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).
I didn't see the logic in making it exclusive to "Darwin's disciples" (assuming that simply means anyone who doesn't diagree with the theory - I could be wrong about that, but the terminology is kind of ambiguous).
Well of course this phenomenon is not exclusive to Darwin's "disciples."
By "disciple" in the Darwinian case I mean a person who sees in Darwin's theory more than it claims to hold. The theory is not an origin-of-life theory; it is a theory of speciation and evolutionary change in species. It starts with organisms that are already alive. There's nothing in the theory that explains what life "is" or how it came about. And yet the disciple is attracted by the fact that Darwin's theory is relentlessly "naturalistic," materialistic, and effectively claims that the biological sphere is, in the words of Jacques Monod, the result of pure, blind, random chance. Therefore, the origin of life must be likewise.
The disciple is happy, because with this strategy he has succeeded in finding, as Richard Dawkins put it, that he, too, can be an intellectually satisfied atheist.... [The entire point of the exercise is to kick God out of the picture.]
What this has to do with the natural world — or even with science — is another question entirely.
Then we've got people pointlessly "filling in the blanks" with stuff that isn't really there but that they would agree with if it was.
Then we've got other people who are rationally and logically "filling in the blanks" with stuff that isn't really there, but that they would disagree with if it was.
The only answer is to make biology more rigorous — i.e., more like physics. Otherwise it risks becoming an exercise in “myth-making.”
Okay. But I've never seen anyone fault Newton for failing to say explicitly that he's not saying where gravity comes from.
Metaphor; a camel that can exist in very dry places, can walk easily on sand, long lashes to protect the eyes from the blowing sand, and other unique attributes.. The metaphor being carrying a hump of information not water..
This planet being a dry place, a desert of real information/data about how to get off this place.. A place dry and parched.. inhabited by cacti and predators..
I sometimes feel like a rose born again into a camel..
i.e. the "rose of sharon" has unique meaning of a rose existing in a desert(Sharon)..
His science didn't need him to say that. Which is fine, because origin questions do not fall into the range of direct observation/testability/verifiability anyway.
You are aware, I imagine, that Newton — a strong monotheist — personally believed that the universe and all things in it (especially including its laws) is a divine creation; not only did God make it, but Newton believed God was eternally, directly involved in sustaining it. But as I said, this belief was not relevant to the conduct of his science, which dealt with the universal physico-mechanical laws. Gravity was a "given" for him. Like life was a "given" for Darwin.
We wouldn't use Newtonian science to show the origin of gravity, any more than we would use Darwin's ToE to show the origin of life. Neither is an "origin theory."
And roses like you, dear brother in Christ!
Whether it actually is an "origin theory" or not seems irrelevant.
The standard seems to be that if a theory can be misunderstood by anyone to address things it does not, it is allowable to consider that the fault of the author, and perceived faults of the author can be held to be admissible as faults of the theory.
The theory will be judged not by what it actually addresses, but by who can shout the loudest for or against it.
You say that evolutionary theory does not apply as to where life came from... It certainly does, evolution is the presupposition that all life came from this earth. This itself is a theory.
You probably have theological disagreements with people who believe it theistic evolution, too.
That debate is not this debate.
There is no such thing as an ecumenical atheist... You accept things on faith, I don't.
I have my religious beliefs, and you have yours. It's not my business to tell you what yours are.
I can't blame Darwin for Julian Huxley or Ernst Haeckel....
BTW, I think a theory ought to be judged by how well it addresses its subject matter. Who's yelling the loudest, whether pro or con, is irrelevant. Or ought to be.
And thank you for the examples of "filling in the blanks" from the atheist corner.
It seemed implicit in the assertion that in a discussion of TToE, Darwin's character, political views, choice of friends and associates and their character and political views, etc. are relevant to that discussion.
Why???
I don't believe that any of these things are relevant at all, if all we're doing is evaluating/discussing a scientific theory, TToE. If you want to discuss the social consequences of a theory, or the way it's been politicized (e.g., as in the public schools), that's an altogether different matter. But strictly speaking, these aspects are not scientific questions, rather matters of sociology, culture, politics.
I hold Darwin's "boosters," or popularizers, Huxley and Haeckel more responsible for such effects than Darwin himself. I don't blame Darwin for the usages his theory has been put to by people with their own agendas, right up to our own time — e.g., Richard Dawkins et al.
I agree. But that's not how it's being debated. TToE is labeled a "liberal" theory, and that label is applied to it and anyone who isn't openly hostile to it almost immediatly upon mention of it in any context.
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