Denna uppsats avser att försöka analysera de diskurser som figurerar i media rörande intelligent design och kreationism i skolan. I denna uppsats finns även syftet att beskriva hur dessa av media skapade diskurser förs som avbildar den ”goda biologin”eller ”den goda utvecklingsläran”. Konflikten mellan kyrkan och vetenskapen är gammal. Bakgrunden till konflikten kan tillskrivas Charles Darwin som utmanade religionen och kyrkan när han påvisade människans släktskap med apan. 150 år efter Darwins utmaning finns det fortfarande en opinion som motsätter sig evolutionen både i Sverige och utomlands. I USA finns det en stor opinion som motsätter sig evolutionen och debatten ”over there” är tidvis väldigt framträdande i media. Förhållandena i Sverige kan sägas avspeglas till viss del av händelser i USA, vilket har visat sig i denna media studie. De diskurser som figurerar i den mediakonstruktion som jag har använt mig av, propagerar i huvudsak för evolutionär syn på biologiundervisningen. Genom att låta diskurserna diktera vad som är möjligt och rimligt genom att dessa motsätter eller styrker varandra så kan dessa också reglera varandras auktoritet. De diskurser som propagerar för intelligent design eller kreationism i skolan i denna mediakonstruktion blir därigenom decimerade av andra diskurser. Denna decimering av diskurser tyder på att i denna mediakonstruktion är den ”goda ursprungsläran”, den ursprungslära som använder sig av en vetenskaplig metodik och empiriska metoder som kan falsifieras. Motsatsen till den ”goda ursprungsläran” kan sägas vara kreationism och intelligent design då dessa båda har har dogman i dess fundament och har närvaro av tro på övernaturliga krafter.

This dissertation critiques and rejects Elliott Sober's dismissal of intelligent design as a scientific hypothesis. Sober builds the case for this dismissal in chapter 2 of his 2008 book Evidence and Evolution. Sober's case against intelligent design as science is a philosophical one, emerging from a Bayesian likelihood approach. Sober claims that unlike neo-Darwinian processes, intelligent design cannot supply independent evidence to support the claim that it is a measurably likely cause responsible for the emergence of biological organisms and the structures or processes of which they are composed. Without an assessable likelihood, Sober asserts that intelligent design (again, unlike neo-Darwinian mechanisms) is not testable, and since it is not testable, it does not qualify as a scientific hypothesis. This dissertation argues however, that according to Sober's own standards in Evidence, because intelligent design and the neo-Darwinian hypothesis both address unrepeated, major biological changes in the unobservable past, and because they both depend upon crucial analogies in order to support either inductive arguments or likelihood assessments, the two hypotheses stand on equivalent evidential and logical grounds. Either Sober must reject both neo-Darwinism and intelligent design, or he must allow them both as equivalent, rival hypotheses based upon a fair application of his argumentation requirements. In addition, after explaining important basics of analogy theory, and its crucial, even unavoidable role in the historical (or "origins") sciences, the dissertation goes on to show how intelligent design's empirical support, based upon analogy with humanly designed artifacts, machines and increasingly cell-like creations in the laboratory, is continuing to grow stronger by the year in both likelihood and in explanatory power. The dissertation thus concludes that intelligent design should be treated as a viable scientific explanation for the dramatic examples of specified complexity being discovered in biology, and indeed should be regarded as an increasingly vigorous rival to the neo-Darwinian explanation of such complexity.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-354).

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, May 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation is a critical evaluation of two modern thinkers debating the idea of intelligent design (ID), William Dembski and Francisco Ayala. Specifically, it focuses on Ayala's major theological critique of intelligent design, namely, the problem of dysteleology. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the problem of dysteleology as it relates to biology and offers a methodology for evaluating each thinker’s resolution to this problem. Chapter 2 examines Ayala's scientific critique of ID, and chapter 3 looks at Ayala's theological critique of ID. Chapter 4 summarizes Dembski's method for detecting design, and chapter 5 outlines Dembski's critiques of naturalism and materialism as well as his information-theoretic account of reality. Finally, chapter 6 analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Ayala’s proposal that Darwin is a gift to theology in light of Dembski’s information-theoretic account of reality.

The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us to conclude that the event is surprising. Paul Horwich has argued that surprising events are, in addition, more probable given alternative background assumptions that are not themselves extremely improbable. I argue that Horwich's definition fails to capture important features of surprises and offer an alternative definition that accords better with intuition. An important application of Horwich's analysis has arisen in discussions of fine-tuning arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider the implications for this argument of employing my definition of surprise. I argue that advocates of fine-tuning arguments are not justified in attaching significance to the fact that we are surprised by examples of fine-tuning.

