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To: Luis Gonzalez

"So, you admit that ID=Creationism=Christian Biblical beliefs=religion."

Nope. ID is distinct from Creationism. Most (if not all) creationists are ID'ers, but not the other way around. In fact, William Dembski had an atheist running his blog for a while. There are a number of agnostics who are ID'ers. Most people who call themselves ID'ers are old-earth, and support universal common ancestry, though there are exceptions such as Wells and Nelson.

ID isn't even strictly a theory of origins. It is a theory of causation. It says that intelligent causes are distinct from, but constrained by, material causes. A good popular read on the subject is Philip Johnson's Reason in the Balance:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830819290/

Or for technical details pretty much anything by Dembski. The seminal work for Dembski is probably The Design Inference, which doesn't even mention origins except in passing:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521678676/

Note also that the bill doesn't mention Intelligent Design or Creationism. It only talks about (a) allowing people to _believe_ whatever they want without retribution (as distinct from answering questions correctly on a test), and (b) allowing teachers to _present_ the full range of _scientific_ views.

How can EITHER of those things be bad? As Dembski once said, "Are there any **legitimate** fields of inquiry that discourage critical analysis of their subject areas? I used to think evolutionary theory was just a bad idea. It’s looking increasingly like a racket."


125 posted on 03/05/2006 10:55:07 PM PST by johnnyb_61820
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To: johnnyb_61820
How can EITHER of those things be bad?

They aren't.

But lying about what is and is not science is. EG, by saying an untestable hypothesis like ID is a scientific theory.

If it were, then there would be some potential observation that would falsify it, like a Precambrian rabbit or an ERV found in the same position in the genome of chimps and gorillas, but not in people would falsfy ToE.

Because the posers of the hypothetical designer are not specified, there is no conceivable observation that can't be "explained" be saying "Oh, that's just the way the designer did it". In other words, ID is vacuous.

126 posted on 03/05/2006 11:09:48 PM PST by Virginia-American
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