The evidence leads where it leads.
Clapping your hand over the mouths of a contrary opinion gives the appearance of weak evidence.
Science has already examined and rejected many "contrary opinions."
The evidence leads where it leads, and alchemy, astrology, phrenology, phlogiston chemistry, and many other "contrary opinions," have already been examined and rejected by science. Creation "science," is one of these.
Changing the name from creation "science" to ID does not change the fact that both are religion in the guise of science.
You are worried about "Silencing criticism with anything except evidence is contrary to science." Where is the evidence? What has changed in creation "science" in the past few decades, other than the name?
If there is new evidence, it certainly would be examined by science. But so far, the ID movement is being pushed largely by the Dyscovery Institute, following the plan laid out in the Wedge Strategy, to destroy science as it is currently practiced and replace it with a "theistic" science.
"Theistic" science? Sure sounds like religion in disguise to me.
I agree...it is frightening. I think many ID people are confused. They think the lack of specific details in something like Evolution by Natural Selection means that anything goes and people can drop anything they want into the suggestion box: giant turtles, indivisible spiritual entities etc. But the whole ID premise is: We can’t understand anything so don’t try.
I’ve yet to see any ID theory. A theory lays out specifics details for a process and makes predictions. It will replace Evolution at each juncture. It will be a very detailed set of books on exactly how God designed/created each part and why. Animal by animal. IDers want to jump in and say God did it in an intangible way, and that’s it, let’s go home. The world’s shortest science book.
By what method does God compute? Specifically, if God is intelligently designing everything, he must have astounding computing power. Is God a quantum computer the size of the Universe?
By what methods does God interact with the Universe without violating 1st and 2nd laws of TD (or is he integrated into our system?).
At some point a complex theory may be able to model how energy from the Sun cast to a place like Earth can lead, statistically, to the formation of complex bio system via the thermodynamic gradient. It may demonstrate how very complex systems can flourish, and with the help of something like Natural Selection, life can arise and grow.
But IDers don’t even want to bother. They just want to throw their hands up in the air and say “It’s too hard...no way it happened through Natural Selection...God did it. Let’s give up and go sing songs instead.”
We tried that folks. It’s called the way life was before the Renaissance. Medieval ID produced a big fat Zero in its efforts to stave of death and disease. Oh, right, keep science around to solve the real problems, but when it comes to answering the questions, we’ll ask St. Thomas Aquinas.
If you want to purport that an entity without parts can interact with this Universe (even design things in it), then lay out a theory for how this is done. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m saying lay your theory on the table in some mathematical formulation which will define how something without parts computes.
Another hint: a theory for how God interacts here without violating TD.
etc
I don’t quite see your point with the wedge doctrine. An organization like the Discovery Institute may well want to promote a view of science that is more consistant with Theism but that hardly means that their scientiffic arguments are invalid.
Here are some of the arguments that I find to be the most persuasive. First, have you looked into any of Dr. Behe’s arguments for design - I think they make a very compelling case that many of the cellular biological mechanisms are very complex machines that could not have developed through a process of random mutation and natural selection. Second, Evolution has a huge problem explaining the development of new protein’s. Given the length of even a simple protein chain, statistically, you would need most of the supposed evolutionary time table to expect to randomly generate even one new simple protein. This is a huge problem for evolution since a partially coded protein produces no benefit to the organism and thus natural selection cannot solve this statistical problem.
Actually there would be no chemistry or physics without alchemy.
There would be no astronomy without astrology.
Science would not be here if it weren’t for religion....Science had it’s foundation in the firm belief that a benevolent God made an orderly world for his creatures and the creatures could discover these laws.
Science has disowned it’s roots.
Now back to evidence...
I am not an evolution denier..I’ve stated nothing about it.
What I am is a strong supporter of science but not science as it exists today.
Science has become little more than the political action wing of a certain Marxist ideology...The Global warming branch of the ecofreaks have no difficulty fabricating evidence...Certain of them have demanded trials for dissenters.
How does science gain by corruption...how does science gain by silencing dissent?
The ID crew cannot harm real science...The PC crowd certainly can.