Posted on 09/30/2005 2:09:51 PM PDT by truthfinder9
It's amazing that these Darwinian Fundamentalists claim they're for science only to turn around and try to destroy any contrary theories or evidence. They're really getting desperate, the ID movement really has them rattled.
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September 30, 2005
It’s happening again: another scientist, another academic institution, another attempt to stifle freedom of thought. The “Darwinist inquisition,” as a Discovery Institute press release calls it, is as predictable as it is relentless.
This time the setting is Iowa State University. One hundred twenty professors there have signed a statement denouncing the study of intelligent design and calling on all faculty members to reject it. The statement reads, in part, “We, the undersigned faculty members at Iowa State University, reject all attempts to represent Intelligent Design as a scientific endeavor. . . . Whether one believes in a creator or not, views regarding a supernatural creator are, by their very nature, claims of religious faith, and so not within the scope or abilities of science.”
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this thing is getting out of control. To begin with, the reasoning of the Iowa State professors is, frankly, some of the weakest I’ve ever seen. They give three reasons for rejecting intelligent design. The first is what they call “the arbitrary selection of features claimed to be engineered by a designer”—which, even if that were true, would prove nothing. If certain features were chosen arbitrarily for study, how does that prove that no other features showed evidence of design? The number two reason given is “unverifiable conclusions about the wishes and desires of that designer.” That is a dubious claim; most serious intelligent design theorists have made very few conclusions about any such “wishes and desires.”
But the third reason is my favorite: They say it is “an abandonment by science of methodological naturalism.” Now this gets to the heart of the matter. The statement goes so far as to claim, “Methodological naturalism, the view that natural phenomena can be explained without reference to supernatural beings or events, is the foundation of the sciences.” I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a scientist, but I thought that the heart of the sciences was the study of natural phenomena to gather knowledge of the universe. I thought we were supposed to start without any foregone conclusions about the supernatural at all, that is, if we wanted to be truly scientific.
It seems to me that the intelligent design theorists aren’t the ones trying to inject religion and philosophy into the debate—the Darwinists are, starting out with predetermined conclusions.
But it gets even better than that. The Iowa State fracas started because one astronomy professor there, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, has attracted attention with a book on intelligent design. It’s a little odd to accuse Gonzalez of being unscientific; he’s a widely published scientist whose work has made the cover of Scientific American. But that’s exactly what’s happening. And here’s the kicker: Gonzalez barely mentions intelligent design in the classroom. He wants to wait until the theory has more solid support among scientists. All he’s doing is researching and writing about it.
Now the lesson here for all of us is very clear: Don’t be intimidated when confronting school boards or biology teachers about teaching intelligent design. All we are asking is that science pursue all the evidence. That’s fair enough. But that’s what drives them into a frenzy, as we see in Iowa.
Say, hypothetically, that some "supernatural" force causes giant talking stalks of broccoli to get up and start mowing your lawn for free. Is it your view that science would be inherently incapable of taking note of that event?
To put the question more seriously, as long as something has an observable effect on the real world, what's to prevent it from being reachable through scientific investigation?
Yep, it's going down.
I find all this sensitivity to having one's beliefs questioned or contradicted very entertaining.
Put a gun to my head, make me sing "Old Rugged Cross" or bow down to Mecca- you're not going to change the faith or beliefs in my heart. As (I think) Saint Thomas Aquinas said, without free will, faith cannot exist.
My daughter learns Darwinist science in school. And she learns our faith's creation stories at home. She gets to choose which to believe- or maybe decide that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive.
As my wife's old professor used to say, "When evolution makes these sudden leaps, that science can't explain- there is the hand of God."
I don't think Christianity will be damaged as a whole by ID. In the long run, Christianity will be strengthened as controversies like this refine it. The number of people who believe specifically in ID, as defined by the current controversy, is small and inconsequential. ID is a passing fancy and will fade away as more people come gradually to understand that evolution is a materialistic mechanism only and does not contradict matters of faith.
It's absolutely what's at issue. The people who are stridently shoving the ID garbage at us are not research scientists, they are religious types. I don't think they are contending (or would support the idea) that an ancient race of unfeeling super-machines created DNA.
Since they haven't offered a particle of evidence that ID is anything more than psuedo-intellectual wankery, all we have to consider is the nature of the alleged designer.
The theory doesn't need to answer those questions in order to be valid. All this comes down to is one simple matter: Either the diversity and features of living organisms can be accounted for through naturalistic evolution, or they can't. It doesn't get any more philosophical than that, nor should it.
Except that origins determine consequences. The consequences of a system of thought that vigorously opposes the reality of God is neither scientific nor objective.
If a scientist wants to admit that he does not kow about God that is one thing. To say that God has no part in our understanding of the universe is quite another.
That's because designed things are built as simply and efficiently as possible to still be functional while there's no limits to the complications of evolutionary biology. The charlatans who promote this ineducable complexity BS are selling books to the most ignorant anti-science sentiment of the uneducated masses.
Christianity is not a philosophy. It is an understanding of the nature of reality.
Scientists make no claim about God.
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