Posted on 09/24/2009 6:08:52 AM PDT by xcamel
William Dembski, the “intelligent design” creationist who is a professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has some rather interesting requirements for students of his creationism courses — 20% of their final grade comes from having written 10 posts promoting ID on “hostile” websites: Academic Year 2009-2010.
Spring 2009
Intelligent Design (SOUTHERN EVANGELICAL SEMINARY #AP 410, 510, and 810; May 11 – 16, 2009)
NEW! THE DUE DATE FOR ALL WORK IN THIS COURSE IS AUGUST 14, 2009. Here’s what you will need to do to wrap things up:
AP410 — This is the undegrad [sic] course. You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
AP510 — This is the masters course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God — for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 3,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
Is it funny when the politicians promogulate the idea the the federal government has the constitutional authority to control health care, because it doesn't explicitly say anywhere that they can't?
Define promogulate, tacticalogic.
If I were to venture a guess myself, it would likely mean promoting a discombobulated theory by virtue of regulation. You know, sort of like "climate change" education, or education in evolutionary life origins, via public schools.
I do enjoy neologisms. Or, then again, perhaps you meant promulgate?
I did. I apologize if it caused any distress.
No distress on my end, rather a fair amount of mirth.
It seems you might have experienced a tad, though, tactiaclogic.
Right now I've got an inflamed nerve in my left arm that's making me want to be terse.
Obama has not announced to the world "I am a Marxist" but we have a body of evidence: his associates and actions and writings.
And of course there will be some who say he is not a Marxist because he never said he was a Marxist. And they will be in opposition to the ones who say "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck - of course, he is Marxist."
Therefore, in my view, this dispute which stems from Darwin's omitting to mention that he took life as an axiom will not go away and neither side ought to think of the other as malicious or ignorant in its reasoning.
However, this kind of thing can be avoided in the future if scientists approach their investigations like the mathematicians and declare their axioms and postulates up-front.
There you go with "declaring axioms up front" again. I don't get that. Mathematicians don't "declare their axioms". They may restate an existing axiom in the course of a proof, but they don't get to declare their own. They all work off of the same set of axioms, and it is understood that other mathematicians already know what those axioms are.
When someone says explicitly that TToE says life arose from nothing, and I know they have all the information necessary to know that this is not true, I am going to suspect there is something other than good intent involved.
"Filling in the blanks" is IMHO, bad practice, but if we're going to just accept that it's going to happen we have to accept that it's going to happen all around.
I said:
That is to say, life in itself – biologically living things. (I strongly recommend Rosen’s book Life Itself to see how first and final cause are entailed in biological life.)
The link between water which is non-life and living things which are characterized by their autonomously communicating a message, DNA (Shannon, information) is the hydrogen bond.
The hydrogen bond is what gives the DNA its geometry, the double helix, and binds the message the living thing communicates within itself, ergo be alive in itself ("hath life.") (For more, I strongly recommend reading Myers’ thoughts on the geometry of biological information content.)
Every thing which is biologically (physically) alive is autonomously communicating a message that constitutes what it is – a particular daffodil, a particular dog, a particular human.
There is no biological life without the communication of that message. That is why the Urey/Miller experiments could get no further than amino acids, their experiments were blind to information theory (communication, Shannon.) And that is why Wimmer succeeded in creating the polio virus in the laboratory. Wimmer started with the message itself, e.g. polio RNA off the internet which he structured geometrically by synthesizing it and then upon introducing the message to cell-free juice, the virus replicated itself, i.e. transmitted the message.
Complexity issues – particularly William’s inversely causal meta-information – are extremely persuasive in the crevo debates.
But the poison pill to abiogenesis in my view is the communication itself, Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication.
In other words, there is no naturalistic explanation for how or why communications would arise spontaneously in a physico-chemical environment.
Our new Spiritual life is also a communication directly from God. We are biologically and spiritually a message being communicated.
In biological life, that communication is autonomous. In Spiritual life, that communication is not autonomous.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:4-5
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Colossians 3:3
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - I Corinthians 6:19
No I did, dearest sister in Christ. It's Austere Realism, and here's the review.
So I did find it! :^)
I can't take this "exotic ontology" seriously either. It starts by positing the entire universe as a single, undifferentiated (having no parts whatsoever) "blobject"; then we are "free" to posit anything we want about its supposed "contents." NLT is utterly wiped out, because there is no direct correspondence between the natural system and the cognitive self; for the natural system has no objective qualities at all, merely those posited by the self. In effect, the universe is a tabula rasa on which the cognitive self can write anything it wants. "Blobjectisim" has to be the most subjective and irrational "ontology" and epistemology I've ever seen. It is certainly "unnatural," IMHO FWIW.
Thanks so much for writing, and pointing me in the right direction, dearest sister in Christ!
There are probably a few Shaman types out there who would prefer to think of the universe this way....
LOLOL dear brother in Christ! Please feel free to do so! (Then you can explain it to me.)
Undoubtedly!
I'll wager they'll have the bit about "scientists climbing the last mountain, and finding the theologians already there" on mental speed-dial, and imagine themselves already atop that mountain.
Indeed — there's no explanation of how "dumb" matter gets "smart." Especially in light of the observation that the algorithmic complexity of the physico-chemical laws is low, estimated by the mathematician Gregory Chaitin at 103 bits. Compare that with the algorithmic complexity of DNA, estimated at 109 bits. How does one "naturalistically" get from the former to the latter? What would be the cause for matter to suddenly start communicating, and what would it be communicating?
Darwin should have made it clear he wasn't interested in "going there," and simply taken life as axiomatic in his theory.... That way he could have had an origin of species argument without having to get into the origin of life issue. Which he himself never formally did; but his lack of clarity on the question has led to much what seems to me pointless speculation on the part of his disciples over time....
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your marvelous insights re: the hydrogen bond and the geometry of DNA, and its significance:
The link between water which is non-life and living things which are characterized by their autonomously communicating a message, DNA (Shannon, information) is the hydrogen bond.Fascinating!!!
Is that intended to mean that only people who agree with the theory are engaged in pointless speculation, or that only their speculation is pointless?
Come again???
After all, every successful communication also requires a sender and receiver that speak the same language (encoding/decoding.)
Moreover, the message of physical life is communicated autonomously. How would it achieve autonomy of communications (the circular model.)
Thank you so very much for your insights and encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
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