Not to be confused with men who arm bears. ;)
Posted on 08/18/2005 5:16:50 PM PDT by RightWingAtheist
No, it isn't.
The concept both schools of thought share is....that there is/was an intelligent Creator and we are living in a universe of His/Her design.
Yeah, I know, but I was discussing the concepts they don't share. In particular, the first harmonizes with science and the other rejects science. That is no trivial distinction, and that is why the distinction is not even remotely "quibbling"..
Nonsense.
PS. When you wish to argue a point, it is usually much more effective not to post a quote that totally refutes the point you're attempting to argue..
I agree that Einstein was an atheist and a great scientist. I disagree that Einstein was anything near a great man. Any man who would prefer death to bearing arms and in the same breath defame the soldiers with the balls to do same is far from great. Especially a man who lived during the holocaust.
Out of context quote. This was said with respoect to Einsteins view's of quantum mechanics at the time. He did not like the idea of a physical phenomenon being described in a probabilistic sense, nor did he like the Hiesenberg Uncertainty Principle. This had nothing to do with debates about evolution.
This would be the man who wrote to Roosevelt to inform him of the potential of atomic weapons, and to urge him to begin construction of one to use against Hitler?
Einstein was philosophically a pacifist, true, but when faced with real evil, he chose to fight it using the most powerful weapons available.
It's rather interesting that Mr. Derbyshire can start off the sentence saying that ID promises them nothing, and finishes up by saying that if "they" do ID themselves, they can make a fortune.
It's absolutely correct to say that if the ID folks want to be included in "science," they have to do a lot better job of being scientific. At the same time, this particular sentence shows the difficulty with honestly dismissing ID out of hand: it's an inherently plausible explanation.
At some point, there will be a need for biologists to be able to find and identify the handiwork of other biologists in various life forms (think, e.g., bioweapons, if nothing else). I suspect that this will finally put to bed the oft-repeated claim that ID us "untestable."
He also opposed its use in Japan. But that is neither here nor there, there are two sides to that discussion.
Would you like to defend his execrable remarks about the men who bare arms in defense of themselves and their country or do you think such remarks are not characteristic of "great men"?
Not to be confused with men who arm bears. ;)
I'd first have to be familiar with those remarks.
You think someone 'wrote' the law of universal gravitation. Why?
Einstein (and others before him and since) express awareness that the existence of natural laws with their extraordinary complexity, is not logically attributable to chance.
Actually, Einstein hoped the laws were simple, not complex. He spent a long time trying to unify gravitation with electromagnetism, for that reason. And why is it more logical to attribute the regularities of the universe to a sentient entity than it is to chance?
They make heavy use of small caps (god), quote marks ("god", and their own metaphors...."cosmic intelligence"
Time for an English lesson. We use upper case only to identify particular individuals. Since Einstein's god was certainly not the Christian god and in fact not a personal god at all, normal usage would not capitalize it.
The scare quotes around 'god' are there to denote that Einstein himself denied he was really referring to a personal god.
And 'cosmic intelligence' is not my metaphor. I resent having words attributed to me that are not mine.
Lack of certainty, and Discomfort on the part of some, about what came before science...should not be a reason to exclude an encompassing dialogue from the science classroom.
The science classroom is no place for a 'Dialogue' (why upper case?) about pre-scientific creation myths, regardless of how prevalent they are in the culture.
Are you saying space aliens are plausible?
Because Behe says ID is not about religion.
No .... the space aliens are your idea.
The reason I say ID is "inherently plausible" is because we humans have an innate understanding of the concept of design -- we practice it all the time, and so it's not that hard to extend the idea to the origin or development of life. (And on the latter, it's all the more plausible because we've been using ID to influence the development of life for thousands of years.)
Whether or not ID is a true explanation of things, it is nevertheless true that we can think about how we would go about the process of creating life.
I'm guessing that with about 10 seconds of thought you, personally, could sketch out at a top level the steps needed to do it, and within a minute you'd probably be diving into one or another of the vexing questions (e.g., how would you store and retrieve information....?)
See what I'm getting at?
How many non-fundamentalist Christians or Jews believe in ID? ID is a "scientific theory" based on religious beliefs. Can anybody point to Hindu, Buddist, or Atheist scientists who support ID?
No. Space aliens are Behe's and other Intelligent Designers' idea.
The Designer in Intelligent Design is not God according to Behe, because Intelligent Design is not about religion. That only leaves unknown extra-terrestrial intelligences that were here before any life existed on the planet.
In Behe's own words from his "Molecular Machines":
There is an elephant in the roomful of scientists who are trying to explain the development of life. The elephant is labeled "intelligent design." 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. The designer knew what the systems would look like when they were completed; the designer took steps to bring the systems about. Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent activity.
No, but it's hot stuff with the Muslims:
Harun Yahya International. Islamic creationism
Why Muslims Should Support Intelligent Design, By Mustafa Akyol.
But I didn't bring them up.
I'm not particularly interested in your interpretation of who Behe was talking about in the passage you quoted. It could be aliens, or it could be God, but it's not particularly relevant to the basic question of whether something was designed, vs. occurred through an accumulation of random mutations.
Again, all I'm saying is that the idea of design is inherently plausible, because we're so very familiar with it.
Self referent reference place marker.
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