Posted on 09/24/2005 7:20:09 AM PDT by gobucks
The brawl between evolutionists and religious neo-conservatives over how life began is coming down to the survival of the slickest.
For about 150 years Charles Darwin's evolution theory has held sway. But a new American theory, intelligent design, is getting a lot of press as scientists and intellectuals rush to the barricades to dismiss intelligent design as little else than "creationism" rebadged.
Already a DVD featuring American scientists claiming intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and life has become Australia's biggest-selling religious video and intelligent design is starting to permeate school courses.
Next year, hundreds of Catholic schools in the dioceses of Sydney, Wollongong, Lismore and Armidale will use new religious education textbooks that discuss intelligent design. At Dural, year 9 and 10 students at Pacific Hills Christian School have begun learning about intelligent design in science classes.
The chief executive of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, says it is inevitable other schools will follow suit. Until last month, few Australians had heard of it. But debate broke out internationally on August 1 when the US President, George Bush, told reporters he supported combining lessons on evolution with discussion of intelligent design. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," Bush said.
Last month, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, gave intelligent design ministerial imprimatur, telling the National Press Club he thought parents and schools ought to have the opportunity - if they wished - for students to be exposed to intelligent design and taught about it.
Nelson's office said his comments were unplanned.
But his interest had been pricked by a parliamentary visit on June 20 by Bill Hodgson, head of the Sydney-based campus Crusade for Christ, who left a copy of a DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life with Nelson.
The DVD featured a US mathematician, William Dembski, and other leading American intelligent design proponents claiming the complexity of biological systems is proof of an organising intelligence.
"ID is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence," Dembski said.
The DVD is distributed in Australia by a Melbourne-based Christian group, Focus on the Family. Its executive director, Colin Bunnett, says until Nelson's comments only 1000 copies had been sold over four years. "But it's taken off. We've sold thousands in the last few weeks," he says.
The intelligent design debate has more resonance in the US, partly because teaching about the beginning of life is problematic. A Harris poll in June found that 55 per cent of American adults support teaching evolution, creationism, and intelligent design in public schools yet many who favour a literal interpretation of the Bible found it difficult to accept Darwin's The Origin of Species.
One teacher, John Scopes, was convicted for violating a Tennessee ban on teaching evolution in 1925's famous "monkey trial". It was not isolated legislation. In 1968, when the US Supreme Court struck down similar laws, some states began pushing the teaching of "creationism" alongside evolution.
In Australia, the issue has been less hard-edged. The last tussle was in 1978 when Queensland's Bjelke-Petersen government bowed to creationists' opposition to social science courses. Of late, leading scientists have rebuffed intelligent design. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist Peter Doherty says it has no place in a science curriculum and the physicist Paul Davies rejects it as creationism in disguise.
Dembski, an associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University in Texas, the world's largest Baptist university, said it should be taught with evolution in schools but not be mandated.
"Evolutionary theory and intelligent design both have a scientific core: the question whether certain material mechanisms are able to propel an evolutionary process and the question whether certain patterns in nature signify intelligence are both squarely scientific questions," Dembski says. "Nevertheless, they have profound philosophical and religious implications."
I've always wondered why I found Aussies so likable; but I have another reason to like G.W. Bush - he doesn't just change things for the better here ... he has positive impact everywhere.
ping
Too bad. NS should be taught as a theory with warts and very limited utility.
DK
And many of his critics right here on FR moan regularly that he is not speaking out enough.
Here is an example of the effect one little sentence has made.
Agreed. I don't think this line from the article sufficiently credits Bush, but the connection is unmistakable:
The DVD is distributed in Australia by a Melbourne-based Christian group, Focus on the Family. Its executive director, Colin Bunnett, says until Nelson's comments only 1000 copies had been sold over four years. "But it's taken off. We've sold thousands in the last few weeks," he says.
(I wonder if this is an overseas affiliate of Jame Dobson's outfit.)
ping
Yeah it does. Same scientific core which says that when you look at a Ferrari engine with two rows of double overhead cams and six double barrel downdraft Webber carburators, you figure it was designed and engineered, and didn't just happen somehow or other.
Darwinism is the theory which says that the Ferrari engine just sort of happened. In other words, given enough time, all of that metal and oil and rubber and copper wire and what not will just sort of come together.
I'm with you on Bush's impact in this. He stood for academic freedom instead of the leftist monopoly over education, and it's clearly rippling on the other side of the world.
Using a narrow, post modern definition of science, that is.
You neo-scientists really need to widen your thought processes beyond the narrow corridor of the last 30 years.....
Of late, leading scientists have rebuffed intelligent design.
'Of late'? Now that's an understatement.
Decimation of religion. Is that your goal? If so, why? Forgive me if I don't understand the irrational zealotry of atheism on these threads, but I just can't see the higher calling (as it were) that this attitude serves.
No you are forgetting the core principal of ID. Whereas a scientist would take apart the engine and discover how it works the ID'er would accept the engine exists and ponder the wonder of it.
ID removes all investigation as everything is Gods (lets call it what it is) design, no need to look deeper than that. If you don't understand something blame ID and walk away.
Sad
I would think that it is affiliated with James Dobson. I heard once how many employees worked for FOTF and it sounded like an international coverage size number.
I take it you believe that a Ferrari or Masarati engine could just sort of happen, unassisted by any engineering or design?
RE: ID has no scientific core.
Have you ever studied fractals? Pure mathematics, and the basis of so much that we see in nature. Hard to believe that fractals occur over and over again without some sort of ID.
Religion? bobbdobbs refereed to literal creationism, the playground of fringe groups and charlatans.
No reason for religion to be harmed unless that creationists drag it, and the conservaytive movement, down with them
An intro to fractals: http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.