Intelligent Design Quote of the Day
The origin of the term Intelligent Design:
It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.
Oxford scholar, F.C.S. Schiller, 1897
The origin of the term Intelligent Design:
It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.
Oxford scholar, F.C.S. Schiller, 1897
Ah yes… the higher power theories do abound and confuse… check this out:
http://burnsite.blogspot.com/2005/09/drug-lord.html
at 8:35 am on September 29th, 2005
The HP did help me kick drugs…
at 6:57 am on September 30th, 2005
Interestingly enough, the fact that it is not possible to rule it out, on principle, is precisely the reason it is objectionable as science (and, it follows, in science classes). There’s no way to figure out if the assumption is correct or not–it has to be taken on faith, and you can’t teach students that. Students who believe in God as the creator don’t need it explicitly taught to them to apply it to evolutionary theory (I stand as case in point, as does Schiller’s quotation). Students who don’t believe in God as the creator shouldn’t be taught that nature testifies to him in ways that it does not, or have their knowledge of God defined by a government that has no expertise in either science or theology.
This is not to say that nature does not testify to God, his role as creator, or aspects of his character. It most certainly does, but that doesn’t make it ok to say that it does in ways that it really doesn’t. It tends to be the case, however, that nature’s most powerful testimony takes forms that cannot be reduced to scientific inquiry. Intelligent design as a scientific movement overlooks this, and rather tries to prove God’s role using falsified explanations (irreducible complexity) and misapplied statistics (specified complexity). It kind of saddens me that these influential people are so afraid of God being someone other than exactly who they think he is, or that his role in human existence is threatened by the unfettered study of his creation. What message does it send when our faith is so unstable?
additionally, I, for one, don’t want any human authoritarian entity determining who God is and what he has or has not done. I’m much more in favor of God making that revelation to me himself. (including through nature, if he sees fit to do so)
(I don’t really mean to rant here, but as both a biologist and a Christian, it pains me to see people turning to false or unsound interpretations of God’s creation to bolster their faith. It is much better for faith to be left standing alone than for it to find support in something that cannot even support itself. )
at 3:28 pm on September 30th, 2005
Matt, in your first paragraph you say that God’s role in creation “has to be taken on faith”—this implies that ID is not scientific. Later, though, you say that irreducible complexity has been falsified—and this implies that ID is scientific. Can you clarify your view on this? Additionally, the question of whether or not God’s work in the world is or isn’t detectable is not such that those who have come to the conclusion that it is have an “unstable” faith. The whole project of natural theology goes back to the Scholastics, who took the approach of “faith seeking understanding” in which the search for, and discovery of, evidence of God’s work in the creation was not so much an attempt to prove God as it was to honor God. My experience with the people in the ID movement is that they are like the Scholastics in this respect, and thus I find your statement that ID supporters are “turning to false or unsound interpretations of God’s creation to bolster their faith” as exhibiting a severe misunderstanding of what ID is about.
at 6:19 pm on September 30th, 2005
Some of the individual claims of Intelligent design are falsifiable… for example, Behe’s argument for irreducible complexity, which has been shown to be flawed, as it does not take into account numerous methods by which structures arise other than gradual addition of parts.
Intelligent Design as a paradigm is not falsifiable, however. There is no discovery that can possibly be made to show that things have not been designed, only that the specific proposals for detecting it do not, in fact, serve to detect design.
The critique of ID being used as a bolster to faith is based mostly on the comments of ID supporters regarding the atheistic assumptions of evolution. They present ID as an alternative to what they perceive (incorrectly) as being a threat to God, and most of those who embrace it do it on this basis, not on its scientific merits. ID is accepted almost entirely by those without the scientific background to critically examine the statements of its proponents. It appeals to people because it provides a determinate place for God in scientific inquiry.
In this sense, it is used as a bolster to faith. It is used to provide a place for God in what is perceived to be a growing atheistic field of study. (Never mind the fact that a very large number of Christians find no atheism in the theory at all, even though they use it on a daily basis)
Ultimately, your comparison to the scholastics doesn’t seem to be accurate, because while you say that their aim was not to prove God, but to honor God, those who are leading the ID movement consistently draw the conclusion
“therefore God,” but their methods do not serve to honor God. They refuse to refine their arguments when they are shown to be in error, they publicize their models to people who do not have the background to critically examine their claims even when their academic peers point to various flaws in their argumentation. How can one publicize a model built on a fatally flawed foundation, and honor God in doing so? It’s not as though they slow down when presented with criticism, in order to more carefully examine or correct their claims. They continue to build on them, dismissing the criticism as scientific elitism or some other such nonsense, without ever responding to recent discoveries, even, such as the discovery of evolutionary analogs of the bacterial flagellum.
I feel like I’m getting harsher than I want to. If I actually am, let me know… The behavior of those who purport to be the Christian face of science does not sit well with me, and I apologize if I react overly harshly when discussing it.
at 8:46 pm on September 30th, 2005
I just thought the quote was cool.
at 10:11 pm on September 30th, 2005
yeah, sorry for the overanalysis ;-)
at 1:45 am on October 1st, 2005
Matt, I hope to respond to your comment tonight over on my blog so that we don’t use all of Cory’s bandwith in our debate.
Cory, I leave you with another quote:
“What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic, that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism.”
—Charles Hodge, 1874
at 8:05 am on October 1st, 2005
Matt- In some ways I agree with you, but in other ways I will simply say you must be very careful of your faith in your own intellect which itself was given by God. I agree faith is the foundation to knowing and believing God. However, the reality of this universe establishes, for me, the truth that one must have faith like a child to know God, and that God confounds the wisdom of the wise. What is the point? To me to make sense of “irreducible complexity”, one must understand “time” and “probabilities” associated with complex systems or simple systems for that matter. Likewise to understand the foundational problems with darwinism, one must understand these same concepts (time and probability) and how they work (or don’t) considering the known universe. Darwinism is a simple idea which helps make sense of a universe that has no God, and yet has life forms in it. However, if one considers a God who created the universe may actually exit, then the rationality of darwinism quickly fades.
at 8:56 pm on April 22nd, 2006
Nice
at 7:50 pm on September 4th, 2007