Dinesh D’Souza speaks out against ID

As I just said on another thread, the Darwinian paradigm explains most of the life on the planet. Untill ID formally recognizes this possibiity, it will be continually marginalized. Until ID deals with all the evidence, it must suffer these types of attacks from those who should be friendly as well as those who are enemies.

The Darwinian paradigm does not explain OOL or the origin of many orders and some particular species but it does explain how most species or variants got here. As unpleasant as may be for many who come to this blog, RV + NS (genetics) works in an extremely large number of cases.

Jerry, I strongly disagree with you that the Darwinian paradigm explains the history of life on this planet.

Besides who is Dinesh D’Souza?
Other than someone who has sucummed to the Devil’s Delusion?

Dr. Dembski,

Why don’t you and Michael Behe meet with D’Souza and explain what ID is all about. It should be a meeting that could be set up. Since both he and Behe are Catholics, it should not be hard to arrange.

DeepDesign,

You are certainly entitled to your opinions but I am not sure everyone holds your opinions of D’Souza or of life on the planet.

Jerry,

I take it you have not read the Design of Life. You would probability be better off reading this book, than by telling the Design Community how to conduct it’s business and research.

DeepDesign,

I read the Design of Life several months ago and it supports my position.

I’m glad to see this posted.

I do wonder if D’Souza is aware about the extent and intricacies of the ID view. I can respect him disagreeing with it - and frankly, I have quite a lot of respect for the man. But I worry about the reasons for the disagreement, as ID is much maligned and tends to be explained in the worst possible manner.

I watched most of the D’Souza/Hitchens debate on youtube, so I decided to buy his book a few months ago.

When I got to the part about his understanding of ID, I was shocked. He’s been taken in by the Darwinian rhetoric and the media. I set the book down at that point and still haven’t picked it back up and finished it.

nullasalus,

If you survey here on this site the opinions about how evolution works, you can quickly understand the opinions of those outside these narrow confines. It becomes not exactly like questioning e=mc^2 but sometimes close.

This section of his book is by far his weakest, as opposed to his analysis of Hume and Kant, which seemed well reasoned, at least in my view. After reading it, his rather cavalier dismissal of ID was unseemly in an otherwise well written book covering the vast amount of subject matter.

I posted a site yesterday,

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-191915

linking Dallas Willard’s critique of Dawkins’ THE BLIND WATCHMAKER. In it, he attempts to side step the traditional teleological arguement and in doing so nails Dawkins on philosophical grounds, something Willard appears to use well.

From what I have been able to ascertain from Dr.s Dembski, Behe, Wells, and The Discovery Institute fellows, is that ID is a propositionally scientific question, not an apologetic method.

D’Souza does acknowledge the cell in all its complexity, but there is very little to go on prior to its comeuppance.

While I respect D’Souza and applaud his work, particularly in the apologetic area in this case, he certainly leaves himself open to his own criticism, as does Francis Collins.

It becomes not exactly like questioning e=mc^2 but sometimes close.

If the two types of knowledge are roughly equivalent then when has the theory of natural selection been encoded in the language of mathematics and repeatedly verified empirically? What trajectory of adaptation has been predicted based on Darwinian theory and repeatedly verified empirically?

Biologists seem to be trained to treat their own imaginations as the equivalent of empirical evidence, so they allow themselves to simply imagine things for natural selection to filter. For example:

What might a non-locomotor benefit [for bipedality] look like? A stimulating suggestion is the sexual selection theory of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, of the University of Oregon. She thinks we rose on our hind legs as a means of showing off our penises. Those of us that have penises, that is. Females, in her view, were doing it for the opposite reason: concealing their genitals which, in primates, are more prominently displayed on all fours. This is an appealing idea but I don’t carry a torch for it. I mention it only as an example of the kind of thing I mean by a non-locomotor theory. As with so many of these theories, we are left wondering why it would apply to our lineage and not to other apes or monkeys.
(The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
By Richard Dawkins :91)

Darwinian “reasoning” often contains explanations for all possible forms of life and biological specification and its proponents can’t seem to grasp the fact that if you explain a result and the exact opposite result then your “explanation” isn’t falsifiable.

e=mc^2 is falsifiable but often the reasoning being used to explain the origins of and history of all biological specification, form and species is not. It’s one thing to engage in systematic thought based on facts, logic and evidence and then make some uniformitarian assumptions to make statements about the past. Even there one should realize that uniformitarian assumptions may be wrong, Nature may not be totally closed and regularities may not always be uniform and so statements about knowledge of the past should be approached with humility. Actual science aside, it’s another thing entirely to build a case based on sifting through biological forms in Nature in order to find similarities in form/imagery which may fit whatever a biologist might imagine about the past. It seems to me that imagining things is not almost “exactly like” the first form of knowledge, it’s not even close.

