[RussP]

All I ask is that you read the article before you criticize it. Thanks.

[RightWhale]

ID is not a theory. Neither is evolution. They are both explanations.

[peyton randolph]

Based on faith? Yes.

Scientific? No.

[staytrue]

ID theory has not enough evidence for it to be taught in school. Maybe if there is more evidence for it, but little or none exists for it.

No one taught continental drift theory in school in the 1800's. Not enough evidence for it. Scientists are open minded and will embrace ID if there is evidence for it. As of now, there is almost none.

Teaching ID in schools would be nonesense and a bastardization of the word science.

[GSlob]

Bull. "Now consider the opposite hypothesis, namely that "extraterrestrial intelligent life exists." How could this hypothesis be falsified? The only way to falsify it would be to prove that absolutely no intelligent life exists anywhere in the entire universe other than on (or from) earth. Because that is obviously impossible to prove, this hypothesis fails the falsifiability criterion and is therefore "unscientific." "
The search of entire universe is possible, at least in theory.

[ovrtaxt]

A misleading definition of science is being used to exclude ID a priori. A judge recently ruled that even mentioning ID is prohibited in the science classes of a particular public school system. That kind of censorship is certainly more in the spirit of the Soviet Union than of the United States. Professors have been publicly censured by their peers for espousing ID. One can only wonder if Isaac Newton would be censured today for his professed belief in the intelligent design of the universe.

That bears repeating.

I say let all the thoeries, ideas, and explanations get haashed out in every individual's mind. What are the Darwinites afraid of?

[RichInOC]

Starting creation v. evolution threads on Christmas is an offense against good taste and manners for which I would gleefully revive hanging, drawing and quartering.

[SandRat]

[little jeremiah]

Moral Absolutes Ping.

Merry Christmas, pingees!

I wasn't going to ping anything today, but I really like this article.

Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.

Note: The proponents of the TOE remind me of characters from "Through the Looking Glass".

[Noachian]

Apparently, nobody informed the SETI team that their motivating hypothesis -- that "extraterrestrial intelligent life exists" -- is "unscientific"!

The entire SETI program is nothing more than a philosophy based in part on Drake's equation which even Drake found problems with.

Millions of dollars, and untold amounts of time, have been poured into a program that attempts to prove a negative.

Why? Because scientist have their own religion, and two of the disciples of that "religion" are Sagan and Asimov.

The whole idea of Intelligent Design is based on design by an intelligent being or beings for which there's no scientific rationale to believe exists at this time.

Neither is there a scientific rationale to believe intelligent life exists beyond this planet. So, if the scientific community wants to ban ID then, by extension, they have to ban SETI as well.

[gcruse]

This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. --Sir Isaac Newton,

On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are…necessarily denied to us… We shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition. -- August Comte, 1835

Everything that can be invented has been invented.  --  Patent Commissioner, Charles H. Duell, 1899

I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky -- Some guy

[publiusF27]

Life is incredibly likely in our universe.

That is an incredibly unlikely state of affairs, for a universe. Entropy predicts the opposite.

I enjoyed this book:

At Home in the Universe

Here's a review, and another mention.

[manwiththehands]

Good article.

Suppose the message contained the first 100,000 binary digits of pi, repeated indefinitely, with each repetition separated by a "spacer" of 1000 zeros.

Evolutionists could not get off easy to support their position even if this message were one day received.

One of the more banal arguments from evolutionists is that "a billion monkeys on a billion typewriters in a billion years could type the works of Shakespeare just by chance".

The evolutionists would have to be one of the first to admit that this signal could just as easily be explained by a radio pattern generated by random noise.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

It's interesting to see Popper being invoked. As Popper pointed out -- no theory has ever been, nor can ever be proven. The most that can be said is that it is "not yet disproven".

The Theory of Evolution has not been disproven -- despite many tests. However, it has not been proven. Evolutionists criticize proponents of ID or Creationism of faith-based reasoning. Ironically, many evolutionists make a similar leap of faith; when they so staunchly defend the ToE that they will not even allow any competing "theories" (models, explanations, whatever) to be discussed.

The ToE (like all other theories) has not, and never will be "proven". That fact of science has to be the starting point of any discussion where the name of "science" is invoked.

[forsnax5]

The philosophical question is whether any amount of evidence for ID could be enough to get evolutionists to concede that it ID is even a possible explanation.

