<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Dec 8, 2005, at 10:05 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BR><DIV><SPAN class="gmail_quote">On 12/7/05, <B class="gmail_sendername">gts</B> <<A href="mailto:gts_2000@yahoo.com">gts_2000@yahoo.com</A>> wrote:</SPAN><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">This Kansas professor criticised ID and its proponents and plans to offer<BR>a course titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, <BR>Creationism and other Religious Mythologies" putting ID where it rightly<BR>belongs: in courses about religion.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR> Actually, I *hate* to burst your bubble :-; but ID could well belong in courses on science related to whether or not we were (a) setup as an evolutionary experiment (as I pointed out in various MBrain discussiosn -- 'natural' evolution may be able to explore certain computational development paths better than 'designed' computation can); (b) whether the universe itself is based upon cellular automata -- recently discussed by Kurzweil based on work by Fredkin & Wolfram in TSIN; and/or (c) whether or not "we" are completely running in a simulation (ala the Matrix et al) [after all an MBrain can most likely support > 10^24 human brains].<BR> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV> I am not seeing your point. The above might make for interesting speculation but it is certainly not validated scientific theory as is evolution. I don't see why the above should be taught in a biology class. It might better fit in a philosophy of science setting. Pure speculation is not science.</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BR> It is worth pointing out that the above ID scenarios are *not* going to make people falling into the "creationist" frame of mind particularly happy. Added to the discussion they do however turn ID vs. Evolution into something which merits serious consideration.<BR> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>That is not equivalent to saying that such speculations should be taught in high school biology classes or presented as being on equal footing with well-established theory.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV> - samantha</DIV></BODY></HTML>