BACKGROUND TO THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN THEORY
Ever since the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, many have viewed Christianity as largely counter scientific. This position is obviously an exaggeration and a desire to portray the Christian faith as unreasoning and unreasonable. Similar situations followed the Scopes trial, such as Epperson v. Arkansas in1968, Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1971, Daniel v. Waters in 1975, Hendren v. Campbell in 1977, McLean v. Arkansas in 1982, and Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. In recent years, the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case attracted attention yet again to what many would have thought was beating a dead horse. But the horse apparently is not dead; it never died. Christianity was never defeated in the science lab.
When the landmark judgment was passed in favor of the plaintiff in the Dover case, it seemed to deal a huge blow to the teleological argument for the existence of God. To some, this was the final nail in God’s coffin; yet to many, it was the beginning of a new phase in the discussion on the origins of life and a great challenge to the traditionally accepted view on the Darwinian theory of evolution. This document seeks to highlight the objections that have been systematically raised against Intelligent Design and expose the flaws in these objections.
Definition
Important to the task, the definition of Intelligent Design should be clear. Its predicates must represent its truthful position. This is necessitated by the fact that in their fight against Intelligent Design, opponents often employ derogatory and misrepresenting terms. They have branded Intelligent Design with names such as ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo,’ ‘neo-creationism,’ and have called it ‘unscientific.’ These definitions se...
... middle of paper ...
...l these years” expended most of her effort attempting to prove that Intelligent Design was in fact a direct descendent of creationism. She paid virtually no attention to the claims of Intelligent Design independently and used the religious position of the Intelligent Design proponents as a problem in the argument. In addition, Forrest labels the opponents of Intelligent Design as the scientific community. This is clearly an effort to distinguish her supporters as scientific and her opponents as the non-scientific and religious. If her intentions were clearly academic, she could have instead elected to identify her group as naturalists rather than scientists. Commenting on Barbara Forrest’s book “The Wedge at work” Menuge alludes to the fact that Forrest’s writing is in some occasions inaccurate and misleading.
Most people are convinced its not true so it is not true
Science and faith are generally viewed as two topics that do not intermingle. However, Andy Crouch’s work, Delight in Creation, suggests that there is an approach to both faith and science that allows support of scientists in the church community. There is an approach that can regard science as a career that can reflect the nature of God.
In the novel Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for American’s Soul, Humes tells the story of how 11 furious parents in the Dover Area school district decided to sue the school board and the district, because of the new learning objective requirement saying that all of 9th grade biology classes had to be taught Intelligent Design (ID), which is basically a form of creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution. They also believed that it “violated their first amendment right to information and ideas in an academic setting” (Humes, 2007, p. 221). This was the first legal trial to the perception of Intelligent Design. This novel is a narrative that captures nearly everyone’s view point in the Dover Area school District on the issue of Intelligent Design replacing evolution. There were numerous groups and organizations involved the trial including; The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans Unites for Separation of Church and State, Pepper Hamilton LLP, and the National Center for Science Education. This Trial was so major that even that national government was involved. George W. Bush sent a conservative appointee (John Jones) to the bench, which was done because it was “the early handicapping in the trial suggested a
In the uncertainty that the modern world is, there is one law that stays petrified in stone no matter what happens: “Things change with age.” No matter if it is in history, science, or even Pokémon, things change as time passes by and this process is called evolution. The theory formulated by Charles Darwin is the belief that all organisms have come from the earliest creatures because of external factors (“NSTA.”). School boards everywhere have accepted the theory of evolution as fact, making it essential to be in the curriculums of science classrooms. However, over the years, controversy has arisen as the fact that evolution is still only a theory with flaws and setbacks, efficiently making other theories (i.e. intelligent design) a viable alternative in the classroom.
The Dover Area School District of Dover, Pennsylvania is seeking approval from the General Assembly of Pennsylvania House to include the theory of intelligent design in the instruction of biology. Intelligent design, also known as I.D., is a theory that seeks to refute the widely-accepted and scientifically-supported evolution theory. It proposes that the complexity of living things and all of their functioning parts hints at the role of an unspecified source of intelligence in their creation (Orr). For all intents and purposes, the evidence cited by I.D. supporters consists only of the holes or missing links in evolutionary theory; it is a widely-debate proposal, not because ?of the significant weight of its evidence,? but because ?of the implications of its evidence? (IDnet).
The claims of rationality and the so-called scientific approach of the atheists and agnostics have been debunked. In the coming pages we shall see that both in the creation of the universe, in things created within the universe and in the creation of living beings, an intelligently designed process is going on, and we shall demonstrate that the objections of agnostics and skeptics to this assertion are merely delusions.
