Posted on 07/16/2009 10:35:36 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
The significance, I believe, is not in asserting a particular origin of the universe, but rather that the founders, in this case Jefferson, wanted to establish “self evident truths” that were transcendent and thus, we would be able to derive transcendent rights from those principles. Also by establishing “self-evident” truths of “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God,” the Founder’s were asserting that the virtues of good citizenship would arise from the common recognition of those self-evident truths beyond the boundary of religious dogmas that required an adherence to a particular faith and tended to divide. This is why Jefferson emphasized an empirical reality to God. . i.e. the self-evident truths. . .even to the extent that faith in God would not be necessary to perceive them and apply the resulting virtues of good citizenship. Such a virtuous populace was essential to the American Republican form of government and, therefore, religion had an essential civil role.
“Of course not, but Darwin was the first person to propose the theory”
The theory, by which I suppose you mean “natural selection,” is not the whole of “evolution”. It is the part of Darwin everyone lauds, and rightly so, since it has that powerful generality and simplicity that makes for great deduction. The remainder of Darwin, his ignorance of genes and his belief that complex forms arose from simple ones (never really much saw into the depths of a cell, let alone an atom or the sub-atomic world, did he?), is less lauded.
Your point seems to be that had Jefferson known the elegant and inarguable power of natural selection, he would have turned on a dime. Except the competing theories pre-existing Darwin weren’t stupid, and Darwin wasn’t so overwhelmingly better (except in the special case of natural selection). That appears only in retrospect.
Besides, the article doesn’t hold that Jefferson maintained deism in the face of natural selection; it holds that he maintained it in the face of early evolution. About Jefferson and Darwin we can only speculate, and it may diminish the author’s point, but it does not obviate it.
So give us the less emotionally soothing answer.
Tell us how it happened. What caused it?
Scientists are working on figuring it out as we speak.
OK.....
I can see that that is a far better answer than God did it.
Um, what if that’s the answer they get?
I beg to differ. Jefferson made his own Bible by tearing out every passage he didn’t like, to include ALL miracles.
Then so be it.
If "God did it" works as a good placeholder for you until we find out, that's fine. But let's not pretend that you've proven there's a creator in a laboratory.
If a scientist can present verifiable, repeatable evidence that God did it (whatever “it” happens to be; really it could be anything), that scientist will become—almost instantly—one of the most famous and lauded human beings the world has ever known.
Alas, God doesn’t really do “evidence.” And, really, don’t you like Him better that way?
I'm not a spokesman for or a promoter of the Discovery Institute. If you want to know what the Discovery Institute says, they have a web site.
As for the discovery of the DNA structure, it was a tremendous feat. But what is the logic behind comparing DNA to a computer code and believing one came about by random undirected processes and chance but the other shows the result of an intelligent designer?
Both DNA and computer code encode information, they don't produce it.
The article used the term “intelligent design” in the same sense Jefferson apparently used the term “design” by a first cause, etc. and did not attribute “Intelligent Design” to Jefferson. If you want to infer that because of who wrote it, so be it. But don't wait for a dollar a minute for being a psychic.
Help me out here, where does research into “intelligent design” lead? In other words, after you’ve looked at something, you’ve noted that it’s complex, and you deduce that it is intelligently designed, what is the next step?
Which side is the one who believes in talking snakes and donkeys again?
name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin?
About a week ago I watched part of the movie “Contact” on television, I'm guessing you know what is is about even if you haven't watched it. I had seen it before and thought it well done and being agreeably free of blood and guts and the mandatory skin show i watched a part of it again.
The scientists search through billions of bits of radio signals, all are random noise till one day a pattern is found. A pattern that cannot be accidental or one off as it repeats its self and has some sort of information embedded in code in the signal.
Whoopee ki-yaaa! The scientists know from the patterns, from the complexity of the code, from information encoded, and so forth that they have found INTELLIGENCE and it has a message that can be discerned.
Still with me here? O.k.,
One THE questions, a biggie, is who sent the message, and as a corollary, why, what are they like and so forth.
If I look at a cell and see complex patterns, interlocking functions, vast amounts of information coded and see the cells assembled into a whole functioning set of systems I want to know find out who did it and why and how and when.
Then I search for a source of that information and how to understand it and make use of it.
I search for who made me and why if I conclude I was intelligently designed.
What does the conclusion that the signal was intelligently designed tell you about the process that produced it?
What types of experiments and data would you use, and how would you test your results?
Secondly, your example with the radio signals in Contacts says that there's design found among a bunch of junk. What is the junk? What on our planet have intelligent design advocates found that does NOT show evidence of design? Is a rock intelligently designed? If the "designer" designed everything, why keep searching? If the bacterial flagella motor is intelligently designed, why keep looking for other things that are intelligently designed? Doesn't the fact that there's just one designed mechanism mean that there's a designer? Or could there be multiple designers on the same assembly line?
Third, if "intelligent design" is about the search for a designer (and I think some ID advocates would disagree with you here), what scientific methods are used for studying the nature of this designer?
I'm really reiterating my original question. What is the next step, in actionable scientific terms, after you find design? What do you do next?
Examine the design.
Examine it for what?
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