Intelligent Design

I was an atheist, brainwashed by the establishment, into my 40s. I got a triple dose of indoctrination: from the public schools, from the secular environment in which I grew up (a small college town, surrounded by intellectual university types), and from the university itself. There was no doubt in my mind that God was a human fabrication and that we were the product of purposeless Darwinian mechanisms. In retrospect, however, I realize that I accepted these conclusions completely uncritically, which is ironic, because educated intellectual types supposedly take pride in critical thinking.

I was once debating “evolution” with a friend, and I was spouting all the platitudes I had been taught. He said, “Look, rather than debating me, why don’t you read a book, Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton”? I assumed that it would be some nonsensical religious hogwash, but I was in for a big surprise.

I devoured the book in a couple of days, and when I was finished I slapped myself on the forehead and thought, “I’ve been conned all my life!” My atheism was quickly unraveling.

This is what the hysterical anti-ID folks fear: Once the evidence of modern science is evaluated without the blinders of a passionately materialistic worldview, design screams at us from every corner.
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Alternate Title: Of Mice and Men and Evolutionary Dogma

“There has been a circular argument that if it’s conserved it has activity.” Edward Rubin, PhD, Senior Scientist, Genomics Division Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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I’m informed by a person on the ground that the British government is in a fix about this because the National Curriculum is simply a minimum standard. In other words, it is there to make sure all children get a basic education; it’s purpose is not to ban things. Ministers to ban creationist teaching aids in science lessons · Schools will be told not to use special pack · Intelligent design group asks for meeting James Randerson, science correspondent Thursday December 7, 2006 The Guardian The government is to write to schools telling them that controversial teaching materials promoting creationism should not be used in science lessons. The packs include DVDs and written materials promoting intelligent design, a creationist alternative Read More ›

Lee Strobel and “The Case for a Creator” Thursday, December 7th 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. FREE EVENT! FREE DVD! Biola University 13800 Biola Ave La Mirada CA 90639 Map to Biola: http://biola.edu/about/map_directions.cfm FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED! Come early. Bring your friends and carpool. We are expecting a full house so please come early to ensure a seat and a parking spot. There will be parking attendants to guide you. Witness the launch of a much anticipated new DVD product based on Lee Strobel’s best selling book. Hear from scholars who are helping to win the debate over Darwinism in our time. –Dr. Jay Richards –Dr. Steve Meyer –Dr. J.P. Moreland –Dr. John Bloom –Dr. William Lane Craig –Dr. Jonathan Wells Read More ›

In commentary under the article about predictability of evolution there was some discussion of the Templeton “ID” RFP (request for proposals). I found the whole thing has a dedicated webpage here. Grants made under the program are listed here. In short the RFP was on the table from May 2005 to May 2006 and all the grant money was awarded. Since this was a call for both pro and con ID research the actual grants should be examined. In that light I’d like commentary generally restricted to discussion of the awarded grants and whether or not any of them can be fairly characterized as ID research. As you can see here I’m not afraid of exposing the truth. I only Read More ›

For those who are not aware of this resource, check out: http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/ I particularly enjoyed the following interview by Casey Luskin with Thomas Woodward, author of the book listed above. http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2006-11-29T22_39_10-08_00 On this episode of ID The Future, CSC’s Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Thomas Woodward and they discuss his new book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, which analyzes the rhetoric used by Darwinists in their critiques of intelligent design. Woodward documents how Darwinists often use ad hominem attacks and promote “fantasy themes” about the supposed “theocracy” of intelligent design to avoid discussing the scientific issues. Did you know that, according to Niall Shanks, Phillip Johnson is like the guy who hangs around schoolyards peddling soft drugs, Read More ›

See here for more about the Harvard Origin of Life project. In a nutshell they are setting out to demonstrate how DNA-based life could have originated from undirected interplay of chemicals. If ID is true then it predicts the Harvard project will fail. This is based on the ID hypothesis that the complex patterns found in the basic machinery of life are too complex to come about without intelligent guidance. Now if I may be so bold as to ask that ID theorists be allowed to make predictions based upon their own theory, and detractors are gracious enough to let us make our own predictions, then I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about ID making no predictions. This Read More ›

