For, in the historical as in the nature world-picture, there is found nothing, however small, that does not embody in itself the entire sum of fundamental tendencies.
Oswald Spengler.
The Godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and set-fast; and therefore, similarly, the reason (Vernufte) is concerned only to strive towards the divine through the becoming and the living, and the understanding (Verstand) only to make use of the become and set-fast.
Goethe.
Intelligent Design not so intelligentthe vast majority of gaps filled with God, including many proposed by IDer Michael Behe in "Darwin's Black Box," have been subsequently filled with naturalistic explanations.
Perhaps it's little wonder that the main dissemination of ID theory has occurred not through peer-reviewed journals, but through Web sites and popular-release books.
If those at the Discovery Institute truly want to "defeat scientific materialism," perhaps they would be better served taking a cue from evangelical Christians doing respectable science. Francis Collins, ex-director of the Human Genome Project, might be a good place to start. Those at the Discovery Institute could join Collins in emphasizing why evolutionary theory is not incompatible with belief in the supernatural. Yet they have persisted in a strategy that manifestly lacks an intelligent design: advancing a pseudoscientific theory through non-academic publications, suggesting a redefinition of science that would dramatically hinder scientific progress, making indefensible claims about the future and, in the process, supporting scientific materialism by diminishing the credibility of those who believe in the supernatural.
In particular, he argued that I had not adequately treated the theory of biological origins called Intelligent Design, or ID.
Few scientists or philosophers from respectable academic institutions have given serious consideration to ID.
That's the definition of irreducible complexity. It will always be irreducible.
...these determinations of meaning are largely incommunicable by specification, definition or proof, and in their deeper import must be reached by feeling, experience and intuition.
Mathematical number (as opposed the chronological number) contains in its very essence the notion of mechanical demarcation being in that respect akin to "word", which, in the very fact of its comprising and denoting, fences off world impressions. The deepest depths, it is true, are here both incomprehensible and inexpressible. But the actual number with which the mathematician works, the figure, formula, sign, diagram, in short the number sign which he thinks, speaks or writes exactly, is (like the exactly used word) from the first a symbol of these depths, something imaginable, communicable, comprehensible to the inner and the outer eye, which can be accepted as representing the demarcation.
Cardinal criticizes ruling on 'design'
(Thursday, February 08, 2007, Rachel Zoll, Associated Press)
New York - An influential Roman Catholic cardinal whose comments on evolution are closely followed condemned a court decision Wednesday that barred a Pennsylvania school district from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class.
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said in a lecture that restricting debate about Darwin's theory of evolution amounts to censorship in schools and in the broader public.
"Commonly in the scientific community every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the very outset," Schoenborn said of Darwinism.
"To some extent there prevails a type of censoring here of the sort for which one eagerly reproached the church in former times."
The cardinal said he found it "amazing" that a U.S. federal court ruled in 2005 that the Dover, Pa., public school district could not teach the concept of "intelligent design" as part of its science class.
The judge had said that the theory, which says an intelligent supernatural force explains the emergence of complex life forms, was creationism in disguise.
The cardinal said the Dover ruling meant that schoolchildren would only be taught a materialistic, atheistic view of the origin of universe, without considering the idea that God played a role.
"A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear of the debate," he said.
Schoenborn's comments came in a speech Wednesday night sponsored by the Homeland Foundation, a philanthropy that funds cultural and religious programs, many involving the Catholic Church.
It is the latest in a series of remarks he has made on the topic. The cardinal, who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, has said he wants to correct what he calls a widespread misconception that the Catholic Church has given a blanket endorsement to Darwin's theories.
The "intelligent design" concept has been promoted most prominently by the Discovery Institute, a think tank in Seattle.
Asked after the speech if he was endorsing the institute's beliefs, Schoenborn would say only "listen to my arguments," cautioning that his views should not be put "in a box."
"I don't belong to any kind of boxes," he said.
The lecture was based on a talk Schoenborn gave in a private meeting in Italy last year with Benedict, a former professor, and several of his old students, where they discussed evolution.
Schoenborn affirmed that the Catholic Church rejects creationism, saying "the first page of the Bible is not a cosmological treatise about the coming to be of the world in six days."
