What's next?
Professor Newman says, "Intelligent Design Not Based on Religion."
ping!
This is “a keeper”. Thanks 3G.
Appeal to authority.
TJ was one heck of a great thinker. But since TToE was penned pretty much 100 years after his life he wasn’t in a position to comment on it any more than he was in a position to comment on 2VL vs. 3VL.
Whether he did or didn’t think of ID as religion (it is) is irrelevant except for those who stoop to “appeal to authority” — and not even an authority on theology.
Happy July 4th.
I hereby give you the gift of my response.
You’re welcome.
Your linkage even provides a LISTEN option:
http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/enclosure/2008-07-04T19_24_48-07_00.mp3
What's next?
Professor Newman says, "Intelligent Design Not Based on Religion."
The motto for intelligent design should be “Surrender, Lest Ye Succeed”.
The evidence given in this piece is beautiful support for the point that ID is perfectly explained by the anthropic principle. Note that Thomas Jefferson was pointing out that people feel like there's a design, whether there was one or not!
He nicely explained how the human mind works...looking for design where it does not exist...just like the nuts who think that a cloud--or a rock formation on Mars--looking like a human face MUST have been designed that way.
Yep...Evolution just happens.
Yep...Evolution just happens.
Dear SirYou go, Tommy!
-- The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `_mon Dieu!_ jusque a quand'! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing _his god._ He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
Whilst Thomas Jefferson did believe that the vast majority of thinkers of history believed in a Creator and he would accept that idea as a Deist, it's a mistake to use this letter as support for the claim that he would be in favor of Intelligent Design based on what we know today. The man was very intelligent and would have updated his views based on what has been learned since his life, and would therefore, by the reasoning used in this letter, eschew ID today.
I don't think that ID is a religion, any more or less than SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). In each case, it is claimed that we can distinguish between what is natural and what is intelligently designed.
Labeling ID as religion is a transparent attempt to censor ID. That is not a good sign. Why censor? Why not discuss and debate?
The basis for censoring ID is supposed to b "the separation of church and state" which appears in one unofficial letter by Jefferson. Even in that one letter, it only meant that religion would be protected from attack by the state. The founder's, including Jefferson's, never meant to exclude religion from the public sphere.
Long before there was "intelligent design," there was "general revelation:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_revelation
There is certainly some overlap or some relationship between ID and general revelation. For this reason, I don't see why anyone who is religious would object to ID. But even an atheist should be able to entertain the idea of ID, whether it is as SETI, or in some other context.
and nature is the product of creation - God’s creation - a perfect creation
Thanks....I needed a laugh today.
Thomas Jefferson ~ Born 1743 Died 1826
Origin of Species published November 1859
The fact that Thomas Jefferson died 33 years prior to the origination of the theory of evolution shows the Discovery Institutes entire argument to be disingenuous
I guess they are still busy researching this challenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkED8cWRu4Q
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.
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.
It's about God designing laws of nature that are inadequate for life to form naturally and then violating those laws selectively to create life. And then dishonestly blowing smoke about what they are really claiming.
Thomas Jefferson re-wrote the New Testament to leave out the miracles:
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth
Yes Jefferson believed in "nature and nature's God" and Christian morality as he understood it. But if he lived today he would not be considered a Christian by fundamentalists.
Jefferson clearly thought that natural law was INDICATIVE of God's creative power. IDers, OTOH, distinguish BETWEEN natural law and "design," explicitly arguing that the former is inadequate to generate the latter.
Ironically, therefore, the deist Jefferson, is here more theistic than the IDers, who are comparably deistic, seeing God's (pardon!, the unspecified "Intelligent Designer's") creationistic activities only in some things rather than in all things.