Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Occasionally a social issue becomes so ubiquitous that almost everyone wants to talk about it -- even well-meaning but uninformed pundits. For example, Charles Krauthammer preaches that religious conservatives should stop being so darn, well, religious, and should accept his whitewashed version of religion-friendly Darwinism.1 George Will prophesies that disagreements over Darwin could destroy the future of conservatism.2 Both agree that intelligent design is not science.
It is not evident that either of these critics has read much by the design theorists they rebuke. They appear to have gotten most of their information about intelligent design from other critics of the theory, scholars bent on not only distorting the main arguments of intelligent design but also sometimes seeking to deny the academic freedom of design theorists.
In 2001, Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s research on galactic habitable zones appeared on the cover of Scientific American. Dr. Gonzalez’s research demonstrates that our universe, galaxy, and solar system were intelligently designed for advanced life. Although Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in his classes, he nevertheless believes that “[t]he methods [of intelligent design] are scientific, and they don't start with a religious assumption.” But a faculty adviser to the campus atheist club circulated a petition condemning Gonzalez’s scientific views as merely “religious faith.” Attacks such as these should be familiar to the conservative minorities on many university campuses; however, the response to intelligent design has shifted from mere private intolerance to public witch hunts. Gonzalez is up for tenure next year and clearly is being targeted because of his scientific views.
The University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, is home to Scott Minnich, a soft-spoken microbiologist who runs a lab studying the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic rotary engine that he and other scientists believe was intelligently designed -- see "What Is Intelligent Design.") Earlier this year Dr. Minnich testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the teaching of intelligent design. Apparently threatened by Dr. Minnich’s views, the university president, Tim White, issued an edict proclaiming that “teaching of views that differ from evolution ... is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses or curricula.” As Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf asked in an editorial, “Which Moscow is this?” It’s the Moscow where Minnich’s career advancement is in now jeopardized because of his scientific views.
Scientists like Gonzalez and Minnich deserve not only to be understood, but also their cause should be defended. Conservative champions of intellectual freedom should be horrified by the witch hunts of academics seeking to limit academic freedom to investigate or objectively teach intelligent design. Krauthammer’s and Will’s attacks only add fuel to the fire.
By calling evolution “brilliant,” “elegant,” and “divine,” Krauthammer’s defense of Darwin is grounded in emotional arguments and the mirage that a Neo-Darwinism that is thoroughly friendly towards Western theism. While there is no denying the possibility of belief in God and Darwinism, the descriptions of evolution offered by top Darwinists differ greatly from Krauthammer’s sanitized version. For example, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins explains that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In addition, Krauthammer’s understanding is in direct opposition to the portrayal of evolution in biology textbooks. Says Douglas Futuyma in the textbook Evolutionary Biology:
“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”3
“Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next. … However elevated in power over the rest of life, however exalted in self-image, we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals. …”5
Mr. Luskin is an attorney and published scientist working with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash.
Why is everyone in such a heated uproar over this? Do you all not realise that you are debating apples and oranges? Evolution and ID are NOT mutually exclusive. Evolution has nothing to do with the origins of the universe. ID has to do with the origins but not with the modus operandi since then. Evolution doesn't even attempt to address how everything was created in the beginning, ID does address this. ID does not define how everything operates after the beginning, evolution does this. One does not contradict the other, in fact they really have nothing to do with each other. One addresses the beginning, the other addresses the continuing. Neither position requires a person to reject the other. In fact, a person can believe in both positions without contradiction. I believe that God created the universe and also uses evolution as the instrument of continuation and to the fruition of the universe. I love science and I see it as a great tool for understanding what God has created. Science cannot either prove or deny God, in fact, at least at this time in our history, it has no evidence either way, and therefor cannot comment on the matter. But science should continue in it quest for truth, eventually it will uncover evidence one way or the other. Until then, science cannot deny ID, or even address it with facts; just as ID cannot deny the facts of evolution - after all, if God did create everything (as I believe He did), and He did not tell us the 'hows' of how He did it, could He not have easily used evolution as His chosen tool for the continuation of life? Of course! Apples and oranges, people.
I don't believe ID officially denies macroevolution which is evolution above the species level. For example one species of beetle evolving into another species of beetle would not disprove ID in the eyes of its advocates. Even bigger observed changes would not disprove the ID explaination that specific biological systems (ie flagellum) could only be designed by intelligence.
I second that motion. Once enough beer is consumed, at that point, maybe it might be entertaining to trade philosophical barbs with someone who clearly just completed the first semester of his philosophy degree and wants everyone to know it.
That's interesting. Can you give an example of morality that isn't an evolutionary advantage?
The elements are the result of the 2LoT, chemical bonds, gravity and energy.
Your criticism is specious because the distinction that exists between neurology and genetics is not relevant to the discussion.
Let's simplify this by going back to a basic question.
Is morality anything more than evolutionary advantage?
Why not try some other fearless predictions, like science will never observe a canyon the size of the Grand Canyon erode, or science will never observe the formation of a major planet circling the sun?
If a scientist ever reproduced such neo-Darwinian macroevolution, it would clearly discredit ID theory.
You don't need macroevolution to discredit 'ID theory'. Suggest a feasible experiment to falsify ID. Don't move the goalposts.
