Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

I melt them with a long lingering semi-focussed gaze

(By JACOB LUECKE, Columbia Tribune, April 25, 2007)

A Columbia medical professor made his case for scientific acceptance of "intelligent design" last night and found himself taking fire from his peers for his view.

John Marshall, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, argued in front of about 100 people in a University Hospital auditorium that mainstream scientists were trying to kick intelligent design "off the playing field of science."

At the heart of the argument for design, say proponents, is that elements of life and the physical world cannot be explained by evolution and show signs of being formed by an intelligent creator.

"It's as much science as Darwinian evolution is science," Marshall said. "And as a theory, I believe that intelligent design fits the evidence of biology better than Darwinian evolution."

Marshall held up DNA as a possible example of intelligent design in action, calling it the "most complex, densely packed, elaborate assembly of information in the known universe."

He said DNA even bears similarities to computer codes or a language.
"There's some three billion characters of information in each of our cells," he said. "If one were to put this code, write it out like you would onto a newspaper, you would fill some 75,000 pages of the New York Times."
Some scientists in the audience, however, accused Marshall of masking religion as science.

"I think" intelligent design "is a code word for God," said John O'Connor, a water consultant and retired chairman of the MU Department of Civil Engineering. "I think that there's no reason for us to mince around and pretend that that's not really what" intelligent design "is trying to propagate."

Frank Schmidt, an MU biochemistry professor, said he counted "21 distortions 15 half-truths and 10 untruths" in Marshall's 45-minute presentation.

"What you are doing is cloaking a narrow definition of Christianity, which I find personally offensive, as some sort of scientific truth," Schmidt said. "And that is what really hacks me off."

Schmidt questioned Marshall about whether intelligent design proposes a testable prediction, as he said real scientific theory does, or if it simply says that we can't understand everything. When Marshall would not directly answer the question, Schmidt turned and left the auditorium, saying Marshall should not "pretend to be objective."

Up to 10 years ago, Marshall said he was an agnostic who believed in the theory of evolution. But in 1998, he converted to Christianity, and three years later the arguments of intelligent design finally swayed him into that camp. He said that although intelligent design does have religious implications for many people, it does not rely on any religious doctrine.

Rather than convince detractors that intelligent design was truth, Marshall repeatedly said he wanted the theory to become part of the scientific discussion, asking scientists to have tolerance toward his view.

Marshall held up DNA as a possible example of intelligent design in action, calling it the "most complex, densely packed, elaborate assembly of information in the known universe."

He said DNA even bears similarities to computer codes or a language.
"There's some three billion characters of information in each of our cells," he said. "If one were to put this code, write it out like you would onto a newspaper, you would fill some 75,000 pages of the New York Times."

It never did say that unbaptised babies went to purgatory. Not to my knowledge anyway.

Just as you do by using the word "simple" to describe hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, with phosphorus bonds all of which are irreducibly complex and contain items which are also irreducibly complex and possibly so on ad finitum and the same applies to their origin.

Every time I lay a bar of iron on the ground and it rusts, that, according to spendi is an example of irreducible complexity.

Otherwise each act of rusting, or chelation, or covalent bonding would obviously be a miracle .

Firstly, there are the twin threads of Science and Religion, starting with the undistinguishable unity of the Pythagorean Brotherhood, falling apart and reuniting again, now tied up in knots, now running on parallel courses, and ending in the polite and deadly "divided house of faith and reason" of our day, where, on both sides, symbols have hardened into dogmas, and the common source of inspiration is lost from view. A study of the evolution of cosmic awareness in the past may help to find out whether a new departure is at least conceivable, and on what lines.

Quote:
Every time I lay a bar of iron on the ground and it rusts, that, according to spendi is an example of irreducible complexity.



It sure is but if it flatters your self-esteem to think you understand it good luck.

Ain't talkin' ,just walkin'
Through the world mysterious and vague
Heart burnin' ,still yearnin'
Walkin' through the cities of the plague.

The twentieth-century European regards with justified misgivings the "reduction" of the world around him, of his experiences and emotions, into a set of abstract formulae, deprived of colour, warmth, meaning and value.