Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

By the way, you didn't tell me which sombitch called you arrogant--i really would enjoy a good brawl this evening.

But the overwhelming majority (90% and then some) are neither Roman Catholic or Lutheran, and neither organization endorses creationism in Germany. As a consequence, it remains a fringe phenomenon here. (Knock on wood.)

I find this interesting, as there is, despite quite a vigorous ultramontane Catholic community in this country, a noticable lack of Catholic participation in "fundamental" christian movements and ideas here.

sometimes his "sneering" gets to be a bit self congratulatory and rather stuffy, IMHO.

It is a beautiful day here in San Francisco. Clear sky with unlimited visibility

Yes, Spendi, this comes under the ID catagory. Any designer who designed you.......in all your brilliance, could not be considered sane. Intelligent but insane for sure.

Setanta wrote:

By the way, you didn't tell me which sombitch called you arrogant--i really would enjoy a good brawl this evening.

Well, you did call my remarks elitist, and you did think you found me in "contempt" of "the ignorant masses of the United States". All this seemed to me to imply the charge of arrogance.

What would be a good description of the designer involved?

Evidently I am suspected of "ultramontane Catholic" tendences.

A remarkable feat for a rather cavalier, but Jesuit-educated semi-practicioner. Now that I am in a bottle with a label, I guess my thoughts no longer need be considered.

I don't suggest anything regarding your membership in a public policy elite - only the general conformity of your views in this area to theirs.

I haven't detected any condescension or arrogance in Thomas' remarks at all. He is a bit direct and compact in his expression, but overall quite logical and open.

For those that feel that Intelligence Design has merit:

What would be a good description of the designer involved? Would this designer exhibit Behe's concept of Irreducible Complexity? Would this entity be some simple force or, alternately, that which manifests intelligence composed of and informed by its own complex systems, perhaps themselves irreducible? What would be this designer's nature? What exactly is the right stuff of such a designer?

JM

Nonsense, i wouldn't slap a label on you for the purpose of scorning your thoughts. I've never needed one in the past.

I'm not sure I can live on after this devastating assault on my style. But I'll try.

Thomas wrote:

Does Canada have religion classes or something like it? I'm wondering where America's extreme polarization on this issue comes from. And I'm speculating that maybe American creationists are dwelling on the fact that metaphysics and the limits of science are worth teaching in school, but American schools have no straightforward framework for teaching it in. Maybe that's why Americans get the full program of creationist activism, while the rest of the world gets only "murmurings", as goodfielder puts it.

I believe Thomas' speculation above is exactly correct.

"Harvard University is launching a broad initiative to discover how life began, joining an ambitious scientific assault on age-old questions that are central to the debate over the theory of evolution. The Harvard project, which is likely to start with about $1 million annually from the university, will bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets….''
We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But ''my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
At: http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2005/08/14/project_on_the_origins_of_life_launched/

W.A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

This book was published by Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed as part of a distinguished monograph series, Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. The editorial board of that series includes members of the National Academy of Sciences as well as one Nobel laureate, John Harsanyi, who shared the prize in 1994 with John Nash, the protagonist in the film A Beautiful Mind. Commenting on the ideas in The Design Inference, well-known physicist and science writer Paul Davies remarks: "Dembski's attempt to quantify design, or provide mathematical criteria for design, is extremely useful. I'm concerned that the suspicion of a hidden agenda is going to prevent that sort of work from receiving the recognition it deserves." Quoted in L. Witham, By Design (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), p. 149.

Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (The Free Press, 1996).
In this book Behe develops a critique of the mechanism of natural selection and a positive case for the theory of intelligent design based upon the presence of "irreducibly complex molecular machines" and circuits inside cells. Though this book was published by The Free Press, a trade press, the publisher subjected the book to standard scientific peer-review by several prominent biochemists and biological scientists.

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Regnery Publishing, 2004).
Gonzalez and Richards develop a novel case for the theory of intelligent design based on developments in astronomy and planetary science. They show that the conditions necessary to produce a habitable planet are extremely rare and improbable. In addition, they show that the one planet we are aware of that possesses these characteristics is also a planet that has characteristics uniquely adapted to scientific exploration, thus suggesting not simply that the earth is the recipient of the fortunate conditions necessary for life, but that it appears to be uniquely designed for scientific discovery.

Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1985).
Denton, an Australian molecular biologist, provides a comprehensive critique of neo- Darwinian evolutionary theory. In a penultimate chapter, entitled "The Molecular Labyrinth," he also develops a strong positive case for the design hypothesis based on the integrated complexity of molecular biological systems. As a religiously agnostic scientist, Denton emphasizes that this case for design is based upon scientific evidence and the application of standard forms of scientific reasoning. As Denton explains, while the case for design may have religious implications, "it does not depend upon religious premises."

M.J. Behe and D.W. Snoke, "Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Features That Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues," Protein Science, 13 (2004): 2651-2664.
In this article, Behe and Snoke show how difficult it is for unguided evolutionary processes to take existing protein structures and add novel proteins whose interface compatibility is such that they could combine functionally with the original proteins. By demonstrating inherent limitations to unguided evolutionary processes, this work gives indirect scientific support to intelligent design and bolsters Behe's case for intelligent design in answer to some of his critics.

John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, Darwinism, Design, & Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003)
This is a collection of interdisciplinary essays that addresses the scientific and educational controversy concerning the theory of intelligent design. Accordingly, it was peer-reviewed by a philosopher of science, a rhetorician of science, and a professor in the biological sciences from an Ivy League university. The book contains five scientific articles advancing the case for the theory of intelligent design.

She had nothing to back up her convictions and quietly let them drop.

Doesn't that suggest something to you adele? I'm not being rude or unkind (I hope) but it strikes me (as a non-theist) that ID'ers with their religious leaning must step away from the scientific approach and seek sympathetic sources.

You've been involved here for what, about two weeks or so? Whereas on the other hand, folks like george, setanta, frankapisa, farmerman myself and others have been debating with each other for up to six or more years. Thus the presumptive knowledge claim you make in sentence one above is transparently silly.

The point, for the third time, is not that religious notions or faith ought to be ridiculed

You are untrained (or very poorly trained) in philosophy and you are unfamiliar with both the demands and necessities of unfettered inquiry in matters of theology and political theory. I don't say this to insult you.