“Still, these narrow-minded Christians opposed Copernicus and Galileo until they were forced to admit that they were wrong.”

Dinesh D’Souza is wrong. Copernicus was wrong. Circular orbits and uniform speeds theorized by Copernicus was incorrect, and his detailed model required epicycles to match the geocentric models.

Tycho Brae opposed the Copernican model because it was more complicated than the prevailing and preferred geocentric models, and did not produce more accurate predictions. The simplest explanation (geocentricism) was best, according to Tycho Brae.

Galilo was a supporter of circular orbits, and so he was wrong too.

Kepler worked with Tycho Brae, and ultimately generated the ellipitcal orbit with non-uniform speeds using the data he stole from Tycho’s estate.

It sounds like Dinesh D’Souza is getting his information from a high school text book or wikipedia.

D’Souza:
“Why has the ID legal strategy proven to be such a failure, even at the hands of conservative judges?”

Conservatism has nothing to do with it since there are Atheists that are conservative. Dinesh should know better.

jerry,

I’m not sure even Dr Dembski would argue that this site represents the full range of ID opinion. But I’ve seen past links to John A. Davison’s work, MikeGene’s work over at Telic Thoughts, and more. Not everyone is hostile to evolution in the ID movement, or at least so I’ve thought.

I wonder, can you believe both in evolution and in ID? What if you believe in evolution, but reject “Darwinism” and the popular, competitive model of natural selection (as some non-IDers do, such as some of the proponents of Gaia theory)? What if you believe in “Darwinian” evolution of species, but consider ‘Darwinian’ evolution to have abruptly ended at the introduction of humanity and human consciousness (as Freeman Dyson and others expressed belief in, based on a past brainstorming session posted on this site)?

I guess what I’m really asking is, just how big is the Big Tent of ID? I’d like to think that it’s big enough to accommodate a number of people who currently consider themselves outside ID, because they mistakenly believe the tent is smaller than it is. But hey, I could be wrong about this - I’m just an outsider, after all.

Gil,

You are arguing from emotion and not logic. Suppose there are 10,000,000 species on the planet, what proportion came into being by the Darwinian paradigm and what proportion didn’t.

Information content or CSI has no relevance for nearly all species. Ask yourself what percentage of the species that Darwin saw on the Beagle trip arose from Darwinian processes or from some other mechanism? The answer is nearly all if not all. Depends on what he saw.

This no threat to ID, in fact it strengthens the ID position. To deny this is to throw yourself in with those who see creation everywhere as opposed to where it really counts. When you do so, you weaken the ID position and leads to the comments by D’Souza.

nullasalus,

One of my post just went into moderation so I will have to see what was wrong with it. But I will respond to your comments as soon as I see this post.

D’Souza:
“Imagine that a group of advocates challenged Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity.”

Awful analogy. Darwin’s theory cuts deeper than any other imaginable scientific conjecture since it is dealing (supposedly) with origins, which has quite an extensive religious undercurrent that slices through many philosophical issues like (a) where do I come from (b) why am I here, and (c ) where am I going.

Questions such as these will always engender hotly debated discussions and will be contested on a platform of widely divergent ideologies.

Not so with Einstein’s theories of relativity.

D’Souza:

ID advocates have sought to convince courts to require that their work be taught alongside Darwinian evolution.

Is this based on any real court case? When? Where? Anyone? Anyone?

nullasalus:
“I wonder, can you believe both in evolution and in ID?…I guess what I’m really asking is, just how big is the Big Tent of ID?”

Big enough to allow evidence that empirically demonstrates or proves that complex, organized and goal-specific systems could have exclusively risen through chance and accident alone.

I’ve read a number of Dinesh D’Souza books but will know not to bother with this one. I like Jerry’s idea of y’all meeting with the man and, if possible, setting him straight. It’s always disheartening to see a good man make a fool of himself. Earlier in the decade I read a number of Gregory Boyd’s books on open theism—I know, I’m a heretic!—and then recently came across this. How disappointing!

I guess we glean a bit of understanding here and a bit of it there—but the most important intellectual movement in the world today is Intelligent Design. When we miss out on that we’ve really missed it.

Rude, thanks for the link.

According to Boyd’s article (whose works and contribution to some of theology’s greatest apologetical problems I cannot underestimate):

This is an important point, because Miller’s battle isn’t against people who believe the world was designed by a Creator. He himself believes this.

I am aghast! Am I reading this right? If the world was designed, wouldn’t there be some forensic-type residual evidence for other intelligent agents to discover? What’s up with these people? The delusion is far greater than I had imagined.

At least Boyd believes in the Gap Theory, which is a subset of Creationism, which is a subset of ID. So that was close. Phew!

jerry: “As unpleasant as may be for many who come to this blog, RV + NS (genetics) works in an extremely large number of cases.”

