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Intelligent Design and Peer Review
Discovery Institute ^ | November 1, 2003 | William A. Dembski

Posted on 11/03/2003 12:05:39 PM PST by Heartlander

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To: Tribune7
If we know how these things came about can we duplicate them in a controlled setting ...

We can't re-create the meteor crater in Arizona.

But we're rather confident that we know how it happened. Or is it a newly-invented rule of "creation science" that an eye-witness or perfect re-creation is mandatory for everything? Careful. If you start demanding eye-witnesses and re-creation before you can know something, a whole load of what you imagine you know will vanish in a puff of hearsay.

901 posted on 11/10/2003 8:36:44 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Hic amor, haec patria est.)
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To: js1138
They may be made in Hollywood, but I understand that Miami Beach is where the stars come out to play...
902 posted on 11/10/2003 9:08:12 AM PST by general_re ("I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.")
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To: general_re
Spectral anaylsis is a well-proven way of determining the chemical composition of burning objects -- we can do this with consistancy in a lab --, and we know through laboratory experiments what is required for these chemicals to combust. And it is not unfair to extrapolate these laboratory experiments to objects with the mass of stars.

But suppose we could not in the laboratory duplicate the conditions for chemical combustion or found that spectral anaylsis gave inconsistant results?

Then, of course, scientists would be making rank guesses about the formation of stars.

We have not been able to show in a lab how single-celled organisms can evolve into multi-celled ones. Much less with exclusively naturally occuring processes. Much less with consistancy.

903 posted on 11/10/2003 9:13:32 AM PST by Tribune7 (It's not like he let his secretary drown in his car or something.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Perhaps Scott Peterson should go for an all Creationist jury. After all no one really saw the murder.
904 posted on 11/10/2003 10:46:21 AM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: js1138
And the star producers practice by making starlets first. Then they can work up.
905 posted on 11/10/2003 10:48:04 AM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: PatrickHenry
I think we have the technical menans re-create meteor crater. Political will and accuracy of placement would be touchy.
906 posted on 11/10/2003 11:10:52 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
I think we have the technical menans re-create meteor crater. Political will and accuracy of placement would be touchy.

Indeed; I should think convincing Sen. Kennedy to volunteer for a high speed impact would be problematic at best.

907 posted on 11/10/2003 11:19:22 AM PST by longshadow
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To: Tribune7
And since no one has made a world in the lab, the world doesn't relly exist.
908 posted on 11/10/2003 11:21:42 AM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Right Wing Professor; Shrike; Alamo-Girl; Phaedrus; cornelis; beckett; logos; Tribune7; ...
...this strikes me as being a result of a fundamental logical problem with Christian theology -they have papered over the problem of evil. Even without science, there has been no credible explanation of why a good creator would allow the magnitude of suffering and ignorance and malignity that has always infested the earth. You don't need to torture billions just to test free will; a good reducing diet will do that. Well, there is evil lurking in the human genome; and unless you let the Devil have a hand in its design, you've got problems.

So there it is; even if you abandon naturalism, science is necessarily logical. Christianity has never been able to square itself with fundamental logic; it has always relied on the ineffability of the Creator.

I just hate it when people attribute motives to other people, for the seemingly sole purpose of impugning arguments they disagree with, Professor. You insist ID is about smuggling the Creator in through the back door. Professor, you are entitled to your opinion in this. I do not share it.

One may infer the "attributes of the designer" if one wishes to do so. But it seem to me this enterprise would be extra-scientific on its face. That question goes to ontological, not empirical questions.

You raised the issue of theodicy -- why an infinitely good and powerful God would permit evil in the world -- which you allege Christian theology "papers over." Actually, Christianity delves into this issue with great psychological and ontological sensitivity and penetration. But at the end of the day, what can finally be said about the problem of evil in the world is that it is the mysterium iniquitatis -- the "mystery of iniquity," a mystery right up there with why God created the universe in the first place. The question is unanswerable for us humans, because there is no specific, hard evidence occurring in the space-time world in which we live that sheds such light on the problem that we can say with any kind of certainty that God's motives can be elucidated. The motive may operate in the world; but it only appears here as motif. We are free to speculate about it; but certainty is out of the question. Or so it seems to me.

