"ID isn't science" is often a hard sell because it certainly looks to the outsider vaguely like science, or at least an academic activity. Saying "ID is theology, and therefore not science", though, is a much easier sell since then people do not have to make the distinction between academic-sounding gibberish and scholarship.

So. "ID is theology" - pass it on.

(Now, I personally happen to think that standard ID is flat, uninteresting, and uninspired theology, but that's for a different day - the Multiple Designers Theory variation on ID is much more interesting theology.)

Maybe that looks like an animated monkey in a different light?

Hmm, I think it's a bit of a wasted oppertunity to talk about scientists with strong religious beliefs and not mention Faraday.

"God as a kid tries to make a chicken."

I remember that Far Side. In the anniversary book, Larson put it in the controversial section, explaining that while he didn't actually get much flak from that particular strip, most people seeing it (correctly) as a bit of random silliness, he had a vague fear that a bolt of lightning would come down and make him strongly resemble that kid.

Speculation about what would happen if that came out today? (How did I get the idea in school that society's thought and understanding of the world was progressing?)

Being a religious person, I find it distressing that Science teachers are being asked to teach ID in the Science classroom. It is, indeed, not science, and therefore, not their purview.

At the very closest to empiricism, it's Statistics, but numbers so inestimable that they cannot be appraoched with the comprehension levels we have. It would be futile to try to calculate them.

ID is theology...I cannot blame Dover for removing it from the science classroom at all!

I've heard it said that every meme in SF was begun or codified by Robert Heinlen (not that I believe it; I think he missed one or two :-) -- but he certainly nailed ID: The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

But it might be worth noting that the congressmen most likely to have supported the Medicaid restraint Will wanted were social conservatives. The Republican congressmen who would most heartily agree with Will about evolution, Terri Schiavo, etc., are the ones who would most likely disagree with him about Medicaid.

That may be a meme, but that ID is theology is also a fact.

Oh.

Nev-ver mind.

The straight neo-cons are splitting off from the religious right. This is hopeful in some ways, but there are going to be a lot of dissappointed and angry people on both sides, and I don't think they're going to suddenly espouse liberalism.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

This, I'd say, refutes anyone who claims he was conventionally Christian.

(There's a good list of such quotes here: .)

1) The people pushing ID aren't doing it on the basis of their own personal faith, that would be no problem. We're fine with discussions like "My belief requires my child not eat/learn/wear x". Instead, these people are pushing ID (or claim to be doing it) for the God Every Red-Blooded Right-Thinking American believes in. And who[m?] the Godless Scientists hate.

2) This has convinced many people that Evolution/Science isn't compatible with *any* religion, and that 'fighting evolution' is a Good Work. Folk are surprised to find it doesn't contradict religions in general and their faith in particular. (see Francisco Ayala to his Catholic students).

Besides everybody knows Ghod does indeed play dice with the universe but He loaded the dice - (cf Feynman)

Obs SF Pacifism/Einstein The Number of the Beast

Seems funny to me that these neocons who don't believe in teaching evolution and Darwin in science classes all seem to believe firmly in "neosocial darwinism: the survival of only the richest".

Sagan - Contact - message embedded in the digits of Pi - perhaps any sufficiently advanced technology may be indistinguishable from deity with a small d.

It is merely one of the many reasons the attempt to make the "Intelligent Design" label run cover for young-earth creationism is so deeply stupid, because all the actual examples come down to hey, we do that!

I've annoyed a few waiters in my time by gushing "Oh! I just *love* sitting next to the kitchen. I get to sample the smells of all the stuff you guys make! And my food comes out so warm and fresh!" That and the waitstaff all comes out the kitchen door, which means your waitperson can't avoid you by dodging around the other way.

I thought the concept of Intelligent Design was great when I first heard of it. I've always believed in God-the-Creator, whether He created things several billion years ago and then sat back to watch the Artwork, or whether He created it several thousand years ago and made it *look* like He created it several billion years ago. As far as my appreciation of the Artwork, time of creation is irrelevant.

Then I realized the goons were pushing it as science. Say what? I'm a science geek (ultimately headed for that PhD in Chem) and that ain't science. Science is taking things apart and going "WOW! Looky this, Mabel!" and then putting it back together in new and different ways. Hopefully, without the earth-shattering kaboom. And doing it again, and again and again.

To me, science is a way of appreciating the great Artwork. Theology is a way of appreciating the Creator of the great Artwork. They are indeed related, but one should not be mistaken for the other.

Maybe they're evolved symbiotes.

Actually, they make pretty much all of it now. Animal insulin certainly worked, but some people had immune problems (there were also suggestions that a couple of major long-term complications might be related), and the supply was ultimately limited by the number of animals available. Recombinant human insulin doesn't have any of those problems. I gather that Lilly still makes a small amount of porcine insulin, but beef has been phased out worldwide.

And the bugs used are everybody's postprandial pals E. Coli, which helps make up for the mischief they cause in the food supply.

A story I was working on once had gadgets called Serofacs, which were mobile laboratories about the size of a small truck containing growth chambers and extraction/refining equipment for recombinant biopharmaceuticals. They were "programmed" with a cassette containing the live organisms. Plug the cassette in, provide clean water, power, and a supply of growth medium, and drugs came out the valve. The unit would have to be fully flushed between uses, of course, but a small recirculator could keep the cassette "alive" pretty much forever with proper care, and in the post-kaboom world of the story, cassettes were a highly valuable commodity.

Now, of course, people would tend to think of them as Mobile Bioweapons Facilities, but I take no responsibility for that.

Fortunately, the more lunatic fringe of the press, cheerfully predicting mass brain degeneration, never seemed to notice that prion molecules are found in all life.

Including yeasts...

Anyway, there have been CJD cases (the human equivalent) linked to medical use of human growth hormone, extracted from cadavers. Another source replaced by engineered bacteria.

Why people get all crazy over bioengineered plants, and cheerfully ignore these other genetic modifications, I'm not wholly sure. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they assume, not wholly without reason, that the medical uses are thoroughly tested and controlled. But, as they scream and rave about herbicide tolerant plants, it's all too obvious that they know little of farming.

Thats a quite plausible version of the nanotech universal factory, though I'm sure that keeping the system in working order is thoroughly non-trivial, even in a pre-kaboom world. And one reason why a cassette is valuable is that the non-biological element is hard to replace. If you're running the production, the bacteria are fissioning with gay abandon, and you could load hundreds of new cassettes.

Biological Rights Management? Does a Sony cassette pre-load the Serofac with slow-release antibiotic micro-capsules which their bacteria tolerate, and which bond irreversibly to the pipework so they can't be flushed out?

BZZZ! Gibson reference!

"Pity," Case said. "I was enjoying that addiction."
"That's good, because you have a new one," Armitage said. "There are microcapsules bonded to the inside of your arteries. Tiny capsules, slowly dissolving. You are familiar with the effects of their contents, I think; you encountered the same toxin in Shanghai."
Case stared at him.
"If you complete this contract, I will supply you with the enzyme which will debond the capsules. You'll need a complete blood change, but otherwise you'll be fine. If not, the capsule walls will dissolve in thirty days..."

(Quoted from memory so may be a little wobbly)