It's not that no amount of evidence would convince, it's that there's no evidence of a designer or a mechanism. There's no starting point for research.

Find a very old alien seedship and a biology lab in the asteroid belt or on the dark side of the moon, and you'd be up to your hips in evidence and research projects.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC SPOTREP - what a waste of time this has become: evolutionists refuse to examine any evidence proferred by creationists/ID. Evolutionists simply resort to name calling and cliches.

no further entries will be made on this thread.

[Klinx]

Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?

Let me ask you this
Is Modern Liberalism a Political Ideology or a Religion?

Is Modern Liberalism based on FACTS?
Is Modern Liberalism based on the TRUTH?

Is Modern Liberalism a belief system that is used to control and manipulate weak minded individuals who seek and need guidance?

Does Modern Liberalism use myths and old stories to push it's agenda and to create new members?

I'll ask you again
Is Modern Liberalism a Political Ideology or a Religion?

[DaGman]

ID is a dead issue. It died with the Dover school board decision. To discuss ID futher only gives it more life than it deserves. The only people even interested in trying to discuss ID are people that believe it.

Prediction: This post will be responded to with the usual chants of "evolutionists refusing to debate the merits of evolution". The ID'ers, as did the Dover court, have heard the arguments. But the ID'ers refuse to acknowledge they heard then repeat their chant again in a circular fashion. Therefore, why even engage ID'ers. They are not intellectually honest nor do they ever intend to be.

[Texas Eagle]

Both professional and amateur evolutionists will continue to arrogantly asert that ID theory cannot possibly be "scientific."

Kinda like the way professional and amateur Liberals will continue to arrogantly assert that Conservative theory cannot possibly be "compassionate".

Come to think of it, when it comes to Evolutionists and Liberals, I wonder which group hates God more.

[garjog]

Some here argue that the evidence for ID is nil.
What about the argument that we now know the exact biochemical processes that permit vision and that the idea that a patch on an ancient cell could suddenly mutate with the ability to be sensitive to light is almost absurd?

"To Darwin vision was a black box, but today, after the hard, cumulative work of many biochemists, we are approaching answers to the question of sight. Here is a brief overview of the biochemistry of vision. When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in the shape of retinal forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior, making it stick to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into activated rhodopsin, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with activated rhodopsin, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)...

Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

Now that the black box of vision has been opened it is no longer enough for an "evolutionary explanation" of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century, and as popularizers of evolution continue to do today. Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric."
http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm

[Windcatcher]

As someone with a Catholic background, I've always wondered how a view of an intelligently designed universe was supposedly incompatible with a scientific view of it. When I look at something like Maxwell's Equations, they are so elegant, such things of beauty, that I have no trouble accepting the notion that our Universe was designed (at least, I would consider rejecting it folly). Einstein once famously declared that "God does not play dice." Of course, he was talking about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics, but I find it impossible to belive that God covered His proverbial eyes and created the universe without a thought to how it would operate. If He created it, He certainly thought about it.

I don't believe that we were created circa 6000 years ago, but I fail to see the inconsistency between an evolutionary progression and a God having something to do with it. Good grief, the Uncertainty Principle alone has enough leeway to drive a small galaxy through, such that ***literally anything*** can theoretically happen, and that's not counting the fact that God is *divine*. Saying that we evolved and saying that God didn't merely roll dice but fudged some of the results aren't incompatible concepts. We could very well have turned out this way, in this place, and in this time through divine intent.

Do I have evidence of any of this? Of course not--it's a matter of faith and might be a priori unknowable (maybe Heisenberg was crazy like a fox--wink, wink). My point is that these concepts are not inherently incompatible.

I found the references to putative alien life interesting. I've never seen them used in this way, but here's another concept to make your head spin: we are supposedly made in God's image. His physical image, or perhaps a spiritual one, in the sense of doing His will? Which would God consider more important? I tend to think the latter. As such I have no problem conceiving of life elsewhere, also crafted by God, in different physical shape perhaps, but also crafted and intended to do His will.

I thnk we tend to put God in a box, in the sense that "God is this", or "God is that", and no more. "God wants this", and no more. We are finite creatures and we have a need to define things, such that we can comfortably grasp and deal with them. I like to think that God has a sense of humor, and has some killer surprises up His sleeve. I think He's more than we can conceive, and intends more than we can dream.