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Science and Scripture - 'Intelligent design' theory definitely belongs in biology class
LAT ^ | September 28, 2005 | Crispin Sartwell

Posted on 09/30/2005 3:33:47 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

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To: Alamo-Girl; xzins; GSlob; OrthodoxPresbyterian; marron
It should also be noted that these mathematicians and scientists do not usually claim to be intelligent design theorists. And to me it doesn’t matter whether the answers are found because of intelligent design or despite it.

Indeed, Alamo-Girl. May we add Michael Polanyi to your list of physicists and mathematicians who are "doing" (or have "done") intelligent design without calling it that? If I'm not mistaken, Avshalom Elitzur, Attila Grandpierre, Man Ho, et al. are also candidates for such a list.

To my mind, the Discovery Institute has become a sideshow in recent times; but it's drawing all the attention. However, other scientists around the world continue to "do their thing" regardless. It is interesting to note that non-Americans are in the forefront of the development of a so-called "non-reductive science" -- which does not presume a materialist premise as the exclusive basis of all scientific inquiry.

Yet the neo-Darwinist argument is that ID may not even be mentioned in the public schools, lest American science students suffer a competitive disadvantage relative to the science being done in other parts of the world. To me, this is ludicrous.... If anything, "banning" ID now by court decree (sheesh....) may well mean that American science will have a lot of "catching up to do later on." FWIW.

I note the great interest overseas these days in formulating a "non-reductive" science, particularly in biology. Moreoever, there is a new international institute of theoretical biology in formation, under the auspices of a roster of highly distinguished biologists, physicists, and mathematicians. I'm not absolutely sure of this at the present time, but it may eventually have a presence in a major American university. Everybody stay tuned....

Thanks for your excellent post/essay, Alamo-Girl!

121 posted on 10/01/2005 10:39:05 AM PDT by betty boop (Know thyself. -- Plato)
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To: Alamo-Girl
That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.

Happens all the time; in fact, it can't happen any other way. And I believe this has been explained to you before.

122 posted on 10/01/2005 10:41:47 AM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: xzins; Alamo-Girl; GSlob; OrthodoxPresbyterian; marron
We ask "what has departed" when we compare a dead rabbit and a live rabbit. Are we really witnessing the end result of a chain of events that led to the separation of an intersecting dimension?

Absolutely excellent question, xzins!

You wrote:

I'm guessing that a more adequate phenomenon-based organizing principle, if another is proposed, will involve an intersection with another dimension....

That is my suspicion, as well -- in the sense of a universal field. (What is "universal" does not lie within the "parameters" of 4D space/time as we normally perceive it. So your hypothesis regarding an additional time dimension has great merit in my view, FWIW).

Thank you so much xzins for your excellent, thought-provoking post/essay!

123 posted on 10/01/2005 10:49:11 AM PDT by betty boop (Know thyself. -- Plato)
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To: xzins
Evolution proceeds hierarchically: once something has been arrived at and works [at any level - be it 21 aminoacids in proteins, cholineesterase cycle in nerve transmission, or external forms like teeth or skeletal plan of mammals] - it is carried on in the subsequent forms essentially as a large unitary building block with only minimal changes. And the natural selection takes good care that dysfunctional changes [i.e. most of them] in such a building block are terminated immediately, thus preserving the block unitary character. That's why the same anticholineesteratics work both on cockroaches and on humans [as pesticides and nerve gases], and why many drugs work across species.
To illustrate the hierarchical principle from a completely different field: not every letter combination is a word, and sentences could be much faster - combinatorially - made from words than from letters [fewer combinations to try]. Just substitute "making sense" in language by "natural selection by survivability " in biology.
124 posted on 10/01/2005 10:59:35 AM PDT by GSlob
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To: xzins
Thank you so much for your reply!

Indeed, we know that rocks and rabbits are made of the same elementary particles and fields - and yet as we break down the rock and the rabbit we arrive at some point where the rabbit is no longer life but rather death or non-life. Darwin never asked or answered the question, what is life?.

And I strongly agree with you that the answer to such questions may rest in the geometry – in particular, extra dimensionality - whether temporal or spatial.

We know that space/time and energy/matter are related. For instance, with gravity it is appropriate to view high gravity as indentations of space/time as well as gravitons. Lisa Randall and others propose that gravity is inter-dimensional and Einstein’s dream was to transmute the “base wood” of matter to the pure marble of geometry.

It is quite possible that information (successful communication) in biological life - the property which distinguishes between life and non-life/death in nature - is carried in an interdimensional field.

125 posted on 10/01/2005 11:07:11 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: betty boop
Thank you so very much for your excellent post!!!

