Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Boxen
Re post 42: Intelligent design does not suggest the existence of a supernatural entity or entities anymore than it suggests the existence of space aliens. In both the theory of evolution and intelligent design, the existence of the supernatural is not addressed.

Your argument that ID does not promote the Supernatural is false. The motives of all the ID proponents are clearly based on a supernatural, Christian god. Here are actual quotes from leading ID proponents:

William Dempski, ID proponent, Fellow at Discovery Institute "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners do not have a clue about him." - Intelligent Design, p. 210

"My thesis is that all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ." - Intelligent Design, p 206.

"But there are deeper motivations...... When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these mindless material mechanisms, God's glory is getting robbed...And so there is a cultural war here. Ultimately I want to see God get the credit for what he's done - and he's not getting it." - address given at Fellowship Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, March 7, 2004

"Certainly as Christians we believe there is an angelic hierarchy - it's not just that there's this physical material world and there's God. There can be various hierarchies of intelligent beings operating, God can work through what can be called derived intelligences - processes which carry out the Divine will, but maybe not perfectly because of the fall." - (Ibid.)

"Accordingly, intelligent design should be understood as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in Scripture." - Why President Bush Got It Right about Intelligent Design, 2005

Phillip Johnson, DI Fellow and founder, presumed author of the infamous Wedge Document: "This isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy." - World Magazine, November 30, 1996

Admitting that the entire purpose of the Wedge strategy is religious: "If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this....We call our strategy the "wedge." - Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, pp. 91-92

"The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message." - Forward to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science, 2000

"We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator." - LA Times, March 25, 2001

"This is a way of phrasing the issue that ought to bring together Protestants of different views young-earth believers and the scriptures, old-earthers who interpret Genesis differently,.... In the beginning was the word. In the beginning God created. True or false." Kansas conference, June, 2001

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." - American Family Radio, January 10, 2003

"The subject is not just the theory of evolution, the subject is the reality of God." - Hank Hanegraaf's "Bible Answer Man" radio program, 12/19/2004

Casey Luskin, ID Proponent, writes for DI:

"Obviously, the question comes up, 'Who is the designer?' Well, the leadership [of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) clubs] will promote the viewpoint that the God of the Bible is the designer." - Evolution critics meet to create strategy, The Plain Dealer, 07/29/02

Stephen C. Meyer,director and Senior Fellow of the DI: "I think the intelligent designer is God." - Nightline, 8/10/05

Nancy Pearcey: "If the broader impact of Darwinism was to remove Christianity from the sphere of objective truth, then the broader significance of the Intelligent Design movement will be to bring it back. By providing evidence of God's work in nature, it restores Christianity to the status of a genuine knowledge claim,... - Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, 2004

Discovery Institute: The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which western civilization was built. - The Wedge Strategy, Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

"Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. [Note: The original version of the Wedge document phrased this last part as "have reopened the case for the supernatural."]" - Ibid

"Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialistic's worldview and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." - Ibid

Michael Behe, ID author, an expert witness at the Dover, PA trial: "To a person who does not feel obliged to restrict his search to unintelligent causes, the straightforward conclusion is that many biochemical systems were designed. They were designed not by the laws of nature, not by chance and necessity; rather, they were planned..." - Darwin's Black Box, 1998

"By "intelligent design" I mean to imply design beyond the laws of nature. That is, taking the laws of nature as given, are their other reasons for concluding that life and its component systems have been intentionally arranged? In my book, and in this essay, whenever I refer to intelligent design (ID) I mean this stronger sense of design-beyond-laws." - Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design, 2002

"I think that we are all descended from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be God." - Can You Believe in God and Evolution?, Time, 2005

179 posted on 07/23/2006 5:29:43 PM PDT by thomaswest (Just curious)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies ]


To: thomaswest
As much as I dislike Intelligent Design, I cannot help but to separate motivation from actual execution. The theory of evolution was judged not on the intentions of its proponents, but on its easy adherence to current evidence. Similarly, intelligent design must be brought down bit by bit, exposed for its vagueness and lack of evidence.

One of our creationist counterparts could dig up quotations by the gruff Richard Dawkins showcasing his extreme dislike of religion. Does this mean that the theory of evolution suggests atheism?
194 posted on 07/23/2006 6:57:28 PM PDT by Boxen (THE SPICE MUST FLOW)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 179 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson