What would be taught in an 'Intelligent Design' class?
Offline What exactly would an 'Intelligent Design' class teach, if it managed to get into the curriculum? I can't think of anything more than 'Everything is intelligently designed, god did it.'. When teaching evolution you can show the evidence, talk about the conclusions from them, do experiments over a few months in the classroom with yeast, study the evolutionary history of different animal groups and how it happened, etc. But with 'intelligent design' I can't think of anything past the first 5 minutes. Do they have any of their own work they can teach about how god intelligently designed things? Any evidence they could teach conclusions from? If there are creationists out there I would like to know what it exactly is you want taught - please present me with an example lesson plan! BTW debunking the modern evolutionary theory accepted by a huge majority of scientists the world over as fact does not count as your own work, and can't be included.
"This is the real world, stupid." - Charlie Brooker
"It is necessary to be bold. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think." - Thomas Paine
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Magic & Scriptures written by ignorant men who tried to explain the big question WAY TOO FAST without even forming Science and Facts to apply observations with...
Slimm,
It would be an entire curriculum of the "god of the gaps". Filling in god wherever science does not have an answer. Otherwise it would be poor attempts to debunk real science. Such a thing should never be taught if you can even use that word to describe it.
Biochemist & Law Student
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -Thomas Jefferson
"OK class now open your textbooks to page 31 where you'll see...no, Julie, page 31 please...thank you...where you'll see another huge question mark. That's right, Jim, just the same as all the other pages. This question mark represents what we know about origins of the Indian water buffalo, since we don't think that it's possible to reach scientific conclusions based on empirical observation or logical induction. Now who can come up with an origin for the water buffalo? Adam, yes? Aliens from Vega? Thank you, yes, Adam, your aliens again. Maybe we could try for something more original next time. Sonja? Pink puppy dogs with magical wish-granting tongues. That certainly is creative, Sonja, but I think we're looking for something a little more intelligent...ah, yes, Ralph? A flying spaghetti monster? Very good Ralph! A perfectly plausible Creator for the Indian water buffalo. Anyone else? Lisa? Merlin the magician? Nice, nice, I like that. Well we have three good possibilities here, let's go ahead and decide now which one is the actual origin of our creature today. The trial by combat was a little noisy yesterday so instead I thought we'd head down to the dungeon and give each of our intelligent designers a turn on the rack to see who sticks with their origin theory longest. Ok, let's line up, no pushing please..."
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Alright class, open your bibbb--uh, books, to chapter 33, verse--uh, shoot, I mean, uh, look at diagram 21b. As you can see, the central nervous system is EXACTLY like the wiring in your house. And, like your house, you can reasonably infer that it didn't pop up spontaneously, or EVOLVE from a load of timber and some floating iron molecules. Someone had to have BUILT it, and before that, SOMEONE had to have DESIGNED it. So, clearly, the central nervous system didn't just DEVELOP over billions of years of evolution from simple to complex life; we can reasonably make the SCIENCE-ISH assumption that it was designed by SOMEONE. You know. SOMEONE. *nudge nudge wink wink say no more*
I'm serious here, I want to know what original scientific knowledge a creationist would teach in a classroom. Surely there are some lurking around these forums...
"This is the real world, stupid." - Charlie Brooker
"It is necessary to be bold. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think." - Thomas Paine
And this is what it really comes down to. Results are what seperate real science from pipe dreams.
How does ID propose anti-biotic resistant infectiontions like the staph that ate my gradfather's leg arise? How do they propose treating such insidious infections? What new vaccines and anti-biotics have the proponents of ID come up with?
The answer is, ID and "creation science" haven't done a fucking thing to improve the quality of life of people on this planet. An understanding of how diseases work, mutate, function, change and interact has - and that is done through fields like epidemiology which rely heavily on evolutionary theory to establish trends and defenses.
The day ID or creationism cures as disease is the day I think about taking it seriously.
I'm not holding my breath.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Yep, the same books that people picked up and used to say, "Hey my God said that dem der darkies arnt as good as whitie"
Yep, the same book that people picked up and used to say, "Hey, my God said that vaginas are just baby ovens and how der they want to vote"
Yep, the same books that people picked up and used to say, "God said I could geeet rid of dem der ENGJUNES by giving dem blankets infested with small pox".
GAWD BWESS MERKA!
Oh, BTW you do realize that you are typing in a "whites only" thread? Now take your seat at the back of the bus like a good godless kitten barbaquing cootie spreader! Christians own Merka!
Now that I've established my self centered Alpha Male Jesus. The Bible is scientific. All you need to know is "God did it" and "God can do what he wants" THAT IS ALL THE SCIENCE YOU NEED!
Oh, and the Flinstones was a documentary cartoon.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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What would be tought in an intelligent design class? Hmm...one can only imagine the scenario...
Teacher: the complexity of nature shows the hand of an intelligence designer.
