<p>Just because you, FountanSiren, do not believe oranges are green does not mean I cannot. Just because it’s obvious to you oranges are indeed orange, I still believe the oranges in my backyard are green. Everyone’s take on God is different and may be accurate in different contexts. However you cannot prove it.</p>
<p>I can show you the ground. I can show the physical and chemical properties that indeed make it the ground. It is undeniable, you can see, touch, and taste it and prove it with a variety of different scientific disciplines. However, you cannot prove to me if God, a large bang, or a giant spork created this universe. This does not have any physical/chemical/biological properties. You could indeed say we see God’s effects: life. But that is precisely what science deals with, the effects. Not the cause.</p>
<p>I spent most of the day at the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC). I spent the better part of that time (in both senses of the phrase) standing, sitting and kneelingcontemplating El Greco’s "View of Toledopeering into the way his brushes and eyes refocused the ethereal light of the moment vertically away from the citadel of Toledo, towards the infinity of the budding sky soaring into the incandescent heavens above.
He saw what few see…I saw a piece of it: I figure, you either see it, or you don’t.</p>
<p>I don’t question those who don’t see it; I just pause to reflect and wonder at such things with humility and awe.</p>
<p>This does not have any physical/chemical/biological properties.</p>
<p>Does love? Thought? Free-will? Cause and Effect? Conscience? Desire? Wisdom? Yet most believe these things exist, probably you do too. I suppose the fact that few, if any, of these human conditions have an explanatory scientific value or judgment will make you deny their reality or value. Still, you will likely fall in love, make choices, feel guilty, satiate desire and hope for wisdom without doubting their reality. Some say that there are no desires that do not have their fulfilling counterpart in reality: sounds right to me.</p>
<p>Some fall in love and say its all about the survival of the species (with some difficulty explaining, from thier liberal perspective, homsexual “love”)…how romantic.</p>
<p>Several of those emotions are explained by chemical reactions in the brain. I’m sure you’ve seen the various ads to help alleviate depression and various other psychological disorders? This is not a sound support for your argument.</p>
<p>You have quite the reductionist view of life…so it all comes down to nuts and bolts. What is the material component of a thought? If all this is true, I see a valid explanation for differing forms of racism, sexism, etc. since there must be different chemical electrical processes that would explain difference. </p>
<p>Moreover, I dont think there would be any justification for punishing people for their crimes, since they had no choices it was simply an electro-chemical response to their environment. We should empty the prisons and give up on reform altogether and release the dogs of war..</p>
<p>We account for Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and El Greco’s astral vision by referring to their chemical imbalanceyou mean they could have been sedated and cured?</p>
<p>Genetics affects the brain. Life experiences affect the brain. Have you ever seen the studies of brains of children that were abused? Their brains are different.</p>
<p>FountainSiren, your problem is that you are asking ‘why why why?’ when science focuses on ‘how, how, how?’. ID is a fine idea, as I said before, but in a theology class, not in biology.</p>
<p>ID is a fine idea, as I said before, but in a theology class</p>
<p>How clever. Did they teach ID in your Theology Class?
How about your Philosophy class, did they teach ID there?
Or, did your school, as most schools, consider philosophy and theology bad form and a serious pain in their consuming materialist butts all that silly wisdom and cosmology as if that is going to produce mindless consumers and technocrats?!</p>
<p>Whats wisdom got to do with materialism, apathy, or shopping anyhow? </p>
<p>Yeah, perhaps youre right; maybe high schools will start teaching the perennial wisdom in their theology classes.</p>
<p>In the mean time, I assume many students will be told by their biology teachersas I was in 9th gradethat if evolution is true, there is no god.</p>
<p>Are you seriously saying that in biology classes all these enlightened and non-dogmatic teachers are not suggesting why when pontificating on the origins of the universe? Please.</p>
<p>dstark,</p>
<p>in all seriousness, you are too kind. Thanks a lot:)</p>
<p>A teacher impressing his personal beliefs upon students is certainly not ideal. If you want to crusade for objective teaching, then by all means pursue it. That does not validate wasting already cramped class time teaching a possible origin of the universe. That is the sector of theology. Once again, if you want to crusade for a theology class in every school then by all means pursue it.</p>
<p>I would also like to point out that school is not there to teach a student everything. If ID is so sacred to someone then they should be teaching their children at home, along with Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc families. Do you honestly think that anyone will allow ‘only’ ID into biology? Absurd. Immediately afterwards every religion along with agnostic and atheism will be shouting to have their theories included also.</p>
<p>“I do believe that each of us should try our best and that separating religion from science in the classroom is as important as integrating ethics with science. How curious.”</p>
<p>How curious indeed…and sincere: A wondrous conundrum! Well said MrB.</p>
<p>I would only say: we may need to draw a greater distinction between religion and cosmology. </p>
<p>ID, in essence, may have much in common with SOME religions, but it is by no means identical. Aristotle was not exactly a man of the cloth, neither was Socrates, neither did Einstein think of God as a gambling engineer. </p>
<p>ID has a long philosophical/logical pedigree. It would be a shame to cut off its legs over ideological reasons and call it religion in an attempt to send it and its logical history into intellectual exile.</p>
<p>the origin of sexism racism and genocide certainly have their place in sociology and history, that’s what the class is for!</p>
<p>science has no interest in who or what started the universe, but the mechanisms that operate/operated after their conception. ID has no place in this discipline.</p>
<p>If science has no interest in who or what started the universe, why is the Big Bang theory so discussed? Isn’t that a theory of how the universe started?</p>
<p>I keep seeing the misconception that ID is a religion, and that, therefore, if you teach ID, you must teach every “other” religion. That is simply not correct. ID is the idea that the evidence points toward intelligence being behind the design of the natural world, rather than random chance. Both ID and evolution start with the evidence and try to logically make sense of it. Evolution is based on a foundation of atheism. Why does it hurt to mention to kids that theism is also a possible explanation for the beginning of things? There is no need to go into particular religions or spend a lot of time on it. </p>
<p>Have the people here who are associating ID with creationism actually read works by ID scientists? Or are you relying on the word of others for what they say?</p>
What an utterly amazing statement! Says who? Tell that to the astrophysicists! Most would argue that “how did we get here…how did this come to be?” is perhaps the original question at the base of all science. Unless science is viewed as a contextless exercise in problem-solving.</p>