Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Alamo-Girl
I think it would be helpful to the discussion if, likewise, it were not presumed that intelligent design proponents are Christian.

Nice try.

The vast majority of evolutionists are not Marxists. Perhaps you can name one ID proponent who is not Christian, but I can't.

1,319 posted on 11/19/2002 6:04:27 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1310 | View Replies ]


To: Right Wing Professor
Thank you for your reply!

The information on fellows at the discovery.org website does not indicate religious affiliations, so I'll need to research this further, but I do want to give you what I found on first blush.

First is an article from the materialist side: At the Intersection of "Metaphysical Naturalism" and "Intelligent Design"

If naturalism has a true antonym, it is supernaturalism: the belief that some sort of "higher power" has the ability to create, destroy, ignore, or break the physical laws of nature "at will." The essence of my assertions herein is that "intelligent design" can occur without violating the bedrock principles of "metaphysical naturalism." In other words, you can have our universe be the product of "intelligent design" and yet never require any supernatural phenomena to effect the "intelligent design" of our universe.

And here's another from The Religious Tolerance side

Proponents of ID have a wide range of theological and philosophical beliefs. Persons with all of the following beliefs could embrace ID:

A monotheist (e.g. a Jew or Muslim who believes in one God).

A duotheist (e.g. a Wiccan or Zoroastrian who believes in two deities).

A trinitarian (e.g. a Christian who believes in three divine personality within the unity of a single godhead).

A polytheist (e.g. a Hindu who believes in many Gods and Goddesses).

A Deist who believes that God created the universe, set it in motion, left, and has not been seen since.

An Atheist, Agnostic or Humanist who holds open the possibility of a very advanced species of intelligent beings existing in the universe.


1,326 posted on 11/19/2002 9:00:17 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1319 | View Replies ]

To: Right Wing Professor
The vast majority of evolutionists are not Marxists. Perhaps you can name one ID proponent who is not Christian, but I can't.

I will take the 2nd point first. As I mentioned in post# 316, Dr. Lee Spetner is a practicing Orthodox Jew. There is a long discussion between him and an evolutionist in TalkOrigins and other sites.

As to evolutionsts and Marxists. I would say that most evolutionists are not even evolutionists. They are people totally unconcerned about it, who have not examined the question either way and are just going along with the spirit of the times. There certainly have been evolutionists such as Herbert Spencer and Hitler who were not Marxists. However, most Marxists (including Marx) were evolutionists (Stalin's brief playing with another materialist theory notwithstanding). However, what all these strong proponents of evolutionism (together with Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Dawkins, Eldredge, Gould and many other famoust evolutionists) is a deep set atheism and a profound belief in scientific materialism.

1,443 posted on 11/19/2002 5:22:09 PM PST by gore3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1319 | View Replies ]

To: Right Wing Professor
This is to extend my reply to you at post 1326 as promised. Your original challenge was:

Perhaps you can name one ID proponent who is not Christian, but I can't.

On second blush, I’ve found two prominent non-Christian proponents of intelligent Design. I’m sure there are more, but it would take more time than I have to spend on this:

David Berlinski – Ph.D., Princeton, a mathematician and by various descriptions either atheist or theist, but clearly not Christian.

Michael Denton - noncreationist agnostic, geneticist and author of “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” and “Nature’s Destiny” ID Books

For those following the discussion, here are some interesting links:

At the Intersection of "Metaphysical Naturalism" and "Intelligent Design" - An interesting article on how the atheists might rationalize intelligent design, once proven.

Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural Theology - An ID article responding to the criticism you raised.

Situating Intelligent Design in the Contemporary Debate

But isn't it true that design theorists are largely Bible-believers and that their reason for not casting intelligent design as a Bible-science controversy is pure expedience and not principle? In other words, isn't it just the case that we realize creationism hasn't been working, and so we decided to recast it and salvage as much of it as we can? This criticism seems to me completely backwards. For one thing, most of the leaders in the intelligent design movement did not start out as creationists and then turn to design. Rather, we started squarely in the Darwinian camp and then had to work our way out of it. The intellectual journey of most design theorists is therefore quite different from the intellectual journey of many erstwhile creationists, who in getting educated renounced their creationism (cf. Ron Number's The Creationists in which Numbers argues that the correlation between increased education and loss of confidence in creationism is near perfect).

Human Events

Meyer noted that not all those involved in intelligent design are traditional Christians. David Berlinski, a mathematician who spoke at the Yale conference, "might be theistic, but he doesn’t practice any religion of any kind," Meyer said.

A prime focus of ID is the inability of materialistic theories to explain the origin of information, such as that contained in DNA sequences. This approach has attracted other people who study or depend on information. "George Gilder is a Discovery fellow," Meyer said. "He believes that it is information that generates economic development. We got a donation from someone in the Seattle area who is a dot-com millionaire."

I found the last excerpt particularly interesting. It has been my opinion that even if the Intelligent Design movement were successfully quashed by evolutionists or YE creationists, it would nevertheless be explored by research in information theory.

1,461 posted on 11/20/2002 9:26:44 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1319 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson