Posted on 05/17/2022 7:53:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
A growing number of scientists seem finally ready to at least include intelligent design within the ‘range of views’ allowed to be heard.
At first glance, the Potential and Limitations of Evolutionary Processes conference in Israel last week, which I attended, looked like any other scientific meeting on evolution, with talks by highly-credentialed scientists from institutions such as the Technical University of Munich, Cambridge, and the Weizmann Institute. But a closer look at the list of speakers shows that this one was different; it gave a platform to numerous notable proponents of intelligent design.
The conference included chemistry Nobel prize winners Ada Yonath and Sir John Walker, and numerous well-known evolutionary theorists such as University of Chicago molecular biologist James Shapiro and Georgia Tech biophysicist Jeremy England. But this time four or five intelligent design scientists were also invited, including Michael Behe of Lehigh University.
Most, but not all, avoided mentioning design explicitly, but still emphasized the “limitations” of evolutionary processes. Even Rice University chemist James Tour (who considers himself “agnostic” toward intelligent design) argued that origin-of-life researchers have deceived the public into believing that we are close to understanding how life formed, when we are not.
As stated on the conference web page, “the main goal of this unique interdisciplinary, international conference is to bring together scientists and scholars who hold a range of views on the potential and possible limitations of chemical and biological processes in evolution.” The organizers attempted, to a large degree successfully, to create an atmosphere of mutual respect between those who emphasized the “potential” of evolutionary processes, and those who emphasized their “limitations.”
Until recently, intelligent design has been considered an untouchable topic in mainstream scientific circles, where it’s considered axiomatic that everything must be explainable in terms of the unintelligent forces of nature, no matter how implausible and incomplete our current explanations may be. This axiom has worked well in other areas of science, but the problems of explaining the origin and evolution of life without design are inherently much more difficult than other scientific problems (for reasons which are obvious and outlined in my video, “Why Evolution is Different“).
For this reason, a growing number of scientists seem finally ready to at least include intelligent design within the “range of views” allowed to be heard. The meeting in Israel represented an important step in this direction and shows that mainstream science can ignore the obvious for a long time, but not forever.
If you need further evidence that intelligent design is finally being taken more seriously, look at the long list of distinguished scientists endorsing Stephen Meyer’s 2021 book “Return of the God Hypothesis.” Physics Nobel prize winner Brian Josephson said the book “makes it clear that far from being an unscientific claim, intelligent design is valid science.” Another endorser is Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin, whose own book “Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose,” which promotes intelligent design, carries the endorsements of three Nobel prize winners.
Of course, you shouldn’t judge a scientific theory by the number of distinguished scientists or Nobel laureates who support it, and certainly scientists who advocate intelligent design are still only a growing minority. But you should judge a scientific theory by its merits, and you don’t have to be a distinguished scientist to understand the merits of intelligent design. In fact, many already do.
I recommend Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box.
It is good that we are making progress on the margins in one discipline in academia, but it may be too little, too late, as traditionalist views are being routed in the broader socio-cultural debate.
I,personally,don't have a huge problem with genuine agnostics...those who,after serious thought and reflection, are uncertain if God exists or not.It's the atheists I have a serious problem with...and the militant atheists that I have the biggest problem with.
One year some statisticians pointed out to problems in natural selection, most notably the speciation rate demanded by natural selection to go from single celled organisms to human beings. And another problem the statisticians pointed out was the Cambrian Explosion observing 50% to 80% of all known phyla to ever exist springing up in the archaeological record within a brief 1 million year period about 500 million years ago. (A million years is "brief" if Darwinists expect speciation to happen gradually across billions of years.)
The RTB scholars joked that it was a long time before the Original of Life organizers invited statisticians again. LOL
Strangely enough, the scientific establishment is more tolerant of people who believe that extraterrestrial beings guided the course of evolution on this planet.
if there is ‘intelligent design’, why do we have liberals?
An internet search in this area could include the following terms:
Irreducible Complexity
Appearance of Age
Appearance of History
Those who believe that Holy Scripture is the inerrant, inspired Word of God are commonly asked to explain why, for example, certain rock formations or fossils exist, if we are to take at face value the creation account set forth in Genesis 1:1-2 (i.e., accomplished by God within the span of six days of familiar length, with man created on the sixth day).
Scientists can sometimes be quite dense. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that the universe as it exists now could not just create itself out of nothing. And you can’t claim that it has always been there without facing the logical nightmare of going infinitely backwards in time.
I see this as more of a linguistic dispute, instead of a scientific one. First, what is meant by “intelligent” or “intelligence”, and second, less obviously, how do we define consciousness and is the universe itself a conscious intelligence?
There are over 6,000 genetic diseases known so far to medicine. These result in shortened lifespans, immense pain and suffering, and countless ruined lives both for the patients and their caregivers. How can this be explained by any kind of compassionate intelligent design?
It can’t.
Who said intelligent design is about compassion ? As part of the design living creatures have to recycle — older or not so older ones die off and get replaced by younger ones. Various mechanisms for dying such as old age and disease are incorporated in the design.
Today we've got the best surgeons, physical therapists, plastics engineers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, metallurgists, etc, working to reproduce the human hand.
Heck, we've even got 3D computer imaging and robotics. Still, the best all the above can accomplish is a poor facsimile, at best.
All the above geniuses working in concert cannot produce anything near the original, but we're expected to believe the original just "happened" by dumb chance?
And multiply that by the entire human body. The cardio and pulmonary and vascular and audio and ocular and reproductive and muscular and.............
Only a deliberately blind fool could possibly suggest there is no Benevolent, Omniscient, Omnipotent Creator God. And, such a Being, an All Loving Being, is going to communicate to His creation. Hence, the Bible.
Ps 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made..........
Did Adam or Eve have navels (belly buttons)?
If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil had been snapped in half by the wind of a hurricane or tornado on Day 6 of creation, would it be seen to have tree rings?
If it were so that the fruit of the vine (wine) can or could be analyzed so as to allow its origin to be traced to a specific grape vine, would the wine created by Christ Jesus at Cana feature or reflect such origin-specifying hallmarks?
If the assertions of so-called Young Earth Creationists are to be credited as true, what are we to make of certain rock formations, or certain aspects of the fossil record?
Are those who believe that the earth is young (e.g., <10k years) saying or implying that God is a liar?
Was light associated with distant stars and galaxies created “in transit”?
These are a few of the questions that inevitably arise when the topics “Appearance of Age” and “Appearance of History” are raised and discussed.
Note that this commenter has not ventured to answer any such questions!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt
Regards,
For those who don’t know, there is a non-religious version of Intelligent Design.
It claims that Creation is a simulation.
(Of course nobody knows who or what did the simulation.. :-) )
Even is you disagree with the hypothesis, it is important because it allows non religious scientists to accept Intelligent Design as “non crazy”.
Snark much?
I’m a 7 day literal creationist, and I think the universe is 14 billion years old.
Einstein talked about the Twin Paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
wherein a twin on earth hops into his lightspeed spaceship, travels at the speed of light for a year and returns to find his twin has aged 100 years in that same time.
God breathed the universe into being 14 billion years ago, zipped around on His FASTER than light spaceship for 7 days, and an observer who woulda been on earth at the time sees 14billion years pass by.
It’s all been verified by science by accelerating subatomic particles to almost the speed of light and they live a thousand times longer than unaccelerated particles.
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