| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
24 Aug 2005 07:54:58 AM |
| Object: |
Re: Public not buying 'I.D. is not science' argument |
"WotTheHell" <Cognitus44@hotmail.com> wrote:
:|buckeye-ELO@nospam.net wrote:
:|> Public not buying 'I.D. is not science' argument
:|> http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion_columnists/article/0,1375,VCS_223_4020088,00.html
:|> [excerpt]
:|>
:|> By Beverly Kelley
:|> August 22, 2005
:|>
:|> Opponents of intelligent design are going to have to rethink their "it's
:|> not science" campaign slogan.
:|
:| Sad to say, there's some truth in this statement -- because
:|American citizens are overwhelmingly ignorant of science.
:|They claim life is too complex for them to understand -- and
:|thus it must have been created by God. Of course if you
:|ask them where GOD came from, they are .... perplexed and
:|claim your question is unfair, that God was ... well ALWAYS
:|there. So what is ALWAYS?? No answer.........
:|
Originally posted at
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
From: "esabing at HRSepCnS".
Date: Mon Aug 22, 2005 11:05 pm
Subject: Re: Public not buying--ID has fizzled
--- In HRSepCnS@yahoogroups.com, "buckeyeelo" <buckeyeelo@y...> wrote:
Public not buying 'I.D. is not science' argument
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion_columnists/article/0,1375,VCS_223_4020088,00.html
I disagree.
Intelligent Design has Fizzled
Ellery Schempp
August 2005
Despite the flurry of recent articles on Intelligent Design (ID) published
in the slow-news days of August 2005, this flurry actually represents the
desperation of ID adherents.
The movement called "intelligent design" appears to have passed its peak of
support. Started about 10 years ago and promoted with millions of dollars
from wealthy supporters at the "Discovery Institute", the plan to replace
the Theory of Evolution has failed to attract a strong base of support.
1. Christian evangelical churches have mostly failed to embrace ID.
Although initially attracted to a philosophical position that attacks
evolution, evangelicals have become split along several lines.
1a. Biblical literalists are worried that ID does not support the Genesis
accounts of creation and Noah's flood. ID thus takes momentum away from
traditional criticisms of evolution. ID also fails to support the
so-called Young Earth Creationists (YEC) who believe that the Bible
requires the earth to have been formed about 6000 years ago (usually stated
as 4004 BCE, from Bishop Usher).
Fundamentalists are particularly unhappy that ID leaves scientific
skepticism about the flood completely unanswered. They are aware that the
flood myth is vulnerable to serious scientific critiques, doubting that it
could possibly have occurred. ID is not helpful to YEC believers, and they
are very disappointed.
1b. Evangelicals have also become increasingly concerned that ID never
mentions Jesus Christ--the core of their faith in salvation--and ID only
mentions an "intelligent designer" rather than God. They have seen what ID
critics have pointed out, namely that although everyone winks and knows
that the "designer" means God, it also leaves the door open for any number
of supernatural entities or deities to satisfy ID, leaving both God and
Christ out of it.
Christians have become disillusioned with ID because they realize that ID
allows the Islamic Allah or Hindu deities as equal candidates for the
"designer", thus dethroning Christianity as the claimant. Moreover, the
Roman Catholic Church has been reluctant to embrace ID, suspecting it as
part of the general Protestant "heresy".
1c. Moreover, major rifts have opened within the ID community as to how to
promote ID in such court cases as the Dover, Pennsylvania case. Numerous
players in the anti-evolutionist groups, such as Duane Gish, tax-evader Ken
Hovind of Dinosaur Parks, and others have not only not joined ID but
actively promote their own views in opposition. William Morris, founder of
the "Institute for Creation Research, ICR" in California has voiced his
dismay that his funding is dropping off as funds shift to ID (the
"Discovery Institute"), so the ICR crowd is not happy with ID. One major
anti-evolution website, www.answersingenesis.com, has extensive (but
invalid) criticisms of evolution, but is, at best, lukewarm about ID.
2. Traditional Christian churches in the major denominations have not
embraced ID either, because, for the most part their members have accepted
evolution as a scientifically valid explanation of how life developed on
earth. Mainstream Protestants and Catholics have accepted evolution and
rejected both YEC and ID. ID offers little to support their religious
beliefs.
Moreover, ID has tried to promote their cause as being "religiously
neutral" and "scientific". But the major promoters show this to be a lie.
Philip Johnson, widely credited as being the founder of the ID movement,
said, “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get
the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God,
before the academic world and into the schools.” And leading ID theorist
William Dembski wrote: “Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos
theology of John’s gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
And Jonathan Wells at the Discovery Institute said, “My prayers convinced
me I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism.”
Having said this publicly, ID can no longer claim that ID is outside the
realm of the First Amendment's separation of church and state, which most
American church-goers support.
3. ID has failed to attract serious support in the scientific community,
and practicing scientists find ID provides no guidance for experiments or
descriptions of nature. ID has offered no explanations to explain life
forms and relationships among life forms other than to say, "God did it."
Moreover, ID is presented not in a smooth and compelling way that attracts
people, but rather it is presented contentiously, with a chip on its
shoulder against the "established evolutionists".
ID's major proponents, lawyer Philip Johnson and DI's Bruce Chapman are not
scientists and have little understanding of evolution or scientific
processes. ID has been promoted by authors Dembski and Behe, who have
developed abstruse concepts like "irreducible complexity" having to do with
mouse traps and bacterial flagella that fail to find much popular
understanding or support. Complex arguments from information theory,
linked to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics--and in which IDists have been
proved wrong ("conservation of information")--is not a topic that
church-goers or school boards warm to.
