"...that's not what Intelligent Design is"
That is exactly what ID as a political movement is.
"it's fine for "Science" to influence religion, but not the other way round."
That may be true of some few scientists, but a very few. I think most people with a scientific outlook think that, yes, religions could benefit from re-examining their assertions through evidence, but the main squawking is because religion is losing its primacy. People used to just accept what religions said - they would pick one and then try to justify it. Nowadays, people are challenging this, "Why should I? Why *that* particular belief?" Many religions do not operate well in that sort of environment.
"It also assumes that materialism is the only valid philosophical basis for science, which is not a rational assumption and in fact ignores the history of science in the real world,"
Materialism can mean several things and it gets a bad rap. The materialism on which science rests is this: that if it's not material, it's not something that can be studied by science. It took us a very long time to figure this out. It doesn't assume there is no supernature. It doesn't assert there is no supernature. But if there is a supernature, we cannot discern using science - and if it interferes too much, science will not work. Yes, many religious people have contributed to science, but their religion did not. This is no more relevant than the fact that chemistry used to be merged with alchemy, or astronomy with astrology. It took a lot of time and missteps to figure out what didn't work - and just as importantly WHY they didn't work.
"As for ID, it is argued for by its proponents on at least as rational and scientific a basis ..."
While they have convinced a gullible and uninformed public, they have not convinced many actual scientists of this - and almost none of the top tier scientists (nobel winners, national academy winners, etc.) - and for good reason.
Irreducible Complexity (IC) is a poster child for poor science. And there is a very good reason it is not good science - it cannot be disproved. It has been refuted in the case of bacterial flagella and a few other things. Behe and his followers deny this, but it's true. The refutation is devastating as the judge at Dover realized. Behe does not recognize this refutation. Such a refutation would in his own words falsify IC. Apparently he doesn't understand falsification. "Behe" (modified 6/25) admitted under oath that he wasn't even familiar with most of the current papers on the subject, because they couldn't possibly refute IC. He doesn't know and he doesn't care about the evidence.
IDers and other creationists often like to compare themselves to Galileo. This is highly ironic, because none of Galileo's contemporaries doubted his genius. They disagreed with his conclusions, but no one doubted that he understood what he was talking about. The same cannot be said for the vast majority of creationists, to include IDers.
This is interesting. There are a number of very good word posts that could come out of this, because much of the turmoil is raised by a complete misconstrual of what science is and how it works and WHY IT WORKS, as well as what they theory of evolution is and what the evidence for it is. The case against "Darwinistic EVILutionism" is based largely on barbershop gossip.
"They accepted the results of science; they rejected it's methods." -- epitaph suggested by Carl Sagan for planet Earth.
"The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."
-- The Discoverers, by Daniel Boorstin, Former Librarian of Congress
Last edited by TheFallibleFiend; 06/25/08 10:21 AM.