Theres a difference?.. Every religion I know of is a political philosophy.. even the Tau... Politics is about people, its what people do..
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."-Pericles (430 B.C.)
Perhaps the religious sense and the moral sense both stem from the same impulse, an idea on which Freud has written a few interesting words. Those that instill fear of immediate or eternal punishment and hope of reward as a basis of moral behavior hardly provide an encouraging alternate vision to those who suggest a moral sense stemming from intelligence, cooperation, reflection, wisdom.
More semantic obfuscation. What is "observed" and what is not "observed" is a matter of semantics. I can certainly "observe" that Neo-Darwinan macroevolution has never been reproduced in the lab or directly documented in nature. And if it ever *were* observed, you can bet your bottom dollar that evolutionists would claim it discredits ID theory.
Your attempt to rule out that kind of observation is simply a ruse to stack the deck in your favor. But evolutionists are prolific with such ruses.
There are indeed Marxists in the academia and in power over what will be taught both in the U.S. and around the world, e.g. Lewontin. But I suspect the objective of the education gate keepers is not usually political per se but rather philosophical. IOW, in an effort to purify science from outside influences by methodological naturalism, they have perhaps inadvertently empowered the political movements as well.
Methodological naturalism is simply the idea that the mode of inquiry typical of the physical sciences will provide theoretical understanding of world, to the extent that this sort of understanding can be achieved. Stoljar, Daniel, "Physicalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosoph
If that were the end of, it would be quite innocent. But the metaphysical naturalists take methodological naturalism as proof of their faith:
Alfred Whitehead coined the term scientific materialism in describing the phenomenon:
Significantly, this view runs counter to more traditional views associated with material substance: "There persists," says Whitehead, "[a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call 'scientific materialism.' Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived."
The assumption of scientific materialism is effective in many contexts, says Whitehead, only because it directs our attention to a certain class of problems that lend themselves to analysis within this framework. However, scientific materialism is less successful when addressing issues of teleology and when trying to develop a comprehensive, integrated picture of the universe as a whole. According to Whitehead, recognition that the world is organic rather than materialistic is therefore essential, and this change in viewpoint can result as easily from attempts to understand modern physics as from attempts to understand human psychology and teleology. Says Whitehead, "Mathematical physics presumes in the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualises itself in the events."
The end result is that Whitehead concludes that "nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process." - Irvine, A. D., "Alfred North Whitehead", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
One of the most obvious political ramifications of metaphysical naturalism is equal rights for and as animals. This is the basis of Singers assertion that parents ought to be able to kill their offspring within a few months or a year after birth. Likewise is the political initiative which says that children should be able to off their parents when they become a cause of suffering to the children. Animals do this culling the runts and the lame. Likewise it follows that, in the absence of an absolute moral code, anything goes whether homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality and so on.
IMHO, the bright line political battleground centers on the litigation involving the separation of church and state. The First Amendment allows both for freedom of religion and that congress will not establish a state religion. At the moment, from the decision in the 7th which was based on a litany of past USSC decisions, atheism is seen as a religion if it is promoted. The legal theory may turn on whether the state has established atheism as a religion in the education system.
Anyway, thats my two cents
Sorry.. did some get on YOU.?.. Not intended.. You protest too much, maybe..
bump
"And if it ever *were* observed, you can bet your bottom dollar that evolutionists would claim it discredits ID theory."
Certainly not, since any "evolutionist" (read "rational person") knows that ID is not a theory in the first place.
I hope that cleared things up for you.
..."can not tolerate"..."superior and anterior"...
Not an auspicious start. I echo the advice you have been given to spend some time with PatrickHenry's list of links, so you can come to this debate with a little less of an inclination toward etherially abstract universal declarations, and a little more of an inclination to talk about the facts at issue.
The irony here is that it is the exact opposite of ID theory that may be unfalsifiable. Short of a direct proclamation by God himself, what would it take to "disprove" purely naturalistic evolution (with no intelligent design)? No matter how much evidence Behe, Dembski, and others provide, it isn't enough to shake the faith of the evolutionists.
What it boils down to is that evolutionists will believe their theory of unintelligent origins until ID is absolutely proven. That is not how science is supposed to work. If I handed you a deck of cards in perfect numerical order, would you refuse to believe they were ordered by an intelligent being unless I showed you a video of someone doing so?
If that is your description of Christianity and secular humanism, respectively, then I reject both characterizations.
The question still is: What motivates those to suggest either? If you believe the logic of E.O. Wilson, it's not what they think. Once again, from the article:
Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next. However elevated in power over the rest of life, however exalted in self-image, we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals. 5
and
Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.6
You specifically said random mutation. Thoughts are manifestly not random, and not the product of mutation. Human morality is a product of human thought and cultural development, irrespective of whether or not humans evolved, and irrespective of whether that evolution resulted from random mutation plus selection.
Is morality anything more than evolutionary advantage?
Of course! It's like any other product of the human intellect, like a song, or a play, or a screwdriver, or a gun, or a model made from Play-Doh. These things serve human purposes, which may or may not pertain to human survival.
As it turns out, moral systems do help us to survive, but they clearly have other purposes besides.
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