Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

"The illegitimacy rate represents the triumph of the hormones over the propriteries." Is that Darwinian enough for you? Or are you a social climber?

Intelligent Design Scientists Will Showcase Evidence Challenging Evolution at Dallas Conference
(Discovery Institute Press Release, March 8, 2007)

What is intelligent design and what scientific evidence supports it? How does it differ from Darwin's theory of evolution? Is there a purpose to the universe? What new scientific facts are turning evolutionary theories upside down?

Answers to these and other intriguing science questions will be the focus of a two-day conference called Darwin vs. Design, coming to Dallas April 13-14 at McFarlin Auditorium on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

Join journalist and New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel and a panel of scientists at Discovery Institute's Darwin vs. Design Conference as they explore the evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution and explain the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design.

Featured speakers include:
-Lee Strobel, journalist and bestselling author of The Case for a Creator.
-Dr. Stephen Meyer, Director, Center for Science and Culture (CSC) at Discovery Institute, and co-editor of Darwinism, Design, and Public Education.
-Dr. Michael Behe, Lehigh University biochemist and author of the bestselling book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, and CSC senior fellow.
-Dr. Jay Richards, Research Fellow of the Acton Institute, co-author of The Privileged Planet, and CSC senior fellow.

Attendees will interact with intelligent design scientists and experts whose discoveries in cosmology, biology, physics, and DNA present astonishing scientific evidence that is overturning the evolutionary thinking of the past. Conference goers will hear firsthand the astounding implications these discoveries are having on our society, our politics and our culture.

I was hoping that you would attend and then report back to us. Any chance of that?

I was hoping that you would attend and then report back to us. Any chance of that?

Well, lady scientists are much on your mind spendi maybe your comments will be vast but Im sure you can trim them at least by half.

In former times, the pen, like the sword, was considered as consigned by nature to the hands of men; the ladies contented themselves with private virtues and domestic excellence, and a female writer, like a female warrior, was considered as a kind of excentric (sic) being, that deviated, however illustriously, from her due sphere of motion, and was, therefore, rather to be gazed at with wonder, than countenanced by imitation. But as the times past are said to have been a nation of Amazons, who drew the bow and wielded the battle-axe, formed encampments, and wasted nations; the revolution of years has now produced a generation of Amazons of the pen, who with the spirit of their predecessors have set masculine tyranny at defiance, asserted their claim to the regions of sciences, and seem resolved to contest the usurpations of virility.

With a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer. But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer but that it must be. They formed themselves into a cult. Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities. Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department. For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one's doubts and go with the stringies.

As a result, now that it is increasingly clear that string theory has failed, an abyss has opened up at the feet of the stringies.

Thou art not noble:
For all th' accomodations, that thou bear'st,
Are nurs'd by baseness.

Neat Guy.

Ive grown a bit tired of your immature self-flattery combined with your churlishness. Ill probably begin what others have already done, Ill merely ignore you. That way its hard for you to get traction in continuing your ill mannered behavior.

Post-newtonian science has generally been reductionist in nature - namely, an understanding a system can be reduced to understanding the operation and interaction of its parts. This approach met with widespread success, and led to the acceptance of physicalism, "the belief that all science ultimately reduces to the laws of physics". However, by the twentieth century, it was discovered that some systems cannot simply be reduced to the sum of their parts, but rather have self-organization or emergent properties. These unique properties are different from the properties of the constituents at a more fundamental level. Examples range from something as basic as the hydrogen atom (more than merely a proton and an electron) to the human brain and the universe itself.

Over the decades of the twentieth century, scientists in an increasing number of disciplines (ranging from biology to computer science) as well as philosophers have applied emergence theory to systems of interest. As early as 1926, philosopher Stephen Pepper set out three basic tenets of emergence theory:

"1) that there are levels of existence defined in terms of degrees of integration;

2) that there are marks which distinguish these levels from one another and above the degrees of integration;

3) that it is impossible to deduce the marks of a higher level from those of a lower level, and perhaps also (though this is not clear) impossible to deduce marks of a lower level from those of a higher."

It comes as no surprise that some in the creationist/ID community have jumped on emergence theory as "proof" of a Creator. For example, John Templeton and Robert Herrman claim that: "There are deep and powerful ordering forces in the universe. This is especially observed in recent developments in the study of what are called far-from-equilibrium processes, in which it is seen that there are spontaneous transitions within apparently random processes to higher levels of order."

Although it is true that such "chaotic" systems do show emergent properties of order, there is no scientific evidence that this derives from a supernatural driver. Others have claimed that emergence is a philosophical concept rather than a testable, scientific theory. In response, philosopher of science Philip Clayton has proposed the following tenets:

"1) Emergence studies will be scientific only if emergence can be explicated in terms that the relevant sciences can study, check, and incorporate into actual theories.

2) Explanations concerning such phenomena must thus be given in terms of the structures and functions of stuff in the world."

As the universe itself is the greatest "emergent" structure of all, it is not surprising that physicists have used the term to describe various theories of the very early universe. For example, time, space-time, and Einsteinian gravity have all been described as "emergent properties" of the universe [Barceló, Visser, and Liberati 2001; Butterfield and Isham 1998; Clayton 2004]. Various models of the emergence of the universe itself have been proposed, mainly within the framework of the inflationary paradigm [Linde 1987]. The universe is generally pictured as being "spontaneously created from nothing," either through quantum tunneling (nucleation) [Vilenkin 1983 and 1987] or through the "no-boundary" proposal [Hartle and Hawking 1983]. For this reason, inflationary models are frequently called "the ultimate free lunch" [Guth 1997, 1]. Such glib comments have opened up inflationary cosmologies to sharp criticism from the ID community. For example, in his book No Free Lunch (2002), William Dembski called it a "form of magic" and explained its appeal as "the offer of a bargain - indeed an incredible bargain for which no amount of creative accounting can ever square the books. The idea of getting something for nothing has come to pervade science" [368]. After ridiculing cosmology for appealing to this "magic," Dembski offers the salvation of design theory, which "substitutes a designer who explains everything. Magic gets you something for nothing and thus offers a bargain. Design gets you something by presupposing something unimaginably bigger and thus asks you to sell your scientific soul. At least so the story goes. But design can be explanatory without giving away the store."

Despite Dembski's inflammatory language and glossing over of scientific theory, it is understandable how a popular level audience might be swayed by his "logic." The sometimes amusing language that scientists use to converse within their own community can come back to haunt them when it comes to communication with the general public. For example, the term "quarks" sounds nonsensical enough when taken in isolation, but when these unobservable particles are said to come in "flavors" named up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom (originally truth and beauty), the door is certainly opened for raised eyebrows (if not red flags) from opponents of scientific theories. In the 1980s and 1990s various research groups searching for observational evidence of macroscopic baryonic dark matter candidates (such as brown dwarfs) via microlensing made a veritable game of naming their projects in such a way as to obtain sexually suggestive acronyms, such as MACHO, AGAPE, EROS, DUO, and OGLE. While this can lead to moments of humor in otherwise dry conference presentations, it does nothing to further the reputation of science outside of its own community, and can furthermore play into the hands of its harshest critics.