It is interesting to note that non-Americans are in the forefront of the development of a so-called "non-reductive science" -- which does not presume a materialist premise as the exclusive basis of all scientific inquiry.

Indeed. I look forward to this new institute of theoretical biology! And I agree with you on the risk of the U.S. falling behind.

It would be very sad for the U.S. to lose prestige in the world and drop off the leading edge simply because of its orthodoxy (or political correctness) concerning scientific materialism. Sigh...

126 posted on 10/01/2005 11:16:43 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: balrog666; betty boop; xzins
me: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.

you: Happens all the time; in fact, it can't happen any other way. And I believe this has been explained to you before.

To the contrary, balrog666, I won that debate rather easily because physical reality relies on two guides to the system which do not pre-exist space/time: physical causality and physical laws.

All cosmologies must deal with the context in which space/time (physical causality and physical laws) began. It is not a vacuum but a void: no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no math, no geometry, no logic, no thing.

Again, for emphasis: there is no physical causality in the void.

In math, it is possible to deal with infinities and chaos. But these do not correspond to physical reality without contradiction (Vaas, Hilbert, etc.)

As an example: one could meditate about a line of all possible numbers. Zero would be at the center. Negative numbers would proceed in one direction –1, -2, -3 on to infinity. Positive numbers would proceed in the other direction 1, 2, 3 on to infinity. But if one were to reverse direction by decimal extensions counting from 1 and –1 towards zero, reducing by half (or any percentage less than 100) each time - the number would continually be smaller but the process would never arrive at zero.

The same may be said of decimal extensions in other scenarios (such as the extension of 1/3) but zero is unique because it serves as a placemarker, e.g. 201 means there are no tens. Not that “tens” don’t exist, but for this particular number there are no tens.

But null is much more than a placemarker – it is more like the zero we can identify but not approach. To use the 201 example, if we were to state 2_1 we would be saying that tens do not exist at all.

With regard to physical reality, null is infinite non-existence – empty, void. This is the context of a beginning, of Creation – not merely zero spatial and/or temporal dimensions but null itself – no physical laws, no physical constants, no causality, no energy/matter, no physical object or event. Consequently, no phenomenon, no mathematics, no logic, no reason, no qualia, no autonomy, no language, no universals.

When everything else is removed, at null, “all that there is” is God Himself – thus the beginning and existence is an act of His will. This, IMHO, is the reason so many scientists are not atheists. They’ve thought about it…

127 posted on 10/01/2005 11:32:17 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl

It appears that your understanding of "chaos" with respect to physical systems is deficient.


128 posted on 10/01/2005 11:58:32 AM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: Alamo-Girl
Frankly, I believe the vindication of the intelligent design hypothesis is virtually unavoidable in physics and math.

BTW way the theory of Intelligent Design lays at the foundation of science itself. The strong conviction that the world is intelligently designed by the Creator allowed the natural sciences to be born and develop.

That is why the actual institution of science was created in the medieval universities run by the Catholic Church. (Universities themselves were created by the Catholic Church, not by rare atheists or profit driven merchants or predatory aristocracy.)

Once the market profit, atheist license, political correctness and politics takes over the science, science will die.

A poem by Rilke

The kings of the world are grown old,
inheritors they shall have none.
In childhood death removes the son,
their daughters pale have given, each one,
sick crowns to the powers to hold.

Into coin the rabble breaks them,
today's lord of the world takes them,
stretches them into machines in his fire,
grumbling they serve his every desire;
but happiness stills forsakes them.

The ore is homesick. And it yearns
to leave the coin and leave the wheel
that teach it to lead a life inane.
The factories and tills it spurns;
from petty forms it will uncongeal,
return to the open mountain's vein,
and on the mountain will close again.

(Rainer Maria Rilke from Book of Hours. Translated by Albert Hofstadter as part of Heidegger's What Are Poets For?)

129 posted on 10/01/2005 3:00:12 PM PDT by A. Pole (Finberg:"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a higher rate, but has not changed the test,")
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To: balrog666
Most scientists are cautious because they know how easy it is to fool yourself.

You have idealized image of the scientists. When put to the test, whether by the oppressive regime or by political correctness or by peer pressure or by career consideration only a SMALL minority can pass it. Sad but true.

130 posted on 10/01/2005 3:03:22 PM PDT by A. Pole (Finberg:"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a higher rate, but has not changed the test,")
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To: so_real

Technically, the student taking a test on evolutionary theory is forced to accept it -- or is at least forced to fake acceptance of it -- for sake of his grades.


You make an excellent point here. You can force it to be taught but not force it to be believed. Students will parrot back to teachers what they want to hear in order to pass the course. It happens all the time especially at the college level. The education students are recieving then is how to manipulate to get by not how to think critically.