Speaking of speculating about the problem of evil, here's Lance Morrow's fascinating take (from Evil: An Investigation, 2003):

"Evil has much to teach us. My answer to the dilemma of theodicy -- the mystery of why a good God permits evil in the world -- is that evil is our greatest and perhaps our only effective instructor. With so much instruction available in the form of evil, we should all be geniuses. Evil, in some strange way, is what keeps us in motion toward the unseen destination. Evil supplies us with the horrible incompleteness that we need. If we were perfected, then we would be motionless at last, and so would God. Is it blasphemous to say that evil is in some sense the primum mobile?...

"But if we view evil at a reasonable distance, it is possible to think of it as part of a larger ecology.... Although those suffering the viciousness of their fellow men can be only remotely comforted by the thought...evil is ultimately indispensable and creative, a part of the world's energy. It is one necessary half of a cosmic exchange. Good and evil are matter and antimatter. Even the unthinkable eventually recedes into the soil and fertilizes new history.

"This fairly simple and sane view has a distinguished pedigree in some Eastern religions. In the West, clarity about evil has tended to be obscured in doctrinal complexities, in forests of dense theological nicety and ecclesiastical politics; efforts at symmetry [e.g., of good and evil] have tended to be suppressed as heretical (Manichaeism, Gnosoticism, Albigensianism, and so on).

"Time is meaningless without the punctuation of events. Evil is the great agitator of events. Evil makes things happen; so does good, which makes its living -- defines itself and perfects itself -- by responding to evil....

"Time has no meaning except in stories. Stories measure time. In the beginning was the Word; the purpose of the Word is to record the stories and seek their meaning.

"Without evil, there is no time.

"Without violation, there is no trust. Without trust, there can be no violation.

"Without evil, there is no symmetrical definition of the good. In fact, there is no good. Without valleys, no mountains, and vice versa. All moral meaning -- although we may be disconcerted to think it -- depends upon the existence of evil.

"It is not the direct action of transformation -- as of catepillar into butterly -- that gives evil its meaning. It is rather a much broader chemical response, the dia;ectic of good and evgil in the human heart, that is important. It is not so much that evil is transformed directly into good, as that evil acts as foil and antagonist in the theater of the world, and without evil, you have no drama, that is to say, no life perhaps worth living...."

Morrow quotes South African author Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on this point: "...the line separating good from evil is paper-thin."

What got evil started in the Universe, according to Christian account, was Lucifer's exercise of free will: "Non serviam." Lucifer -- an Archangel of the highest rank (i.e., on a par with Michael and Gabriel) was most beloved of God, as the lgend goes. God called him "prince of light," and "son of the Morning Star." But apparently, God and Luficer quarrelled (about God's plan to create the Universe, or of man???); and the upshot was Lucifer -- Satan -- told God to go stuff it, and irrevocably separated himself from God. He and certain personal, loyal minions chose to leave Heaven, forever to live outside of God's life, law, grace, and light -- and thus became the Absolute Negative, anti-Life, Evil. And his personal ugliness increased and flourished, for he chose to cut himself off from the Source of all beauty and truth -- which is God.

Anyhoot, Evil would appear to have the quality of an intelligent, willing entity that cycles in and out of human affairs. It has its own purposes, and it works its purposes constantly via the means of human souls, Satan's tools and alleged "future repast." One of its purposes is everlastingly to slander, to revile, to accuse Man before God; to tempt men away from God, thus to destroy as many souls as possible. Satan knows that the end of the day he cannot win; his fate is sealed. He just wants to take as many humans down into perdition with him as possible.

Or that is what the legend says. Anyhoot, Satan wants to be our "role model" -- to do as he did, and say to God, "non serviam" -- "I will not serve You."