What kind of mutations/variations occured , and in what order, does it take to get a human brain from a “common ancestor of apes and humans?”

nullasalus: I wonder, can you believe both in evolution and in ID?

Of course. I do.

jerry:

“It becomes not exactly like questioning e=mc^2 but sometimes close.”

You’ve got to be kidding! As was stated by mynym, just when has Darwinism been described by exact mathematic equations with precise constants? There are no equations and no precise constants. (population genetics doesn’t count - its all statistics)

Your statement resembles the common Darwinist folderol of saying Darwinism is as proven as gravity.

You really ought to understand your subject before you make faulty comments like that.

Unless of course you can present us with the math that demonstrates the truth of Darwinian evol.?

Here’s a modest proposal: Let’s write Dinesh. I suggest we proceed as follows: [A] compliment him for what is good in his book, [B] make your case for ID in as words as possible, [C] end on a positive note. Use the sandwich technique; it works every time. Do not begin the correspondence with an insult! this man can be reached by e-mail. Let’s contact him and report back.

Why can’t I edit myself. I meant [B] make your case in as few words as possible.

mike1962,

See, so do I. I waffle on whether it can be proved in a lab - I don’t think design of that level can be demonstrated on the same level as other scientific work. But I see value in the research and exploration of it anyway.

If that’s truly the case, it needs to be presented more clearly. I’m sure some ID proponents do deny evolution - and I’m not objecting to that. But that someone can accept both ID and evolution is a concept that really need to be communicated better.

nullasalus,

The more I consider biological systems from every angle and from every level, I can’t help thinking “designed to evolve” along certain lines. And I agree, proving it a lab may be impossible. Maybe the designers intended it that way, who knows.

Its leading advocates are legal scholar Phillip Johnson, biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician David Berlinski, and science journalist Jonathan Wells.

Dr. D, you’ve been dissed by a guy named Dinesh.

OK, I could probably do a better job with the beat if I went to Oxford like Dawk the Dick.

Berlinski has a new book out The Devil’s Advocate that makes the remarkable claim that “Darwin’s theory of evolution has little to contribute to the content of the sciences.”

Well you could say it’s remarkable and have the mind-numbed robotic crowd nod their heads in trained obedience.

Or you could cite the fields which require fidelity to the dogma that all life descended from a common ancestor, much less that all life descended from a common ancestor solely via the know means of random genetic change plus natural selection.

Of course doing so presents the danger of unnumbing the robots.

This movement is based on the idea that Darwinian evolution is not only flawed but basically fraudulent.

Does this statistically establish that those whose first and last initials are “D” are clueless?

Your statement: “toward the end of his life, Lewis regretted his earlier support for evolution” is a bit exaggerated and is not supported by the Acworth letters which you cite. For more information on this your readers might be interested in reading my book “Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis” and the chapter on Creation. As the web site you cited points out, Lewis never recanted his theistic evolutionary stance.

…not exactly like questioning e=mc^2 but sometimes close.

I will believe that when I start to hear physicists boasting that their theories are “as well-proven as evolution.”

D’souza is a smart guy and usually is in the business of defending belief in religion especially Christianity.

He shows his ignorance by excluding you Bill from his short list of ID advocates- even in the face of that the fact that you wrote “The Design Inference” and “No Free Lunch” which to this day are the main works that form the scientific inference of ID.

I have always and still do take D’souza as a bright guy. Its good to have him on our side for what good he does contribute. However where all of this ignorance comes from I cannot say. Perhaps he sees you and Wells and Berlinski as getting into his Kool-aid, that is as his competition. I hope he isn’t in this business simply for money.

Either way D’souza is a good speaker on issues of faith and atheism but he has it way wrong on ID. He needs to sit down with an open honest mind and actually read your books Bill “TDI and NFL”– then maybe he will actually know what he is talking about.

Jerry wrote:

“. . . the Darwinian paradigm explains most of the life on the planet.”

An April Fool’s joke, presumably?

Mynym quoting Dick the Dawk:

A stimulating suggestion is the sexual selection theory of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, of the University of Oregon. She thinks we rose on our hind legs as a means of showing off our penises. Those of us that have penises, that is.

Well, that’s certainly why I stand er, erect. Do you mean to say that I’m the only one?

Patrick,

I find it curious that in the middle of a controversial set of statements that my comments all of a sudden disappear. Thank you for looking into it.

GilDodgen (11)

What is ‘ID 101′, please?

Duncan in #40

I can’t speak for Gil, but one aspect of “ID 101″ might be the limited demands of the movement, at least at this stage in the debate:

ID advocates have sought to convince courts to require that their work be taught alongside Darwinian evolution, yet such efforts have been resoundingly defeated. Why has the ID legal strategy proven to be such a failure, even at the hands of conservative judges?

As far as I know, no one of any standing in the ID debate has promoted “teaching ID in schools”. This is a Darwinist/media misrepresentation that is used to scare parents and educators and thwart further consideration of ID.