He also said that "the Catholic faith can accept" the possibility that God uses evolution as a tool. But he said science alone cannot explain the origins of the universe.
The cardinal said he found it "amazing" that a U.S. federal court ruled in 2005 that the Dover, Pa., public school district could not teach the concept of "intelligent design" as part of its science class.
spendi has a mental block; ID is not science by any stretch of the imagination - except to people that fears their whole concept of a god is in jeopardy. That last thread will be broken in the near future - by science.
I can't think of anything in any structure, let alone just the biological, that isn't irreducibly complex.
I bet you can't think of anything that is not irreducibly complex. You should stick to your work and cease telling religious people that they are barmy and ID-iotic. The onus of proof is on you. Not on them.
Well thats a convenient dodge that sits well with ID philosophy."It is all irreducibly complex because spendi says so"
July 7, 2005
Finding Design in Nature
July 9, 2005
Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Correction Appended
An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.
The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
In a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church's position on evolution. "I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on," said Cardinal Schönborn.
He said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.
Opponents of Darwinian evolution said they were gratified by Cardinal Schönborn's essay. But scientists and science teachers reacted with confusion, dismay and even anger. Some said they feared the cardinal's sentiments would cause religious scientists to question their faiths.
Cardinal Schönborn, who is on the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, said the office had no plans to issue new guidance to teachers in Catholic schools on evolution. But he said he believed students in Catholic schools, and all schools, should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories. Many Catholic schools teach Darwinian evolution, in which accidental mutation and natural selection of the fittest organisms drive the history of life, as part of their science curriculum.
Darwinian evolution is the foundation of modern biology. While researchers may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution plays out, there is no credible scientific challenge to the underlying theory.
American Catholics and conservative evangelical Christians have been a potent united front in opposing abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, but had parted company on the death penalty and the teaching of evolution. Cardinal Schönborn's essay and comments are an indication that the church may now enter the debate over evolution more forcefully on the side of those who oppose the teaching of evolution alone.
One of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort.
Mark Ryland, a vice president of the institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write the essay. Both Mr. Ryland and Cardinal Schönborn said that an essay in May in The Times about the compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory by Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested to them that it was time to clarify the church's position on evolution.
The cardinal's essay was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.
Mr. Ryland, who said he knew the cardinal through the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he is chancellor and Mr. Ryland is on the board, said supporters of intelligent design were "very excited" that a church leader had taken a position opposing Darwinian evolution. "It clarified that in some sense the Catholics aren't fine with it," he said.
Bruce Chapman, the institute's president, said the cardinal's essay "helps blunt the claims" that the church "has spoken on Darwinian evolution in a way that's supportive."
But some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology.
"How did the Discovery Institute talking points wind up in Vienna?" wondered Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which advocates the teaching of evolution. "It really did look quite a bit as if Cardinal Schönborn had been reading their Web pages."
Mr. Ryland said the cardinal was well versed on these issues and had written the essay on his own.
Dr. Francis Collins, who headed the official American effort to decipher the human genome, and who describes himself as a Christian, though not a Catholic, said Cardinal Schönborn's essay looked like "a step in the wrong direction" and said he feared that it "may represent some backpedaling from what scientifically is a very compelling conclusion, especially now that we have the ability to study DNA."
"There is a deep and growing chasm between the scientific and the spiritual world views," he went on. "To the extent that the cardinal's essay makes believing scientists less and less comfortable inhabiting the middle ground, it is unfortunate. It makes me uneasy."
"Unguided," "unplanned," "random" and "natural" are all adjectives that biologists might apply to the process of evolution, said Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown and a Catholic. But even so, he said, evolution "can fall within God's providential plan." He added: "Science cannot rule it out. Science cannot speak on this."
Dr. Miller, whose book "Finding Darwin's God" describes his reconciliation of evolutionary theory with Christian faith, said the essay seemed to equate belief in evolution with disbelief in God. That is alarming, he said. "It may have the effect of convincing Catholics that evolution is something they should reject."
