Swami said:

Essentially there is nothing to teach about Intelligent Design. This goes back to one point I constantly harp on: when information is incomplete or unknown, then the gap is erroneously filled with a mystical explantion.

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Unfortunately, scientists and biologists explain the mechanisms of nature and life as just that; mechansims. They've fallen into their own dogma, which is to explain things by saying that there isn't any meaning to anything. That is as much as a belief as the belief that everything was designed by God or whatever.

We know so much to how the way things work, we are able to explain how beings reproduce, how haploid cells make diploid cells and vice versa. Look at the complexity of the meiose (sp?), how can this be nothing other than a simple mechanism? How can one say that none of it has any meaning? How can one say that nature doesn't have any intentions?

I believe that science and religion/mysticism will one day or the other have to merge into one.

exclusive58 said:

Unfortunately, scientists and biologists explain the mechanisms of nature and life as just that; mechansims. They've fallen into their own dogma, which is to explain things by saying that there isn't any meaning to anything. That is as much as a belief as the belief that everything was designed by God or whatever.

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Diploid said:

Our president, the drooling moron, wants religion taught in science class:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usdesi054371665aug05,0,5384426.story?coll=ny-uspolitics-headlines

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush invigorated proponents of teaching alternatives to evolution with remarks saying that schoolchildren should be taught about "intelligent design," a view of creation that promotes the idea that an unseen force is behind the development of humanity.

Although he said curriculum decisions should be made by local school districts, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters at the White House on Monday that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

"Both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about," he said.

These comments drew sharp criticism from liberals, who said there is no scientific evidence to support intelligent design theory and no educational basis for teaching it.

Much of the scientific establishment contends intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory, but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious thinking to students.

But his remarks heartened conservatives who have been asking school boards and legislatures nationwide to teach students that there are gaps in the theory of evolution and explain that life's complexity is evidence of a guiding hand.

"With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable," said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative leader who ran for president in the 2000 Republican primaries. " ... It's a view held by the majority of Americans."

John West of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank supporting intelligent design, issued a statement saying Bush "is to be commended for defending free speech on evolution, and supporting the right of students to hear about different scientific views."

Opponents of intelligent design, which a Kansas professor once derided as "creationism in a cheap tuxedo," say there is no legitimate debate. They see the case as a political battle.

Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said that Bush, in suggesting students hear two viewpoints, "doesn't understand that one is a religious viewpoint and one is a scientific viewpoint."

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OldWoodSpecter said:

Isn't that totalitarism if you are not taught the alternative theories?

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OldWoodSpecter said:

why is that not a theory?
Many theories have been created with zero material leads and only logical thinking or mathematics.

For example. In biology in high school we were taught the theory of how life came into place, but we were also taught that life could have came to earth from space, in form of an asteroid or something, as an alternative theory. Such alternative theory does not have any evidence or leads, but it was taught only by logic of what is possible.

Intelligence is possible, act of creation of new breeds by genetic manipulation, or in theory genetic sequencing is possible, so why is it not possible that intelligence created life on earth?

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