Posted on 03/06/2009 11:30:02 AM PST by Alex Murphy
ROME — A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design.
The Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design research, says it was shut out from presenting its views because the meeting was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, a major U.S. nonprofit that has criticized the intelligent design movement.
Intelligent design holds that certain features of life forms are so complex that they can best be explained by an origin from an intelligent higher power, not an undirected process like natural selection.
Organizers of the five-day conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University said Thursday that they barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."
While there are some Darwinian dissenters present, intelligent design didn't fit the bill, they said.
"We think that it's not a scientific prospective, nor a theological or philosophical one," said the Rev. Marc Leclerc, the conference director and a professor of philosophy of nature at the Gregorian. "This makes a dialogue very difficult, maybe impossible."
He denied the decision had anything to do with Templeton's funding for the conference. "Absolutely not. We decided independently within the organizing committee, in total autonomy," Leclerc said.
The Pennsylvania-based Templeton Foundation, which has an estimated endowment of $1.5 billion and awards some $70 million in annual grants, seeks to fund projects that reconcile religion and science.
At least three of the conference speakers, including two members of its scientific committee, serve on the Templeton Foundation's board of advisers.
The Templeton representative at the conference, Paul Wason, director of the foundation's science and religion programs, said the grant had no strings attached.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
(Hey, I know that name!)
Courtesy bump!
Good detective work. Your efforts to keep FR purified are most appreciated. I for one don’t have the patience to sift through posts in order to discern who is or isn’t orthodox, so to speak. With you on the job it will be that much harder for a rogue DC’er to sneak back on unnoticed. Thanks!
I dunno Fichori- JS didn’t uysually rant on and on about ID being ‘antiscience’ or psuedoscience- even though he most likely believed those htings, he usually just hopped in threads tryign to bait people into arguments that derailed threads instead of discussing hte issues of hte thread. In all my dealings with him, I noted he usually refrained from the broad generalizations about ID that Johannes makes- Coyote however constantly made htose claims, but hte writing is too ‘refined’ to Be coyoteman’s- not really sure who Johannes is, but don’t really care either- probably just a another previously banned DC ‘soldier’ sent here to ‘carry on the torch’ of pettiness
Is there a science you do like?
When I posted my last reply to you I did not realize this was in the religious section which I do not post in so I will not be responding to any response you may leave.
If you wish to continue this line of discussion just bring it up to me at a latter time.
Science is still part of the larger idea of philosophy. That’s why scientists get doctorates in philosophy. However it’s true that it’s not thought of that way. IMO it’s the result of the fragmentation that always happens when disciplines grow and branch into more areas of study. When I’ve asked scientists if they have studied philosophy they usually say no.
“Aquinas rejected any purely materialist philosophy as well purely materialist science.”
Aquinas doesn’t require that philosophy must include theological positions and did produce philosophical works that have none. Certainly the borders between theology and philosophy can rub up against each other. Atheist beliefs must have been rare centuries ago yet there are very old scientific and philosophical papers that don’t include theological ideas even when they’re written by clergy. Science deals with the subject of physical matter. Textbooks at the college level should be well past informing their students of this fact.
“discount the claim that man evolved from apes”
Feel free to do that but many people including many Christians (like those at the Vatican conference) believe otherwise and don’t have a theological problem with it.
“understanding of man”
I thought you were comparing the Christian body/soul understanding of man with those who think that is simply a physical being. I thought you were suggesting that the scientific opinions of people who hold the latter view can be discounted. I know the Catholic Church does not hold that view.
“life did begin sometime ...is absolutely key when talking about what happened with life after such initial occurences”
How life started doesn’t really matter for evolution. You’re looking at the big picture but scientists don’t look at things that way. They look at details. “Origin of Species” doesn’t either and that’s demonstrated by the other title, “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. For Darwin, species originate from individuals that produce more offspring than it’s competitors for the same niche.
Theologically speaking the origin of species is the first Cause. Scientifically speaking the origin of something is the proximate cause.