Frost,

I tried to send you and e-mail just now. Is your UD e-mail current?

Nice seeing you at Dr. Berlinski’s Discovery Institute party yesterday afternoon.

I tried to find you after my book was signed, but you were already gone.

Hope to see you at the next DI party.

Salvador

—-Jerry: “the Darwinian paradigm explains most of the life on the planet.”

Jerry, your position is compatible with ID, but it doesn’t define ID. I am reading “The Design Inference” at the moment, and I have found nothing in it that would confirm your extravagant claims. I know you are well versed on the subject, and I respect that. Still, there are those who are equally knowledgeable about the facts who interpret them differently.

ID’s varying attitudes about evolution’s power to produce new life, if expressed in mathematical terms, would likely fall under a normal curve distribution. You and Dave Scot are probably at one end of the curve (spectrum), while Paul Nelson, Born again77 (whatever happened to him), and Scordova are probably at the other end. I suspect that mainstream ID, the statistical middle, would claim thinkers like Dembski, Meyer, and, to a lesser extent, Behe.

So, what is ID’s official position on the matter? On page 106 of DOL, we read this measured response: “New species have originated many times in the history of life.” That is the mainstream position, and I think it is the one that most of us can live with. It’s a little too much for Gerry and not quite enough for Jerry. That is exactly why we should use it.

The one thing we should not do is go beyond that to accommodate the Darwinists. You can’t split the difference with this bunch, because they have already invested themselves in a “no concession policy.” Do you know what happens when you negotiate with tyrants? I’ll tell you. When you move to the middle as a sign of good faith, they seize it, claim it as gained ground, and use it as their new starting point. These people want ID out of commission, period. This is a battle; someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. To win we must do three things: Do good science, tell the truth, and wait.

Sagebrush:

I will believe that when I start to hear physicists boasting that their theories are “as well-proven as evolution.”

Excellente réplique!

William Wallace @ 13

What a breath of fresh air. This is the first and only time I have seen a correct account of the various ancient astronomical theories appear on the Net. I first encountered the right stuff in a volume of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, I forget which one. The amusing thing was that Galileo was actually a reactionary! He ignored Kepler’s findings and proceeded to sell his own snake oil; even to the point of trying to stuff a bogus theory of the tides down everyone’s throat on his own personal “authority.” And Kepler was right, insofar as he could have been right. And guess who’s horse our scientific prefects decided to ride; not Kepler’s! As Bugs Bunny says, what a bunch of maroons!

Incidentally, Dinesh has another article up arguing that (from his point of view) the correct method for dealing with the Dawkins sort of crowd is to oppose atheistic accounts/promotions of evolution, rather than promote ID.

I’d disagree with him, only because I (even as someone who doesn’t really think design can be scientifically proven on that level) think that ID has considerable value as an investigation into nature, and a philosophical tool in general. The only question is whether the discerning of design in nature that Dinesh himself advocates fits under ‘ID’, or if it’s something else.

And another thing, D’souza seems to conflate ID’s failure in the court as one and the same with it as a theory. Since when do courts possess the virtue of unbiased, informed and clear minded truth?

Can anybody say OJ?

It has been well established that this kind of subject matter is not really one that some miscellaneous judge is capable of sorting out. All the Dover trail proved to me was that some misinformed biased and inadequate judge showed his desire to evoke his ruleing despite his obvious inadequacies.

IMOP, Dover said more about the nature and state of the judicial system than it did about the nature and sate of origins science.

This a test since all my posts have been going into the spam filter

This is the third time I have posted this. Nearly all my posts have not appeared for over a day.

I was prevented from answering questions and challenges to my assertion that most of the species on the planet arrived via the Darwinian paradigm because of a glitch in the software of the site. I will try to do so now because the understanding of ID on this site by many is very different from mine and I believe it is anti science.

No Eric Anderson, it was no April Fool’s comment.

The current estimate for the number of species on the planet varies but an estimate of 10 million is usually given. Here is one estimate

“So far scientists have named and classified more than 1½ million animals. Over half of these are types of insects and other species are discovered each year. Scientists believe there may be from 2 million to as many as 50 million kinds of animals alive today.”

It is from http://hypertextbook.com/facts.....imov.shtml

If we use the 10 million as an estimate or just the 1.5 million, how many arrived on the planet as a design event and how many arrived via a naturalistic process. Pick one of the following that is closest to what you believe.

A. 100% arrived via naturalistic processes

B. 95%+ arrived via naturalistic processes but not all

C. 75%+ arrived via naturalistic processes

D. 50%+ arrived via naturalistic processes

E. 25%+ arrived via naturalistic processes

F. 10%+ arrived via naturalistic processes

G. 0%+ arrived via naturalistic processes

I believe B best describes the empirical evidence. Actually I would make the number closer to 99.5%. (Remember there are 300,000 beetle species and tens of thousands of fish species.) But believing that this is true does not deny ID in one iota. In fact I believe it makes ID stronger and disbelief makes ID weaker and anti science.