Student: Where?
Teacher: Well, look how complex it is.
Student: Yes, nature is complex and fascinating, but where is the designer?
Teacher: We don't know.
Student: What experiments can we conduct to show the designer exists?
Teacher: We can observe nature.
Student: Well, that only leads to speculation. Is there tangible evidence that there is a designer?
Teacher: Well, there is this flagellum with a little motor thingy on it. That should prove it!
Student: Hmm...not real convincing. Okay, what else you got?
Teacher: You seen Mount Rushmore? We all know someone designed that!
Student: Well, yes, we know a human did. What does that have to do with anything? When we see human design, which is a material entity modifying other material entities, how does that relate to the concept of immaterial entities designing material ones? This analogy doesn't work.
Teacher: Well, when you see design, there is a designer, an Intellgient Designer!
Student: Did you know rabbits have to excrete their food, then eat it again in order to absord the nutrients? That the human eye delivers the message backwards to the brain? That whales have hip bones? Just how intelligent is this designer? Does he have a degree ?
Teacher: No, he just knows everything.
Student: How is this possible?
Teacher: We don't know.
Student: How did the creator come into existence?
Teacher: We don't know
Student: If he created everything, where *was* he prior to creation?
Teacher: We don't know
Student: Where is he?
Teacher: We don't know
Student: what is he?
Teacher: We don't know
Student: If you don't know where he is, what he is, how he came into existence, cannot even offer any definition other than "creator", how can you call this science?
Teacher: Because we see intelligence in nature..a designer!
Student: Hmm...something is shaky in this whole deal. I think you are making this up as you go along.
Teacher: Go to the office!
Some excellent creative writing in this thread!!!!!
Thanks, all, for the laughs!
If I ever had kids that go to a school that teaches ID.
I'll tell them to never answer the teachers' questions and just say "goddidit".
answersingenesis.org is the epicenter of ID and creationist "education." A lot of their stuff is for sale (to homeschoolers mostly) but they have a good amount of free content that you can review to get an idea of what the ID & Creationist doctrines are.
The creation museum virtual tour might be a good place to start to get an overall high-level view of young earth creation science.
One big criticism of ID is that it doesn't have any original scientific knowledge. Most of their information consists of criticisms of "Darwinism" and the supposed materialist humanist conspiracy without any particular research to back it up. You'll be able to see for yourself that the lessons described and sampled on answersingenesis are pretty much devoid of reputable science.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
Gregfl,
That is great. Can I post this elsewhere? Fabulous stuff.
I would have to imagine that it would depend on the teacher and the schoolboard and what not. I know all of my science teachers would have (If they had to!) would have said, "It is possible, and most people think that a designer is nessessary for the structural existance, blah, blah, blah.", but that would be it. 5 mins. tops!
I'd imagine that some very zealous "teachers" would gush, "Isn't the creater amazing!!!!", after every fun fact. Even if ID was required to be given "equal time", I seriously doubt that Young Earth, or any other literal Genesis interperatation would be taken seriously by, well, all of society.
Can you imagine a class where you learn about Plate Techtonics one moment and then you hear that "A significant portion of the scientific community disputes this fact, and instead counts the begats of the bible to conclude the earth is 6000 years old." I think that would actually be very entertaining classroom discussion and a good introduction to psuedoscience identification (Something I think should be included in science classes).
A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce
I remember discussing ID with Todangst prior to the court decisions and school board elections that basically threw ID out of schools and he expressed the very clever hope that the IDiots WON those battles and that people actually had to suffer through their kids being fed this garbage in school. What better demonstration of the emptiness and idiocy of creationism could there be? Plus, it would have robbed the IDiots of being able to claim (as they are now, no doubt) that they are the oppressed martyrs of truth, shouted down by an arrogant liberal elite. The IDiots probably gained more by being defeated in this fashion than they would have if their ideas had really been exposed and put to the test by the public.
Of course, a lot of kids would have had to waste a lot valuable class time, so it was probably a good thing that the IDiocy never really got going.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
SYLLABUS FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN 101Instructor: Dr. Richard Smoker, Phd. in Caveman's Rhetoric (Liberty University)
Required text: The Bible, some PDF's from Answers in Genesis website, Flintstones coloring book
COURSE OUTLINE:
Week 1: Presentation of Theory A and Theory BWeek 2: Picking holes in Theory AWeek 3: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 4: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 5: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 6: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 7: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 8: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 9: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 10: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 11: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 12: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 13: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 14: Picking holes in Theory A (cont'd)Week 15: CONCLUSION: Theory B is correct by default
GRADING:5% attendance5% midterm5% final5% field trip to Legoland80% staying inside the lines in Flintstones coloring book
Brilliant EFM!
"This is the real world, stupid." - Charlie Brooker
"It is necessary to be bold. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think." - Thomas Paine
How do you teach intelligent design in a class room? very simple... God did it