[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[David Cake]

At 3:37 PM -0700 4/12/07, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>On Dec 4, 2007, at 7:53 AM, Mark Smith wrote:
>
>>Not the point, creationism demands belief. Science never, ever, ever  
>>requires belief. Science demands doubt.
>>
>
>And yet all I have to do is scroll down the page to see statements 
>that seem categorical and dogmatic. The ID people are far to clever 
>to admit that they 'demand belief'. They will assert that they only 
>want  a chance to present their  side.

	And they would scream if told that, say, economics classes 
would give equal time to communism, or that human biology would cover 
Hitlers ideas on eugenics, so they understand that you don't need to 
give equal time to ALL theories. Their lie consists in maintaining 
that their theories have equal scientific validity to evolution, and 
that their theories are anything other than a deliberate attempt to 
present Christian ideas in scientific language.

>>In fact, it *is*  
>>currently good science to exclude creationism from all scientific  
>>discussion, because it does not pass the most basic admission  
>>criteria. This is a case where the baby can safely be thrown out with  
>>the bath water. If there is anything robust in there, it will surface  
>>on its own anyway.
>>
>
>Any halfway competent ID advocate will eat your lunch for making 
>statements like that. You sound afraid to let people consider the 
>evidence and arrive at their own conclusions.

	He is right, and ID is not creationism. ID specifically 
avoids making creationist claims for exactly this reason. An ID 
advocate can't contend that creationism is good science without 
giving their whole facade away (and the whole purpose of ID is to 
maintain that facade in order to sneak past the gatekeepers of 
science).
  	ID shouldn't be arbitrarily thrown out of scientific 
discussion - it should be discussed every time they come up with 
useful scientifically verifiable evidence in favour of their theory. 
Which will be seldom to never, because its bullshit, but they deserve 
to be considered, because they have done a good enough job of 
mimicing science to make falsifiable claims, and the price they have 
to pay for that is being falsified.

	Cheers
		David