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Oh PS. The reason I’m so grumpy is not even god at all it’s the lame quacks, and pseudoscience, and fake medicine that is infiltrating the medical system, but that’s a topic for another time.

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Hey all, just another awesome day, well I was doing some research, on why ID isn't science, and well ran across an article at

http://www.naturalism.org/s...

that was too good not to just post, so here it is, feast your eyes on this, and finally see why the new Ben Stein movie is dumb, and why our poor journalist was wrong. (Yipes I guess skeptics are grumpier at 4:37 AM. Enjoy you guys

Why Intelligent Design Isn’t Science

Contrary to the claims of some proponents of intelligent design (ID), science does not presume naturalism. So science doesn't reject ID because ID is supernatural.    Nevertheless, science does reject ID because the ID hypothesis exemplifies none of the characteristics of legitimate scientific explanation.  For some basic characteristics of scientific explanations, click here.

Some of those sympathetic to intelligent design (ID) argue that science as it’s currently taught assumes naturalism, and further that science tries to rule out ID as unscientific on the grounds that ID invokes the supernatural. ¹ But science makes no claims about naturalism. Scientists simply propose explanations which are accepted or rejected on the basis of their scientific merit.

Intelligent design fails as science not because science a priori rules out the supernatural (methodologically it doesn’t need to do this, and in fact wastes no time on the matter), but because the intelligent design hypothesis has no merit as a scientific explanation.

Because science doesn’t presume naturalism, there’s no basis for supposing it violates any U.S. constitutional prohibition on states favoring or establishing a particular religious or philosophical view. So ID need not be imported into the science curriculum to provide "balance" or give non-naturalistic views "equal time." Because ID conclusively fails as good science, it should not be presented or taught as a viable scientific alternative to Darwinian accounts of evolution. But ID could usefully be discussed as an example of pseudo-science, helping to clarify what science actually is, and does.

Below, I’ve set out what I take to be some fairly uncontroversial, central characteristics of legitimate scientific explanation, and then list reasons why ID doesn’t embody or exemplify these characteristics. I don’t pretend that these are exhaustive, that they aren’t redundant to some extent, or couldn’t be improved upon in many respects, so I invite interested parties to improve upon them. But it’s crucial to note that in characterizing science, none of the points below invoke the natural/supernatural distinction. By virtue of its aims and methods, science ends up producing a unified view of the world, but it doesn’t start out with ontological assumptions that qualify it as a partisan philosophy.A first cut at some basic characteristics of scientific explanation:

Awesome article, and I can only close, if we must teach intelligent design next to evolution, why not fortune telling along side math, World War Two Denial in History class, or Prayer Healing along side GERM THEORY!!! or whatever a crazy person in a given subject wants to teach. hope you all enjoyed this is your grumpy skeptic going to get some sleep

1. Other things being equal, science seeks the simplest and most parsimonious peer-reviewed explanations, based on empirical, inter-subjective evidence.

2. Science tries to minimize the number of unverifiable or ad-hoc assumptions in constructing explanations.

3. Science is conservative in hypothesizing new explanatory factors: to the extent possible, explanations will be sought among phenomena already known to exist before positing other phenomena as explanatory factors. Science is not unnecessarily inflationary in its ontology.

4. Science seeks testable, verifiable, and transparently mechanistic or specifiable explanations for phenomena - no mysterious or unspecifiable processes play a more than a passing role in scientific accounts.

5. Entities accepted by science are either directly observed or indirectly inferred via experiment or theory, where such inference predicts specific characteristics of the entity that can be tested for in later experiments or that bear on other predictions.

6. Science seeks explanations which connect phenomena with one another, which unify different levels and domains of phenomena, and which generate testable predictions. Good scientific explanations are in these senses productive.

7. In science, an explanation can’t simply be posited to match the target phenomenon in order to fill an explanatory gap - there has to be independent evidence of the features of the explanation.

8. Before positing explanatory factors that have no other empirical support besides their function of filling an explanatory gap, science will declare the target phenomena to be as yet not fully explained.

9. Science will put stock in a provisional, as yet incomplete explanation involving known processes and entities rather than in an explanation which claims completeness at the cost of invoking ad-hoc, disconnected, and mysterious entities and processes (see 2, 3, 4 above).

10. Science seeks explanations for all phenomena in its purview; it always asks what determines the characteristics of any phenomenon that figures in its explanations: how did that originate, what explains that?

Why intelligent design (ID) isn’t science (the corresponding points above are in parentheses):

1. ID leaves the designing intelligence unexplained in the same way as ID claims that "irreducible complexity" is left unexplained by Darwinian selective processes, but worse, since it offers no specific hypotheses or mechanisms. ID hasn’t produced an explanation, it simply pushes the demand for explanation back a step and so is otiose. Thus:

2. ID posits an extra entity unneeded for explanation, so violates parsimony and simplicity (1).

3. ID seeks explanations outside of well-substantiated, empirically-supported phenomena without fully investigating the adequacy of explanations which restrict themselves to such phenomena. ID is thus not conservative in its explanations, but is instead inflationary ² (3, 8, 9).

4. ID doesn’t specify how design is carried out: no mechanism or process is proposed, and further, no means of discovering this mechanism is proposed. The mechanism remains unacceptably mysterious with no hope of being clarified (4).

5. ID supplies no observational or inferential evidence for a designer that specifies or predicts its specific characteristics. (5).