From the reactions that were posted here and the lack of a defense in what I have said, then it is my belief that ID as understood on this site by most is not in sync with the empirical evidence. And if this is true of what most who support ID believe then ID is generating an anti-science belief system and that D’Souza’s observations may be the result of the same observations I have made despite what the formal statements about ID that are posted here.

Jerry wrote:

This a test since all my posts have been going into the spam filter

One sure way to end up in the filter is by including multiple hyperlinks. Wordpress has a feature where it will hold up posts with multiple links; so it may not even be an Akismet issue. (Wordpress Admin->Options->Discussion). I ended up raising the limit on my site so it wouldn’t trip these up.

I’m not sure if this is what’s happening Jerry, but if you’re pasting more than 1 or 2 hyperlinks in a single post, it’s quite possible.

Apollos,

At Dave’s suggestion I changed the email address in my profile. My next attempt worked. So like Pavlov’s dog, I associate the two.

jerry,

I won’t speak for most of those who support ID - I’m just one guy. But as a guess, I think that ‘most’ (as in, not on this particular site, but generally out in the public) have at best a belief that there’s something more to life-as-it-is than simple chance and darwinian evolution, but haven’t followed through with what that may or may not mean. As with most topics, many people are happy being passively familiar with the data at best.

However, you can count me (and even on this site, a few others) as believing more or less what you do - I believe in common descent, that life likely evolved from the simple to the more complex over time, etc. I do think the darwinian paradigm ended as the best explanation for life when humans arrived on the scene, that alternative models may offer better understandings of even so-called ‘naturalistic processes’ (Gaia theory, for example, has more of an accent on equilibriums being maintained than ‘winners’ triumphing over ‘losers’ in the natural world), and certainly that evolution has been twisted to support an atheistic agenda - frankly, I’m on board with Dinesh with a lot of what he says, though I still think he has much to learn about the scope of ID theory.

I suppose what I’m saying is, you’re not alone in your views. I respect that others disagree, of course - and so long as ID truly remains Big Tent (Where the operational views of people like Dinesh, Michel Heller, MikeGene, or even Ken Miller are respected and welcomed), I don’t have any problem.

For the record, one thing to keep in mind about Dinesh is that, even if he is misinformed about ID as a school of thought, he’s clearly very well informed about the particular abuses of science made when it comes to Dawkins, Dennett, and the rest on darwinism and evolution. He clearly sees neither of these things as a threat to faith, certainly not proof against it, and I believe does a good job of articulating his reasons why. Even if someone is utterly skeptical of what evolution can accomplish, I think it’s important to realize that even if evolution can accomplish all that the orthodoxy claims - it STILL is no threat to theism, and that the primary problem is with how the data is abused to promote a favored worldview.

nullasalus,

you said,

“I wonder, can you believe both in evolution and in ID”

If by evolution you mean a naturalistic mechanism for the origin of new species, yes I do and I think it is great design. Now before everyone gets in an uproar, I believe in micro evolution as the source for most of the species on the planet and as such is great design because it enables adaptation to take place from resources completely within the species or with a minor mutation. When a species meets a new environment either in the same place where it is or because of some migration it may not have the best combination of genetic elements to thrive but with a reshuffling over time of these genetic elements a new variant will arise that is similar and better suited to the new environment.

Nobody in ID denies this and it is just a case of how many of the species arose this way. Since most species within a family are very similar it seems likely they formed from some original gene pool and represent refinements of that gene pool. This is how micro evolution works and is essentially a evolution downward or what some call devolution.

It does not explain where the original gene pool came from or how complex novelty arose. Behe’s Edge of Evolution indicates that complex novelty cannot arise through naturalistic mechanisms. But this does not mean that naturalistic mechanisms are not operating to refine these gene pools and producing a lot of the new plant and animal species and variations. This process does not require the formation of complex novelty and actually probably represents a contraction of the gene pool, not an expansion.

So yes ID can live very happily with much of the Darwinian paradigm which now includes a lot more than variation and natural selection. But because it can live with a lot of it does not mean it accepts all of it. But the important point is because ID rejects part of the Darwinian paradigm, it does mean it rejects all of it.

Ok I want to go in a very strange direction here.

I think that maybe people like D’souza are concerned about ID for subliminal of even subconscious reasons. I am going to now go down a dark road of speculation and thought that I think is VERY important. Don’t confuse it with my belief but as something that I felt for a while now that needs to be looked into. And I also I think that D’souza just maybe has similar concerns.

I think that Intelligent Design has a dark side to it that is not yet exploited but may concern both people of faith and people who consider themselves moral but not divinely inspired or faithful.

