Posted on 09/30/2005 2:09:51 PM PDT by truthfinder9
It's amazing that these Darwinian Fundamentalists claim they're for science only to turn around and try to destroy any contrary theories or evidence. They're really getting desperate, the ID movement really has them rattled.
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September 30, 2005
It’s happening again: another scientist, another academic institution, another attempt to stifle freedom of thought. The “Darwinist inquisition,” as a Discovery Institute press release calls it, is as predictable as it is relentless.
This time the setting is Iowa State University. One hundred twenty professors there have signed a statement denouncing the study of intelligent design and calling on all faculty members to reject it. The statement reads, in part, “We, the undersigned faculty members at Iowa State University, reject all attempts to represent Intelligent Design as a scientific endeavor. . . . Whether one believes in a creator or not, views regarding a supernatural creator are, by their very nature, claims of religious faith, and so not within the scope or abilities of science.”
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this thing is getting out of control. To begin with, the reasoning of the Iowa State professors is, frankly, some of the weakest I’ve ever seen. They give three reasons for rejecting intelligent design. The first is what they call “the arbitrary selection of features claimed to be engineered by a designer”—which, even if that were true, would prove nothing. If certain features were chosen arbitrarily for study, how does that prove that no other features showed evidence of design? The number two reason given is “unverifiable conclusions about the wishes and desires of that designer.” That is a dubious claim; most serious intelligent design theorists have made very few conclusions about any such “wishes and desires.”
But the third reason is my favorite: They say it is “an abandonment by science of methodological naturalism.” Now this gets to the heart of the matter. The statement goes so far as to claim, “Methodological naturalism, the view that natural phenomena can be explained without reference to supernatural beings or events, is the foundation of the sciences.” I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a scientist, but I thought that the heart of the sciences was the study of natural phenomena to gather knowledge of the universe. I thought we were supposed to start without any foregone conclusions about the supernatural at all, that is, if we wanted to be truly scientific.
It seems to me that the intelligent design theorists aren’t the ones trying to inject religion and philosophy into the debate—the Darwinists are, starting out with predetermined conclusions.
But it gets even better than that. The Iowa State fracas started because one astronomy professor there, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, has attracted attention with a book on intelligent design. It’s a little odd to accuse Gonzalez of being unscientific; he’s a widely published scientist whose work has made the cover of Scientific American. But that’s exactly what’s happening. And here’s the kicker: Gonzalez barely mentions intelligent design in the classroom. He wants to wait until the theory has more solid support among scientists. All he’s doing is researching and writing about it.
Now the lesson here for all of us is very clear: Don’t be intimidated when confronting school boards or biology teachers about teaching intelligent design. All we are asking is that science pursue all the evidence. That’s fair enough. But that’s what drives them into a frenzy, as we see in Iowa.
No. I know several of the evos on FR believe God set the initial conditions of the universe and set everything in motion, such that evolution would happen. In fact, I'd wager we atheists are a rather small minority among the evos. Creationists, as I, and I think most people, use the word, believe in specific intervention of a deity in the origin of life or of species. Lemaitre may also have been a creationist as it pertains to life (I don't know) but his philosophical belief that the Big Bang was a divine creation event does not make him a creationist in my book. And actually, having read now a little bit about him, I'd be a little disappointed if he were an advocate of 'God the tinkerer'.
When you have a point let me know.
Galileo did not formulate his theories thinking that they were independent of what he knew from divine revelation.
" Galileo did not formulate his theories thinking that they were independent of what he knew from divine revelation."
Yes he did. He wrote them based on the physical evidence he amassed. He didn't think they went against his religious beliefs, but those religious beliefs did not enter into his theories.
You are? I thought it was the other way around (unless I'm misreading your syntax as well). You were upset at me for something I said in an exchange we had a while back about executive war powers, but the feeling wasn't mutual on my part.
What's been established according to Dembski is that the idea has religious implications ("penumbra" is just your own term). The same can be said of Darwinism.
Most Darwinians are theists. The theory of evolution has religious implications in that it disallows literal readings of the Bible and Koran, but then so does much of physics, geology, astronomy, etc.. Simply because a religion makes highly implausible statements about the state of or history of the world, does not mean that any science that contradicts those statements is intrisically religious.
Well, as far as I know he was a scientist who was very well able to keep his scientific work and theological beliefs separated and although he was also a priest, he was opposed to using scientific theories to bolster theological pronouncements.
A quick Google search turned up this commentary by Lawrence M. Krauss where he mentions Lemaître's opposition to such practices.
I particularly liked his wind-up paragraphs.
The Discovery Institute, which promotes "intelligent design," a newer version of creationism, argues that schools should "Teach the Controversy." But there is no scientific controversy.
State school board science standards would do better to include a statement like this: While well-tested theories like evolution and the Big Bang have provided remarkable new insights and predictions about nature, questions of purpose that may underlie these discoveries are outside the scope of science, and scientists themselves have many different views in this regard.
IMO the more complex an object is the less able we can determine it has an artifical source. This is only becuase complex objects tend to be the least understood. And until something is understood to a reasonable level, it only makes sense that a natural explaination would be elusive. Of course once a complex object is fully understood we can determine the likelyhood of it having an artificial source in my opinion.
So with radio signals I reckon we are already in a position to determine whether a signal is artificial with high probability simply because we know so much about radio signals and sources. So there is little scope for finding a natural explaination for say detecting a radio signal containing the sequence of digits of PI.
As for the artifact on mars I think it depends on the artifact. Artifacts that we fully understand are actually easier to determine as artifical. For example the digits of PI carved into a rock face on mars would immediately imply artifical, as lots is known about geology, and carving, and nothing we know could come anywhere near explaining such a thing.
And here's where your logic comes full circle. You start off with the assumption that ID is highly implausible, and then use that to "prove" that the people who adhere to it could only do so for religious reasons, and then use that to bolster your view that the theory is implausible, because it's only being supported for religious reasons.
And that's what distinguishes this from your rainbow example, where lots was not known about atmospheric science and optics at that time. I think that if the main contention of the ID'ers was correct, namely, that the features and diversity of living organisms could not have come about through naturalistic processes, science would be capable of determining that, at least with a high degree of probability.
In this instance I was not discussing ID, but YEC, using it as an example. YEC makes specific testable predictions that can be scientifically proven to be false. Even though YEC is a religious idea, the science that contradicts YEC is not religious.
Dembski and his allies have tried to have it both ways about the religious content of ID. In some contexts, they've heralded it as completely secular - the designer is not specified. In other circumstances, they've made triumphalist statements about how it's a clever way to get religion taught in the science classroom. Dembski has even tried to claim that while ID is not religious (contradicting himself) any attempt to disprove it is religious. If you've been following the testimony in the Dover trial, the plaintiffs have been able, over the strenuous efforts of the defense, to get statements about the 'wedge strategy' into the court record.
I am confounded. 'Splain, please.
and it has...
AHA! But your are a member of the professorial class and as we all know, professors are idiots.(see proof text on earlier post)
Since idiocy among the high blown is a crime, I shall follow you to the gallows.
Excellent. Intelligence has deduced a remarkable design to the structure and development of atoms. Is it so ridiculous to posit the theorum that the very intelligence used to discern atomic aptters may be a referent to greater intelligence?
Therefore, to suggest that uncaused causes are somehow illogical or irrational has a little problem with empirical falsification - in fact, uncaused causes happen all the time. We don't usually see them in our everyday lives, which is what makes the concept rather foreign to us, but the phenomenon is real and it really exists.
I can't speak for his "allies", but Dembski did not, in the statements you quoted, herald ID as a way of getting religion taught in the science classroom.
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