Posted on 10/18/2005 9:31:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
On the surface, it may seem to be a false dichotomy; but is it really? "If evolution is ruled out", ID would the best best explanation absent other alternative explanations. Do you know of alternatives to evolution, besides ID?
As for me, I have never argued that IS must be true simply because evolution is disproved. There are other reasons as well, including the absence of other rational explanations.
Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. Evidence *against* evolution is not evidence *for* ID (or any other particular alternative explanation). And Behe has never, ever, ever given actual evidence which directly supports ID itself -- he has always attempted to just undermine evolutionary biology.
I don't think Behe ever claimed that he has. The real issue is that if the evidence undermines evolutionary biology, it casts doubt on the truth of evolutionary biology.
Furthermore, even his arguments "against" evolutionary biology are fundamentally flawed, and it shouldn't be hard at all to show that to the court as well.
I don't think it will be nearly as easy as you might think. You ought to keep in mind that only one of the plaintiffs' witnesses claimed that evolution is a 'fact'; and that claim was based only on a perception that it is a fact because it is 'widely accepted'. Miller even admitted that evolution is not a 'fact'.
Not going to say the defendants are going to win, because you never know what a judge will decide, regardless what the evidence says.
The statement of the Dover school board was carefully crafted and I don't think the plaintiffs have shown that it does anything more than state that there are other opinions about 'life' and where one might look for that information if a student is interested.
ID does "explain" origins, so it has to answer that question.
Does not follow. Even if a "supernatural designer" existed outside of *our* space-time system, you have not demonstrated that it would necessarily be free from causality in its *own* realm, or that that realm would have no time of its own, etc.
For example, if advances in physics one day allow us to create a new Universe ourselves (parallel to our own), that would, by your definition, make us "supernatural designers" with respect to the new Universe, yet that would hardly therefore mean that we "need no beginning", as you incorrectly conclude.
We've spent a lot of time on these threads asking what an ID curriculum would look like and have been met with deafening silence.
Now Behe is showing us where his curriculum would begin.
It appears we've undergone a Vulcan Mind Meld or something!
Right. I've requested the mods to make a correction.
I think the question is purely rhetorical. If one assumes a designer, then somewhere at sometime at the bottom of the pile of turtles or space aliens has to be a supernatural creator, i.e. God or any of his many manifestations (FSM, Allah or the Hindu variety or some other thing). There is no other explanation.
KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?
MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
Ouch.
Thanks for fixing my title.
"Behe testified that intelligent design doesn't require a supernatural creator, but an intelligent designer: it does not name the designer."
So, Mr. Behe, who do you think the designer might be?
Well, I don't know. It could be a spaghetti monster, I suppose, or it could be an invisible pink flamingo. Our science is not concerned with the identity of the designer (wink, wink, nod, nod)
Evolution theory isn't on trial here. A charlatan psuedo-science called non religious "intelligent design" is on trial.
AKA "the Turtle of Special Pleading"
Behe is hardly a psuedo-science charlatan. If you are placing your faith in an attorney against a well-prepared and intelligent expert witness, you are exercising faith.
That'll do.
Yes, please, do so.
Electrician? Behe's an electrician? No wonder he knows diddly about the subject of evilution.
"Behe is hardly a psuedo-science charlatan"
I suggest you look at the whole of Behe's output since he received tenure. That sum adds up to "Pseudo-science charlatan".
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