Posted on 02/09/2010 3:15:53 PM PST by cornelis
It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle.
Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to religious belief because of ID arguments. These arguments not only have failed to persuade, they have done positive harm by convincing many people that the concept of an intelligent designer is bound up with a rejection of mainstream science.
The ID claim is that certain biological phenomena lie outside the ordinary course of nature. Aside from the fact that such a claim is, in practice, impossible to substantiate, it has the effect of pitting natural theology against science by asserting an incompetence of science. To be sure, there are questions that natural science is not competent to address, and too many scientists have lost all sense of the limitations of their disciplines, not to mention their own limitations. But the ID arguments effectively declare natural science incompetent even in what most would regard as its own proper sphere. Nothing could be better calculated to provoke the antagonism of the scientific community. This throwing down of the gauntlet to science explains not a little of the fervor of the scientific backlash against ID.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
There is an eager discussion at the original site.
If it turns out life is designed rather than come about via a series of impossible coincidences, I'd say ID has increased the understanding of nature quite a bit.
Or if design was involved in the occurrence of biodiversity rather all being explained by random genomic changes fixed by natural selection, that would be another big benefit of ID.
ID does not reject evolution. It rejects pointlessness.
“Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to religious belief because of ID arguments.”
Really? Maybe in the scientific community, but there are thousands of people who find faith in Christianity and therefore believe in ID. I don’t think the scientific community is the arbitor of truth. There are many that do good work, but just look at the so called fear mongers in the GW movement. I will keep my faith in what the good book says.
Amen!
I was hesitant to respond to this thread, since the straw man is so clumsily (and shamelessly) constructed.
I do, however, note with amusement that the retard didn't take the obvious next step of asserting that evolution was also a science.
Don’t look for an end to the ID movement because Philip Anschutz, and others, will continue to funnel big, big bucks into the Discovery Institute.
I think we’re at the end of intelligence.
Look around.
I am an evolutionist and also a believer in intelligent design. I have yet to see how they are incompatible.
In fact one can argue that the universe has an obvious evoltionary attractor as its future driven by the second law.
I guess I r stupid.
You’re not allowed to use the word “retard” anymore. Or maybe it’s “f***ing retard”, it’s hard to keep up.
Faith in fundamentalist Christianity.
This is a pretty dumb article. There’s nothing “scientific” about Darwin’s General Theory of Evolution. Intelligent Design theory has been chiefly valuable in identifying the problems with nailing down Darwinist theory as fact.
Barr must be aware that “young earth” theology is not the same as ID, but he seems to confuse the two.
Father Neuhaus, the founding editor of First Things, is dead. I have been wondering how it would survive in his absense. It’s still a bit early to tell, but this article, and a couple of others, leave me rather doubtful.
I’m disappointed in Stephen Barr and First Things, frankly.
Simply put, science is based on the scientific method and reproducible statistical analysis. It is a closed system, in which, if you play by the rules of science, *all* you have done is just that, played by the rules.
An analogy is the game of chess. If you play by the rules, you have played a game. That is all. How the game was played, and who won and lost cannot be interpolated or extrapolated, as if they were magical.
Science, however, can be interpolated and extrapolated. But the further away from the original experiment and analysis, the less likely that the interpolation or extrapolation are correct.
But Intelligent Design has no place in this, because it is neither a control nor variable to the experiment, and it is statistically irreproducible.
Therefore, even if it exists, it has to be ignored, because it cannot be integrated into the system. Again, using the chess analogy, the white knight has put the black king into check, and at this point, some intelligence other than the players intervenes and does something to determine if the king escapes or is mated.
Both players can just sit there for an hour, yet even if they both believe that some intelligence will intervene and complete the game, it will not do so reliably, every time. In fact, it probably won’t at all, ever.
So even taking it into account as part of game play accomplishes nothing. And even if a waiter stumbles into the table and the black king falls over, the players disregard that action, because it is not part of official, recognized game play.
Science has tremendous credibility precisely because it follows rules, is statistically verifiable, and can be reproduced. If something else is integrated into that, in an effort to capitalize on its credibility, its credibility is lost.
Look what harm Al Gore and his company of scoundrels has done to science, in the effort to glom on to its credibility for their own sordid purposes. The study of our climate has been set back decades because of this corruption.
And no matter what its motivation, Intelligent Design would have the same effect.
Like the surety of the Science of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
then there is the tale of Noah
How does Geology and Paleontology fit into this? Yes, certain rules are followed, but how is it statistically verifiable and reproduceable?
I agree that the natural world should be studied as a closed system even though I don't believe it is, however, if scientists are going to refrain from drawing conclusions of ID, they should also refrain from drawing conclusions of not ID, based on these studies. ID exists precisely because of the latter. Also, science needs to admit that it knows very little, compared to all that there is to know, and it will always be that way. A little humility would help credibility.
So if I come upon a beautiful house, built next to a desert oasis .. It just ‘happened’ to build itself .. by accident?
Wait .. a human being Must be much simpler to ‘accidentally’ come together. (I understand now) /sarc
Disingenuous for you to link science with AGW. Nay, dishonest.
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