The documentary begins with Stein speaking before an audience, addressing the principle of freedom in America. He then advances to discourse of the loss of academic freedom in the scientific community through interviews of scientific figures such as Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Michael Ignore, Robert Marks, and Guillermo Gonzalez. These interviews are contrasted with clips of scientists who refute the idea and validness of intelligent design. To get a perspective about the credibility and thoughts of Darwinism and intelligent design in the scientific community, Stein is referred to talk to other figures of science such as Bruce Chapman, Paul Nelson, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Jonathan Wells. Stein then begins his in depth investigation interviewing Richard Dawkins, David Berlinski, and Michael Ruse, looking to determine how Darwin theory applies to the cr...
An argument is defined as presenting reasons for a conclusion in order to convince an audience of a certain point of view and an explanation as a clarification of why something has happened. An argument contains some form of an opinion while an explanation holds only facts, this does not mean that a well-constructed argument is not without facts. The second piece, Lisa Fullam’s, Of God and the Case for Unintelligent Design is evidently the argument. The title itself, “unintelligent design” proves this reasoning, she provides facts/reasoning for her audience to believe that the notion of intelligent design is unintelligent in and of itself because nature has too many flaws. Fullam provides facts about rabbit digestion, horse digestion, mammalian testicles, and human back ache followed by her opinions. First, to Elizabeth Bumiller, who doesn’t take a side while providing facts for each side, Fullam feelings strong about her opinions, her sarcastic questions help the audience tap
The Scopes Trial, which was also known as ‘The Monkey Trial’ or The State of Tennessee vs. Scopes, was a very popular legal dispute in court that was between the theory of evolution and creationism, and played a major role which shaped the 1920’s. What was just as popular was the interpretation of the case, if not more than the actual result of the dispute. This case received world-wide attention and the media coverage produced many different opinions world-wide. A major factor of why the Scopes trial had received so much attention in such an insignificant town was because of the stage the trial was played out on. The Butler Act is what made the Scopes trial possible. The Butler Act stated that it was prohibited for public schools in Tennessee from teaching evolution, or to go against the words of the Biblical story of creationism. The Act made it ‘unlawful for any teacher in in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the state which are supported in whole or in part by the public funds of the state, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has described from lower order of animals’.
Charles Krauthammer was the author of Let’s Have No More Monkey Trials that was in TIME. This article gives the statement that to teach science and religion together would be a wrong choice because doing so “undermines” both subjects (Krauthammer 40). For example, liking ice cream and sour candy because they are both delicious might be why a person eats them....
A hotly debated topic these past few years centers on the origin of life. Now more than ever, science and religion are butting heads trying to come up with a conclusion, and one that public schools would teach to their students. Alex Rainert, meanwhile, reasons that both “science and religion are engaged in the same project, to discover the origin of life” (141). In short, one could better describe the debate as a crusade between evolutionists and creationists. Both sides have their well-founded arguments, but when one looks at the decisions of the courts, clearly only one side may win the battle when deciding biology curriculum in schools. Despite the overwhelming number of people in favor of teaching creationism in public schools, it may be better to leave science classes free from matters of religious belief.
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee vs. Scopes but given the nickname “The Monkey Trial”, has been credited as starting the popular legal dispute between evolution and creationism in the court, and its impact in the 20’s was immeasurable. The interpretation of the case is just as popular, if not more, than the actual result of the case. The worldwide attention and media coverage the case received produced many opinions. Scholar’s opinions range from describing the case as an irrelevancy and a good show to describing it as a “Watershed in American religious history” (Ronald L. Numbers, 1998, p. 76).
In the last decade, many states are trying to reinstate the teaching of creationism in public schools under the more academic title of “intelligent design.” Funded heavily by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank, intelligent design is an attempt to produce scientific backing for the idea that an intelligent being (the Abrahamic God) has designed all life on earth.... ... middle of paper ... ... Branch, Glenn. A. A. "Intelligent Design is not Science, and Should not Join Evolution in the Classroom."
To infer God’s existence by ‘Argument from Design’, Rachel has taken the example of amazing things that are present in nature around us such as eye, the most complicated part of body system, the way eye is attached to the human body and the phenomenon by which it performs it function is astounding and such types of creations cannot be occurred randomly by chance. Although, it is only the creation of some intelligent designer. Whereas, in the case of evolution and intelligent design, the author put forward the “Theory of Natural Selection” given by Darwin. In this theory, Darwin stated that evolution occurred among the species due to the changes in their environmental conditions and to adopt these changes, certain changes take place among the specific characteristics of the species in response to such environmental conditions. Therefore, through the process of natural selection, organisms passed their newly adapted characteristics to their off springs and then new generations born with such characteristics which help them to survive and reproduce in altered environmental conditions.
John Polkinghorne’s The Universe as Creation does its best to not convince the reader of Intelligent Design, but rather to dissuade the reader from the notion that although the is intelligently designed, but in this way, it has made science possible.
Talking on both sides of the debate, each side feels as though the other has no scientific reasoning come up with their theory. In reading the article written by Shipman, the evolutionists believe that intelligent design has no concrete evidence on how the world was crea...