Academia's Assault on Intelligent Design

Townhall ^ | May 27,2007 | Ken Connor

[miliantnutcase]

Can you worship God, and believe that the theory of evolution is still plausible?

[Coyoteman]

But, as a life scientist of 47 years’ practice, I see strong (a gross understatement) evidence that life forms adapt to the universe, or die, and that the universe did not or does not adapt to us.

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

-- Stephen Crane

[gcruse]

In the "anthropic principle" it is proposed that the universe adapted to us, rather than the other way around.

Uh, no.

"The [anthropic principle] can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time."

[Rudder]

"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."

And our sense of purpose confers some advantage over the indifferent universe.

[Rudder]

The anthropic (by its very name) principle presumes that the universe was designed just for us.

[Rudder]

Noticeably absent from the Wikipedia article you cited is the notion that life forms adapt (i.e., change). The citation almost presumes that life is static and thus, it is incumbent upon the universe to be “just right” so that life can be accommodated. Well, life is not static but rather characterized by its ability to adapt to an ever-changing universe. When Earth was very young it did not support life-—must be the designer was asleep at the wheel. Thus, early in its development the universe did not follow the anthropic principle. But, according to this anthropic notion, the universe changed to follow the anthropic principle. Thus, this principle has the universe adapting to us.

[yahoo]

Once again, there’s no evidence to support the claim that Gonzales was denied tenure because of anything related to ID.

And once again, the biggest problem with all this is with the tenure system itself. The tenure system should be outlawed.

[yahoo]

Wow! I have not seen a strawman argument that lame in a long time.

[cookcounty]

"He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which "showed" that there is evidence for design in the universe.

Again, there are no scientific data supporting such a notion.

That's because "design" is a concept ruled out, a priori by the "scientific" community. It's beyond the very narrow scope of what has become known as "science."

There is no scientific evidence that Michael Jordan was a very good basketball player, but that doesn't mean it isn't a serious and accurate statement.

What is the scientific data supporting the notion that your mother loved you? Nothing that would pass peer review in a scientific journal.

[cookcounty]

"There isn’t ANY scientific evidence for design?

So Richard Dawkins is incorrect when he says nature gives the appearance of design?"

Bingo!

"That which is observed, when in conflict with established doctrine, shall not be considered as "evidence."
-----Dawkin's New Church Dogmatics

[Rudder]

Nothing that would pass peer review in a scientific journal.

While there is an admission by scientists that there are many questions which are not suitable subject matter for science, e.g., supernatural phenomena, all ID has to do is generate hypotheses, test them and replicate. ID has failed to do so. If it is to be included in science, ID must follow the rules of science. So far it hasn't. Until then, there is nothing for the peers to review.

[RussP]

Please see my posts #78-80, and quit making such a fool of yourself.

[omnivore]

"There is evidence for intelligent design in the universe."

Gosh, I love it when trial lawyers pretend to they can play scientist. He makes a claim about existence of evidence, and then fails to produce any. He'd better argue the law on this one, since he doesn't have any facts on his side.

Galileo, alive today, would recognize the "ID" con artists as of the same ilk that harassed him mercilessly.

"Instead they turn to bullying, persecution, and activist judges to enforce their beliefs, and will tolerate no questions whatever of their views.

That's a better description of the "ID" people than it is of the scientists. "ID" is a fraud invented to try to get around the Supreme Court rulings that prevent Creationism (religion) from being taught in public school biology classes, nothing more. The "ID'ers" are the first to use bullying and legal means to try to force their weird ideas on everyone else. You'll notice that this pro-ID piece at Townhall was written by ... a lawyer. A trial lawyer. For further explanation of the "ID" movement, see books including Monkey Girl by Edward Humes, or Forty Days and Forty Nights by Matthew Chapman.

It has nothing to do with any "Godless left." It has everything to do with his affiliation with the crackpot "Discovery Institute" which recently lost their "ID" case in Pennsylvania, and in the trial was exposed as just a bunch of Creationists.

"...time is gonna come when lots of the ID folks are gonna build their own university..."

