education, the amount of time we spent on evolution was about a month tops. After this we moved on to more interesting things like energy etc.
Everyone in my class was Christian and I went to a private school. In the classes I had, when Darwin's theory was taught, it was explained simply by my science teacher: there are no problems with the theory that species evolve in adapting to environments and that this theory is completely compatable with Christianity.

A question for all,(this question is completely neutral and not antagonistic to any opinion)

Supposing ID is taught in science classes. How much time do you think would be spent on it? Two periods? A week?