We often hear the ridiculous assertion that the theory of evolution is as well tested as the theory of gravity. The theory of gravity can predict precisely where the planets will be a million years from now. What can the theory of evolution predict a million years into the future? Essentially, ToE predicts nothing. It explains history after the fact which is a whole lot different than predicting something before it happens. Of what value is a theory with no predictive power? Why do we bother teaching our children a valueless theory of history that more often than not is disbelieved and causes so much strife? Just the facts, ma’am, please. All life on earth is related through common structures Read More ›

Check out this essay by Jack Woodall in The Scientist: Intelligent Design: The Clincher — A butterfly explodes the theory Follow Woodall’s argumentation to its inevitable implications: If I were the perfect designer I would invent a perfect world in which nothing could possibly ever go wrong or present any challenges or adversity. But then my world would be hideously boring and meaningless (and there would be nothing to learn, because learning takes effort, and effort means challenge and adversity), so I would no longer be the perfect designer of a perfect world. I couldn’t win for losing, and in either case (a “perfect” world or an “imperfect” world) my design would be imperfect, and therefore would not be designed.

Apparently, in Britain, where the ID controversy (that was supposed to disappear after some court decision in the United States) rages and rages, an ID-friendly group called Truth in science is taking on one of the most famous frauds in biology, at museum – Haeckel’s nineteenth-century embryo drawings, reproduced in hundreds of textbooks worldwide, to demonstrate the incontrovertible truth of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The only problem is that Haeckel made up most of it. Embryos from various classes of vertebrates simply do not look as similar as he made them out to be. Read more at the http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/  

One of Canada’s national papers, the National Post, ran an op-ed (November 22, 2006) by a scientist who is a global warming skeptic. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus, University of Virginia, and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, talks about how he was horsed around by ideologues, and it makes for interesting reading. Read More ›

Here’s a portion of a letter sent by Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe to the CEO of ExxonMobil. To me, at least, it is becoming increasingly apparent that science as a discipline has lost that essential quality which made science’s authority seem impregnible: objectivity. We increasingly live in a world where everything, including science itself, has been politicized. We’re witnessing the Fall of the Scientific Empire. The parallels to the ID-NDE debate are transparently clear. Instead of “burning the witches”, we’ll soon be seeing the “heretics” (those that don’t believe in NDE or Global Warming) burnt at the stake. I truly believe we find ourselves at a watershed moment in history. Should science itself be unmoored from its “objective” Read More ›

In celebration of the coming 1st anniversary of Judge Jones’ enforcement of an impenetrable wall of separation between church and state I present to you 45 holes in the wall. Read More ›

Of a recent indie anti-abortion film, Robert Novak writes, “Bella” was conceived by three young Mexican men — producer, director and lead actor — who are conservative Catholics and want to make movies removed from Hollywood’s movie culture of sex and violence. Bankrolled by a wealthy Catholic family from Philadelphia, they shot the film in 24 days in New York City. The star is Eduardo Verastegui, a Mexican heartthrob as a lead performer in TV soap operas who now lives in Los Angeles. A devout Catholic, he told me he was tired of movies showing Latinos as disreputable and immoral . He has learned to speak English in three years well enough to play the lead role mostly in English (with subtitles Read More ›

A small group of Wikipedia admins with a grudge against ID have been running amok with no oversight performing and/or allowing hatchet jobs on ID and its leaders. It’s long past time to expose what they’ve been doing. Wikipedia is far too popular and reliable source of information, especially for school children, to let this travesty of justice continue. Please keep comments on topic. The Wiki horror stories are great!

Update: I have three people who have biographies on Wiki who’ve written to me privately with similar tales as those in the comments. I expect several more as word gets around. FeloniusMonk’s name is coming up more often than JoshuaZ’s. I’ll collect all the complaints for a couple days then see how each wants to proceed. Read More ›

Recently, a caffeine-deprived friend was grousing about the fact that ID proponents don’t tend to be welcomed at “open theology” conferences.

“Open theology” implies a much more limited sort of God than the Immortal, invisible, God only wise of the Western monotheist (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) tradition.

Now, it’s unclear to me why the ID guys, who are mostly hard math and science types, should even want to hang out with these children of a lesser god. But my friend insisted on hearing the view from O’Leary’s Point, so here goes. And I have followed it up with a testable prediction, too: Read More ›