I now and then see it claimed that, among its various contributions, one key benefit of Intelligent Design is that it poses a direct challenge to naturalism, or materialism. The problem I have with this sort of talk is that one of the key planks of ID is a kind of metaphysical neutrality – the recognition that any designer or designers responsible for this or that particular design in the natural world can, at least in principle, be (for lack of a better-word) “non-supernatural”.

This is claimed often enough by Dembski, Behe and company, but my favorite quote on this front comes from a post right on this site: ID’s metaphysical openness about the nature of nature entails a parallel openness about the nature of the designer. Is the designer an intelligent alien, a computional simulator (a la THE MATRIX), a Platonic demiurge, a Stoic seminal reason, an impersonal telic process, …, or the infinite personal transcendent creator God of Christianity? The empirical data of nature simply can’t decide.

The problem is that if this is accurate – and frequent, consistent attestation by a number of prominent ID proponents seems to indicate as much – then it seems to me false to think of ID in and of itself as representing a challenge to either naturalism or materialism. Indeed, ID – even if ID inferences are not only strong, but ultimately true – seems entirely compatible with both positions, at least in principle. But I think it’s possible to recognize that, while at the same time explaining how ID can nevertheless represent a challenge to these positions, at least in a qualified manner.

So, let’s get right on that. The explanation I have in mind is simple, but important.

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(Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 found here.) Richard Hoover Despite NASA’s attempt to “control the narrative” on ET, it was Hoover’s paper in the Journal of Cosmology that received 18,000,000 hits in two weeks, making his ET debut a case of “going viral”. Even the staid SPIE where Hoover’s annual conference on Astrobiology publishes his work as conference proceedings, (and charges a cool $18 for each downloaded PDF of Hoover’s earlier publications on microbial meteoritic fossils), were so happy with the income they want to advertise the 14th annual conference this year. NASA, on the other hand, initially said some rather uncomplimentary things about their star scientist, and then has gone strangely quiet. My biology colleagues in Read More ›

An interesting research paper was recently published in the Journal Astrobiology by Gayle K. Philip and Stephen J. Freeland, which asks, “Did Evolution Select a Nonrandom Alphabet of Amino Acids?” Read More>>>

The National Center for Science Education (= Darwinism) provides a helpful summary of academic freedom bills regarding Darwinism and tax-funded compulsory education: This has been a busy year for creationists. Since January, anti-science legislators in seven states have proposed nine bills attacking evolution and evolution education. Many are so-called “academic freedom” bills, like Tennessee’s HB 368, which allows teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” (For general background on academic freedom acts, go here.But that’s not all. Some of these bills also target such “controversial” theories as global warming, the chemical origins of life, and human cloning. Given Read More ›

In “Neanderthals: Bad luck and its part in their downfall” (New Scientist, 07 April 2011), Mark Buchanantells us, The popular theory has it that humans soon displaced Neanderthals thanks to their superior skills and adaptations. But mathematicians Armando Neves at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Maurizio Serva at the University of Aquila, Italy, now say that the extinction of Neanderthals may have been down to a genetic lottery. The theory is that intermarriage with modern humans did the ‘thals in. We also learn, A strong point of the analysis, says anthropologist Luke Premo of the University of Washington in Pullman, is that it makes few assumptions about unknown factors, including the relative sizes of Read More ›

In yesterday’s CNN blog evolutionist Karl Giberson bemoans the influence of religious thinking in beliefs about origins and then, in evolutionary typical fashion, hypocritically mandates evolution’s own religious beliefs.  Read more

I watched the Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig debate today. I have to say, Sam Harris delivered a great argument championing deism. However, when I remembered that Harris was supposed to be arguing for atheism, I realized that Craig had it beat completely.
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Recently, we were apprised that the rarest of intellectual qualities, true genius, is merely an overdose of testosterone before birth.

You heard it here first and forgot it here first.

Recently, real news – of another child genius – has been making the rounds

At 12-years-old, Jacob Barnett is a genius. He’s already in college, his IQ is higher than Einstein’s, and for fun he‘s working on an expanded version of that man’s theory of relativity. So far, the signs are good. Professors are astounded. So what else does a boy genius with vast brilliance do in his free time? Disprove the big bang, of course.For a minute, just a minute, try and follow his logic. He explained his thinking recently to the Indianapolis Star:

According to those who study the phenomenon, while child geniuses usually grow up to be intelligent adults, Read More ›

The next time some learned person slowly and patiently begins to explain to you that “there is no conflict between faith and science, when both are properly understood … “, ask him point blank:

“Professor, by “science” I take it you mean Darwinism. Is that right? Few actual sciences are controversial for most Christians.

Now, you are asking Christians to change their basic understanding of human nature to conform to the latest from Darwinism/”evolutionary psychology”.

So is there any thesis in Darwinism that it would be right for a Christian to reject, on the basis of received wisdom from the millennia? Any thesis at all?”

Ask but don’t expect a coherent answer, never mind an honest or believable one.

After all, what can he say? Read More ›

It began practically as soon as Origin of Species was published. In the second half of the nineteenth century and even more so in the twentieth century, questioning evolution was cast as anti science. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense. If evolution is an obvious and undeniable scientific fact, then is not skepticism tantamount to an attack on science itself? But once again, evolution’s criticism is more of a reflection of evolution itself.  Read more

It was the best of times, and the worst of times. NASA was making new discoveries every day, discoveries that would change the course of science forever, and yet, they could not publish them for fear that it would destroy their government mandate, their public image. The discovery of microfossils on comets that made the news a month ago cannot be told without understanding the history of extra-terrestrials (ET) and NASA. It is a curious tale, with Darwinists embarassed and Designers triumphant except when the press show up, and it may still have even more twists to come, but the saga needs to be told for the sake of our children, and their children’s children who may look up through Read More ›

In “Dissolving the Fall,” a chapter in his Saving Darwin, theologian Karl Giberson argues that Darwinian evolution created humans selfish; there was no actual fall of man.

Selfishness … drives the evolutionary process. Unselfish creatures died, and their unselfish genes perished with them. Selfish creatures, who attended to their own needs for food, power, and sex, flourished and passed on these genes to their offspring. After many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature. (P. 12)

Political scientist John West notes in God and Evolution that Read More ›

Here and below, Jeff Brown, offers his thoughts on the new pastiche religion that a writer at New Scientist would like to invent.

Brown, a pastor in Nuremberg, Germany, holds a B.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology. Read More ›

Kerry Sheridan advises that a “US atom smasher may have found new force of nature” (YahooNews, April 7 08:07 am)

Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature that could expand our knowledge of the properties of matter, physicists say.[ … ]

While much remains a mystery, researchers agree that this is not the “God Particle,” or the Higgs-boson, a hypothetical elementary particle that has long eluded physicists who believe it could explain why objects have mass. Read More ›

At UD there has been much discussion about Thomism, final causes, and the like. This stuff has been around for centuries, but we have never seen books from people like Barbara Forrest with titles like, “Thomists and Final-Cause Advocates Want to Impose a Theocracy and Destroy Science!” But we have seen such outrage and irrational screaming about ID theory. Why is this? The answer is simple and obvious. ID theory is rigorous. It’s based on the hard sciences of information theory, computation, probabilistic mathematics, and the limits of chemical reactions, stochastic processes, and the Darwinian mechanism to produce what we see in nature — in particular, information-rich systems with the requisite hardware and software. Let’s face it, the reason ID Read More ›