At the reguest of spoon i hope that everyone i.e. keeper argue against evolution in this thread. Well that said the various argument for ID have been debuked:
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Improbable versus impossible events
William Dembski formulated the universal probability bound, a reformulation of the creationist argument from improbability,[112] which he argues is the smallest probability of anything occurring in the universe over all time at the maximum possible rate. This value, 1 in 10120, represents a revision of his original formula, which set the value of the universal probability bound at 1 in 10150.[113] In 2005 Dembski again revised his definition to be the inverse of the product of two different quantities, 10120 and the variable rank complexity of the event under consideration.[114]
In "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences," John Allen Paulos states that the apparent improbability of a given scenario cannot necessarily be taken as an indication that this scenario is more unlikely than any other potential one: "Rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion [1 in 6 x 1011]. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been [randomly] dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable."[/b]
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Arguments from ignorance
Eugenie Scott, along with Glenn Branch and other critics, has argued that many points raised by intelligent design proponents are arguments from ignorance.[111] In the argument from ignorance, a lack of evidence for one view is erroneously argued to constitute proof of the correctness of another view. Scott and Branch say that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance because it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: lacking a natural explanation for certain specific aspects of evolution, we assume intelligent cause. They contend most scientists would reply that the unexplained is not unexplainable, and that "we don't know yet" is a more appropriate response than invoking a cause outside of science.[111] Particularly, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to assume a dichotomy where either evolution or design is the proper explanation, and any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for design. In scientific terms, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for naturalistic explanations of observed traits of living organisms. Scott and Branch also contend that the supposedly novel contributions proposed by intelligent design proponents have not served as the basis for any productive scientific research.
Intelligent design has also been characterized as a "god of the gaps" argument, which has the following form:
There is a gap in scientific knowledge.
The gap is filled with acts of God (or Intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or Intelligent designer).
A god of the gaps argument is the theological version of an argument from ignorance. The key feature of this type of argument is that it merely answers outstanding questions with explanations (often supernatural) that are unverifiable and ultimately themselves subject to unanswerable questions[/b]
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As a means of criticism, certain skeptics have pointed to a challenge of intelligent design derived from the study of artificial intelligence. The criticism is a counter to intelligent design claims about what makes a design intelligent, specifically that "no preprogrammed device can be truly intelligent, that intelligence is irreducible to natural processes."[110] This claim is similar in type to an assumption of Cartesian dualism that posits a strict separation between "mind" and the material universe. However, in studies of artificial intelligence, while there is an implicit assumption that supposed "intelligence" or creativity of a computer program is determined by the capabilities given to it by the computer programmer, artificial intelligence need not be bound to an inflexible system of rules. Rather, if a computer program can access randomness as a function, this effectively allows for a flexible, creative, and adaptive intelligence. Evolutionary algorithms, a subfield of machine learning (itself a subfield of artificial intelligence), have been used to mathematically demonstrate that randomness and selection can be used to "evolve" complex, highly adapted structures that are not explicitly designed by a programmer. Evolutionary algorithms use the Darwinian metaphor of random mutation, selection and the survival of the fittest to solve diverse mathematical and scientific problems that are usually not solvable using conventional methods. Furthermore, forays into such areas as quantum computing seem to indicate that real probabilistic functions may be available in the future. Intelligence derived from randomness is essentially indistinguishable from the "innate" intelligence associated with biological organisms, and poses a challenge to the intelligent design conception that intelligence itself necessarily requires a designer. Cognitive science continues to investigate the nature of intelligence to that end, but the intelligent design community for the most part seems to be content to rely on the assumption that intelligence is readily apparent as a fundamental and basic property of complex systems.[/b]
The only reason i see that intelligent design is popular is because most american are scientifically illiterate http://www.csmc.edu/6603.html i bet the people who argue for intelligent design havent even read a book on evolution from a evolunist of cause and yet you can argue against it that like me arguing that Einstein theory of relativity is wrong when i havent even seen the whole theory and understood it. I remeber a chart from the daily show john stewit which showed that america has the near lowest mathmatical test result in the world but the second highest number of people in support of intelligent design next was mexico. It proberly is stupidity that people believe in intelligent design because the theory is rejected by the scientific community.Quote:
In the Dover trial, the judge found that intelligent design features no scientific research or testing.[102] There, intelligent design proponents cited just one paper, on simulation modeling of evolution by Behe and Snoke, which mentioned neither irreducible complexity nor intelligent design and which Behe admitted did not rule out known evolutionary mechanisms.[102] But in sworn testimony, Behe said: "There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."[103] As summarized by the judge, Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed articles supporting his claims of intelligent design or irreducible complexity. In his ruling, the judge wrote: "A final indicator of how ID has failed to demonstrate scientific warrant is the complete absence of peer-reviewed publications supporting the theory."[96]
Despite this, the Discovery Institute continues to insist that a number of intelligent design articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals,[104] including in their list the two articles mentioned above. Critics, largely members of the scientific community, reject this claim, pointing out that no established scientific journal has yet published an intelligent design article. Instead, intelligent design proponents have set up their own journals with "peer review" which lack impartiality and rigor,[105] consisting entirely of intelligent design supporters.[106][/b]
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Why doesn't America believe in evolution?
