Posted on 08/22/2005 3:29:51 AM PDT by Pharmboy
At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?
The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain.
Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world.
In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.
Similarly, Dr. Behe argues, if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for instance, clots will not form properly.
Such all-or-none systems, Dr. Behe and other design proponents say, could not have arisen through the incremental changes that evolution says allowed life to progress to the big brains and the sophisticated abilities of humans from primitive bacteria.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Looks as if the Times has figured out a way to boost sales.
Good book- Darwin's God. It covers both bases just fine.
It is interesting that the more we find out about the Universe, the more complex God becomes.
Although I am a Darwinist, I would have no problem whatsoever if intelligent design were presented in my kids' classroom along with natural selection.
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If we are not endowed with certain inalienable rights by our Creator, then all of our rights are the results of agreements between men, and can be removed just as easily by agreements to the contrary.
No Creator, no inalienable rights. I don't give a rat's patoote about evolutionary biology, but I care a great deal about the rights of man.
I reject your premise. In fact, I think that ascribing our rights to a creator weakens them, as not everyone will agree on the nature and preferences of the creator. Moreover, people are more fickle with their beliefs than with their contracts.
But rights are not a matter of contract. They follow ineluctably from taking human life as the standard of value. That's all there is to it! Now, you may say that not everyone has to take human life as their standard of value, and you'd be right. But such people are often easy to spot: criminals (value money above human life), totalitarians (value the state above human life), terrorists (value their creator above human life), animal-rights activists (value animal life above human life), greens (value "nature" above human life), etc. But the overwhelming majority of people take human life as their standard of value, whether they acknowledge it or not, so this is a much firmer foudation for the Rights of Man than any book or sect.
ok
u may reject gridlocks premise - but that doesnt make u rite
Astrology, OTOH, has nothing but a belief system based on primitivism. And, they do not pose reasonable questions relating to Newtonian or Einsteinian laws.
Not really. ID is trying to prove a negative ("certain features could not have arisen naturally"). That is a logical impossibility.
Not really. ID is trying to prove a negative ("certain features could not have arisen naturally"). That is a logical impossibility.
The only thing ID is really trying to do is tarnish TOE sufficiently to get politicians to open the doors to stealth teaching of you know what in public schools.
I can just picture an ID "teacher" nodding his/her head and saying "Absolutely" when a student asks, "Could the Intelligent Designer be a space alien?".
Phlogiston alongside redox.
You reject the premise, but then give a laundry list of people who value the rights of everything from the ozone layer to the family pet above that of man.
The overwhelming majority of people in the United States at this particular time hold basic human rights as a irreducible necessity, but this condition cannot be divorced from the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence that brought it all about.
The fact of the matter is that agreement on inalienable human rights is more the exception than the rule. If there is not some reason outside of ourselves for them, societies have evolved time and again to the point of denying these rights. The pressures are always there. Even in the modern United States you have the promotion of abortion or the potential misuse of the Patriot Act to hold certain citizens without trial or charges.
We live in a happy time where Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are guaranteed to us. But if we throw the Creator over the side, this condition will not last for long.
A creator does not need to be a supernatural being in order to determine rights. It just needs to include a set of natural laws and forces that result in predictable results from specific behaviors.
For instance, the relative failure of every society that restricts human freedom can’t be avoided for long by “agreements among men”. Their society stagnates or collapses due to unmet social and economic needs. The relative failure of every society that places the rights of animals, nature, God, money, etc… (as Physicist brings up) above the rights of man is assured. Our creator gave both man and everything affecting us a nature that makes consequences unavoidable. So in essence, rights without God are simply a common denominator of principles that promote life.
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