Posted on 07/04/2009 3:39:53 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
>>Ideas of evolution, even if not so named, existed long before Darwin wrote his views down and long before Jefferson just as did the idea that one could look at the earth and detect a designer in the design, an obviously intelligent designer.<<
Which is a great theological and philosophical idea.
Just not a scientific one.
>>Labeling ID as religion is a transparent attempt to censor ID. That is not a good sign. Why censor? Why not discuss and debate?<<
Because there is no scientific basis for ID of any kind. And Intelligent Designer is pretty much the same as God from an objective perspective.
You can’t apply an ID to a problem nor a Scientific Theory (unless you introduce us to the designer and ask it what rules it follows and how they can be applied in every case).
ID is theology/philosophy/religion — take your pick. It ain’t science in any way, shape or form.
“I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. (emphasis added)”
He said the human mind perceives also and that based upon examination of the general and the particular.
But that raises a question that perhaps you can answer:
If you examined some chipped stone how would you determine which ones, if any, were the result of a design, a deliberate human act, and not just happenstance?
“Just not a scientific one.”
Not so. When an archaeologist finds a piece of fire baked clay how does he decide whether it is simply some wet clay that had a fire built over it or that it is a piece of pottery?
The most common way is if it is glazed or not.
A great amount of pottery was not glazed so not having a glaze would not be definitive one way or the other.
However, mankind is part of creation. How can creation be perfect with an imperfect part?
“Because there is no scientific basis for ID of any kind. And Intelligent Designer is pretty much the same as God from an objective perspective.”
I’m walking along the beach and see a pattern in the sand. It’s a stylized heart with an arrow through it, with the words “Bobby loves Sue.” This could be the result of movement of the surf over the beach. But I infer that it is the work of an intelligent designer. Contrary to your assertion, I don’t think the designer is God. Your response, I take it, is that my inference has “no scientific basis (for ID) of any kind.” If you’re right, that is a shortfall of science.
I have no problem with a theory saying that the Universe might be the creation of some higher being; but I have real problems in accepting that some arbitrarily defined God did it.
“Contrary to your assertion, I don’t think the designer is God.”
Two questions:
1. In a more relevant example of ID than that which you presented, who IS the designer?
2. What do you do with the answer to question 1.?
ID clearly evolved from Creationism (a religious idea) as a defense against the it-ain't-science charge. You must have missed the court room transcripts that proved that the word "Creationism" was replaced with "Intelligent Design" by a global search-and-replace in "Pandas and People."
I do not believe you.
How, then, can creation be perfect, given precisely what you’ve said?
A creation that can become imperfect cannot then have been perfect at the start, can it?
I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to atheism by their general dogma, that, without revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a God. Now one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians; the other five-sixths, then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without knowledge of the existence of God! That gives [a basis for the hypothesis]…that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may forever go on, by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not and know not, of whose form, substance, and mode, or place of existence, or of action, no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend.
On the contrary, I hold, (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and cent. metal forces; the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere; animals and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutes” particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all of this, design, cause, and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms.
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