Dr. Collins and other scientists said they could understand why a cleric might want to make the case that, as Dr. Collins put it, "evolution is the mechanism by which human beings came into existence, but God had something to do with that, too." Dr. Collins said that view, theistic evolution, "is shared with a very large number of biologists who also believe in God, including me."
But it does not encompass the idea that the workings of evolution required the direct intervention of a supernatural agent, as intelligent design would have it.
In his essay, Cardinal Schönborn asserted that he was not trying to break new ground but to correct the idea, "often invoked," that the church accepts or at least acquiesces to the theory of evolution.
He referred to widely cited remarks by Pope John Paul II, who, in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, noted that the scientific case for evolution was growing stronger and that the theory was "more than a hypothesis."
In December, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, chairman of the Committee on Science and Human Values of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, cited those remarks in writing to the nation's bishops that "the Church does not need to fear the teaching of evolution as long as it is understood as a scientific account of the physical origins and development of the universe." But in his essay, Cardinal Schönborn dismissed John Paul's statement as "rather vague and unimportant."
Francisco Ayala, a professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest, called this assessment "an insult" to the late pope and said the cardinal seemed to be drawing a line between the theory of evolution and religious faith, and "seeing a conflict that does not exist."
Dr. Miller said he was already hearing from people worried about the cardinal's essay. "People are saying, does the church really believe this?" He said he would not speculate. "John Paul II made it very clear that he regarded scientific rationality as a gift from God," Dr. Miller said, adding, "There are more than 100 cardinals and they often have conflicting opinions."
Correction: Monday, July 11, 2005:
A front-page article on Saturday about the effort by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, to redefine the Roman Catholic Church's position on evolution referred imprecisely to the cardinal's Op-Ed article in The Times on Thursday. The article, which said the church's position had often been misrepresented, was prompted by an essay by Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss published in Science Times in May; it was not a direct response to that essay.
Correction: July 21, 2005, Thursday:
A front-page article on July 9 about an influential cardinal's skepticism on evolutionary theory referred imprecisely to the Roman Catholic Church's position on stem cell research. The church opposes such research with cells from human embryos that are then discarded; it does not oppose stem cell research in general.
Cardinal Condemns Suppression of the Darwin Debate in America: "A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear of the debate."
In a speech last night in New York City, Roman Catholic Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn of Vienna sharply criticized efforts in America to prevent students and the public from learning about the debate over Darwin's theory. According to the Associated Press report:
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said in a lecture that restricting debate about Darwin's theory of evolution amounts to censorship in schools and in the broader public.
"Commonly in the scientific community every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the very outset," Schoenborn said of Darwinism. "To some extent there prevails a type of censoring here of the sort for which one eagerly reproached the church in former times."
In his comments, the Cardinal condemned in particular the Kitzmiller v. Dover court decision in 2005 banning the coverage of intelligent design in science classes in Dover, Pennsylvania:
The Austrian cardinal said he found it "amazing" that a U.S. federal court ruled in 2005 that the Dover, Pennsylvania, public school district could not teach the concept of "intelligent design" as part of its science class...
"A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear of the debate," he said.
As readers of this blog know, Discovery Institute opposed the Dover policy, because it does not favor efforts to require the inclusion of intelligent design in public schools. But, like the Cardinal, the Institute also strongly opposed the Kitzmiller decision's attempt to ban even voluntary discussions of intelligent design and to declare them unconstitutional. The Cardinal is to be commended for continuing to champion the right of free expression in the growing debate over Darwinism.
Posted by John West on February 8, 2007 12:08 PM PST
In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome
By IAN FISHER and CORNELIA DEAN
ROME, Jan. 18 - The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.
"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L'Osservatore Romano.
"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."
The article was not presented as an official church position. But in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI.
Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasizing that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him."
But Robert L. Crowther, spokesman for the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle organization where researchers study and advocate intelligent design, dismissed the article and other recent statements from leading Catholics defending evolution. Drawing attention to them was little more than trying "to put words in the Vatican's mouth," he said.
L'Osservatore is the official newspaper of the Vatican and basically represents the Vatican's views. Not all its articles represent official church policy. At the same time, it would not be expected to present an article that dissented deeply from that policy.
