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."
Not necessarily, ever see 2001 Space Odyssey?
No I didn't say that. While science in interested in explaining things, ID explains nothing.
Your engine example is less than perfect. Yes it was designed by a human but to understand how it works and how it was made it must be taken apart, studied and evetually it will be understood.
ID does none of the above. ID accepts the engine was designed by an intelligence greater than it. It does not attempt to understand how the engine works or how it came to be.
I'm saddened, as a practising Christian, by this whole ID movement. A deep belief in God does not affect my ability to accept evolution and marvel at the wonder that it is.
ID does not preclude that Darwinian adaptation was part of the plan!
Australians have a federal system. If they're having trouble with Darwin, that should be handled by the local authorities or by the government of the Northern Territory.
Since when? The whole ID movement is based on attacking Darwin. It paints evolution and Darwinism as controversial when it really is not.
ID's and the movement itself aim is not to challenge evolution in the classroom, but to replace it.
I wonder at it too but I still believe that an "intelligence" was behind its development
Bravo!
That's one of the best, and most easily understood, analogies to get the essence of ID into the heads of even the clueless intellectuals.
IDers want to play on the main stream but the liberal left scientists don't want to play because they cannot prove evolution.
Not necessarily, ever see 2001 Space Odyssey?
LOL. That's a scientific theory?
I suppose we should teach '2001: A Space Odyssey' in biology classes too. That is, the IDer could be God, or black monoliths, or unknown space aliens, or maybe even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All are equally possible in ID 'theory'
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.
The TOE says no such thing about engines or biological systems. But I'm sure you've heard that before and just ignore it.
"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."
What a ridiculous comment.
You apparently preferred the days of real academic freedom when Mr Scopes was hauled before the court for failing to teach creationism.
"And the Darwinists might get something out of the IDers study of the complexity of biological systems."
Even a salt shaker is a complex device to an infant.
If they ever bring ID off the fringe tiers and decided to play on the main field of science, they'll be decimated.
Which is why they won't do it. The Discovery Institute and it's 'ID scientists' won't even back the DASD in the Dover trial, starting Monday Sept 26th.
"ID removes investigation."
Wrong. ID actually spurs investigation. The diligent pursuit for an explanation of the "Big Bang" is complementary to ID.
In fact, those middle age theologians working without all the scientific discoveries we have today were coming pretty close with the "First Cause Argument".
Don't let your biases block out your own need for investigation. To turn around your analogy, Darwinism can't explain how we got from the carburator to fuel injection - or did it "just happen" also.
Ping
fyi
In fact, those middle age theologians working without all the scientific discoveries we have today were coming pretty close with the "First Cause Argument".
******
Good point. And many of the best and brightest minds of the day were theologians and scientists simultaneously.
Don't forget adaptation. After a few billion years we would get a sub-species of SUV's.. due to rough terrain/environment. :)
Darwinism can't explain how we got from the carburator to fuel injection - or did it "just happen" also.
The TOE doesn't attempt to explain 'how we got from the carburetor to fuel injection'.
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