Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Hi Chumly, Why don't you come at the same time to San Francisco as Merry Andrew; I can take the both of you on some tours outside the city.

Creationism is just 'a matter of interpreting the data'
(By Tammy Malgesini, The East Oregonian, June 17, 2007)

Two creationists admitted answers for the origin of life, the universe and evolution have different explanations based on a person's perspective.

"Like Don (Chittick) was saying, it's a matter of interpreting the data," said Michael Oard, a retired meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "Some people interpret based on certain presuppositions and we do the same thing. That's the way it is with science."

Oard and Donald Chittick discussed topics including, "Bible, Science and Reality," "Startling Evidence that Noah's Flood Really Happened" and "Whatever happened to the woolly mammoth?" during a Creation Conference held in Fossil, Oregon which began Thursday and concludes today.

A fossil dig at a site behind Wheeler High School also was included in Saturday's activities.

Karen Temple of Lexington attended sessions Saturday and participated in the fossil dig.

She said the presentations reaffirmed her belief in creation.

"The evidence is so strong," she said. "I think part of our goal is (to gain) increased knowledge."

Chittick, an international lecturer on the topic of creationism and evolution who holds a doctorate degree in physical chemistry, is an inventor and active in the area of alternative fuels.

Oard, who has a master's degree in atmospheric science, has done extensive study on the Ice Age. He also has been published in both secular and creation journals and is the author of eight books.

"There are two views that a person can take," Chittick said. "Either a person can take naturalism or creationism."

Chittick explained biological evolution is the way naturalists explain information.

"I like to look at the options and then I go look at which one agrees with reality," he said.

As a physical scientist, Chittick acknowledges there is conflict in what reality is from his creationist's view versus a naturalist's standpoint.

"Naturalism is the idea that chance and time and no design explains everything," he said. "Creationism is a designer design and non-chance."

William Thwaites, a retired biologist from San Diego State University, who has heard Chittick speak in the past, disagrees.

"By "cherry picking" observations and quotations "young earth creationists" are able to give the impression that biological evolution is just a wild guess that scientists put forth to corrupt the minds of youth and promote their naturalistic world view," he said in an e-mail to the East Oregonian.

Thwaites acknowledges science does consist of an effort to explain the workings of the universe in naturalistic terms. However, he said creationists take a different view on the subject.

"Many creationists insist that this dependence on naturalistic explanations is a bias and that real science should be open to any explanation of an observation."

He said people can call this a bias, however, he sees it otherwise. Thwaites takes issue with creationists' beliefs that if something can't be explained, "it must be a miracle."

"A supernatural explanation is just as good as a natural explanation," Thwaites said regarding creationists.

Oard became interested in the topics of evolution and creation after "name-calling among scientists.

"We're a lot more sophisticated than many university professors think we are," he said. "They think we're a bunch of local yokels and ignorant."

Oard has done extensive research on the wooly mammoth. Through his studies he has gleaned they have been found in standing positions, showing evidence of suffocation from dust particles and possibly packed permafrost.

"I answer it from my Ice Age model," he said of the giant mammal's extinction. "It was a grassland and the animals up there were grazers."

Oard said the area is now a bogland in the northern part of Siberia.

"The top of the permafrost melts and bog vegetation is toxic to grazers, so the environment had to be totally different than it is today," Oard said. "I think the model I developed started from the flood."

According to Biblical scholars, which Chittick and Oard agree with, the great flood of Noah's time occurred approximately 4,000 years ago.

"If we've been educated that it's slow processes over millions of years, often that's what we're going to see when we look at the Earth. But if we realize the sedimentary rocks and fossils were deposited by Noah's flood, we're going to look at it and see evidence for that," Oard explained.

Oard said vast amounts of volcanic ash and small particles filled the air, refracting the sunlight back into space causing cooling over large land masses, particularly during the summer. Additionally, he said the ocean's temperature was warmer.

He said the environment became cool and dusty.

"They died because of the climate change," he said. "A lot of stresses on them from cooler temperatures, which they were not used to and I believe they were entombed in the soil pretty fast and then covered with permafrost."

Although Temple wasn't aware of the demise of the wooly mammoth she said Oard's presentation "made sense."

Most scientists pinpoint the last Ice Age as ending 10,000 years ago.

"We generally have the same data. I say generally, because when I read geological articles, a lot of times they don't tell you a lot of things out there so I go out in the field and look and examine it and find stuff that is very key in a reinterpretation," Oard said.

