How is Intelligent Design taught as a science if it's only basis is miracles?

Question

I just don't get it. How can you argue, Noah's flood for marine fossils at 12k feet above sea level, when uranium-thorium dating and geology provide scientifically accepted evidence? How are miracles scientific???!!?!

Answer 1

As far as I know, ID is not taught as science in any credible school.  It can't be, because of two things:

1) It's premise is untestable.  It's impossible to test the supernatural (if you think the creator is supernatural), and we have no way to verify a natural creator (i.e., aliens)

2) There is no valid evidence to back it up.  As one responder said, ID asks a lot of questions.  Questions in and of themselves are fine, but these questions haven't generated any empircal research that can back up any answers that are different than the naturalistic, scientific explanations we already have (for evolution, abiogenesis, the Big Bang, etc.)  In other words, it fails in parsimony, by making the explanation more complicated.

Edit:  This is, of course, assuming that you believe that ID is anything other than creationism in disguise.

Answer 2

Illogically.  

Creationism is just the conjecture of ealy man, left over from the infancy of human intelligence and passed on as tradition.  One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, creationists will be a thing of the past.

Answer 3

There's 2 ways to explain the "miracles" scientifically.

One is Darwinism and modern day evolutionary theories, intelligent designs can be an effect of these theories. It could also be based on random events in the past that directed us to our current position in the universe, which enabled nature's designs to progress. I am personally a believer of The Many Worlds Theory. Our universe evolved in such a way so as to accommodate our earth, and our earth evolved in such a way as to accommodate certain designs and let other designs to perish.

For example its said that we evolved from homo-sapiens, a branch that nature chose to carry forward. What you call as "miracles", is nothing but a cloud of uncertainty that science has yet to uncover.

This area of uncertainity is filled by theologians and religions. They bring in concepts of God, the Noah stuff is one such explanation.This is the second way to explain the course of Intelligent Designs in the language of nature. A certain question can be placed on the side of the religions is that : Why did certain designs evolve and certain designs perish? Why did some stand the test of time, others hopelessly die?

These questions remain unanswered too.

Overall, the "miracles" you stated could not be miracles at all but another explained area in science, or it could be a miracle by some super-human being above us?

Only time can tell. the courses that many universities offer in this field are research based and not exactly thought,the basics might be thought, but much is only research. Its like a holy grail kinda search for anthropologists and archeologists and fossil collectors around the world.

thanks for occupying my thoughts with this question. A real good one.

Thanks,

Karthik

Answer 4

how do you argue evolution when we have no comparables or witnesses based on time, people today aren't evolving and haven't forever, and there is no proof to say evolution is correct. Miracles aren't a science. You can't stick a frickin miracle in a machine, compare it with a miracle we found 50 years ago, and conclude that over time this new found miracle that we dug up from the ground is a billion years old because the miracle we found 50 years ago is only 95 million years old. Who on this earth can say this fossil is a million years old because a million years ago I saw it with my own eyes. Miracles are a spiritual thing. Miracles aren't science because as man we cannot recreate or study miracles that happened when we weren't alive. There's your big bang for you! People like you annoy me to no end because you prbably no very little about anything and ask these stupid questions because you feel the need to ask questions like everyone else. Facts are a lot stronger than hearsay.

Answer 5

You're confusing Intelligent Design with the Judeo-Christian religion. They are not the same.

Intelligent Design in its simplest explanation is an idea or theory that life as we know it was created by an intelligent force or being. It does not attempt to identify the being or its origin.

There is nothing really wrong with the theory in all actuality. The problem is that it generates more questions than it answers, questions that we would be unlikely to ever answer. Such as, where did we come from? Who created our creator?

One day when we start seeding other planets with life we might just come to accept that we are probably only one stop on the train of life and we might finally figure out the most imporant question of all. Not how, but why?

Answer 6

ID people belive that the atmosphere was much different than it is today that there was water in "orbit" around the earth and that the flood is a result of that coming down to earth explaining the rain and that water made the Huge Oceans and is why there are polar Icecaps aswell as more water Vapor in the air.

Uraium-thorium dating is very flawed because it is all relative and has a huge margin of error because there can never be a control experiment so it says whet you want it to say.

It could also be argued that evelution which means spontaneous generation of life and the development of that all the way to human life forms is so statistically unlikely that it would be a miracle in its own right.

It can also be pointed out that there is no real fossal evidence of transitional kinds.

Hope that answers your question.

Answer 7

I have never seen intelligent design taught as a science.  It's faith based.

If you have seen it, it is probably the same reason why people try to disprove a spiritual being with physical science.  People ranting on the internet rarely make sense, in my opinion.

Answer 8

If I had a nice swiss watch, and blew it up, would it give me a grandfather clock? If I believed that, you would think I was stupid. Of course I would be stupid if I really believed that. You can't blow up something, and get something even better. However, evolutionists believe that "nothing" blew up, and now we have the universe (much more complex than a grandfather clock). That doesn't even make sense.

Do you know there are no transitional species? Every one that has been "found" has been proven a hoax! If evolution is true, we should have found BILLIONS of transitional species by now.

If evolution is true, and we evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?

If we are continually evolving into something better, how come we don't have wings when we have been trying to fly for centuries. Or why don't we have tails? I sure could use one now and then.

Did anyone see evolution take place?

If evolution is true, how did cross-species survive? How does a half-bird and half-fish survive? Does it fly under water? Is a bird suddenly born with gills and what does a bird do with gills? Where did it find a mate, because the chances of the same mutation happening twice in a close proximity is near impossible and very unlikely? Have you ever seen a mutation that made its victim better?  Do you know that the majority of mutations are sterile. What in a animal's DNA allowed it to get other animal parts in the first place?

I think the real question should be, why are we teaching evolution in schools when that is simply based on faith. And it takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does in Intelligent Design.

Answer 9

First of all, so many people these days are confusing biblical creationism with intelligent design.  "Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence" (Dr. William Dembski). That's it; it says nothing of who the creator is and how he/she/it/they did it. Intelligent Design encompasses every "creation" story, even aliens seeding life on this planet (directed panspermia).  The God of the Bible is just one possible candidate.  Some creationists (like those at Answers In Genesis) don’t like the ID movement because they say it divorces the Creator from the creation.

As far as it being scientific, reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, data fraud analysis, and SETI.  These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems.

As Dr. Stephen Meyer said (when being interviewed by Nightline), “From the evidence of the information that’s embedded in DNA, from the evidence of the nanotechnology in the cell, we think you can infer that an intelligence played a role.  In fact, there are sophisticated statistical methods of design detection that allow scientists to distinguish the effects of an intelligent cause from an undirected natural process. When you apply those statistical measures and criteria to the analysis of the cell, they indicate that the cell was designed by an intelligence.”

Design theorists often employ several methods of design detection, including specified complexity, irreducible complexity, and Bayesian probability approaches.

Here is a brief overview of the scientific case for ID: http://www.arn.org/docs/positivecaseford...

And for those who put so much faith in peer-review, check this out: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640