In July, Christoph Schönborn, an Austrian cardinal close to Benedict, seemed to call into question what has been official church teaching for years: that Catholicism and evolution are not necessarily at odds.
In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, he played down a 1996 letter in which Pope John Paul II called evolution "more than a hypothesis." He wrote, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source.
At least twice, Pope Benedict has signaled concern about the issue, prompting questions about his views. In April, when he was formally installed as pope, he said human beings "are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." In November, he called the creation of the universe an "intelligent project," wording welcomed by supporters of intelligent design.
Many Roman Catholic scientists have criticized intelligent design, among them the Rev. George Coyne, a Jesuit who is director of the Vatican Observatory. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," he said in November, as quoted by the Italian news service ANSA. "Intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
In October, Cardinal Schönborn sought to clarify his own remarks, saying he meant to question not the science of evolution but what he called evolutionism, an attempt to use the theory to refute the hand of God in creation.
"I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained," he said in a speech.
To Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and a Catholic, "That is my own view as well."
"As long as science does not pretend it can answer spiritual questions, it's O.K.," he said.
Dr. Miller, who testified for the plaintiffs in the recent suit in Dover, Pa., challenging the teaching of intelligent design, said Dr. Facchini, Father Coyne and Cardinal Schönborn (in his later statements) were confirming "traditional Catholic thinking." On Dec. 20, a federal district judge ruled that public schools could not present intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory.
In the Osservatore article, Dr. Facchini wrote that scientists could not rule out a divine "superior design" to creation and the history of mankind. But he said Catholic thought did not preclude a design fashioned through an evolutionary process.
"God's project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events, without having to think of miraculous interventions that point in this or that direction," he wrote.
Neither Dr. Facchini nor the editors of L'Osservatore could be reached for comment.
Lawrence M. Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, said Dr. Facchini's article was important because it made the case that people did not have to abandon religious faith in order to accept the theory of evolution.
"Science does not make that requirement," he said.
Faith and understanding
159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical . The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
... 60. Above himself and yet in the intimacy of his own conscience, man discovers the existence of a law which the tradition calls the "natural law." This law is of divine origin, and man's awareness of it is itself a participation in the divine law. It refers man to the true origins of the universe as well as to his own (Veritatis Splendor, 20). This natural law drives the rational creature to search for the truth and the good in his sovereignty of the universe. Created in the image of God, man exercises this sovereignty over visible creation only in virtue of the privilege conferred upon him by God ...
... Science and technology must be put in the service of the divine design for the whole of creation and for all creatures. This design gives meaning to the universe and to human enterprise as well. Human stewardship of the created world is precisely a stewardship exercised by way of participation in the divine rule and is always subject to it. Human beings exercise this stewardship by gaining scientific understanding of the universe, by caring responsibly for the natural world (including animals and the environment), and by guarding their own biological integrity.
1. Science and the stewardship of knowledge
62. The endeavor to understand the universe has marked human culture in every period and in nearly every society. In the perspective of the Christian faith, this endeavor is precisely an instance of the stewardship which human beings exercise in accordance with God's plan. Without embracing a discredited concordism, Christians have the responsibility to locate the modern scientific understanding of the universe within the context of the theology of creation. The place of human beings in the history of this evolving universe, as it has been charted by modern sciences, can only be seen in its complete reality in the light of faith, as a personal history of the engagement of the triune God with creaturely persons.
63. ]According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the "Big Bang" and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage[/size]. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution ...
... The Church's interest in evolution thus focuses particularly on "the conception of man" who, as created in the image of God, "cannot be subordinated as a pure means or instrument either to the species or to society." As a person created in the image of God, he is capable of forming relationships of communion with other persons and with the triune God, as well as of exercising sovereignty and stewardship in the created universe. The implication of these remarks is that theories of evolution and of the origin of the universe possess particular theological interest when they touch on the doctrines of the creation ex nihilo and the creation of man in the image of God ...