...the organism in its totality is as essential to an explanation of its elements as its elements are to an explanation of the organism.

Conversely, a diseased state of an organism, a society or culture, is characterized by a weakening of the integrative controls (1), and the tendency of its parts to behave in an independent and self-assertive manner(2), ignoring the superior interest of the whole, or trying to impose its own laws on it. (3) Such states of imbalance may be caused either by a weakening of the co-ordinating powers(1a) of the whole through the growth beyond a critical limit, senesence, and so forth; or by excessive stimulation of an organ or part; or its cutting off from communication(4) with the integrative centre. The isolation of the organ from central control leads according to circumstances to its hyper-activity or degeneration. In the realm of the mind, the "splitting-off" of thoughts and emotions, of some aspect of the personality, leads to similar results. The term schizophrenia is directly derived from this splitting-off process; "repressed" and "autonomous" complexes point in the same direction. In the obsessional neuroses, in the "fixed ideas" and "fixed behaviour patterns", we see parts of the personality dissociating themselves from the whole.(5)

Most Canadians Pick Evolution Over Creationism
(Angus Reid Global Monitor, June 19, 2007)

Many adults in Canada believe the theory of evolution is correct, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 59 per cent of respondents think human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.

Conversely, 22 per cent of respondents believe God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years, while 19 per cent are not sure.

Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was first published in 1859. The book details the British naturalist's theory that all organisms gradually evolve through the process of natural selection. Darwin's views were antagonistic to creationism, the belief that a more powerful being or a deity created life.

Earlier this month, the Big Valley Creation Science Museum opened in Alberta. One of the museum's displays suggests that dinosaurs and human beings co-existed on earth. 42 per cent of respondents agree with this assertion, while 37 per cent disagree.

CANADA UPDATE

Quote:

Most Canadians Pick Evolution Over Creationism
(Angus Reid Global Monitor, June 19, 2007)

Many adults in Canada believe the theory of evolution is correct, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 59 per cent of respondents think human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.

Conversely, 22 per cent of respondents believe God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years, while 19 per cent are not sure.

Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was first published in 1859. The book details the British naturalist's theory that all organisms gradually evolve through the process of natural selection. Darwin's views were antagonistic to creationism, the belief that a more powerful being or a deity created life.

Earlier this month, the Big Valley Creation Science Museum opened in Alberta. One of the museum's displays suggests that dinosaurs and human beings co-existed on earth. 42 per cent of respondents agree with this assertion, while 37 per cent disagree.

God vs. Jim Sparks
(by Sarah Mogin, Richmond Style, June 20, 2007)

With the Chesterfield County School Board's recent decision to keep intelligent design out of science textbooks, Style decided to air out some issues. We caught up with Ken Ham, president of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and former VCU biology professor Jim Sparks, who got the boot last year for protesting a university-sanctioned text that referenced intelligent design.


How old is the earth and where did it come from?

Ham: My answer would be you can't prove absolutely how old the earth is because all dating methods are based on assumptions. But if you use the Bible's history, then the Bible would suggest many thousand years old.

Sparks: [It's] approximately 4.5 billion years old…. Where specifically the earth came from has to do with the swirling gases that were in our solar system that are part of the spiral galaxy that we inhabit called the Milky Way.



Can we consider the Bible an accurate source of scientific information? Is it literal or metaphorical?

Ham: From a Christian perspective, the Genesis as metaphorical means you might as well throw Christianity away and the rest of the Bible away. All of the New Testament doctrines are built on Genesis 1-11. All of the gospel message about Christ and salvation is built on Genesis 1-11. … Something can't be a metaphor the first time it's used. To use something as a metaphor, it has to have a literal meaning first. So the first time sin is used, it can't be a metaphor.

Sparks: The Bible is the basis of Judeo-Christian, Western civilization. … So it's useful. In terms of material reality, it's not the best source. … I believe that there's both a spiritual and material reality, and not everybody does that. Most scientists are atheists; they don't believe in a spiritual reality. They just believe in a material reality, and that's all you can tangibly identify, so that's all that exists. … And scientists probably spend more time pondering those questions on their own. We just don't write papers about it; we write papers about science.



What evidence outside of the Bible do we have to support creation theory?

