ID and its place in schools

This follow up is a response to commenter "Joe" from the previous post. He made two points, 1) any discussion of philosophy invariably involves a discussion of God or some sort of supernatural explanation for the way the world works and 2) there has to be gaps in the fossil record even assuming what science tells us is true--namely, that the Earth is billions of years old and is very dynamic. I will deal with the second one first as it is the easiest to dispense with.

Joe, when I talked about gaps in the fossil records, I am referring to ID proponents claims that there seems to be sudden changes that cannot be explained by gradual change, ergo creatures must have been created by some intelligent designer (which ID people won't say is the Judeo-Christian God, but let's face it, that's to who they are referring).

Undoubtedly, we cannot trace the evolutionary development of every single species from the dawn of life until present day, due to volcanoes, meters, earthquakes, erosion, etc. But the Plaintiff experts certainly convinced Judge Jones (and me) that none of these "gaps" necessitate that the theory of evolution is flawed. "Dr. Padian’s unrebutted testimony demonstrates that Pandas distorts and misrepresents evidence in the fossil record about pre-Cambrian-era fossils, the evolution of fish to amphibians, the evolution of small carnivorous dinosaurs into birds, the evolution of the mammalian middle ear, and the evolution of whales from land animals." Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board at 85.

In short, the judge analyzed each and every critique of evolution and every critique of ID and came out in the favor of evolution as good science and ID as non-science.

To your first point, that discussions of God and the supernatural are long traditions in philosophy. In the ancient days, philosophy and science were inseperable, they both sought to discover the way the universe works. That's why Aristotle was both a botanist and a ethicist (other than the fact that he was really smart).

In my courses on philosophy (one taught in a German college prep school, another taught at Brown University), we talked about supernatural explanations of things, but never about God or the will of God. That was for religion classes.

Personally, I think scientists do what they do not because they want to be or think they are God(s) but because they are trying to understand God's work. God could have very well created the rules that we call physics, how chemicals react, etc. This still seems consistant with the beginning of the Gospell according to John [which by the way really should be "In the beginning was the idea..." because the word John actually used Logos does not necessarily mean "Word"]. To me, there can still be a creator and Lord of us all without having to disprove or discount evolution. Natural section could be God's way. I truly belive that "everything happens for a reason."

Philosophers, like theologians, are involved in figuring out how one should live their life. But ethics is completely independant of evolution, notwithstanding ID supporter's statements that evolution contridicts "every word in the Bible." Philosophy no longer muses about the origin of life, that is again left to either biology or theology.