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To: Matchett-PI
Many thanks for the link: it is indeed a very well-written anc concise piece, a pleasure to read. Of particular note to me here, from the essay:

...the ID hypothesis warrants due consideration, not for what it denies (the adequacy of Darwinism), although pointing out the inadequacies a received theory is a necessary part of an argument for an alternative, but for what it affirms–that some real causes might not be purely mechanistic–and for the possibility that a research program that looks in non-mechanistic directions might ultimately be successful. It is true that some very interesting and fruitful science has been done by great scientists who did not assume that all causes must be mechanistic. For example, Gottfried Leibniz called Newtonian gravitation a “perpetual miracle,” because Newton offered no mechanical explanation for it; and Johannes Kepler hypothesized that the orbital radii of the planets could be found from the assumption that God used the five Platonic solids as “archetypal causes” in laying out the dimensions of the solar system. (Kepler’s fascinating understanding of causation operating on various levels, working together, is one that might be instructive for ID advocates to study.) For ID to fit this category, however, it will be necessary for its advocates to spell out much more clearly just what an ID account of the origin of biological complexity would look like, and how this would actually further scientific inquiry rather than hinder it. I remain skeptical that this will happen–it seems central to the program to insist that irreducible complexity can be explained only by an appeal to direct divine agency–but the movement is still in its infancy and some of the very bright people associated with it may in time prove me wrong; certainly they will try to. Despite the desire by some in the ID movement to have potentially enlightening discussions of very interesting philosophical and scientific questions, however, thus far ID appears to be little more than a highly sophisticated form of special creationism, usually accompanied by strong apologetic overtones that tend to keep the debate at the ideological level. All too frequently science becomes a weapon in culture wars, denying in practice the clean theoretical distinction between science and religion that is otherwise widely proclaimed.

Again, thanks for the link

1,080 posted on 02/21/2006 11:12:19 AM PST by ToryHeartland
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To: ToryHeartland

You're most welcome!


1,121 posted on 02/21/2006 12:09:11 PM PST by Matchett-PI ( "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." -- Dwight Eisenhower)
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