Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

If it leaves you feeling empty and , as a species, spiritually unfullfilled, then read some of Ken Millers stuff on how he pictures his own God. ( His God isnt a meddler and isnt involved in the natural world, mostly because Miller can see the evidence on his own) .

spendi, if given enough time and paper, will, eventually morph his on-screen persona into a rather sad. dyspeptic mysoginist . Therefore, purposely ignoring his recent contributions as mere "bits of undigested beef" , I shall further my discussion with foxy..

The only important logical fallacy in this whole discussion is that some who accurately argue verification and falsification principles in scientific principles are so damn sure that there is no God when they have absolutely no way to verify or falsify that and are making that assertion purely out of their own experience.

Foxfyre wrote:

The only important logical fallacy in this whole discussion is that some who accurately argue verification and falsification principles in scientific principles are so damn sure that there is no God when they have absolutely no way to verify or falsify that and are making that assertion purely out of their own experience.

Issues of faith can and should be kept separate from issues of science. When farmerman talks about science he talks about science. Farmerman does not use science to comment on the existence of God. Science restricts itself to natural explanations of natural phenomena. We all benefit from what scientific research has discovered.

Translation into English- I have no answers to the points you make so I'll weave four more assertions into a bad-tempered expostulation

If you wanted science and issues of faith kept separate, why start a thread that presumes discussion of both?

Quote:

If you wanted science and issues of faith kept separate, why start a thread that presumes discussion of both?

Your method of debate is more sophisticated than spendis in that you really never want to be left abjuring a single position , so you (sort of) try to accept both, but only on fallacious terms. AS far as your above quote, We can always discuss the origins of morals from a purely genetic standpoint, or (in this case) the foundations of a Faith based POV that screams at the top of its lungs that it is really science. You cannot logically critique ID without examining its roots in Fundamentalist doctrine. Its a well documented bastard child of the "Floodists" and the "Creation SCientists" whod been handed their lunches by the Epperson And the Edwards decisions.

If Edwards v Aguillard had gone the way Justice Scalia wanted, do you think that Dover would ever have happened?

7) The fact that some would presume to deny the existence of or relevance of ID based on the fact that it cannot be proved nor disproved by science is a fallacious argument as is any intent to change my statements into something other than what I have stated.

. When you post questions or debate points from logic or evidence, Ill gladly join in. Let me know when that happens spendi.

How do you think evolution created out of nowhere, with no intermediate forms, this gulf between our delightful companions and what you see in the zoo?

Your method of debate is more sophisticated than spendis in that you really never want to be left abjuring a single position

But if you guys just want to discuss the science, that's okay too. Since I see no conflict with that and none of us are likely to contribute anything to it that we don't all already know and/or agree with, I'll happily watch.

You also seem to presumie some things about what I do or do not believe or think which are not supported by anything I have said.

Have you read Wilhelm Reich?

Bruce Chapman and John West: Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us?
(Dallas Morning News Opinion Section, April 10, 2007)

Nowhere is the free exchange of ideas supposed to be more robust or uninhibited than on college campuses.

Thus, it is disheartening that certain professors and even some journalists are seeking to prevent scientists and philosophers who support the theory of intelligent design from explaining their views at the Darwin v. Design conference on the Southern Methodist University campus Friday and Saturday.

At the conference, scholars will present empirical data from biology, biochemistry, physics, mathematics and related fields that provide strong evidence that features of living things and the universe are the products of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random (chance) mutations.

Unfortunately, would-be censors are trying to get the conference banned from campus by ludicrously comparing intelligent design proponents to faith healers or even Holocaust deniers.

Faith healers and Holocaust deniers are not on the faculties of reputable universities. Scientists who support intelligent design are.

These scientists include biochemist and author Michael Behe at Lehigh University (who will be speaking at the SMU conference), microbiologist Scott Minnich at the University of Idaho and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, whose research has been featured in Scientific American and who co-authored a book describing the evidence for design of the cosmos that has been praised even by some leading evolutionists.

Scholars who support intelligent design are making their arguments in books put out by academic publishers such as Cambridge University Press and Michigan State University Press and in technical articles published in peer-reviewed science and philosophy of science journals.

If the evidence for design can be presented in such forums, what is so frightening about allowing it to be heard at SMU?

Proponents of Darwin's theory typically insist that the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that no rational person can challenge it, but they equivocate on the meaning of "evolution." Intelligent design does not challenge the idea that evolution occurs, rather the claim that the development of the intricate and highly functional features in nature is the result of a blind and undirected process that cannot select for future function.

Contrary to the bravado of Darwinists, there is considerable empirical evidence of the insufficiency of the Darwinian mechanism. Research published by protein scientist Douglas Axe in the Journal of Molecular Biology shows just how astonishingly rare certain working protein sequences are, casting severe doubts that a Darwinian process of chance mutations could generate them. In the words of Dr. Axe, the rarity of these working protein sequences among all the possible combinations is "less than one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion."

Various science professors at SMU have called on their university to ban our conference, and more recently some of them have declared that they "have a duty as practitioners of science to speak out" against intelligent design.

But if they truly believe that they have a duty to "speak out," why not speak out by engaging intelligent design scholars in a serious discussion?

We invited the chairs of SMU's departments of biology, geological sciences and anthropology to send representatives to the first night of our conference so they can present their objections and even interrogate intelligent design scholars with their toughest questions.

As we were writing this, the anthropology department declined due to a scheduling conflict, but the other departments have not responded. Unfortunately, this behavior is all too common among defenders of Darwinian theory. They publicly disparage intelligent design (often showing through their comments that they know very little about what it actually proposes), but they refuse to engage in genuine dialogue.

What a different approach from that modeled by Darwin himself, who humbly and patiently responded to objections to his theory and who frankly acknowledged that "a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question."

What are today's Darwinists so afraid of?

How do you think evolution created out of nowhere, with no intermediate forms, this gulf between our delightful companions and what you see in the zoo?

The fact that some would presume to deny the existence of or relevance of ID based on the fact that it cannot be proved nor disproved by science is a fallacious argument as is any intent to change my statements into something other than what I have stated.

Bruce Chapman and John West: Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us?
(Dallas Morning News Opinion Section, April 10, 2007)

Well Walt, Reich did offer an approach to social engineering in the absence of religion just as de Sade did. He was after all a biologist first and foremost and one would think the anti-IDers would have agreed with his general recommendations.

spendi, Hello from Barcelona, Spain. Want you to know that American tourism to Barcelona is one of the lowest of industrialized countries