I föreliggande arbete har vi undersökt problematiken med att arbeta med religion och vetenskap inom skolvärlden. Ämnesområdet är av många uppfattat som svårarbetat och komplicerat. Därför har vi haft som syfte att undersöka hur det kan göras och vilka bakomliggande faktorer som kan finnas för den förmodade problematiken. Vi har genomfört en kvalitativ intervjustudie med sju olika lärare och analyserat deras svar med hjälp av tidigare forskning om religionskunskapens kursplan och forskning om relationen mellan religion och vetenskap. Resultatet visar att lärare arbetar på olika sätt med kursmålet, vissa med bättre förkunskaper än andra. En gemensam nämnare är att en konfliktorienterad undervisning om relationen är dominerande, och att det finns en underliggande problematik och frågeställning om kursmålets existens i kursplanen för religionskunskap.

Like few other concepts in the history of science, Darwinian evolution prompted humans to question their most basic assumptions about themselves. Among the theory's most controversial implications, the principle of common descent insisted that humans were kin to other species. As such, common descent challenged the previously unquestioned tradition of anthropocentrism, which held that humans were distinct from and superior to other species. In order to discern common descent's impact on anthropocentrism, I will examine three court cases from an eighty-year span of American history, where resistance to common descent was especially virulent. Courtrooms provided the nation's leading critics of common descent an arena in which to protest the theory's most egregious offenses. As common descent garnered increasing support from scientists and educators, however, anthropocentrists modified their position accordingly. Initially, they stigmatized monkeys and apes precisely because those animals were the most genealogically proximate to humans. As common descent became more accepted, however, this position became increasingly difficult to defend. Accordingly, many anthropocentrists abandoned their obsession with primates and instead engaged the entire tree of life, including its mysterious origin. By the turn of the millennium, even as some anthropocentrists increasingly accepted humanity's kinship to other species, many continued to cite human intelligence as legitimate grounds for anthropocentric behavior. Thus, while anthropocentrism survived the threat of common descent, it had to accommodate the Darwinian onslaught in order to do so. / Master of Arts

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Intelligent Design (ID) Bewegung auf Basis der Luhmannschen Systemtheorie. Innerhalb dieser theoretischen Rahmung werden eine Einordnung und Positionsbestimmung der Bewegung, die ihrer Selbstbeschreibung nach wissenschaftlich operiert, vorgenommen. Die Wurzeln der Bewegung finden sich in der historischen Ausgangslage protestantischer Konfessionen. Aufgrund ihres Glaubens verfolgt, emigrierten viele Christen aus Europa in die 'neue Welt'. Die evolutionstheoretischen Erkenntnisse des 19. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere von Charles Darwin, hatten auch für das theologische Selbstverständnis dieser christlichen Gruppierungen weitreichende Folgen. Diesen wird entlang der Positionierung zum Kreationismus bis hin zum modernen politischen Aktivismus der Evangelikalen nachgegangen. Der systemtheoretische Ansatz leitet die Betrachtung der komplexen Kopplungen der ID-Bewegung zwischen verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Teilsystemen an. Insbesondere wird die Beziehung zur Wissenschaft behandelt, mit Fokus auf das organisationale Zentrum der Bewegung, das Discovery Institute. Neben der politischen Arbeit wird der nach US-Recht „steuerrechtlich gemeinnützigen“ Stellung der Organisation besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Politisches Agieren und wirtschaftliche Aspekte lenken den Blick schließlich auf die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit der ID-Bewegung und deren massenmedialen Auftritt. Die vorgebliche Wissenschaftlichkeit der Bewegung endet im Versuch das gegenwärtige System der Wissenschaft durch religiös-normative Setzungen zu regulieren. Das Ziel wird dabei mit der Gegenrepräsentation in der Gesellschaft, als soziale Bewegung, verfolgt.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Todd F. Simon / The debate over human origins was a prominent fixture of U.S. news coverage during the first decade of the 21st century. During this period, U.S. news media featured regular portrayals of an all-out culture war between supporters of biological evolution and advocates of so-called “rival theories” of human origins. In the end, this war would cost American taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees, confuse science students, divide communities with unparalleled animosities, and alter public policy at the city, county and state level. While there have been previous content analyses performed on U.S. newspaper coverage of evolution and its primary challenger, an idea called "intelligent design," these analyses have tended to be somewhat informal (Mooney & Nisbet, 2005) or lacking (Martin, et al., 2006). The following study addresses these gaps in the literature. Using content analysis, the following study examines hard news coverage of intelligent design presented in 12 U.S. newspapers of varying circulation size and storytelling influence. A final sample of 421 newspaper articles originally published between the years 2000 and the end of the year 2009 is analyzed herein. Results demonstrate that U.S. newspapers initially framed intelligent design as primarily a religious / unscientific concept, but that intelligent design was increasingly framed as a scientific / unreligious concept leading up to, during and after the landmark 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Additionally, this study finds no significant differences in framing intelligent design as a religious / unscientific or scientific / unreligious concept by dedicated science reporters and non-science reporters.