[Alacarte]

JFK_Lib - Eliminative assertions are specifics. To assert that A cannot do B is assertive, good greif. You're just slinging the polemic around like rich fertilizer, no?

Alacarte - You are reiterating my point, criticizing one theory does not make another, separate theory valid. ID presupposes that if evolution cannot account for all the diversity (which it can), then there must have been some higher power that did it. This logic is terribly flawed and the furthest thing from science possible. If other realms of science took the position that whatever we cannot currently explain cannot possibly have a natural explanation and must therefore have been caused by magic, progress would stop. Why is there no movement to stop physicists from trying to figure out why all atoms in the universe are attracted to one another? Well? According to your logic, since we currently don't know the answer, it is obvious the answer is god, so just stop all physics research now, we got all the answers!

JFK_Lib - No, it is not or else evolutionists would not find it compatible. It is compatible with evolution, but not materialism as expressed in Darwinistic evolution. Again, Darwinism <> evolution.

Alacarte - Irreducible complexity is just the watchmaker argument dressed up in a pretty gown. And who are these evolutionists you speak of? Possibly there are a few evolutionists who question the power of selection pressure and mutation to cause speciation. But I assure you they don't throw their hands in the air and say we should give up, it must be magic. They think there may be another, better, natural explanation.

JFK_Lib - Not everything that goes beyond the natural is 'magic'.

Alacarte - What do you call it then? There is nothing in the natural world that is not natural, there are only things we have yet to explain. The supernatural, whether it be ghosts, gods or leprechauns exist only in people's heads. What would you have me call the unnatural power of your great designer then, if not magic? Divine intervention? If ID really were a theory it would explain exactly this sort of thing in its own model.

JFK_Lib - Hahahah, yeah, right. You admit that you have not read up on the issue, so why dont you either educate yourself on the issue or just shut up and get out of the way of progress?

Alacarte - No, I asserted there is nothing within ID that constitutes a theory. Irreducible complexity is tantamount to saying we should stop all scientific research right now since we've obviously discovered all we are going to discover. We'll just fill in all the unknowns with 'magic.'

JFK_Lib - *Random mutation* does not account for EVERYTHING. And that is not synonymous with asserting that evolution does not account for 'blah, blah.'

Alacarte - Why can't it? Your 'magic' explanation isn't exactly convincing either. Regardless, surely this is a decision for evolutionists, the people who study the effects of random mutation and selection pressure (BTW, there is nothing RANDOM about diversity other than the genetic anomalies during cross-over), and they say it is possible. But let us say for a second that evolution doesn't account for all the diversity, what bizarro world do you live in that the answer must be magic (or divine intervention, or rogue leprechauns, whatever 'intelligence' implies...)? Wouldn't the logical conclusion be that the answer is a different natural explanation?

JFK_Lib - So you again imply that without a completely natural, materialistic explanation, there can be nothing 'taken seriously'. You admit to such bias and then try to pose as though you are open minded on the subject!

Alacarte - In what other part of life do you apply faith instead of science? Really! Would you get on a plane if your pastor said god will protect you, but that engineers had told you was not safe? Of course not! Would you eat meat that the meat inspectors said had ecoli, assuming you said grace beforehand? No... Being open-minded is one thing, being stupid is another. Why don't you leave cookies out for santa at christmas? Don't believe in him? You that closed minded!?!?

JFK_Lib - Your paradigm is coming to an end, and I look forward to it. The Twentieth century was dominated by deterministic, materialism and it nearly destroyed mankind. Thank God that point of view is being eclipsed by new scientific Truth.

Alacarte - We tried what you are referring to, it's nick-named the "dark ages." It ended with the enlightenment, when the west told christianity to sit down and shut-up, then embraced secularism. What you want is a christian version of iran.

JFK_Lib - The bottom line is that you still dont have a clue about what ID is about as you continue to confuse it with Creationism, which it isnt. Your view of 'science' is loaded, prejudicial, irrational with presumption, and obsolete.

Alacarte - The few proponents for ID who are not fundamentalist christians are orthodox jews. I don't have to ask you if you are religious or not, only someone driven by an ideology would persist in arguing something is scientific, after scientists say it is not (see NAS website). If ID really was an alternative to evolution rather than just an attack on the gaps, it would have its own explanations for how life came about the way it is today. It does not. It merely says that one specific part of evolution is wrong, therefore deism must be true. The mere fact that ID proposes a higher power eliminates it from being scientific, since the supernatural cannot be tested, otherwise it would be natural...

The evolution/creationism debate was ALWAYS a debate over the validity of evolution. As if it was a given that should evolution be proven false, god musta dunnit. There was never ANY debate about creationism itself. Why? Because there was nothing to debate! All creationism said was, 'god dunnit.' Well, ok, the 6 day story, which can be summarized into one page. This scenario sound familiar? It should, because creationism 2.0 (ID) uses the same tactic. Irreducible complexity is just the defunct watchmaker argument rehashed. Evolution can stand on its own as a theory, but without evolution, intelligent design is left with 'god dunnit,' hardly a theory of anything.

BTW, why do you keep saying "Darwinism <> evolution."? Without self-replication/inheritance/variation/selection (darwinism specifically), evolution would fall apart.

Again, if we want to know what colour pants god wears, we'll consult the theologists. If we want to understand the natural world, we will consult scientists. Scientists overwhelmingly accept evolution, and reject ID (google for what the NAS says about ID). Case closed.

[JFK_Lib]

Alacarte, there simply isnt time in the day enough for me to respond to each of the points you bring up. So I am going to respond by looking at the higher level issues involved which are the genuine source of the dispute, and also the root cause of why you and others insist ID should be 'shunned' and not debated.

