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To: doc30
"For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. From Plato to Aquinas to Newton, maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind, a Creator, served to guarantee humanity's own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from law to literary theory, from behavioral science to biology, a thoroughly materialistic understanding of humanity and its place in the universe has come to dominate. Free will, meaning, purpose, and God have become pejorative terms in the academy. Matter has subsumed mind; cosmos replaced Creator."
-Meyer
If ‘id’ is now anti-science, science ‘must’ now be; anti-design, anti-intelligence, and anti-god.

…Suppose I were a super-genius molecular biologist, and I invented some hitherto unknown molecular machine, far more complicated and marvelous than the bacterial flagellum. Suppose further I inserted this machine into a bacterium, set this genetically modified organism free, allowed it to reproduce in the wild, and destroyed all evidence of my having created the molecular machine. Suppose, for instance, the machine is a stinger that injects other bacteria and explodes them by rapidly pumping them up with some gas (I'm not familiar with any such molecular machine in the wild), thereby allowing the bacteria endowed with my invention to consume their unfortunate prey…

Now let's ask the question, If a Darwinist came upon this bacterium with the novel molecular machine in the wild, would that machine be attributed to design or to natural selection? When I presented this example to David Sloan Wilson at a conference at MIT two years ago, he shrugged it off and remarked that natural selection created us and so by extension also created my novel molecular machine. But of course this argument won't wash since the issue is whether natural selection could indeed create us. What's more, if Darwinists came upon my invention of a novel molecular machine inserted into a bacterium that allows it to feed on other bacteria, they wouldn't look to design but would reflexively turn to natural selection. But, if we go with the story, I designed the bacterial stinger and natural selection had nothing to do with it. Moreover, intelligent design would confirm the stinger's design whereas Darwinism never could. It follows that a design-theoretic framework could account for biological facts that would forever remain invisible within a Darwinian framework. It seems to me that this possibility constitutes a joint test of Darwinism and intelligent design that strongly supports intelligent design -- if not as the truth then certainly as a live possible theoretical option that must not be precluded for a priori philosophical reasons like naturalism…
-Dembski

Philosophy should not exist in the ‘current’ view of evolution? Hmmm… How do you separate Social-Darwinism from evolution and philosophy? Are leading critics of id such as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Pinker, Myers, et al. merely cranks that should be exposed?

119 posted on 12/12/2006 6:02:47 PM PST by Heartlander (My view from the cheap seats ;)
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To: Heartlander
If ‘id’ is now anti-science, science ‘must’ now be; anti-design, anti-intelligence, and anti-god.

Your arguements are philosophical and certainly not scientific. Leave science to the experts so you don't hurt your head. Your own arguments are philosophical in nature and not scientific. Design, as your quote says, is an arguement. It is not science. The historical figures cited by Meyer viewed it as philosophy. But only you, and like minded anti-science theocrats, make such an absurd connection.

Philosophy should not exist in the ‘current’ view of evolution? Hmmm… How do you separate Social-Darwinism from evolution and philosophy? Are leading critics of id such as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Pinker, Myers, et al. merely cranks that should be exposed?

Creationsist quote mining is so disengenuous. Frankly, science is a subset of philosophy, but its the one that has advanced human knowledge by actually testing ideas, rather than simply arguing about them. So frankly, no, philosophy has no part in a scientific discussion because you are going outside the scope of science. Evolution just describes the way things happened with repect to changes in populations of organisms. If you want to go outside the paradyms of science go ahead, but then it isn't science. And arguing from that perspective simply shows a clearly luddite, anti-science perspective. If you want to live in a cave, I won't stop you.

130 posted on 12/12/2006 6:50:20 PM PST by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what an Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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