How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)

The New Republic ^ | 8/16/05 | Ross Douthat

[apackof2]

philosophical text that has been through multiple translations

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16

I'm also a believer

Congrats! Just "believing" puts you in the same category as a demon.

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. James 2:19

[Dimensio]

I have indicated that there is science...not that it is irrefutable, any more than Darwin's or other theories are irrefutable. If any of them were (and they are not) we would not be having this discussion, they would not be termed "theories".

Nothing in science is "irrefutable". That's the nature of science.

Behe's "Irreducably Comples" writings have been debunked countless times. Dembksi's arguments of probability are based upon faulty assumptions (among things, he assumes that the first life forms must have come about through a specific configuration and no other, yet he has no reason to assume that only one specific configuration would work, meaning that the basis for his probability analysis is meaningless). And ultimately you're trying to push faulty arguments that attack evolution, however arguments against evolution are not arguments in favour of "design". Falsify evolution tomorrow and you still won't have demonstrated that "Intelligent Design" is valid science.

[balrog666]

Why wouldn't Intelligent design folks work in labs?

Gee, just what does "Intelligent Design" predict? How can it be tested?

[muawiyah]

Actually, the Sumerians named the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia as "Eden".

They wrote it down long before Abram became Abraham.

[Dimensio]

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16

Using Scripture to prove Scripture is circular reasoning.

[aft_lizard]

When God created mankind he knew you would be typing here tonight. You have no choice but to follow his master plan.>>>

But did GOD make me type here? Your line of reasoning removes purpose in life. Maybe tommorow I will quit my job buy a gun and shoot up a place, what does it matter then, its GOD plan or maybe tommorow I will get up shower and eat breakfast and go to work. Which one of those is GODs plan then? If I purposely change the path I walk on, am I interfering with gods predertimination of me?

I know someday I will die, GOD knows I will die also. So why wait then, lets remove the purpose of freewill and off ourselves since then no matter what we do god knew we would and therefore we are only following his master plan and therefore it isnt freewill. I guess that removes hell as a punishment, since GOD is the only person to blame and GOD is infallable so no matter what we do, its on GOD and not us.

[GSHastings]

I don't get it...Leftists can respect Jihadists, Buddhists, Taoists and Satanists...but if someone believes in Christ the Savior and God the Father Almighty, they're "crackpots

That's an easy one to explain. Liberals inhabit the same darkness as Jihadist, Buddhists...your whole list. None of those things are rejected by liberals (other than lip service), because none of them are Truth.

[balrog666]

You believe that there is one God.

Which one?

This one maybe?

[Dimensio]

If I purposely change the path I walk on, am I interfering with gods predertimination of me?

If God is truly omniscient, then whatever you ultimately end up doing is what you were predetermined by God to do. You're not "changing" anything, because God would always have known that you were planning one thing and then would later change your mind and do another.

[Hotdog]

Not much of a movie fan...who is Rael?

[WildTurkey]

But did GOD make me type here?

Since he preordained all you would do in your life, I guess you had no free-will to do otherwise. If you want to call that "making you do it", I guess so.

[muawiyah]

The horses and camels, unfortunately, had to first be caught, then broken. Odds are they were actually intended to be eaten, not ridden.

Remember, if God had wanted you to ride, he'd created saddles!

[rkhampton]

I believe that being omniscient means knowing only that which can be known. God being omnipotent, can create whatever He wants, including creatures with free will.

I've often though along these same lines. An omnipotent being can do anything, even limit his own powers in certain cases, which would be necessary to give us free will. That, I believe, is why God created a quantum universe with fluctuations that even he cannot predict. To the cognitively challenged, this may sound like heresy, but God can do anything he wants.

[balrog666]

Not much of a movie fan...who is Rael?

Not movies, reality. Are you really too stupid to do a Google search?

[WildTurkey]

Maybe tommorow I will quit my job buy a gun and shoot up a place, what does it matter then, its GOD plan or maybe tommorow I will get up shower and eat breakfast and go to work. Which one of those is GODs plan then? If I purposely change the path I walk on, am I interfering with gods predertimination of me?

Uh, you miss the point. God has already chosen your path for tomorrow. You have no choice. We will find out tomorrow what God has planned for you.

[little jeremiah]

Hmm - better read every word before posting my .02.

My bad.

But, OTOH, if conservatives are going to profess ideas and ideals colored by what liberals are going to think about it, we're DOA right now.

Who gives a flying (insert noun) about what M. Dowd or any other mentally ill liberal thinks? That's actually half of the problem right there - trying to appeal to fools and knaves. What we need are statesmen who have the courage of their convictions, not poll readers and appeasers.

[aft_lizard]

Omniscience is not to say all-controlling, prior knowledge of something does not preclude control of it.

Take for instance I know that tomorrow the sun will rise, or maybe tonight a meteor will destroy the earth, or clouds will cover the sky or it might rain. Knowing all these could happen, if any of them do does that imply I have control over them?

[muawiyah]

There's a real problem with this "genetic engineering" business and that is that we would have no idea if it had happened.

[little jeremiah]

Maureen Dowd is one of those stopped clocks that mysteriously is never right twice a day.

[WildTurkey]

Odds are they were actually intended to be eaten, not ridden.

Actually they were intended to be possible "partners" for Adam. Only after Adam 'tried' each partner for 'compatibility' did God realize his error and then created a women for Adam.