Excellent Advice from “Intelligent Design Is Not a Theory”

I’m doing work on the status of Intelligent Design as theory, and I ran across this (emphasis added):

So, realistically, what should we expect of a theory ?

  • … Show what a skeptical student – mistrusting all claims from the theory’s proponents – would need to do to obtain the data which the theory purports to explain; explain how the student can then reason from that data to the basic tenets of the theory and, from there, to the whole of it. (Asking the student to take your word on anything is not an option in this.)

[Link: Intelligent Design is not a Theory]

For those who will jump to post about ID’s failing as a theory on this or other counts, you can rest assured that I’m aware of those objections. I’m not going to be working on that here at this time, however.

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Possibly related posts (automatically generated):

  1. “Does Intelligent Design Really Explain?”
  2. Intelligent Design: Good Theology or Bad?
  3. Further on “Why the Debate” (Intelligent Design and Thomism)
  4. What’s Wrong and What’s Right With Intelligent Design (Re-posted)
  5. A Taste of New Mystery: Thomism and Intelligent Design
February 24, 2009 – 5:44 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Post Comments (2) Recent Blog Comments For primary navigation click "Show Menu" above. For sidebar material (About, Links, Subscriptions, Blogroll, Copyright, ...) scroll down and click "Further Information."
  1. ChrisB wrote:
    February 25, 2009 at 1:15 pm   Link

    Just in case someone’s interested, I offered my thoughts on whether ID is a theory and how it could verified on my blog.

  2. Paul wrote:
    February 25, 2009 at 8:38 pm   Link

    That quote ignores the realities of pedagogy by assuming an ideal student (by “ideal” I mean a student in the abstract, as opposed to a student that scores 100% and cleans the erasers).

    Part of the issue is pedagogical: at what point in a class, a student’s career, a curriculum, etc., should questioning the assumptions of the class, the curriculum, etc., be encouraged and at what point should it be discouraged? Even though questioning of assumptions is a Good Thing, *constant* questioning of assumptions would create an unworkable classroom at some point in a class, a career, a curriculum, etc. So if constant questioning of assumptions is untenable pedagogically, then the question is then *at what point* is questioning of assumptions appropriate, and at what point should questioning of assumption be appropriately limited? Part of the ID debate is the viewpoint that in K-12 public schools, questioning of assumptions must be limited because of the pedagogical need for *some* acceptance of authority, and *some* times.

    When the quote in the OP refers to never accepting a teacher’s authority, it misses these legitimate pedagogical considerations.

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