ID is in its simplest and purest form an inference from nature to design. But ID does not proclaim ANY moral standards or any connection to any particular faith. Bill has of several occasions said that the designer for him is the Christian God of benevolence but as we all intuitively know not every one is as convinced as he is. Yet, while Bills belief in his religious convictions is left to each person’s opinion to decide form him or her self, ID is on the other hand a scientifically sound inference- that is everyone who is object should accept it as not simply a possibility but as a reasonable conclusion that is connected and extrapolated from science.

It could be proven if the cell for example had a written easily understood signature and it could be disproved if life could arise without any help in say a test tube. It also has plenty of scientific evidence to support its assertion.

But.

What if ID was used by atheists as a wedge not between science and atheism but between science and religion.

What good is ID if it has not moral foundation or extrapolations to ground itself in?

It can strengthen one’s faith in God or the divine. No doubt about that. It serves as a nice back drop to how we can know and support of belief in a God or Deity.

But what if people use it as a religion substitute. That is what if it is considered scientific but by this virtue all other true faiths such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc are to be forgotten about because they do not cross the threshold of scientific scrutiny.

What if ID is used as the wedge between science and religion? Then the atheists could use it to support their own political agendas by saying that anything they want is consistent with the undefined Designer.

I see ID ultimately as a form of philosophical nuclear power. From it flows great power and understanding but within it could lie the capability of mass destruction.

Take cloning for example. It is scientifically fine to clone. It scientifically works! And if that is ok then why not engineer (that is intelligently design) a super human race? This scientific applicability that seems to frame and support ID is not moral substitute. Anything can be scientific. Bt not everything is right.

A one world religion about nothing is not be a religion at all. Therefore we must remember that ID is not a religion. This is its blessing and its curse.

ID is a good theory that needs to be taught, respected, forwarded and understood, but with great power comes great responsibility. Lets focus on the good but be aware of the possibly bad.

nullasalus,

My post to you was being written the same time as you wrote your recent one and was in response to what you wrote yesterday. One thing to keep in mind to use your the phrase is that the average person understands survival of the fittest quite well and along comes ID with so many trashing the Darwinian paradigm that a natural reaction is to write these people off without taking in the entire message.

There is no discernment between what works and what doesn’t work for many. So every time I see someone trashing the Darwinian paradigm of RM + NS as nonsense, I cringe because it is undermining ID. They think they are supporting ID but what they are doing is denying the obvious and when they do that they make ID look silly, A more sophisticated approach would be to embrace elements of the Darwinian paradigm as obviously working and really good design but it can only explain so much before it runs into real trouble.

Also, what I am getting at above is the simple insight that I think that some people (maybe D’souza included) see ID as sort of anti-religious in a sense because they have high faith in their own religious convictions and to them religion must transcend science. In this sense ID is sort of blasphemous. I think that they also feel that whenever ID is put down or rejected by those who don’t understand it or want to straw man it,- that each battle lost chalks one up for the atheists and puts another nail in religion’s coffin.

The problem here however, is not the theory of ID but the ignorance and ambitions of those who are hell bent of destroying it.

People like D’souza have a point and right to be concerned about ID’s sociological impacts but they need to realize that ID is ultimately on their side. Instead of trashing the efforts of the good men who work on it they need to realize that their time would be better served if they focused on helping and supporting ID in its battles than arm chair quaterbacking after the fact.

Stephenb,

you said

“I am reading “The Design Inference” at the moment, and I have found nothing in it that would confirm your extravagant claims.”

I gave up on this book. If you understand it, let me know. I was a mathematics major many years ago but it didn’t help since I forgot it all. You are right; it has nothing to do with what I am claiming.

Are you confusing the Design Inference with the Design of Life? Because it was after reading this book that my position hardened.

I am not interested in debating with the Darwinists but with the average person who does not have any personal worth invested in a position. Dinesh D’Souza is typical of this type of person. He is not a scientist but a journalist and social policy activist. My three children are typical targets as they are teacher, web designer and computer consultant respectively. We should ignore Panda’s Thumb. We are not in competition with them. We should concentrate on getting the right message and it should be a true message based on science and not subject to ridicule even if it means a smaller tent.

Frost122585,

There is a lot of theological objections to ID because it presupposes a God who has to constantly change things as opposed to One who got it right from the start. This is a very simple explanation for the Theistic Evolution position among many religious people and has been discussed here many, many times.

jerry,

I think they understand ’survival of the fittest’ well enough, sure. That’s pretty easy to grasp on its own. And you’re probably right that some people write off ID when they think it’s entirely disregarding that. Do they understand evolution in a broader sense? I personally don’t think so. Heck, I think many atheists have an atrocious understanding of evolution - just because they like it in concept doesn’t mean they have a better understanding of it.

