Is atheism a scientific perspective?

[GUBU]

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And I don't think that you can just dismiss the arguments that ID proponents make by asserting that it is a conspiracy theory set up by the religious to corrupt science.

Well we can presume that ID is exactly that because it is what the fundy creatards who created ID stated in their foundational document. The "Wedge strategy" memo, which has long been available and long been acknowledged by the discovery "institute" as being theirs and factually correct, explicitly states that the whole idea is to get creatardism taught in schools through rebranding as ID (and not explicitly naming yhwh), and pretending that there is a controversy in evolutionary biology, i.e. the science isn't settled and that "many scientists" are being blackmailed into not speaking out against "Darwinism".

If that is not religion trying to corrupt science then I don't even.

[Esquilax]

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And I don't think that you can just dismiss the arguments that ID proponents make by asserting that it is a conspiracy theory set up by the religious to corrupt science.

Well we can presume that ID is exactly that because it is what the fundy creatards who created ID stated in their foundational document. The "Wedge strategy" memo, which has long been available and long been acknowledged by the discovery "institute" as being theirs and factually correct, explicitly states that the whole idea is to get creatardism taught in schools through rebranding as ID (and not explicitly naming yhwh), and pretending that there is a controversy in evolutionary biology, i.e. the science isn't settled and that "many scientists" are being blackmailed into not speaking out against "Darwinism".

If that is not religion trying to corrupt science then I don't even.

For an even more vivid example of this, and in fact a smoking gun that amounted to legal proof that ID is merely creationism disguised to corrupt science, we need only look at "Of Pandas and People."

For those not in the know, Pandas was a 1989 biology textbook described by real scientists as "a wholesale distortion of modern biology," published by a non-profit organization founded by a minister and devoted to preaching the gospel, written and edited by creationists including one of the fathers of the ID movement, Charles Thaxton, with contributions from Stephen C Meyer, whom AAA has already cited as a good source in this thread. Funny how he insists ID isn't creationism, but cites a fucking creationist as his source.

Now, normally, just seeing the originators of ID writing creationist biology textbooks in association with christian ministers and the very people AAA swears up and down are just good ID scientists and totally not creationists would be enough, but we can do better. We can find the transitional form between creationism and ID, showing that, to the people who founded the movement, the two terms mean the same damn thing. See, in 1987, the Edwards vs Aguillard Supreme Court case ruled that creationism couldn't be taught in schools; drafts of the Pandas textbook from before this time used the term creationism freely, but after 1987 those same drafts suddenly switched to using ID... except for one, which used ID and, in one notable instance, "cdesign proponentsists."

What had happened was that the editors were simply finding instances of the words "creation," or "creationists," and replacing them with "intelligent design," and "design proponents," without changing any of the structure of the text beyond that. The book was literally just creationist arguments, with the names swapped out, only they fucked up in one instance and left telltale traces of what they were doing. You can actually find drafts of this damn thing and compare: the only thing that changes is the relevant nouns. If that's not enough, Thaxton himself later admitted that yes, the term intelligent design was only included because he was looking for a way not to say creationism in the book.

So tell us again how ID isn't a religiously based attempt to confound science, AAA.

[Tonus]

It can also be pointed out that Darwin's motivations do not affect the validity of his theory. If it was true that he came up with the theory of evolution out of a desire to mislead the world and move them away from god, the theory still needed to be testable and falsifiable to be a legitimate scientific theory. If Darwin loathed god with all of his energy, he still needed to show his work and allow it to be reviewed by his peers and checked for accuracy and errors. If ID is simply creationism rebadged, it can still be put forth for scientific scrutiny via the scientific method and the system of peer-review. Motivations make for a good story, but they do not matter. Results matter.

[Cyberman]

For a fuller discussion of the Pandas book and its role in the Dover trial, the 2007 Nova episode is available on youtube:

[Esquilax]

It can also be pointed out that Darwin's motivations do not affect the validity of his theory.  If it was true that he came up with the theory of evolution out of a desire to mislead the world and move them away from god, the theory still needed to be testable and falsifiable to be a legitimate scientific theory.  If Darwin loathed god with all of his energy, he still needed to show his work and allow it to be reviewed by his peers and checked for accuracy and errors.  If ID is simply creationism rebadged, it can still be put forth for scientific scrutiny via the scientific method and the system of peer-review.  Motivations make for a good story, but they do not matter.  Results matter.

Very true. I just tire of people like AAA, blithely accusing anyone who disagrees with him of bias while completely ignoring the lengthy and verifiable history of bias and dishonesty at the beating heart of ID. He and every stripe of creationist will happily impute malevolent or dishonest motives into atheists and scientists and then walk away as though the job had been done, while studiously avoiding any form of research as to the motivations behind their own camp.

It's kind of an insult to injury thing, where we both have to deal with a non-scientific claim of intelligent design that leans transparently on arguments from ignorance and claims that cannot be supported, while also having our reputations and research acumen impugned by people who wouldn't know decent epistemology if it bit them on the ass.

[Asmodee]

Not really. We have a feature in something that humans did not make. We humans have produced this feature repeatedly with the input of intelligence. No other cause has stood up to scrutiny, which leaves intelligence as the only known cause for the feature. It also isn't that they MUST be the product of design. That was never part of the argument. We may find a better explanation tomorrow.