The general objection to ID boils down to an objection to what you keep refering to as 'magic'. To materialists, no intrusion from 'outside' the material universe is an acceptable response to any anamoly in science. And no matter what the research is behind theories that leave the conceptual door open to 'outside' answers, like ID, you reject it out of hand because you consider it the equivalent of old Creationist theories/critiques that you believe science rightly rejected years ago, and hence the continued confusion between ID and Creationism. (I agree with you up to this point because I agree that science cannot prove as 'reality' those things that lie outside its parameters of investigation, ie outside the material universe. But I do believe that science can find 'footprints' that suggest that there are things outside the universe, such as the Weak Anthropic Principle does.)

This debate between the materialists (closed universe) and theists (open universe) has raged on many levels for centuries, as I am sure you know, and it is the theists who have now become locked outside the halls of power of the scientific community. Outside those stale old halls alot of theistic scientists have had the freedom to think freely for some time now and they have different theories that do not make the same mistakes the earlier generation of theists made.

ID is one such theory, and it deserves to be considered purely on its merits and not whether it violates philosophical presumptions (like materialism) that do NOT underly science itself. Science is a systematic method of investigating our universe, and it is not capable of evluating philosophical issues that support it or that some would like to append to it artificially, hence materialism CANNOT be something that science either supports or denies. Materialists today like to presume that materialism is part of sciences foundation, but it isnt and most engineers are aware of this.

The predisposition of materialists like yourself to reject ID out of hand because to you it is indistinguishable from 'magic' points to your underlying presumption that everything in the physical universe is explainable by purely natural means. Thus anything that critiques such a set of presumptions is outside of your ability to mentally digest it, as you begin with the concept that these things simply cannot be. No one will ever be able to explain it to you sufficiently because as long as it 'violates' your materialistic framework you cannot accept it as anything other than 'magic' from the very start.

But to theists who accept the *possibility* of an open universe, it is not a presumption that there is a natural explanation of everything in the physical universe. (Kant's dichotomy is fundamentally static and thus flawed and simply does not work.) So when ID claims that there are limits to Darwinistic natural selection that cannot explain *some* anomolies today, it is not a problem for the theist that must be glossed over with some naturalistic explanation. That is the hobgoblin of the materialist mind; theists are content with leaving the facts to speak for themselves.

But more and more the scientific evidence for the 'fine tuned' nature of our universe pushes the materialists into greater and greater presumption and naturalistic explanation bordering on the absurd or unprovable, hence we have the Weak Anthropic Principle that there are universes outside our universe. While these materialistic scientists can reject any notion of God immediately as 'magic', but somehow accept a 'nearly' infinite number of paralel alternate universes as just dandy, everyone outside the halls of institutional science can see the hypocrisy that the scientists are blind to.

So, as a theist and someone who believes that Darwin's theory explains the vast majority of biological diversity, I am willing to entertain ID as a theory. I see nothing inherently unscientific about it, but I do see the purge of theists from the institutions of science, the dogmatic refusal to debate theories coming from a theistic perspective (like ID), and the predominate preference of materialists to use distortion, pejoratives and censorship in place of open debate, all this is clear evidence that the materialists have run out of alternative answers to the mounting number of anamolies (for the materialists) that seem to point to an open universe. Far too often there is denial by materialists that ID has any possible validity and the response is not to debate, with ID proponents allowed to participate, but to instead shut the ID people out and carry on an intellectually incestuous discussion where the conclusions are predetermined. That is NOT open, honest discussion, but the equivalent of a philosophical monologue with all the conclusions predetermined before the first word is uttered.

When I teach my children science and math at home (to augment their teaching in public schools) I sometimes find that they get misconceptions that I have to explain. I enjoy doing this as it gives me the opportunity to refresh my mind on some of the basics that I have not considered for years. But I NEVER have to make a claim of authority with them in my explanations, because that is NOT an explanation of anything. I realize that if I cannot explain something for them, they will get their answers elsewhere. And of course, I might be wrong about something and they are getting the latest facts and it serves me the favor of sweeping away the old cobwebs and getting the latest and greatest 'truth' that the teaching proffession proffesses today. To learn is to truly live, no?

But the materialists today are not finding answers or even understanding the actual questions anymore. They are making assetions based on authority (really presumption) and using their institutional power to suppress debate and purge 'offenders' with loss of career, position, income and recognition. Materialists have become what they have long despised as the boogeyman of early modern science, today's Torquemadas determined to burn out heresy root stem and branch from their 'holy' view of the universe.

But it is all to no avail; Truth will win out though all the world try to suppress it. You see, Alacarte, this shunning of theists is the adult equivalent of the childs game of 'pretend'. Though you and your buds will keep telling each other that you are right and theism is wrong-headed 'magic', the people who have the habit of looking at the reality around them and forming a set of facts independent of institutions of science, the engineers whose success depends on actually acheiving results in the real world unprotected by tenure, will simply find/create other institutions where they can discuss these questions. It is the engineers that drive further science and investigation with their earned donations and part time investigations into questions that intrigue them. If institutions of science wont continue to provide solid inquiry, then that inquiry will be found elsewhere.

Evolution suggests that those things which do not adapt will die, and materialism is dying. That is why 'The Passion of the Christ' was such a run-away success and why the Abrahamic faiths have actually become the majority of the worlds population despite the exterminations of theists by atheist regimes in the last century and despite the population explosions ongoing in China and India.

It is fine with me that you keep ignoring theistic points of view, slandering them as irrational and using persecution to purge us from your ivory towers. Today these institutions belong to you, but tomorrow they will belong to us or they will have been replaced by more robust institutions willing to engage in honest daring inquiry.

Either way, tomorrow belongs to us and Darwinism will be put on the shelf along with the Bohr atom and Newtonian physics.