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Intelligent Design Belongs With Darwin in Classrooms; Political Correctness Does Not

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This is an embarrassingly ill-informed editorial. There is no evidence for intelligent design. The intelligent design movement is about discrediting the theory of evolution, whether God is mentioned or not. The editorial is much like that movement: propaganda masquerading as objective analysis.

Scott of UT 2:35PM March 03, 2012

It has been stated that Intelligent Design has no observible evidence. But what about evolution. Evolutionists claim that billions of years ago (during the Cambrian Period) species changed into different species in a matter of thousands of years. If it could happen so fast then, why don't we see it today? We have been observing species (with very complex and intelligent brain I might add) for at least a thousand years and we have seen no species turn into another species. Sure we have seen variation, but vaiation isn't elolution. Variation is simply DNA fluctuating within the bounds that have been set for it (by a Creator I believe). I will reconsider evolution when evolutionists can find some solid evidence that fits their case (not creation's). I should aslo add that Intelligent Design and Creation are two very differant things. Intelligent Design is the theory that everything we see today is a result of a creator (not specifing a specific creator). Creationism is the belief that the God of the Bible is the creator.

Erin of NJ 8:36PM March 21, 2011

Keep your Creationism, and thoughts of ID in the appropriate places = your churches, synagogues, temples, and Philosophy101.
The thought of teaching ID in a classroom sounds fair, right? Here's the problem: you can't test that hypothesis, or even falsify results. If you cannot observe it, record data sets, test the hypothesis, it isn't science. At all. At best, it is a philosophy.
Does ID include elements of science? Only as it supports the hypothesis, and since you cannot test said hypothesis, you cannot label any part of the process as including a hypothesis. See the circle here?
If there is any remaining doubt, please use a space below this post to express ID or Creationism in a formula. If you can't do it, then you've got nothing more or less than an opinion, or a philosophy; pull it off, and you're the next deity.

Robert Winn of KY 2:53PM February 07, 2010

Intelligent design and creationism are not the same thing, yet both are dismissed as religious. Creationism is not science, it is philosophy. I.D, on the other hand, never mentions religion. It just looks at evidence, and draws conclusions that actually matches the evidence. The recent discoveries in DNA and information point to design. Nobody said anything about I.D meaning the judeo-christian god had anything to do with anything, it simply says there is absolutely no way, at all, of life originating through random chance.
Evolution isn't science either, by the way. There's no solid evidence, no observations supporting it or anything. Its just as much religion as Creationism is. Its based on a mechanistic, materialistic, naturalistic worldview and filters evidence through the lens of naturalism.

Elleh Mokhen of CA 9:58PM January 31, 2010

gPoFhs

Ntkzllqk of NE 1:00PM July 14, 2009

exactly what does ID teach me as a thiest that i don't already know? God did it. What does science teach me that i still don't understand ? He did it with a bang. Science is just the HOW. what does ID tell us about the HOW? nothing really. ID just tells us "not evolution". It doesn't say anything else. What does it add to our understanding of nature? nothing! Where is the ID evidence that God created everything in 432 hours? I haven't even heard any ID scientist try to argue this. i still don't understand why evolution and intelligent design can't co-exist? Its like rice and beans- but I under clearly that rice is a grain(science) and beans are a legume (philosophy/religion). Taste great together!!But i know the difference.

equality jones of OH 4:39PM March 05, 2009

Carol Morrisey:
Your accusations are completely groundless. As a case in point, Professor Michael Majerus, who was studying the peppered moth for years - alas he recently passed away unexpectedly - has summarized his observations here:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7n4r6h026q1u6hk/?p=371668e9121d4603acab5f8d9c2fde8a&pi=6
(I would also recommend reading the other articles in that journal's special issue devoted to the Darwin bicentennial, which can also be linked here:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/02/new-evolution-e.html#more)
Evolution is valid mainstream science. It impacts our lives each day, from our understanding as to how we should protect endangered species, to finding effective treatment for poisonous snake bites, and determining which vaccine(s) are effective in dealing with an unusually virulent strain of virus. Your desire to teach only the "mistakes" of evolution would deprive children of the importance and facts of evolution which, as I have just noted, are relevant to us every day.

John Kwok of NY 11:20AM February 23, 2009

I believe not only in intelligent design but also in special creation by a personal God. However, I would be perfectly satisfied if these beliefs were never mentioned in a biology class, as long as the material presented about evolution were truthful. Unfortunately, that is not the case. "Support" for evolution includes much inaccurate, even fraudulent material.
For example, England's peppered moths are said to reproduce more dark ones when pollution darkens the tree trunks, making them less visible to predatory birds, and more light moths when the tree trunks are light, thus showing natural selection. Actually, it shows only gene frequencies shifting back and forth within one species. But those photographs of moths resting on trees were faked--dead moths were glued onto trees for a NOVA documentary. Turns out, peppered moths don't rest on trees during the day!
Another example is Ernst Haeckel's drawings of embryos in 1868. Supposedly the human embryo goes through stages in which it resembles its non-human ancestors. I hope this has been excised from textbooks by now, but even in the 1990s Haeckel's drawings were still being used. These drawings have been shown to be very different from the actual embryos of pigs, chickens, etc.
The history of evolutionary "science" abounds with deceit and misinterpretation. Remember Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man? The former was an outright deception and the latter an imaginative reconstruction based on one tooth, which turned out to come from a
pig. As Mark Twain remarked about science in Life on the Mississippi, "One gets such
wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of facts." (p. 156)
Yes, let us teach our children the facts of science--and only the facts--not as we wish them to be. Let us tell them the truth about the missing links which are still missing, and the inconclusive data, and the contradictory dating methods, etc.

Carol Morrisey of MI 8:04PM February 22, 2009

Mr. Locke:
On the other hand, I think my proposal would be dismissed by the Federal Department of Justice since it violates our understanding of religious freedom as understood in the US Constitution and the US Bill of Rights. In a similar vein, your insistence that religiously-oriented pseudoscientific nonsense such as "Scientific Creationism", including its latest, most virulent flavor, Intelligent Design creationism, would be a violation of the separation between church and state; a distinction recognized by a fellow conservative Republican, Federal judge John Jones, when he ruled against the Dover Area School District in his historic ruling at the close of the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial.
I have no doubt that fellow Stuyvesant High School alumnus Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, would concur with my assessment of the feasibility - or rather lack thereof - of having any form of creationism taught alongside valid science, especially in any of the science classrooms at our prominent high school alma mater, widely regarded as America's best science and mathematics-oriented high school.

John Kwok of NY 6:20PM February 21, 2009

Mr. Locke:
On second thought, I'll agree to your proposition on one and only one condition. Evolution as valid science, along with critical reasoning that rejects religious thinking, should be taught in Sunday School classrooms. When that happens for every church and other religious house of worship in the United States, then I will encourage the principal and faculty of Stuyvesant High School to teach Intelligent Design creationism alongside valid science in their science classrooms.
How's that for trying to be "fair", so that "students discover truth for themselves"? I think mine is a reasonable proposal. Don't you agree?
John Kwok

John Kwok of NY 6:11PM February 21, 2009