The ‘Darwinist Inquisition’ Starts Another Round

http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=169

[mlc9852]

Well, what kind of other research does the government fund? Are you opposed to any of it?

[Louis Foxwell]

God is incapable of setting up initial conditions such that they evolve without further interference? Isn't He supposed to be omnipotent?

I am trying to wrap my brain around your double negative. In any case, God is by nature coherent. It is also clear to me that God is actively involved in His creation.Omnipotent, yes. A watch maker, no.

[mlc9852]

Why do you think all life forms are transitional? And "because they are" is not an acceptable answer.

[Borges]

WHAT!!! Are you afraid of?

Pseudo science being taught in a science class.

[Louis Foxwell]

Stop worrying so much about the religious implications of ID and open your eyes to the astonishing refutation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that might have occured so many millennia ago What? Back up the turnip truck and explain that one. I missed something.

Gotcha!

[shuckmaster]

Why do you think they're not?

[etlib]

Amos the Prophet: And it makes claims about those processes that preclude the possibility of a designer. Random selection is an atheist doctrine.

jennyp (in response to Amos...) Exactly in the same way that modern physics - by precluding the explanation that angels push the planets around - is an atheist doctrine.

Modern physics makes no such claim.  It may indeed be true that angels push the planets around.  Science can only describe the rules they follow as they push the planets around.

Amos,  "Random selection" is not strictly an atheistic doctrine.  The atheistic doctrine is to interpret "random" as meaning that God is not involved.  In fact, the scientific meaning of "random" is that it is beyond the ability to measure or predict.  The word random could be changed to "chosen by God" with no change to the scientific meaning as long as you keep in mind that the science itself says  nothing about God.

[Right Wing Professor]

In fact Gonzalez's only defense seems to be that his opponents are atheists. Of course, many of them are not, and so this is just an attempted slur.

I don't know what his problem is. He got tenure at ISU; he's released a movie and book on cosmology with a co-author who has made an idiot of himself publicly with his complete misunderstanding of the Special Theory of Relativity; and having injected himself into the public realm, he's now objecting there are people who have strong opinions contrary to his and are expressing them openly, just as he does. Has he been shouted down, or suppressed, told not to publish? Nope. In fact, Sigma Xi at Northern Iowa just invited him up last week to present his views. Granted, there were hordes of evolutionists there ready to ask him questions (several of which he flubbed), but what does he want? Unquestioning acceptance?

As someone who's been politically and outspokenly active in an unpopular area on campus for 20 years, I have advice for Gonzalez: stop whining.

[Louis Foxwell]

Then I presume it's settled that we're the result of evolution,

By Gosh, I think he's got it!

But is it God's evolution or Chaos's?

[Borges]

I don't make the decisions what sorts of research government funds. But if you ask for such funds you generally has to present a plan. Biologists have those. Microscopes, fossils and the like.

[porkchops 4 mahound]

True! LOL!

[RightInEastLansing]

"In relation to the second law of thermodynamics, might it be about the same as the buildup of complex elements during the life cycle of stars? Lots of things get organized in a complex fashion. Certainly this does not violate the second law."

Umm no. The life cycle of stars is clearly explainable by natural processes. Assembling something infinitely more complex then the computer you are pecking away at is something entirely different. I think the SETI analogy is relevant to this discussion. If randomness can account for extreme complexity, then why hasn't SETI found even the simplest pattern yet?

[Borges]

But is it God's evolution or Chaos's?

It's not the place of science to try to answer this question.

[Right Wing Professor]

(1) Use the spell checker.

(2) 'Random selection' appears to be a creation of yours. It has nothing to do with evolution. If it is an atheist doctrine, and it's your doctrine, then presumably you are an atheist?

[Coyoteman]

Stop worrying so much about the religious implications of ID and open your eyes to the astonishing refutation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that might have occured so many millennia ago

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What? Back up the turnip truck and explain that one. I missed something.

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Gotcha!

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What are you talking about?

[porkchops 4 mahound]

Is this a real question?

[Ignatius J Reilly]

"By the way aren't all cosmology books essentially "lay-mans" books? I have read a few, and am always left with an empty feeling."

No, there are many scholarly works that without a very good understanding of some very complex math are incomprehensible to most. Math is the language physicists use to describe the universe because english is just not adequate to describe the concepts. A have taken graduate level differential geometry and am unable to follow much of what leading researchers in that field are studying.

[Louis Foxwell]

the relationship between God and the laws of evolution is analogous to that between an author and a book

Except that the book has not been finished. God is still writing it.

The notion that God can not be considered in scientific circles because he started all this and left town is not what any Theist would agree to.

The universe is not a watch, wound up and running down. There is a profound and continuing creativity going on that can not be reduced to either pure chance or pure mechanics.

[Dimensio]

Umm no. The life cycle of stars is clearly explainable by natural processes. Assembling something infinitely more complex then the computer you are pecking away at is something entirely different. I

So a star is not as complex as a hydrogen atom?

[Right Wing Professor]

It may indeed be true that angels push the planets around.

Y'know, when we say they're trying to send science back to the Dark Ages, they accuse us of exaggerating.

I nominate the post I'm replying to for 'This is your Brain on Creationism'.