Is Intelligent Design Like Scientology?

No, this is the de facto legal reality forever, it can’t go back to Federal Court ever, it is precedent and has force of law forever. The same applies to same sex marriage and slavery. Can’t be revisited.

That is not true. Courts can rule against precedent. They do all the time.

No they don’t. FFRF had a recent case at the 9th Circuit Court of appeals. The judges wanted to go against percent in a lower court in a different part of the country but couldn’t. They even said that they would have ruled against the precedent but couldn’t. I am not a constitutional lawyer but I think this is somehow in the constitution. Nonetheless, Dover is permanent.

This is really important today as many Christians believe that if they can get the right judges on the Supreme Court that they can get same sex marriage reversed or Roe vs. Wade reversed. The legal reality is that they can’t just revisit it and over turn precedent.

Yeah, that doesn’t make sense.to me. But neither fo us are lawyers. Let’s wait till we find one, and pick it up with them.

ok, lets think about this. Say there are 9 judges on the supreme court who think that Roe vs. Wade was decided incorrectly. The Supreme Court can’t issue an opinion on a settled case. And they don’t have a present case in front of them because a case challenging legalize abortion can’t get to them by peculating up from the District and Appellate Courts because of precedence. So a challenge to Roe v. Wade has no way to get to the Supreme Court. It really is pretty simple.

Now Congress could enact a law banning abortion and the President could sign it. Within 24 hours, any Federal Judge can deem it unconstitutional with prejudice and the precedent of Roe v. Wade stands.

Even evolutionary biologists look at ID as a older view. In fact, it was the prevalent view before Darwin’s theory came to be widely acknowledged.
DI and the court cases are arecent resurgence an old scientific view.

This is ridiculous. I could say that most mainstream scientists say science is not athiestic in public. But In private and non scientific circles, their true colours come out… This is a wrong argument because people are entitled to their personal belief systems
and opinions.

It’s not ridiculous at all. Scientists keeping their religion to themselves aren’t advocating the use of subterfuge for the illegal introduction of religious views into public school science classes. ID proponents are.

When the schism happened in the CotFSM (Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster), and the metal colander followers looked unfavorably down upon the plastic colander followers, the stage was set, not only for a permanent new denominational split, but for some unscrupulous rabble rouser to pawn himself off as the new Chief Colander Wearer.
Our very own @Patrick led a small group of spaghetti devotees to New Jersey, and began referring to the Monster as “Ambulatory,” rather than “Flying” – effectively rendering the very Monster itself flightless, and not nearly as monstrous, upon which he set out to write a new best-selling book to justify the change, which sold so miserably he began collecting dues from his small contingency of Monster members.
It’s not a cult, exactly, but a very expensive price for a plate of mythical ambulatory spaghetti, if you ask me.
I was told by a reliable source that he had read the “Dianetics” book by L. Ron Hubbard, and that he simply translated some of Hubbard’s tactics into launching his own religious version of the Cot(F, but now)ASM.
Don’t buy into his protestations of innocence. It’s all an attempt to distract from the real issues. Caveat Emptor!!!

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Equivcoation alert. We are talking about the ID movement, which begins in the 1990s. Try again.

@Ashwin_s, this is one place your Indian context is just going to be different. This does not apply to you, but it might apply to a lot of ID people here.

Actually I have read a large no: of ID scientists say explicitly that religious views should not be taught in school.
Having said that, I am quite skeptical of how neutral evolution is with regard to theology. So the point might be moot anyway.

I agree… will try to keep away from court cases and stuff!

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Why such a narrow definition that is restricted to a few decades and one country (the US). It’s not like this view does not have history older than the 1990s outside the US context.
No offence meant. But sometimes Americans behave like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

ID as presented now in the U.S. is a religious view. That’s the whole point. The DI’s thinly veiled attempts to hide ID’s religious motivations by claiming “the Designer could be any Entity” have failed miserably.

Where besides the U.S. do concerted attempts to undermine science with religious Creationism does ID exist?

Well, when we talk about ID in our context, it is defined by the ID movement. The ID movement, also, has gone international. So the ID you are talking about has far more in common with the ID movement than, say, Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle, or even Boyle and Paley. We are products of our times, like it or not.

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Many many other places. Catch up.

If this is true… then biology was not science before Darwin!

Actually, they do have a growing international footprint. But that’s a different subject.

Please name a few. I’m talking well organized and dedicated attempts to undermine science education by professional organizations like the DI does here.

I prefer looking at things from a historical point of view. I find it adds perspective to our understanding.

There is no reason to be straight jacketed by our times.