131 posted on 10/01/2005 6:31:12 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: balrog666
It appears that your understanding of "chaos" with respect to physical systems is deficient.

IMHO, it is more likely your concept of physical laws and physical causality is lacking.


132 posted on 10/01/2005 8:06:56 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: A. Pole
Thank you so much for your insights and especially for the poem!

The strong conviction that the world is intelligently designed by the Creator allowed the natural sciences to be born and develop.

Indeed, the universe would be unintelligible if it were not orderly.

133 posted on 10/01/2005 8:08:33 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: metmom
The education students are recieving then is how to manipulate to get by not how to think critically.

I fear you are correct.
134 posted on 10/01/2005 8:47:58 PM PDT by so_real ("The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.")
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To: A. Pole; GSlob; ninenot; sittnick; steve50; Hegemony Cricket; Willie Green; Wolfie; ex-snook; ...
If you wish to preach theology, then do so as an elective, optional class. Creationism is a protestant invention that is not supported by the Orthodox, Catholic or Lutherin churches and is not Scripturally sound.

Orthodoxy and Creationalism

135 posted on 10/03/2005 10:49:11 AM PDT by jb6 (The Atheist/Pagan mind, a quandary wrapped in egoism and served with a side order of self importance)
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To: jb6



Access Research Network
Phillip Johnson Archives





Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight
Interview with Phillip E. Johnson




This article is reprinted from an interview with Citizen Magazine, January 1992.

Phillip Johnson has been a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 20 years. As an academic lawyer, one of Johnson's specialties is "analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments." A few years ago he began to suspect that Darwinism, far from being an objective fact, was little more than a philosophical position dressed up as science--and poor science at that. Wanting to see whether his initial impression was correct, Johnson decided to take a closer look at the arguments, evidence and assumptions underlying contemporary Darwinism. The result of his investigation is Darwin on Trial, a controversial new book that challenges not only Darwinism but the philosophical mindset that sustains it.

When did you first become aware that Darwinism was in trouble as a scientific theory?

I had been vaguely aware that there were problems, but I'd never had any intention of taking up the subject seriously or in detail until the 1987-88 academic year, when I was a visiting professor in London. Every day on the way to my office I happened to go by a large bookstore devoted to science. I picked up one book after another and became increasingly fascinated with the obvious difficulties in the Darwinist case--difficulties that were being evaded by tricky rhetoric and emphatic repetition. I then began delving into the professional literature, especially in scientific journals such as Nature and Science. At every step, what I found was a failure of the evidence to be in accord with the theory.

What was it that initially made you suspect that Darwinism was more philosophy than hard science?

It was the way my scientific colleagues responded when I asked the hard questions. Instead of taking the intellectual questions seriously and responding to them, they would answer with all sorts of evasions and vague language, making it impossible to discuss the real objections to Darwinism. This is the way people talk when they're trying very hard not to understand something.

Another tip-off was the sharp contrast I noticed between the extremely dogmatic tone that Darwinists use when addressing the general public and the occasional frank acknowledgments, in scientific circles, of serious problems with the theory. For example, I would read Stephen Jay Gould telling the scientific world that Darwinism was effectively dead as a theory. And then in the popular literature, I would read Gould and other scientific writers saying that Darwinism was fundamentally healthy, and that scientists had the remaining problems well under control. There was a contradiction here, and it looked as though there was an effort to keep the outside world from becoming aware of the serious intellectual difficulties.

What are some of the intellectual difficulties? Can you give an example?

The most important is the fossil problem, because this is a direct record of the history of life on earth. If Darwinism were true, you would expect the fossil evidence to contain many examples of Darwinian evolution. You would expect to see fossils that really couldn't be understood except as transitions between one kind of organism and another. You would also expect to see some of the common ancestors that gave birth to different groups like fish and reptiles. You wouldn't expect to find them in every case, of course. It's perfectly reasonable to say that a great deal of the fossil evidence has been lost. But you would continually be finding examples of things that fit well with the theory.

In reality, the fossil record is something that Darwinists have had to explain away, because what it shows is the sudden appearance of organisms that exhibit no trace of step-by-step development from earlier forms. And it shows that once these organisms exist, they remain fundamentally unchanged, despite the passage of millions of years-and despite climatic and environmental changes that should have produced enormous Darwinian evolution if the theory were true. In short, if evolution is the gradual, step-by-step transformation of one kind of thing into another, the outstanding feature of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution.

But isn't it possible, as many Darwinists say, that the fossil evidence is just too scanty to show evidence of Darwinian evolution?