The thing is, ID is billed as ‘big tent’ - and that’s meant that neither YECs are cast out, nor are the Michael Behes who accept common descent, or (I believe) people who accept a fairly orthodox view of evolution but believe design can still be detected in nature. And frankly, I have no problem with the YEC view in ID, so long as it’s understood that ID comprises a wide range of views. ID should not be equated with YEC - and, in my meager few, should not be equated with denying evolution either. Anyone who believes that design can be discerned in nature, or even philosophically argued for, should have a place in the discussion.

Hence, I think people should take seriously what’s happening with D’Souza. This is not a man who is kissing up to an intellectual elite - he’s the one who’s actually being, pardon my language, knocking guys like Dennett and Hitchens on their asses, to the point where even evangelical atheists cringe at the results. If he, of all people, has a misunderstanding about ID, then maybe it’s time to question what ID is communicating to people, and where the breakdown in message is coming from.

Theists who denounce ID are not necessarily betraying their faith to buddy up with the Dawkins crowd - it may either be a miscommunication (thinking ID really IS YEC in a cloak - remember, half the reason many people repeat the line is in the hopes that it’s believed), or an honest difference of opinion (I cite myself - I am not certain design can be demonstrated in a lab, though I think someone can make an extremely strong (stronger than the alternative) argument for design based on the evidence. And for me, ‘the evidence’ can include micro to macro evolution, and other such data.)

Not that I denounce ID, mind you. I support it, I want to see it thrive and develop. I think we’re still in the early stages of the ‘project’, and the variety of views and possibilities are still being realized.

The average person understands very little of evolution. My children know almost zilch about evolution except for survival of the fittest and some basics like mutations and natural selection and they are well educated. I have read a ton on the topic and what I understand today was quite different from two years ago when I thought I knew a lot. I owe a lot of it to reading comments from others on this site. But those of us here are an unusual group and most of the educated people in the world know very little besides the obvious.

—-Jerry: “Are you confusing the Design Inference with the Design of Life? Because it was after reading this book that my position hardened.”

Yes, indeed. I have read both books, and I got the titles confused. I was referring to “The Design Of Life.” I hope I didn’t hopelessly muddy the waters.

—–nullasalus: “I suppose what I’m saying is, you’re not alone in your views. I respect that others disagree, of course - and so long as ID truly remains Big Tent (Where the operational views of people like Dinesh, Michel Heller, MikeGene, or even Ken Miller are respected and welcomed), I don’t have any problem.”

I am not sure what you mean. Do you consider theistic evolution as being in the ID tent?

Nulassulas said,

“If he, of all people, has a misunderstanding about ID, then maybe it’s time to question what ID is communicating to people, and where the breakdown in message is coming from.”

I agreed with your points about “big tent”. Well put. I think that is where Jerry had it wrong. Jerry said that people view ID as proposing that God had to keep changing things. That is nonsense ID is “perfectly” compatible with front loading. ALL THAT ID SAYS IS THAT THE DESIGN OF THE WORLD IS DETECTIBLE. Period. Almost any religion can use it as support for there metaphysical understanding of the world- thank God.

As for your rhetorical question above, the answer is THE MEDIA. Look at the various interviews that have aired on IMOP the “communist stations” like MSNBC and CNN and the “tabloid trash at best” FOXNEWS. They are always about one thing and one thing only…

A DUH… HOW IS ID DIFFERNT FROM CREATIONISM…. A DUH.

And the whole glorious 2 and a half minutes consists of one Darwinist saying “well, it is creationism in disguise” and the Design theorist saying “No, it has nothing to do with creationism.”

Of course the ID advocate is actually the only one telling the truth but the implication is already made in the topic of discussion and then if the Darwinist out debates the ID advocate using tricky rhetoric then everyone watching who is ignorant of the facts thinks “Boy, that ID is nothing but creationism! I don’t waaant myyyy kids learning that religious biblical indoctrination propaganda!”

And the sad fact is that because of the even worse press like what I like to call “The Dover incident” people dismiss the theory even more. D’souza has a point being concerned about where ID is taking religion… but I think Ben Stein is the one who is right when he says at the end of his monologue in the Expelled preview-

If no one is going to speak up then who will be left to fight this fight?– Especially once the whole world is brainwashed with this Darwinist political garbage.

D’souza, there is much more to lose if we say and do nothing.

Jerry said,

“But those of us here are an unusual group and most of the educated people in the world know very little besides the obvious.”

Lets change that.

Jerry wrote:

As I just said on another thread, the Darwinian paradigm explains most of the life on the planet. Untill ID formally recognizes this possibiity, it will be continually marginalized.

I’d rather be right and marginalized than wrong and accepted.

I think Michael Denton pretty much trashed the Darwinian paradigm. Research building upon Walter Remine and John Sanford’s work will probably seal the deal of refuting Darwin once and for all from a population genetics standpoint.