... The doctrines of the imago Dei and the creatio ex nihilo teach us that the existing universe is the setting for a radically personal drama, in which the triune Creator calls out of nothingness those to whom He then calls out in love. Here lies the profound meaning of the words of Gaudium et Spes: "Man is the only creature on earth that God willed for his own sake" (24). Created in God's image, human beings assume a place of responsible stewardship in the physical universe. Under the guidance of divine providence and acknowledging the sacred character of visible creation, the human race reshapes the natural order, and becomes an agent in the evolution of the universe itself. In exercising their stewardship of knowledge, theologians have the responsibility to locate modern scientific understandings within a Christian vision of the created universe ...
... Through the activity of natural causes, God causes to arise those conditions required for the emergence and support of living organisms, and, furthermore, for their reproduction and differentiation. Although there is scientific debate about the degree of purposiveness or design operative and empirically observable in these developments, they have de facto favored the emergence and flourishing of life. Catholic theologians can see in such reasoning support for the affirmation entailed by faith in divine creation and divine providence. In the providential design of creation, the triune God intended not only to make a place for human beings in the universe but also, and ultimately, to make room for them in his own trinitarian life. Furthermore, operating as real, though secondary causes, human beings contribute to the reshaping and transformation of the universe ...
... But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree ...
... Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist because "the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles....It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence" (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2) ...
... Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called "an ontological leap...the moment of transition to the spiritual." While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe ...
... The present text was approved in forma specifica, by the written ballots of the International Theological Commission. It was then submitted to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the President of the Commission, who has give his permission for its publication.
Not at all. It is all irreducibly complex because it is all irreducibly complex.
Christian faculty debate design theories
(Carolyn Crist, University of Georgia Student Newspaper, February 9, 2007)
Intellectual design as a scientific explanation for bio-diversity is dead - or so said a University plant biology professor.
Wednesday night, the Christian Faculty Forum sponsored a discussion of the pros and cons of intelligent design as a theory of origins.
Paul Nelson, a doctor of philosophy and professor at Biola University in Los Angeles, Calif., asked scientists to keep an open mind and not to eliminate intellectual design as a possibility for scientific explanation in organism development.
Chris Peterson, a University professor of plant biology, argued intelligent design was merely a philosophy and not scientific because it cannot generate testable hypotheses.
"Intelligent design as a science is a zombie. It's dead but just doesn't know it yet," Peterson said.
Both sides had 30 minutes to present their side, and a question-and-answer session followed.
"Intelligent design could fall two ways: a placemark for more questions or an end to questions. If we did the latter, we'd still be throwing virgins in volcanoes," said Tom Shannon, a University doctoral student.
Nelson agreed intelligent design shouldn't be an all-purpose explanation for every puzzle but an idea to explain several complex occurrences in nature.
"What both theories fail to address are the key issues humans wonder about: Why are we here, and what is the purpose of life?" said Darwin Smith, a University chemistry professor. "If we ignore the cross-purpose dialogue between science and belief, it's damaging to the wholeness of a person."
Because both professors are Christians, junior Paul Brice asked Peterson to explain how he reconciles science and evolution with his religious beliefs.
"I believe scientific evidence and use my brain to fit them together. I can't just close my eyes to proof," said Peterson.
Nelson and Peterson agreed intelligent design shouldn't be taught in high schools and must earn its place in the scientific community first.
This world-fear is assuredly the most creative of all prime feelings. ('creative' in italics). Man owes to it the ripest and deepest forms and images, not only of his conscious inward life, but also of the infinitely-varied external culture which reflects this life. Like a secret melody that not every ear can perceive, it runs through the form-language of every true art-work, every inward philosophy, every important deed, and, although those who can perceive it in that domain are the very few, it lies at the root of the great problems of mathematics. Only the spiritually dead man of the autumnal cities..(you know their names)..only the pure intellectual, the sophist, the sensualist, the Darwinian, loses it or is able to evade it by setting up a secretless "scientific world-view" between himself and the alien.
One is led to wonder though how an obsession with secretless scientific world-views arise in a small proportion of the population and why they are defended with such vigour in a combination of evasion, assertion, insult, bombast and half-baked posturing. Why certainty is so attractive in an uncertain world where nothing is really what it seems.