The question is whether or not Darwinism is a scientific theory that can be tested with scientific evidence. If you assume that the theory is true, you can deal with conflicting evidence by saying that the evidence has disappeared. But then the question arises, how do you know it's true if it isn't recorded in the fossils? Where is the proof? It's not in genetics. And it's not in the molecular evidence, which shows similarities between organisms but doesn't tell you how those similarities came about. So the proof isn't anywhere, and it's illegitimate to approach the fossil record with the conclusive assumption that the theory is true so that you can read into the fossil record whatever you need to support the theory.

If Darwinism has been so thoroughly disconfirmed, why do so many scientists say it's a fact?

There are several factors that explain this. One is that Darwinism is fundamentally a religious position, not a scientific position. The project of Darwinism is to explain the world and all its life forms in a way that excludes any role for a creator. And that project is sacred to the scientific naturalist-to the person who denies that God can in any way influence natural events.

It's also an unfortunate fact in the history of science that scientists will stick to a theory which is untrue until they get an acceptable alternative theory-which to a Darwinist means a strictly naturalistic theory. So for them, the question is not whether Darwinism is true. The question is whether there is a better theory that's philosophically acceptable. Any suggestion that Darwinism is false, and that we should admit our ignorance about the origin of complex life-forms, is simply unacceptable. In their eyes, Darwinism is the best naturalistic theory, and therefore effectively true. The argument that it's false can't even be heard.

Surely there are some skeptics in the scientific world. What of them?

Well, there are several, and we can see what happened to them. You have paleontologist Colin Patterson, who's quoted in my first chapter. He made a very bold statement, received a lot of vicious criticism, and then pulled back. This is a typical pattern.

Another pattern is that of Stephen Jay Gould, who said that Darwinism is effectively dead as a general theory-and then realized that he had given a powerful weapon to the creationists, whose existence cannot be tolerated. So now Gould says that he's really a good Darwinist, and that all he really meant was that Darwinism could be improved by developing a larger theory that included Darwinism. What we have here is politics, not science. Darwinism is politically correct for the scientific community, because it enables them to fight off any rivals for cultural authority.

Darwinists often accuse creationists of intolerance. But you're suggesting that the Darwinists are intolerant?

If you want to know what Darwinist science is really like, read what the Darwinists say about the creationists, because those things-regardless of whether they're true about the creationists-are true about the Darwinists. I've found that people often say things about their enemies that are true of themselves. And I think Darwinist science has many of the defects that the Darwinists are so indignant about when they describe the creationists.

Across the country, there has been a growing trend toward teaching evolution as a fact-especially in California, your own state. What does this say about science education in America?

This is an attempt to establish a religious position as orthodox throughout the educational establishment, and thus throughout the society. It's gone very far. The position is what I call "scientific naturalism." The scientific organizations, for example, tell us that if we wish to maintain our country's economic status and cope with environmental problems, we must give everyone a scientific outlook. But the "scientific outlook" they have in mind is one which, by definition, excludes God from any role in the world, from the Big Bang to the present. So this is fundamentally a religious position-a fundamentalist position, if you like--and it's being taught in the schools as a fact when it isn't even a good theory.

Why should Christians be concerned about a scientific theory? Why does it matter?

Well, not only Christians should care about it. Everyone should. It is religion in the name of science, and that means that it is misleading people about both religion and science.

Copyright © 1997 Phillip E. Johnson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date:2.22.97





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136 posted on 12/28/2005 3:08:57 AM PST by 13Sisters76
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To: jb6
"Creationism is a protestant invention that is not supported by the Orthodox, Catholic or Lutherin churches and is not Scripturally sound."


So which was Christ an orthodox, a catholic or a lutherin? Christ is the key that exposes evolution as a LIE and that is a Scripturally sound statement!!!!!!
137 posted on 12/28/2005 3:14:35 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
Because God is incapable of making evolution do his bidding to raise man to his present form, which is no guarantee its the final form that God intends. Or is it ego of man that can't accept that?
138 posted on 12/28/2005 8:48:33 PM PST by jb6 (The Atheist/Pagan mind, a quandary wrapped in egoism and served with a side order of self importance)
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To: jb6

"Because God is incapable of making evolution do his bidding to raise man to his present form, which is no guarantee its the final form that God intends. Or is it ego of man that can't accept that?"

Christ said I have foretold you all things, and there is not one word written describing evolution took place. Has absolutely nothing to do with the capabilities of the Heavenly Father, rather evolution is contrary to what He sent us called the WORD.

My ego has nothing to do with the Written Word, as had the WORD given the instruction then so be evolution. The Word is simply not good enough for some people they have to design another way.

The Word explains the flesh body as the earthly vessel that houses the spirit body called the soul, do you know when the souls were created?


139 posted on 12/28/2005 9:02:12 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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