There could be fruitful research in using Fisher’s fundamental theorem of Natural Selection to destroy the vestiges of natural selection theory. Salthe outlined the idea in one of his essays, but it needs refinement.

Nei’s critique (Nei is an NAS member) critique last year is an indication Kimura’s math will soon be applied to adaptation theory. Kimura successfully excorcised Darwinism from molecular evolution, adpatation is next.

D’Souza is terribly mis-informed believing that mainstream science is to be trusted with respect to Darwinian evolution. He ought to watch expelled.

Salvador,

“I’d rather be right and marginalized than wrong and accepted.”

But I believe ID is marginalized because it is associated with things that are wrong. And I think the examples that you have brought up may be a symptom of its marginalization. Could you point out how Denton challenges my claim because I believe he substantiates what I have been saying. Here is a quote from “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis p 85.”

“It is clear, then, that Darwin’s special theory was largely correct. Natural Selection has been directly observed and there can be no question now that new species do originate in nature; furthermore, it is now possible to explain in great detail the exact sequences of events that lead to species formation.”

By special theory he meant micro evolution. You are confusing micro evolution with macro evolution. Denton is a believer in natural selection shaping species.

Why don’t you layout what you mean by the research of Remine and Sanford. These are Young Earth Creationists and it is best to be specific on what they say and if what they have shown disputes anything I have said. Someone brought up recently that Sanford says the genome is deteriorating when others have said this is nonsense. The genomes of species do not indicate deterioration nor are we seeing this playing out in our world. The species of the world seem quite healthy except where man interferes.

Here is a statement by Salthe

“Oh sure natural selection’s been demonstrated. . . the interesting point, however, is that it has rarely if ever been demonstrated to have anything to do with evolution in the sense of long-term changes in populations. . . . Summing up we can see that the import of the Darwinian theory of evolution is just unexplainable caprice from top to bottom. What evolves is just what happened to happen.”

His main objections to natural selection is that he is a socialist and the Darwinian paradigm is a capitalist paradigm. He doesn’t like the implications especially the competitive nature of natural selection that Darwin provided. The current version of the modern synthesis contains a lot more that what Darwin originally proposed and what was considered in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Read Jablonka and Lamb’s book for some possible interesting additions to the modern synthesis. (nothing in this book threatens ID)

It is always nice to cite some people but for everyone you cite, one could cite 20 others and on Denton you were wrong. It seems that most of the objections to Darwinian processes is the extrapolation over time to large scale changes. Nothing I have said disputes these objections or that most of the life on the planet does not need macro evolution for its existence.

The real issue is the origin of the gene pools for which no one has an answer and seems beyond the capabilities of any naturalistic process.

I am sure D’Souza will watch Expelled and may have seen it already. It is covered in detail on his website. For that to have happened he must have seen it.

I am not sure he should pay any attention to Remine, Sanford or Salthe. Maybe you could explain in laymen’s terms what Nei and Kimura have said so we can assess their relevance. What little I saw of Kimura is that all his work is consistent with what I have said. Maybe you can point out how his work contradicts it since it all points to naturalistic causes for changes in species and the narrowing of the gene pool. His ideas are part of the current evolutionary paradigm.

Jerry said,

“I am sure D’Souza will watch Expelled and may have seen it already.”

That’s lovely. Hopefully he will bother to read some of Bill’s books and acknowledge him as one of- if not “the”- father of modern ID.

And no, I don’t think that D’souza has read them. If he has then he is obviously neglecting them for some suspicious reason. Perhaps because they strongly support ID and refute his position.

I think that a lot of people just don’t like ID because it seems at first glance to imply that somehow you have to be smart or well versed in scientific and philosophical literature to know, have and justify a relationship God or religion. This is a total misconception. ID is there for those people who have expierenced or choose to use science and philosophy to trash faith and religion. It serves the purpose of an antidote among other things. No one has to know ID except for people who should know better then to chalk up life and reality to nothing except perfectly predictable purposeless material processes.

You seem to have a big problem with people who believe in the possibility of divine intervention (like myself). Can you prove that it never happened or cant happen? No you cant. You sound like you also have a problem with people who reject the theory of common descent. Well the fossil record is skimp and while it is a strong theory from what I gather, ID in no way demands anyone to profess or take the position of disbelief against it. If however you take the position of skepticism ID can coexist with that as well as if you accept common descent as fact.

Until more good evidence for evolutionary processes and common descent comes in, I think that people like yourself should be a little more tolerant and accepting of other people’s beliefs. Afterall, we all been wrong at times when we were convinced that we were right.

Dave,

I appreciate what you are saying but I have a different take on this. I know I am ruffling some feathers here but I do not think I am using anything bogus to do so. Look at my response to Sal just above. Sal is the first person to challenge my claims and I don’t think he did a good job at it. I welcome challenges because if they cannot be answered I have learned and maybe some others will learn also and it may point to an alternative argument. But few here