“Uh-huh, so where’s the hair on fire irrational responses and lawsuits against , multiverse, string, and membrane theory, not to mention the scientific study of prayer?”
Why would anyone have a lawsuit against those things? Who cares?
“I can think of nothing particularly objective let alone grounded in reality when it comes to manmade global warming.”
Objective reality is a bitch to the Globaloney theorists. Objective reality requires that conclusions are consistent with the results of other sciences. There have been some high powered physicists who have ripped it apart. The physics doesn’t work. Of course the MSM never notices.
“Multiverse theory is another beauty, as is string theory.”
These seem like mathematical imaginings to me. They claim they can make the math work. Is math evidence? Some claim the more mathematical the science the better. That doesn’t negate objective reality. The math and experiment have to work in concert.
Exactly, it proves the point that their hang-ups aren't with their strawman "falsifiable, repeatable, predictable" nonsense or even science; rather their multiple infinite inseucrities about God and a power higher than themselves.
That doesn’t negate objective reality. The math and experiment have to work in concert.
And yet they and their global warming ilk get money from the govt to fund their "science".
People should be more focused on this that's a far greater threat to science instead of trying to socialize children by sterilizing God from science and the rest of failed NEA public schools.
Very interesting concept.
NO, all those out-there hypotheses are “falsifiable, repeatable, predictable”. They’re just weak. I do find it annoying that they don’t care if standard science is claimed by people making rediculous claims. They just care when someone seeks to overturn standard science.
“And yet they and their global warming ilk get money from the govt to fund their “science”.
People should be more focused on this that’s a far greater threat to science instead of trying to socialize children by sterilizing God from science and the rest of failed NEA public schools.”
I agree with that.
How life started doesn’t really matter for evolution. You’re looking at the big picture but scientists don’t look at things that way. They look at details. “Origin of Species” doesn’t either and that’s demonstrated by the other title, “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. For Darwin, species originate from individuals that produce more offspring than it’s competitors for the same niche.
Theologically speaking the origin of species is the first Cause. Scientifically speaking the origin of something is the proximate cause.
You’re outsmarting yourself, origins is key because without it, the way it happened, the way the model was begun, why it’s grounded it genetics and not something else is key to everything we understand about life afterwards.
NO, all those out-there hypotheses are “falsifiable, repeatable, predictable”. They’re just weak. I do find it annoying that they don’t care if standard science is claimed by people making rediculous claims. They just care when someone seeks to overturn standard science.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree, because multiverse theory isn’t any of those things by a long shot. “Repeatable” if you want to assert universes are instead not uni at all but multi, ad infinatum, but how to test such a claim? (Speaking of math.)
They get to define their own discipline.
Speciation is about the succession of different life forms from other life forms. Once you have one or a few life forms (from comets, or abiogenesis or zapped into existence by God) new species are formed under the regulation of unbroken law.
They get to define their own discipline.
Not following...as far as the rest, it started =somewhow and materials used set the whole thing in motion.
It’s as silly as saying the desigtn and/or construction of a bidge is separate from the ground it’s built on.
Everything about the bridge has a fundamental connection to the are it spans, what it spans, etc.; the design and meterials used are wholly dependent upon the make-up of the soil, the shifting of the earth in the area (earthquake fault zone), flood zones, weather, etc. etc. etc.
I also heard that the Society of Clairvoyants were not invited either. The clairvoyants were not all that disappointed however as they saw it coming.
LOL...and I guess algore was hung up at the airport in another ice storm while he and his global warming buddies were scurrying about on private jets.
You said origins was key to evolution. I’m saying that the people who study evolution don’t include the origin of life in their discipline. That’s another area of study. Those people get to define what they do.
You present what I consider the weakest form of design arguments; a building analogy.
The problem with that analogy is that we have within historical times records of the evolution of technology.
Bridges didn’t start as they are now. The original bridge was probably a log. They evolved from that to logs lashed together and then rope bridges and later stone. The concrete and asphalt bridge down the road from me is a 20th century development. These various solutions have evolved to better solve the same problem.
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