Really. And that's before even getting into the 'other things' being living organisms.

That the 'other cause' (evolution by heritable variation and natural selection) hasn't stood up to scrutiny is false given any reasonable assessment of scrutiny, given 150 years of people trying to prove it wrong and that there's a Nobel waiting for anyone who can find a better explanation that's going unclaimed. Intelligent Design on the other hand has fallen apart at every point where proponents have claimed 'irreducible complexity'. I'll give them this: they proposed a testable hypothesis. Too bad for them that the hypothesis fails every time it's tested. And at this point, any 'better explanation' that may turn up tomorrow will have to explain all the evidence that led us to conclude that natural selection acting on heritable variation is the explanation.

I just noticed this.  It really bugs the hell out of me when people use the "Sherlock Holmes" the answer.  You know the quote.  "If you eliminate the impossible whatever is left, however improbable, must be the answer."  I fucking hate that quote because morons everywhere think it's so fucking wise.  Most of them don't even know it's a line from a novel set in a fictional universe.  They just believe, ESPECIALLY creationists, that if you can just eliminate every notion you don't like they "win by default" because after they've rejected everything else theirs is the only answer left.  Reality just doesn't fucking work like that.  You can't find out "what is" by finding out "what is not".  That would be like saying that Mr. X MUST have been the murderer because I don't accept your explanation that Mr. Y did it.  There's no evidence to prove Mr. X did it, but I don't like him and since I've eliminated every other suspect you presented, Mr. X is your man.  But no, I didn't bother to eliminate any of the other 7 billion people on the planet as suspects, just the one you put forth.  It irritates me to no end that people are too fucking stupid to see just how fucking stupid that is.

Then there's also the elephant in the room with that statement, intelligence is not a "known" cause for natural structures, it's a "believed" cause.  No natural structure has ever been proved to have been "designed" by anything.  In fact, the ONLY designer we are absolutely certain of is humans (unless you count things like beaver dams as being "designed" rather than simple products of instinct, but that's another conversation).  By definition something which is designed "by humans" is not and cannot also be "a natural structure".  Something cannot be both "natural" and "designed by humans".  So, humans being the only designers we are absolutely, unquestionably certain about, the terms "designed" and "naturally occurring" are mutually exclusive terms.  So the comparison between the naturally occurring and things designed specifically be humans to prove the naturally occurring structures are designed by "not humans" is really quite ludicrous because you are comparing two mutually exclusive things.

[Esquilax]

I just noticed this.  It really bugs the hell out of me when people use the "Sherlock Holmes" the answer.  You know the quote.  "If you eliminate the impossible whatever is left, however improbable, must be the answer."  I fucking hate that quote because morons everywhere think it's so fucking wise.  Most of them don't even know it's a line from a novel set in a fictional universe.

A fictional universe created by Arthur Conan Doyle, a man whose approach to epistemology famously led him to accept the existence of fucking fairies based on some fake-ass photos of girls posing with cardboard cutouts of fairies from a children's book. I like Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle was a writer, and though he may have written about a genius detective, he wasn't one himself. Outside of his writing, he was actually kind of a dopey spiritualist: not the guy you want to be turning to for sage advice on deduction.

Then there's also the elephant in the room with that statement, intelligence is not a "known" cause for natural structures, it's a "believed" cause.  No natural structure has ever been proved to have been "designed" by anything.  In fact, the ONLY designer we are absolutely certain of is humans (unless you count things like beaver dams as being "designed" rather than simple products of instinct, but that's another conversation).  By definition something which is designed "by humans" is not and cannot also be "a natural structure".  Something cannot be both "natural" and "designed by humans".  So, humans being the only designers we are absolutely, unquestionably certain about, the terms "designed" and "naturally occurring" are mutually exclusive terms.  So the comparison between the naturally occurring and things designed specifically be humans to prove the naturally occurring structures are designed by "not humans" is really quite ludicrous because you are comparing two mutually exclusive things.

This sort of betrays the self-serving, arbitrary nature of how people use observations to support ID. AAA is all too happy to point out that intelligence has been observed to produce this and that, but he stops there because it supports his conclusion. It's equally true, under the same premises, that the only intelligences we've observed capable of doing whatever he thinks is being done, are human intelligences. Wouldn't it therefore follow that his own argument concludes that human life was intelligently designed by humans, and that this is the best explanation?

Oh no, but we're just meant to stop at intelligence and not care about what our observations are beyond that point, for some reason...

[robvalue]

I'm still waiting to hear what ID is supposed to teach us.

Apparently something about plants being a good diet. But no explanation has been forthcoming about why believing there was a designer leads to this conclusion. And although I personally am on a plant based diet, I wouldn't agree it's a simple matter of stating its "the best" either.

And other random claims that are not in any way substantiated, or of any particular significance.

[The Grand Nudger]

ID teaches us about the compelling and subversive nature of science.  Once upon a time, people wouldn't twist themselves into knots trying to be scientific, they'd twist themselves into knots trying to be faithful.

[LadyForCamus]

Once again, Junk Status took a shit everywhere and then skated out the door without flushing.