909 posted on 11/10/2003 11:30:12 AM PST by betty boop (God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. -- Paul Dirac)
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To: betty boop
I just hate it when people attribute motives to other people, for the seemingly sole purpose of impugning arguments they disagree with, Professor

Gosh, me too, so I didn't read the rest of your motive-assuming rant.

910 posted on 11/10/2003 11:38:40 AM PST by balrog666 (Humor is a universal language.)
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To: betty boop
Another way to look at it is that without God there is no evil. Think about that one.
911 posted on 11/10/2003 11:47:09 AM PST by Tribune7 (It's not like he let his secretary drown in his car or something.)
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To: Tribune7
Spectral anaylsis is a well-proven way of determining the chemical composition of burning objects...

That's fine. That's a great way of telling you what a star is doing right now, but that's not the same as seeing one form, is it? The animal equivalent would be to catch an animal and observe it in a zoo - that'll tell you all about what this animal is like, but it doesn't tell you where it came from, what caused this animal to come to be.

Or look at the meteor crater up above - nobody has observed impacts near that scale, so therefore, we don't know what caused it. Right? That's pretty much what the science teacher will have to say, isn't it?

912 posted on 11/10/2003 11:48:40 AM PST by general_re ("I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.")
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To: Tribune7
Another way to look at it is that without God there is no evil. Think about that one.

So without God, pain doesn't hurt?

913 posted on 11/10/2003 11:49:00 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138; longshadow
I think we have the technical menans re-create meteor crater.

That doesn't prove anything! All you've shown is that intelligent agents can cause craters! You still can't prove that they happen without intelligent intervention! </ID mode>

914 posted on 11/10/2003 11:52:08 AM PST by general_re ("I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.")
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To: general_re
All you've shown is that intelligent agents can cause craters!

Not true! IF you use Sen. Kennedy to make the crater, it proves that NO intelligence is needed AT ALL!

;-)

915 posted on 11/10/2003 11:57:36 AM PST by longshadow
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To: balrog666
She did use the word "seemingly". That makes it OK.

More interesting, I think, is the coninuing argument from consequence. We can't allow evolution to be true because that would have icky consequenses. Perhaps we could wish away all evil by asserting it isn't true.
916 posted on 11/10/2003 11:57:47 AM PST by js1138
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To: general_re
The animal equivalent would be to catch an animal and observe it in a zoo - that'll tell you all about what this animal is like, but it doesn't tell you where it came from, what caused this animal to come to be.

No, the animal equivalent would be to observe how the chemical compound DNA reacts to particular stimula, find that this causes the code to direct the one-celled creatures to become multi-celled ones, then extrapolate that to all biology.

Now, the evidence for evolution usually presented on these threads is the fossil record, the recognition that some life is more akin to other life (phylogenic tree), and the observation of natural mutations.

Why would one be satisfied with these?

917 posted on 11/10/2003 12:15:17 PM PST by Tribune7 (It's not like he let his secretary drown in his car or something.)
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To: js1138
So without God, pain doesn't hurt?

Without God, you're pain doesn't hurt me.

918 posted on 11/10/2003 12:16:53 PM PST by Tribune7 (It's not like he let his secretary drown in his car or something.)
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To: Tribune7
No, the animal equivalent would be to observe how the chemical compound DNA reacts to particular stimula, find that this causes the code to direct the one-celled creatures to become multi-celled ones, then extrapolate that to all biology.

This simply makes no sense.

919 posted on 11/10/2003 12:18:32 PM PST by js1138
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To: Tribune7
Not at all - simply observing current spectra doesn't tell you what the star was like yesterday, and it certainly doesn't tell you where it came from, so your analogy is bad from the start.

Now, the evidence for evolution usually presented on these threads is the fossil record, the recognition that some life is more akin to other life (phylogenic tree), and the observation of natural mutations.

Why would one be satisfied with these?

You tell me. What evidence would you consider compelling? What would it take to convince you that evolution is a fact?

920 posted on 11/10/2003 12:18:51 PM PST by general_re ("I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.")
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