Now that I'll agree with. There's huge money in the Creationism / "ID" racket, as Discovery Institute and Thomas More Law Center (funded by the guy who founded Domino's Pizza, very deep pockets and eager to throw away mountains of cash) have shown. They could build 20 universities if they ran their fundraising right.

Hats off to Popocatapetl who I think said it best at 37.

[RussP]

I’ll say the same thing to you that I said to someone else a couple of posts ago.

Please see my posts #78-80, and quit making such a fool of yourself.

Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, and Loius Pasteur, among many other truly *great* scientists believed in intelligent design and announced it proudly. For you to come along and call ID a fraud is the epitome of ignorance and foolishness. You should be embarrassed.

[Rudder]

Faith alone does not a scientist make. You're out of your league in a discussion about science. You're invoking for authority the statements of personal faith held by esteemed scientists, statements which are not the conclusions of science but of private faith. If your interpretation of the meaning of these statements were correct and honest, then all of these scientists would just have hung it since they all arrived at the answer to all the mysteries in the universe: "The creator did it."

You're guilty of shabby intellectualism.

[omnivore]

"...First Law of the Scientific Method seems to be 'acceptance of authority.'"

No, actually it's "have some physical evidence." Something the trial lawyer author of the piece doesn't seem to understand.

"..proselytizing of our youth..."

That's all the "ID" movement is for, is proselytizing kids by trying to force Creationism (under a clever, new and improved brand name) into high school biology classes.

"There isn’t ANY scientific evidence for design?"

There is a distinction between lower case "design" as a generic term meaning the geometric form of something in a visually descriptive sense, and "Intelligent Design" (R) (TM), a false front tacked onto Creationism, which pretends to offer a limited acceptance of the reality of evolution, while insisting that supernatural influences by the hand of some ill-defined "Designer" are essential for all the crucial bits.

[sauron]

There could be more than one intelligent designer.

Very doubtful.

C.S. Lewis put a lot of thought into the Eastern concept of duality, of a dual-natured god, or two opposing gods (good/evil), and ultimately concluded that it was inherently unstable, that one must prevail.

I'm terribly oversimplifying it.

Q.v., Mere Christianity, somewhere around chapter three, IIRC. Pity I waited twenty years to get around to reading it.

SAURON

[omnivore]

"Should a professor in economics, who believes that Jesus Christ was beaten and killed for the sins of mankind, and then arose in bodily form 3 days later, be denied tenure?"

Well, I know that a guy who insists he's an atheist will never become Pope. If you don't buy into the group's beliefs, don't expect the group to give you a lifetime guarantee of employment, is all I'm saying.

[omnivore]

Regards your post at 76, people already are working on "designer organisms" just as you suggest, with humans as the designers. There's kind of a race, at MIT and other places, to be the first to build a fully functioning but entirely artificial life bacteria.

But saying something like that could be so designed, is not the same as having any physical evidence that points to that being the way the life in the natural world we find around us actually got here.

[sauron]

I think you nailed it in your post--though you didn't quite state it.

Science, without a Judeo-Christian underpinning forming an ethical foundation, quickly degenerates into studies in eugenics, euthanasia, and the like.

History, without a Judeo-Christian underpinning, quickly degenerated into Nitsche, which led directly, though in bifurcated fashion, to Marxism and German National Socialism.

Nitsche leaned heavily on Darwin, and once God was taken out of the equation of life, there seemed to be no sense to it all, so Freddy Nitsche claimed it was about survival of the fittest (shades of Darwin?) and Hitler killed off the cripples and weak in society (shades of Darwin?). National Socialism was simply applied Darwinism, and by its moral yardstick, killing off the weak is NOT morally wrong--by its standard. But by a Judeo-Christian one, it IS.

Just a thought. Interesting how Darwin --> Nitsche --> Marx --> Hitler! A continuous line of applied thought.

Moral of the story: Keep God in politics, history, national holidays, tradition, or you move into either a Soviet- or Hitlerian-godless society, with all the consequences.

...and no one wants to live like that. Look where it led.

Judge an ideology by its own fruits.

SAURON