6. Since no mechanism or process is shown by which intelligent design works, the designer posited by ID is left unconnected to other phenomena (6).

7. ID lacks any explanatory or predictive power; it is unproductive ³ (6):

• ID doesn’t predict biological features that arise as change occurs in organisms.

• ID doesn’t explain the particular biological mechanisms that are found in organisms.

• ID can’t explain patchwork, jury-rigged, or sub-optimal organic "designs." ⁴

• ID doesn’t suggest any experiments to prove the design hypothesis.

• The designer assumption does no real explanatory work; it simply pushes the question further back (1, 3).

8. ID provides no independent evidence for the designer beyond its purported explanatory function (i.e., to fill the explanatory gap), so the designer is just an ad-hoc explanatory posit, like elan vital, phlogiston, etc. (7).

9. In leaving the designer unexplained and its characteristics unspecified, ID fails to treat the designing intelligence as a possible object of scientific explanation (10).

Additional points:

On proving a negative

: In general, ID is a negative thesis - that standard evolutionary explanations cannot, however well elaborated, account for some particular phenomena, e.g., "irreducible complexity." The plausibility of the design hypothesis is thus only a function of the purported failure of selectionist explanations. But there is no argument to support the idea that selectionist explanations will not or cannot be completed, especially as biological mechanisms become better understood, and indeed many selectionist explanations are complete to the satisfaction of many scientists. This means, if selectionist explanations are completed and filled out to a reasonable degree (what’s reasonable is of course a bone of contention), then the intelligent design hypothesis loses this sort of support. The same goes for the origins of life: once a plausible mechanism is established, then ID becomes otiose.

On falsifiability

: It is often supposed, although not universally agreed, that scientific hypotheses and conjectures are at least in principle falsifiable, if not directly testable. In contrast, ID is unfalsifiable: no experiment could prove or disprove it. ID simply says that what selectionism or other science can’t explain is explicable by appeal to design, so ID can always fill the gaps left by science: thus there’s no way to prove it wrong. (This point is taken from Larry Arnhart’s piece" Evolution and the New Creationism: A Proposal for Compromise," Skeptic V8#4, 2001, p. 48.)

On low probability events

: Science accepts the possibility that certain events and conditions may have been extremely low probability occurrences, but doesn’t draw any ontologically inflationary conclusions from this. In contrast, ID draws the inference that since (let us concede for the sake of argument) it’s highly improbable that the universe has constants which are favorable to life, or that life arose at all, there must have been an intelligent agent that chose the constants and/or created life. But this inference simply begs the question of the prior probability of the existence of the designer.

hello all, well I haven't had time to write too much, with babies, possible deployment to iraq, and a very busy work schedule, i can't seem to find the time to write. Every now and then, some moron, comes out to piss me off, this time it happens to be one of our local journalist's Marylee Shrider, she's obviously dumber than  she look (hard to believe I know) so i took the time to write her, hope she writes back

PS. Please pick up a book, ignorance is bliss, but come on, you can’t be that dumb

hope she does, I'll let you all know what she says if she indeed responds, have a good day yall...........ugh working nights.....tough

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Hello all, seems I can't find the time to write anymore in my blogs so i can only hope to continue to write. Either way, last night, while having a poker night having a few drinks, Ouija Board came up, and someone swore up and down that it works. After I stated that there is no way that Ouija Board works we ended up a long night trying to convince each other of the plausibility of it.
In my humble opinion I don't see any plausible way of seeing how this happens. I have seen very plausible explanation, it's known as the Ideomotor effect described below

http://skepdic.com/ideomoto...
ideomotor effect

The ideomotor effect refers to the influence of suggestion or expectation on involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. The term "ideomotor action" was coined by William B. Carpenter in 1852 in his explanation for the movements of rods and pendulums by dowsers, and some table turning or lifting by spirit mediums (the ones that weren't accomplished by cheating). Carpenter argued that muscular movement can be initiated by the mind independently of volition or emotions. We may not be aware of it, but suggestions can be made to the mind by others or by observations. Those suggestions can influence the mind and affect motor behavior.

Scientific tests by American psychologist William James, French chemist Michel Chevreul, English scientist Michael Faraday (Zusne and Jones 1989: 111), and American psychologist Ray Hyman have demonstrated that many phenomena attributed to spiritual or paranormal forces, or to mysterious "energies," are actually due to ideomotor action. Furthermore, these tests demonstrate that "honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations" (Hyman 1999). They also show that suggestions that can guide behavior can be given by subtle clues (Hyman 1977).

The movement of pointers on Ouija boards, of a facilitator's hands in facilitated communication, of hands and arms in applied kinesiology, and of some behaviors attributed to hypnotic suggestion, are due to ideomotor action. Ray Hyman (1999) has demonstrated the seductive influence of ideomotor action on medical quackery, where it has produced such appliances as the "Toftness Radiation Detector" (used by chiropractors) and "black boxes" used in medical radiesthesia and radionics (popular with naturopaths to harness "energy" used in diagnosis and healing.) Hyman also argues that such things as Qi Gong and "pulse diagnosis," popular in both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic medicine as practiced by Deepak Chopra, are best explained in terms of ideomotor action and require no supposition of mysterious energies such as chi

so either some spirit is controlling the planchette or, someone is unconsciously moving it,
I find it rather silly that this ancient belief is still in existence but oh well I can only try and do my best to educate the world lol. So in closing i will try any supernatural game or thing to prove it doesn't work.

sincerely
your grumpy skeptic