[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
I personally don’t see the question of whether science requires faith as all that important.
The more important questions are:
what type of question is science currently designed to answer;
what type of question is science currently most useful in answering; and
what is the current state of scientific usefulness based on the current state of scientific knowledge.
Say, for example, I wanted to travel to mars. For me, personally, if I had the resources, I’d look to people who understood the scientific principles necessary to get me there and have faith that they would use sound science to accomplish the task. I think even most (not all) devoutly religious people would agree that this is the type of question or problem that is best suited to science to answer, and they are not going to find the technical path to mars laid out in their bible or other holy texts.
Now say, for example, I wanted to know how the laws of physics came about or what happened before the Universe was created or whether there were supernatural forces at work that designed it all. At least in our current state on knowledge, these questions are scientifically unknowable and science doesn’t do a good job answering these questions. Will science answer these question in the future? I don’t know and I accept the fact that there might be some questions that might never get answered.
The flip side is, religion also shouldn’t be masked as science, because it makes science less useful at what it is actually designed to do and what it does well. Intelligent Design theory purports to the answer the question of how the laws of physics were formed and claims that the theory is based in science.
It isn’t, even if the theory is based on math, data, observable things, or other science-related principles, because the theory, at least in our current state of knowledge, is untestable and incapable of refutation or verification in the same way that the claim that there is no god or no creator is not testable or refutable. Its just not the type of question science is currently designed to answer or at least currently capable of answering.
I currently have “faith” that science is good at answering some important questions and that it will get better at doing so, but I don’t have “faith” that science is capable of answering all the important questions. [/quote]
This. Really well said.
Push, I don’t have a lot of time to write an articulate response to your questions but this post by jjack is a good reflection of my thoughts on intelligent design.
IMO, science classes in the public schools should be focused on experimental design and the application of the scientific method. ID becomes problematic for the reasons jjack talked about.
As a parent, I am free to teach my kids about how this fits into my belief system, if I believe science reveals how God works, strengthens my faith in a creator, or how I grapple with the mysteries.
[/quote]
All that’s fine and good but the bottom line is you ARE demonstrating your faith when advocate for only teaching evolution. You really don’t have a choice when it comes to conceding that.[/quote]
OK. Feel free to persuade me. BTW, I get the frustration with the removal of any mention of religion in public life, and the attempt to take God out of a nation founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. Keep your beliefs in a closet, people offended by God in the pledge of allegiance, or who want to outlaw nativity scenes in public spaces, who want to teach revisionist history where we make no mention at all of the effect of religion on the founders and so forth. Ok. I’m just not sure how you’d design a science curriculum that includes ID that wouldn’t create some of the problems jjack mentioned.
Granted, it’s not an area I know a lot about.
Funny story. My son was WAY into reading about animals, birding, watching Animal Planet and so forth. So, when he was in second grade, we were talking about Noah’s Ark. As you know, the dimensions are given in the Bible in cubits. We he was asking me how many feet in a cubit and trying to figure out how big the ark was. And looking at the Biblical timeline to figure out when the flood happened. You could see the wheels turning. “Wait, how big was the ark?” … “Mom, do you know how many species of spiders there are? Just spiders alone couldn’t fit on that ark. Or what about the lemurs? Lets say he had a male and female lemur. Mom, do you know how many different kinds of lemurs there are? And they wouldn’t have time to evolve into all those species. Not near enough time. If you just started with a pair of lemurs, you’d need WAY more time than a few thousand years…” Yeah. So maybe there’s more to the story, or it isn’t literal, or it was some kind of regional flood… You get the idea. Fun kid.
Also, I would say if you don’t want to have “The Birds and the Bees” talk with your 7-year-old, don’t let him watch a bunch nature documentaries that involve whales mating. Little birds are fine. They kind of flit around, it’s very fast, and you can’t really see anything with all the feathers in the way… but the WHALES!! If you’ve seen whales mating, there’s no way to NOT see what’s going on. Those things are just enormous. Yeah, there was no way I could sidestep that conversation. 
