For example: a recent post by Christian CADRE's BK claiming scientists who criticize ID don't know what they're talking about. BK's training, by the way, is in law.
Quick note on the creationism issue: How exactly is ID not creationism? Because it's proponents take less extreme positions than the creationists? Nope. Philip Johnson refuses to take a position on the age of the earth, making him less accepting of the current scientific consensus than self-described old-earth creationists. Is it because their arguments are different? Nope. They spread the same blatant falsehoods that creationists used to. No difference in claims, no difference in arguments, what am I missing?
9 comments:
But think about this... intelligent design... creationism. They sound different and are even spelled different, so they must be different!
lawl
I know exactly what ID is: An argument from ignorance.
Anyone who wants to dispute my conclusion is free to provide me with a predictive ID hypothesis.
Just for the fun of it, I would like to hear your opinion of what the obviously knowledgable scientist I was referencing my my piece actually said. He said:
"Then your flu vaccine wouldn't work, your car wouldn't start, there was no Hiroshima, and on and on and on."
So, do you think for even a moment that's true? If so, why? It is completely baffling to me.
Oh, and for the record, the first and primary difference between creationism and intelligent design theory is that creationism starts with the Bible and tries to mold the facts to fit literally the creation account found there. ID starts with observation of the natural world and, observing the complexity found therein that is beyond statistically reasonable probability to self-assemble reasons that it is much more likely to have been designed by an intelligent designer.
BK, isn't it interesting then, that virtually all ID proponents are Christian fundamentalists?
Darwinism does not address religion. It removes the NEED for a god, but it doesn't preclude one. So you're free to believe in whatever god you like. There's just no scientific basis for that belief.
Hello es,
Yes, most ID advocates have a religious background, but not all. Moreover, the coincidence is explained by the fact that theists are more prepared to accept the idea that there might be something behind all of this than an atheist or secularist is.
And, I beg to differ with you, but Darwinism is every bit as much about religion as ID. Of course, if you define science so as to exclude the possibility of something outside the material intervening in the natural world, then science can't be used to prove God, a god, or gods, or disprove him, for that matter.
I've seen too many misquotations of scientists by anti-evolutionists to pay much attention to hysterical excalations of "look what such-and-such scientist said" from them. I didn't intially notice TT had the video; now that I've seen this one in context its obvious that the point was that if scientists could get a fundamental scientific theory with apparently overwhelming support wrong then we wouldn't expect them to get anything right. Of course, I admit that such a point might be hard to understand if you don't understand the workings of science.
Ah yes, the insult. I understand the working of science quite well, thank you. :)
BK,
Most IDists don't argue the way that you say they do. Most admit that improbability isn't sufficient, by itself, to warrant a design inference; rather, the event or structure must *also* have features that are regularly produced by intelligence, e.g., "specified complexity". J.P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, and William Dembski make a big deal about this. They say it's a caricature to attribute to them the sort of view that you mention here.
Also, some ID proponents accept that most features of living organisms are the result of mutation and natural selection, e.g., Behe. He mainly rejects naturalistic accounts of the origin of biochemical structures, and the origin of life itself. But the origin of life has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is about the mutatation and natural selection of the features of already-living things.
Finally, notice that Behe rejects methodological naturalism, yet he still accepts evolution. So it can't be that the basis of his acceptance of evolution is a priori reasoning based on a prior acceptance of MN. Therefore, acceptance of MN isn't a necessary condition for scientists accepting evolution.
p.s. Has anyone else noticed that Dembski's notion of complex specified information as a design-indicator originally came from none other than Norman Geisler (unless Geisler got it from someone else)? You can find the same terminology, examples, etc. in his old books, such as "Come, Let Us Reason", and "When Skeptics Ask". Did Demski just rip it off without Geisler's permission? Does Dembski acknowledge that his core ideas aren't his, but rather Geisler's? Does anyone have any information about this? Even if Dembski gives proper credit to Geisler at some point, IDists should call *Geisler* the father of modern ID -- not Phil Johnson or Bill Dembski.
exapologist,
First, I am well acquainted with ID theory, and I was only pointing out a very base understanding since Hallq readily admitted that he didn't believe that there was even a difference.
Second, I agree with Behe's view that there certainly is some evolution occurring. But I don't agree that evolution alone can account for the diversity of species that we see. Also, I certainly know that most people try to separate origin of life from evolution, but that's part of the problem for those accepting methodological naturalism -- there is no explanation that works and it seems statistically impossible that a naturalistic explanation will follow.
Third, I certainly don't hear Dembski screaming "this is my theory! I thought of it all by myself!" So, if Geisler was using similar (maybe identical) language earlier, it makes no difference to the question of whether the theory has support.
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