Carried to its logical extreme, this approach would result in the creation (no pun intended) of what would amount to Christianity without Christ: an entire set of secular teachings, parallel to those in Scripture but with no explicit reference to God or His son, all for the sake of inclusion in the public square. The trouble with this approach, of course, is that these parallel teachings, rather than leading people toward Christianity as presumably intended, could just as easily take on a life of their own and end up competing with Christianity for adherents.

Although I do not favor the teaching of creation in public schools, I find that to be a far more respectable option than intelligent design. At least creation theory is honest enough to call God what He is.

the thing missing in your flagellum experiment is the change in physical environment. Maybe the flagellum is best for that environment, but not for another, place the non-flagellum against the flagellum in a different environment, and the non-flagellum might win out.

You did not prove that Evolution does not work, you proved that it did. Competition with the more worthy creature (flagellum) surpassed against the less.

Religion is driving this argument, not Atheists. To be frank, most Atheists like myself could care less what religious people believe. But don’t try to tell me that I should take your faith seriously, when you do not take mine in any other way than as counter to yours.

The sad (from a purely scientific perspective) truth is that this doesn’t stop some scientists (and the lay people that follow them) from setting up evolution as a competitor to or as proof against theology. When evolution is trumpeted as a St. George going up against the dragon of theology, you can’t expect the people who happen to like their dragon, from getting upset and taking up arms against this crazed knight who has no business swinging a sword on their turf.

As long as the lunatic fringe of supporters of evolution continue to insist that it has any bearing on religion, you’re going to find regular people regarding it as simply a competing religious philosophy and not as a scientific theory. Can you really blame them for considering it to be fair game?

I like to think most believers in evolution (I’m one of them) are honest, but the zealots get all the attention.

Although I am not Catholic, many of you would be surprised to know that evolution is taught in catholic schools and that the old testament – along with creationism – is not regarded as fact. Inspired word of God? Yes. Historical, scientifically and logically accurate? No. It was John Paul II himself who said that evolution is more than theory.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM

“”Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studiesâ€â€?which was neither planned nor soughtâ€â€?constitutes in itself a
significant argument in favor of the theory.”

From my expeirence, it is the protestant Christian sects, such as Baptists, that promote ID.

As for the case, I think its simple. Since intelligent design is inherently a Christian theory (not a theory of all Christians, but a theory thought up and funded by Christians), the school board will have to prove how this is not gov’t sponsored religion. If the school board can prove that multiple faiths subscribe to ID, they might have a something to stand on… but even then, the gov’t is in the business of not promoting ANY religion.

In other words, you don’t know and I don’t either.

I previously wrote about this here

If the upshot of the debate in PA is that the scientic claims get backed down a notch to “we have no idea how life actually began. Here are some possibities…” that’d be great by me…

Other than intelligent design, what is the alternative hypothesis for evolution? If nobody designing life is wrong then somebody had to have done it. The bottom line on the controversy should be whether you can design a scientific ID experiment. Here’s one that I’ve yet to have anybody declare is improper science.

I’ll take the flagellum, an ID favorite but why not. Take an organism with flagellum and figure out what part of the creature’s DNA codes for the thing. Cut that part out and create a creature variant that does not have a flagellum but is otherwise identical. Keep looking for species until you find one that the flagellum free variant is viable and loses out to its flagellum using father (that last part shouldn’t be hard) when they compete.

Now take the flagellum code and put it back in one gene at a time, creating further variants in all the permutations available. Test each intermediate species against the full flagellum and the flagellum free variants and measure out which variants win which competition. If all variants are less adept than both the flagellum free and the full flagellum variants, you have just discovered an evolutionary impossibility. Evolution would be put in serious doubt and it’s time to start rethinking the subject of looking for that designer.

This is a brute force attack to the problem. There are, no doubt, more complicated, more elegant ways to go about the question. There are also a great many other variants of this experiment that could yield more or better information. This is irrelevant to the point of the exercise.

Is the experiment science? Is it an ID experiment? If both are true than the ACLU line of attack is simply false and a distortion of science in the service of keeping men of faith out and providing advantage to atheists arguing against God.

The reason that christians are overly concerned with science these days is mostly because the scientists haven’t been sufficiently diligent in defending the misuse of science in the service of atheism. It doesn’t take too many atheists loudly proclaiming that Darwin proves that God doesn’t exist without serious rebuttal by scientists for christians of all stripes to start worrying that there’s something fishy going on.

Proper science is first and foremost an examination of how the universe works. If God exists, science should be comfortable with that. If God doesn’t exist, science should be comfortable with that too. What science as a field should not be comfortable with is being made into a football to serve extraneous ideologies of any stripe, whether political or theological. Atheists try to cloak themselves in the mantle of science, often making claims that are unsubstantiated by actual research. That’s an abuse that everybody should speak out against. Too many scientists aren’t and they are reaping the inevitable whirlwind.