From many essays and books trying to define irreducible complexity and
specified complexity, ID has failed to specifically define where scientific
observation and ID part company. In rejecting evolution, ID tends to agree
with the "kinds"--vaguely related to species--mentioned in Genesis, but ID
adherents have not been able to define what a kind is. ID also fails to
account for why all mammals, for example, are remarkably similar in terms
of body plan, metabolic processes, fetal development, blood, bones, and
DNA---similarities which are readily explained by evolutionary theory. ID
has also become trapped in accepting that some examples of evolution are
routinely observed--which they accept as "microevolution"--while they
reject what they call "macroevolution". ID has never been able to define a
boundary between these two terms, which are not used by mainstream
scientists. By accepting "micro-evolution" in the breeding of plants and
animals, and in the evolution of antibiotic-resistant germs, ID has
implicitly accepted the main tenets of evolution.
4. Within the informed lay communities, ID has failed to gain traction
because ID adherents single out the science of evolution to apply
"intelligent design" to. ID does not attack the historical and descriptive
sciences of astronomy, geology, archeology on similar grounds, nor does ID
try to offer its "designer" thesis as an explanation for the sciences of
biology, medicine, chemistry, and physics. This serves to undermine ID's
claims to a broadly acceptable point of view and allows the IDers to be
portrayed as having an axe to grind solely with evolutionary science.
ID has also suffered from adopting a seriously flawed logic, namely that by
attacking evolution and "disproving" it, then that shows that
ID-creationism must be correct. Many have been quick to point out that
even if the idea of evolution is found to have flaws, then that does not
make ID correct. And in fact, very large understandings in science, such
as evolution or the germ theory of disease or gravity, based on mountains
of evidence, are rarely thrown out wholesale, but they become modified to
incorporate new ideas. (This, of course, is not always true--the
phlogiston and caloric theories of heat have been abandoned entirely.)
This logical flaw and a general interest in science and technology is
probably why a large number of political and social conservatives not only
have not embraced ID, but actively defend evolution on dozens of internet
forums and boards, such as Free Republic. Many conservatives find ID to be
an embarrassment to the conservative movement.
5. ID has no record of carrying out scientific experiments or suggesting
experiments or providing descriptive classifications or understandings.
The major thesis of ID is, "Gee, it is so complicated, so we can explain
this only by saying 'God did it.'." Since this idea can be applied to
anything we do not understand, it lacks intellectual rigor. As in the case
of Paley's The Blind Watchmaker--from which ID derives--it is fundamentally
anti-intellectual and rejects the notion that human intellect can puzzle
out the complexities. It is noteworthy that IDists do not attempt to apply
their notion to quantum mechanics. At the end of the day, ID turns out to
be merely a contorted argument for the "existence of a god", and everyone
knows that such existence can neither be proved nor disproved. Thus, the
whole notion of ID offers neither scientific insight nor a novel
theological point of view.
6. As shown in the ID document Wedge,
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html, ID adherents attribute a
slew of moral and social evils to the theory of evolution, claiming that it
fosters "materialism", "naturalistic explanations", and is anti-theistic.
Some even go further to claim that the "naturalism" of evolution is
responsible for most of the evils of the world. However, to many
conservatives that ID hoped to attract, the idea of materialism is
perfectly fine and not inconsistent with their theological or spiritual
views. The idea of an ordered social hierarchy fits with both evolution
and conservative, libertarian values. ID thus offers nothing attractive to
these groups, and the idea that a grand "designer" directly intervenes to
make some people more successful, as suggested by ID, leaves social
conservatives uncomfortable.
7. A major problem with ID is that it accepts supernatural forces and
actions as being on the same plane with engineering and real science.
Since evolution is based on an interwoven network of concepts from geology,
physics, astronomy, paleontology, if ID were to win wide acceptance, then
all such disciplines are equally discredited. Few conservatives or
liberals wish to go there. The problem is the mind-set of ID.
The mindset is superstitious in nature. There are many people who are
happy to see science and rationalism debased, because they hold to views
about psychic phenomena, UFOs, appearances of the Virgin Mary in weird
places, astrology, dowsing, predictions of Nostradamus, hidden codes in the
Bible, reincarnation, a heaven/paradise after death, and a hundred other
non-rational beliefs. The fundamental issue is a rational, healthy outlook
on the world, with joy in its beauties and sadness for what some people
sometimes do, vs. a supernatural outlook, in which gods intervene
willy-nilly, some people have "hidden psychic powers", and happiness is
determined (or pre-determined) by weird forces that do not stand up to
rational inquiry.
8. A major weakness of ID is the matter of implementation. It's one thing
to have a design, but how does it get turned into a fabrication? Every
engineer knows that a first design runs into "but we can't make that".
Other design flaws frequently appear until there is sufficient reiteration
between makers and designers. This may be the ID explanation for species
extinction!
But, now suppose we have an "intelligent design" for an eye. Where and
when does this get implemented? Since the coding starts with the DNA of a
single cell, maybe each fertilized egg is made by the god-designer. On the
other hand, maybe the divine intervention comes only when cells begin to
differentiate. Or maybe when humans evolved 2 million years ago and the
design has been on auto-pilot ever since? And was the planet earth and its
orbit around the sun itself intelligently designed? These are many
questions ID has no answer for.
.
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