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To: js1138
"Your list of biologist kind of peters out somewhere in the nineteenth century. "

As does the other fields too. No doubt that's because history needs a few years to determine which scientists stand the test of time and were truly great. I have every confidence that in 2200 we will be looking back at scientists from this era and there will be people who were considered heretics in their field who will be in the list of truly greats.

After Darwin, the list of working biologists who question commmon descent shrinks to virtually none, even among ID proponents.

Well here is some. I don't know that most biologists are on record as to what they believe. I do know that there are many in the Medical field who believe in God and the power of prayer.

Biological Scientists

132 posted on 03/13/2004 7:52:35 PM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
I followed your link to your ICR scientists, and indeed some of them appear to to be credentialed, working scientists. I think you might be surprised, however, by some of the things they've written.

If you wish to make the point that believers can be competent scientists, I can accept that. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for any of these people to demonstrate that the traditional working assumptions of science are inadequate. These people are scientists to the extent that they apply scientific methods and assumptions.

The fundamental error of ID is not the assumption that God designed the universe. That is irrelevant to the current debate. The fundamental error of ID is the more mundane error of incorrectly describing the behavior of the universe, once brought into existence.

ID asserts that certain processes and phenomena are impossible, specifically, that certain biological objects cannot have come into existence through the regular processes of chemistry. Please note that we are not discussing who made the dirt, or who created the laws of nature. We are discussing how the world works now that it exists.

The problem here is one of basic procedure. When science is confronted with a mystery of how something came to be, it attacks the problem in manageable pieces, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Some problems require decades or even centuries. But there is an underlying assumption that eventually the pieces can be reassembled into a congruent whole.

ID, as a matter of principle, asserts that certain processes cannot be disassembled. Like the old maps with the warning, "Here be dragons," ID says that some physical processes simply can't happen. It is not a matter of whether ID is right or wrong about these assertions. It is a matter of implying that one should give up without a fight. It is like saying that human flight cannot happen because there is no source of energy is compact enough and light enough to overcome gravity. True in 1900, but not the kind of attitude that leads to discovery and invention.
147 posted on 03/13/2004 8:57:07 PM PST by js1138
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