Comments on: TNR, Slate and Slacktivist on Intelligent Design

By: John Aliff

John Aliff — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 22:54:31 +0000

First of all Darwinism = evolution = atheism is false. Natural slection is a testable evolutionary process that is one of many. Thousands of research papers are published on evolution by natural selection every year. In Biology there is no controversy about it. The controversy is from neoconservatives who want to use their “wedge strategy” to divide Christians and voters at large. Their chief advantage is our passive response as they come up with laws to require the teaching of intelligent design, “academic freedom” laws to restrict what teachers can say in class, and Bible classes taught in high schools. When Jesus asked that when he would return, would he “find faith?” This insistance that the evidence of God’s work be “scientific” is anti-faith!

By: Matthew Tenney

Matthew Tenney — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:31:27 +0000

Coyne’s arguments are
1) philosophical in nature. i.e. “Would an intelligent designer create millions of species and then make them go extinct. . ” is not a scientific answer but a philosophical, even theological answer. What would God do is obviously not a scientific question. By asking the question, he’s opened the door to an answer that is equally beyond the province of science. What Coyne wants is to fire off his questions in a science classroom but relegate the answers to his questions to a philosophy classroom.

2) hidden motive/conspiracy theory/character assassination, i.e. “The real issues behind intelligent design–and much of creationism–are purpose and morality: specifically, the fear . . .” So everyone who opposes Coyne’s viewpoint is motivated by fear.

A statement that says or implies that there is no intelligent design or purpose or meaning or ultimate goal in any natural process is not a scientific statement but a philosophical one. Coyne’s defense does more harm to science than does the ID movement.

Matt

By: A Mind Occasionally Voyaging

A Mind Occasionally Voyaging — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 02:52:07 +0000

The design IS intelligent.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law…

By: wildwest

wildwest — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:26:33 +0000

Any biologists out there?

By: BobW

BobW — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:19:23 +0000

Now, Part Two.
Whether we read Genesis literally, poetically or as myth, we and our Jewish and Muslim brethren and sisters know that it expresses truth, and that that truth is that In The Beginning, God [Intelligence} Created [which, though not necessarily synonymous with “designed,” certainly shows prima facie evidence of design.)
And, far from being the Deist God who then put the whole thing on the sheld,
our God constantly intervened in it. In the Hebrew Bible, he chooses Abraham and not Lot, Jacob and not Esau, David and not Saul, Nebuchadnezzer to enslave his people and Cyrus to free them. His prophets speak under his direct inspiration. In the New Testament, he literally intervenes “in the flesh.”,
and later (and to this day) through what we’ll here call a disembodied Spirt.
Though our Islamic friends deny that Jesus could be one aspect of an indivisible God, they credit Jesus as God’s messenger; and in turn believe that their Koran was literally dictated word for word by Allah. That a God who intervenes so often, so forcefully in historic times did not do so in the prehistoric? C’mpm!

I have no doubt that your metaphysical comments on this subject of a few dayss ago come closer to the capital – T Truth than anything that either ID or Darwinian Evolutionists are ever going to come up with. Alas, the fight is not at this level; but at one Nils Bohr described as more about our perceptions of reality than reality itself. There’s that “through a glass darkly” again.
But for Heaven’s sake, let’s let this be discussed. If the Darwinian case is really so airtight, this should in fact be to their advantage and they should be first to want it. In the classroom, under the framework of the scientific method; instead of in the media, where the axes of the extreme partisans ob both sides are so audibly being ground.
Again regards,
BobW

By: BobW

BobW — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 01:54:07 +0000

You put so much on the plate here that I cannot in one sitting give a full
response; but I can’t resist suggesting that if Covine does not think or-
ganisms are organized, he might do well to get a CT scan, or to open up any
anatomy text written since the mid-Rennaisance. He may choose to believe
that his liver is his liver and his spleen is his spleen because of sheer chance,
and many evolutionary blind alleys; but as in so often in debate and like
so many, he is so in love with his side that he makes statements (in fairness, in his case, a statement) that his allies themselves would tell him is utter
nonsense.
Now. We need to remember that this debate, properly framed, is not over
whether there are evolutionary processes in nature. The scientist proponents
of ID, and I believe most Jews, Christians and Muslims, would agree thst
there are; and that many or most of these give every appearance of acting
randomly and without the direct, case-by-case involvement of an outside in-telligence. The question is whether or not we are to accept as proven beyond
any reasonable scientific doubt whether these are (or this is) the only acceptable explanation for the history of Everything That There Is. The proponents of *Darwinian* evolution simply have not proven this to be so.

Nor, so long as we are here where we see through a glass darkly, could they.
They can, as scientists, say that they have come up with a framework that allows them to reliably, accurately and replicably show how we got from where we
began to here and now. They are unwise to go beyond this and claim, nay, in some cases insist, that this framework is a final and timeless truth. (Which is exactly what they seem to be doing.) This is simply bad science; and scientists ought to be the first to know it. They are fond of citing Galileo v. The Church, but seem to overlook that what Galileo and Copernicus falsified was no Biblical doctrine, but a *scientific* theory first propounded by Aristotle and then expounded by Ptolemy. In short, scientists who refuse to even discuss a dissenting idea might well be wise to wander through a portrait gallery of
their predecessors. The ones where the artists painted egg all over their faces.
In this respect, what strikes me first and foremost about this Scopes Trial
Revisited is how the roles have so totally reversed. While the proponents of ID seek only to discuss, and to present what they believe are unsnswered or wrongly-answered questions, the Darwinians follow the example of William Jennings Bryan
and huffily assert that Every Word Of This Is True And Beyond Any Contradiction.

Quick (or maybe not-so-quick) break.

Regards,
AlsoBob

By: wildwest

wildwest — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:15:38 +0000

“Despite the IDers assertion that their objection to evolution is because of their faith, it is based on fear, which of course is a failing of faith.’

Absolutely!