Vatican: Intelligent design is not science

It has been so long since we went around this mulberry bush:

"Intelligent design" not science: Vatican paper

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.

A court in the state of Pennsylvania last month barred a school from teaching intelligent design (ID), a blow to Christian conservatives who want it to be taught in biology classes along with the Darwinism they oppose.

The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the Church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism.

"Intelligent design does not belong to science and there is no justification for the demand it be taught as a scientific theory alongside the Darwinian explanation," said the article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper.

Haw haw!

OMG! The Pope actually sides with Evolution? WOW!!! He just went up a notch in my book!

Of course ID isn't science.

As any *intelligent* person on *either* side of the debate could tell you.

As such it should not, of course, be taught in a science class.

With that out of the way, any aforementioned intelligent person should be able to tell you that ID and Evolution are not anathema to each other. Belief in a divine creator does not mean evolution isn't real, and believing evolution is real does not mean you reject a divine creator. Nor, as any intelligent person could tell you, does ID mean "God made it out of dust. The end.", as some of it's more vocal and hilarious opponents are wont to suggest.

This little dose of reality and logic brought to you be Reitsuki Kojima Designs...

ID and evolution as explained by natural selection are incompatible.

~Ulrika~

Utter nonsense. I know you're smarter than that, Ulrika, even if you don't believe in it yourself.

I believe she means evolution isn't an intelligent way to design something

I don't suppose we can stop here and just acknowledge that nobody is going to persuade anybody, and not only are we not all going to agree, but we won't even manage to form coherent sides to the arguement.

I'll bet if you asked the Bush administration, they would say ID isn't politics, too...





Thinking for himself since 2001,

.

your statement is false.

I also like your human vs. octopus eye argument; but to get the full humorous impact, you have to make the unstated premises explicit:

Since it doesn't make any sense to me that the wiring of the human eye should be in front of the imaging surface, and since I am smarter than God, therefore either God wasn't involved or God is not rational.

Do you see a flaw in reasoning here?

--Allie

ID and evolution as explained by natural selection are incompatible. Seriously.

~Ulrika~

Only a person ignorant of the viewpoints of both beliefs, or closed-minded person who knew but refused to see them, could honestly believe that.

Seriously.

I'm not even trying to insult you personally here Ulrika. Honestly, you're smarter than that.

ID and evolution as explained by natural selection are incompatible. One is pseudoscience and the other is science. This is the same way in which a perpetual motion machine and a generator are incompatible. One exists in the land of fairies and the other is used in automobiles.

~Ulrika~

ID and evolution as explained by natural selection are incompatible. One is pseudoscience and the other is science. This is the same way in which the search for big foot and the study of great apes are incompatible. One exists in the land of fairies and the other is reality.

~Ulrika~

You guys are going to have to define your terms, otherwise you're just talking past each other. By ID do we mean god created the first ameboa with the plan that evolution would then proceed to produce humans and everything else, or do we mean that god created everything we have here, whales with vestigial hind legs included?

Almarea - I think your argument (correct me if I'm wrong) is that we cannot understand the mind of god, and that therefore we cannot know that apparently bad designs aren't actually good for some reason.

This is the same argument for why there is so much suffering in the world - that somehow all of the horrible things that happen to people are part of some larger "plan", that we are too stupid to see. I don't buy that one either.

Well sure, perhaps there is some reason that whales need vestigial lower legs... my theory is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster likes the taste of whale vestigial drum sticks, and therefore It created whales with them, so it could eat them. No, there's no evidence for this view, just like there's no evidence for "It's too complicated for us to understand but god has a plan...".

The fact is very simple, macro-evolution is not testable, can't be recreated, and has never been observed. Yet somehow it's a science. Amazing, truly amazing. Only in America

I'll agree to throw it out if you throw out Christianity.

~Ulrika~

It's like deja vu all over again... I think my response at this point last time was something along the lines of "Is astronomy a science?".

"Only in America"... is there any kind of serious support for ID...

Edit: Wait, are you seriously saying that you think that viewing evolution as a science is a primarily American thing?

First we must understand the difference between macro-evolution and micro evolution.

I know micro-evolution is a science. We test it, see it recreated etc.

When one says "evolution" they are muddying the waters. Macro-evolution isn't re-creatable, hasn't been tested, and depends on much faith.

Just like God! I'm telling your right now: if you renounce your belief in God, I will renounce my belief in macroevolution. Let's do this thing Kevn. It's time to wash this pseudoscience out of our hair.

~Ulrika~

Again, nonsense.

ID does not inherently claim that the scientificly observed processes of natural selection do not occour. It, at it's most basic, provides nothing more than a catalyst. How much else you want to add to that is up to you, but the two views are not, inherently, incompatable as you repeatedly, and wrongly, claim.

Religion is not claiming to be 'scientificly' correct. Religion, by it's very nature, admit's to requiring faith.

ID is pseudoscience.

~Ulrika~