Ham: I would say the arguments from design are arguments for a creator. [If] you want to look at the design of the cell … everything has to be there to make it work. We all agree on the rules of logic. We know that "A" will never be "not A," … things like that. Where did those laws come from? Why do we agree on them?… In other words, it's irrational not to believe in God. If it's a chance-random universe, why should the rules stay the same? If it's a chance-random universe and your logic evolved by chance-random process, how do you know it evolved the right way?

Sparks: I wouldn't use the word "theory" when I was talking about religion, because a theory is a specific logical construct. … Whereas religion is not a theory, it's a revelation. It's a different sort of thing.



What do you have to say about carbon dating, which has confirmed the existence of fossils on this planet that are tens of thousands of years old?

Ham: Carbon can only go about a hundred thousand years at the most because of the half-life of carbon-14, which is just over 5,000 years. You shouldn't find carbon-14 in fossils or coal or anything like that, but you do. You find it in all sorts of places.

Sparks: It varies, but it varies in a statistically predictable range. It's not like something will be dated 10,000 years one day and 1,000 years the next time.



Why or why not should students learn about both creationism and evolution?

Ham: We're not an organization that's demanding creation be taught in schools. In fact, if someone's an atheist, I wouldn't want them to teach creation to students because they'd teach it in a different way. What I believe is teachers should have freedom to critically analyze things as they do with all ideas.

Sparks: I would not personally recommend learning about creation as a topic, but students should be learning about religions and the fallacies that they have. And creationism could fall into that story. So I would definitely say that I think you should teach creationism, but not in science classes.

The contemplation of the eternal is the aim of philosophy, as the contemplation of the mysteries is the aim of religion.

For Pythagoras as for Kepler, the two kinds of contemplation were twins; for them philosophy and religion were motivated by the same longing: to catch glimpses of eternity through the window of time. The mystic and the savant jointly satisfied the dual urge of allying the self's cosmic anxiety and of transcending its limitation; it's dual need for protection and liberation. They provided reassurance by explanation, by reducing threatening, incomprehensible events to principles familiar to experience: lightning and thunder to tempermental outbursts of man-like gods, eclipses to the greed of moon-eating pigs; they asserted that there was rhyme and reason, a hidden law and order behind the seemingly arbitary and chaotic flux, even behind the death of a child and the eruption of a volcano. They jointly satisfied man's basic need and voiced his basic intuition, that the universe is meaningful, ordered, rational and governed by some form of justice, even if its laws are not transparent.

Apart from reassuring the conscious mind by investing the universe with meaning and value, religion acted in a more direct manner on the unconscious, pre-rational layers of the self, providing it with intuitive techniques to transcend its limitations in time and space by a mystical short-circuit, as it were. The same duality of approach--the rational and the intuitive--characterizes, as we saw, the scientific quest. It is therefore a perverse mistake to identify the religious need solely with intuition and emotion, science solely with the logical and rational. Prophets and discoverers, painters and poets, all share this amphibial quality of living both on the contoured drylands and in the boundless ocean. In the history of the race as of the individual, both branches of the cosmic quest originate in the same source. The priests were the first astronomers; the medicine-men were both prophets and physicians; the techniques of hunting, fishing, sowing and reaping were imbued with religious magic and ritual.(*) There was division of labour and diversity of method in the symbols and techniques, but unity of motive and purpose.

Ham: I would say the arguments from design are arguments for a creator. [If] you want to look at the design of the cell ? everything has to be there to make it work. We all agree on the rules of logic. We know that ?A? will never be ?not A,? ? things like that. Where did those laws come from? Why do we agree on them?? In other words, it?s irrational not to believe in God. If it?s a chance-random universe, why should the rules stay the same? If it?s a chance-random universe and your logic evolved by chance-random process, how do you know it evolved the right way?

God vs. Darwin in Europe
(Reuters, June 21, 2007)

Europe's main human rights body will vote on a proposal next week to defend the teaching of evolution and keep creationist and intelligent design views out of science class in state schools in its 47 members.

The unusual move shows that a U.S. trend for religiously based attacks on the theory of evolution is also worrying European politicians, who now see such arguments put forward in their countries by Christian and Islamic groups.

A report for the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly says the campaign against evolution has its roots "in forms of religious extremism" and is a dangerous attack on scientific knowledge.

Creationism teaches God created the world and all beings in it, as depicted in the Bible. Polls in the United States show about one-half of U.S. residents agree with this, while most Europeans support the theory of evolution.