19 August 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Jeff Hecht
Public acceptance of evolutionHuman beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.
Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue."
Miller's report makes for grim reading for adherents of evolutionary theory. Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005 (Science, vol 313, p 765). That's despite a series of widely publicised advances in genetics, including genetic sequencing, which shows strong overlap of the human genome with those of chimpanzees and mice. "We don't seem to be going in the right direction," Miller says.
There is some cause for hope. Team member Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, finds solace in the finding that the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution has dropped from 48 to 39 in the same time. Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared, from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year. "That is a group of people that can be reached," says Scott.
The main opposition to evolution comes from fundamentalist Christians, who are much more abundant in the US than in Europe. While Catholics, European Protestants and so-called mainstream US Protestants consider the biblical account of creation as a metaphor, fundamentalists take the Bible literally, leading them to believe that the Earth and humans were created only 6000 years ago.
Ironically, the separation of church and state laid down in the US constitution contributes to the tension. In Catholic schools, both evolution and the strict biblical version of human beginnings can be taught. A court ban on teaching creationism in public schools, however, means pupils can only be taught evolution, which angers fundamentalists, and triggers local battles over evolution.
These battles can take place because the US lacks a national curriculum of the sort common in European countries. However, the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind act is instituting standards for science teaching, and the battles of what they should be has now spread to the state level.
Miller thinks more genetics should be on the syllabus to reinforce the idea of evolution. American adults may be harder to reach: nearly two-thirds don't agree that more than half of human genes are common to chimpanzees. How would these people respond when told that humans and chimps share 99 per cent of their genes?
From issue 2565 of New Scientist magazine, 19 August 2006, page 11[/b]
It will come with no surprize that people in support of intelligent design was lowest in china and japan and that they scored highest in mathmatical abillity.Quote:
According to widely publicized findings from those studies, U.S. performance was above the international average in grades 4 and 8, but below the international average at age 15, suggesting that the quality of American high schools is inferior to that of elementary and middle schools.
“We believe the narrower focus of this study more accurately reflects the state of education in the United States in relation to a common set of industrialized nations because we are comparing apples to apples,” says Leinwand.
The reanalysis took advantage of the richness of the TIMSS and PISA data sets to present new findings on the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. and other countries’ mathematics performance.
Countries that score well on items that emphasize mathematical reasoning (a higher-level skill) also score well on items that require knowledge of facts and procedures (a lower-level skill), suggesting that reasoning and computation skills are mutually reinforcing in learning mathematics well. Compared to other countries, students in the United States students do not do well on questions at either skill level.
Many countries differ in their strengths and weaknesses among mathematical content areas (numbers, algebra, measurement, geometry, and data and statistics). The United States does relatively better in data and statistics and relatively worse in measurement in grades 4 and 8 and in geometry in grade 8 and at age 15.
Overall differences within countries between boys’ and girls’ mathematics performance are not large, although there is some evidence that the boys’ score advantage is greatest on the more difficult items, especially at age 15. This finding is consistent with some prior gender literature. In addition, the study found that boys in the United States consistently outperform girls in all three assessments, a pattern shared only with Italy, but the differences are small.
“These findings suggest cross-national surveys of educational achievement at different grade levels and ages provide a broader lens than is possible from domestic research alone from which to determine the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. mathematics instruction,” says Alan Ginsburg of the U.S. Department of Education, another of the study’s authors.
Rankings1 of 12 Countries Participating on the 2003 International Mathematics Assessments: TIMSS Grades 4 and 8, and PISA Age 15 2
This New Analysis
Previous Analyses
Country
Common Set of 12 Countries
Full set of 24
Full set of 45
Full set of 40
TIMSS
Grade 4
TIMSS
Grade 8
PISA
Age 15
TIMSS
Grade 4
TIMSS
Grade 8
PISA
Age 15
Hong Kong
1
1
1
2
3
1
Japan
2
2
3
3
5
6
Belgium
3
3
4
5
6
8
Netherlands
4
4
2
6
7
4
Latvia
5
6
9
7
11
27
Hungary
7
5
8
10
9
25
Russia
6
6
11
8
11
29
Australia
10
8
5
15
14
11
United States
8
9
9
11
15
27
New Zealand
11
10
6
16
20
12
Norway
12
12
7
20
27
22
Italy
9
11
12
14
22
31
1 Country rankings for common set of 12 countries are from highest score (equals 1) to lowest score (equals 12). Country rankings from previous analyses are from highest score (equals 1) to lowest score (equals 24 for TIMSS Grade 4, 45 for TIMSS Grade 8, and 40 for PISA).
2 Tunisia also participated in all three international results, but it is not an industrialized country and was omitted from our study.
Source: Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, and Chrostowski, 2004; OECD, 2004. [/b]
