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To: shrinkermd
If intelligent design or some other matter suggesting God action is proved then ipso facto they are wrong.

Your initial premise is flawed. 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.

Darwinist religion

Please comment on this. If I am a proponent of biological evolution, am I also a "darwinist"?
42 posted on 07/23/2006 11:17:06 AM PDT by Boxen (Stupid, frail, non-compartmentalized organic meatbags!)
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To: Boxen
William Provine, Cornell evolutionary biologist, calls Darwinism the greatest engine of atheism known to man. Richard Dawkins, prominent biological evolutionist, said "?Darwin made possible an intellectually fullfilled atheist."

Darwin's theory states life began on earth with single cell life forms which evolved into multi celled life forms, which evolved into higher life forms in including man. These all occurred by random mutation followed by natural selection without guidance from any intelligent entity like God.

A single mutation cannot move life much forwards. Even single cell organism with flagellum require 30 parts for the flagellum and 200 parts to the cilium. That is a one cell problem. Imagine the complexity of the eye and so forth. This example is from Behe's (1996), Darwin's Black Box.

Incidentally Dawkins called Behe a coward and an ignoramus, but admitted he couldn't answer the complexity problem. The other problem that you and anyone who believes in random mutations and natural selection is the difference between the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian periods in respect to the number and complexity of life.

Finally, Darwin himself admitted he had no good explanation as to how an eye evolved. He anticipated future records would prove this. After 150 years this has not happened, and more importantly, there should have been found many creatures in between present and past animals and organisms.

No one doubts that by selective breeding and other means we can favor one type of an organism over another. Unfortunately, it is estimated it takes 200 mutations for a flagellum. It is hard to imagine these would have occurred all at once, but that is the current position of evolutionists.

Finally, Francis Crick, discover of DNA and a Nobel Prize winner said "the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule so as to make it absurd." Like many atheists he believes that extraterrestials sent living cells to earth. In this fashion he keeps his sanity and avoids the question.

I have not labeled you anything. If you chose to label yourself a "Darwinist" you do so with your own knowledge of your belief system. My point was people who believe they are ultra rational and scientific when they claim to believe in evolution have taken a leap to faith as much or more than Martin Luther ever did.

65 posted on 07/23/2006 12:33:56 PM PDT by shrinkermd
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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)
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