Intelligent Design

One of the comments on the previous post caused me to do some further analysis, which I had said I wouldn’t post, but have reconsidered. The comment was: This seems like an odd tact on Dennis’ part and I don’t understand the point. If, Dennis’ position (I’m going to call it “Agnostigner” – someone who is agnostic about the Designer) is correct and the Designer is irrelevant, then what does ID bring to any table scientifically? If the Designer is irrelevant, what does the explanation of design tell us about the world/universe? Does it impact any other scientific explanation in anyway and if so, how? So let’s start by analyzing the “odd tact” of Dennis, which seemed odd to me Read More ›

In “First Person: The Bible as a Source of Testable Hypotheses”(Biblical Archaeology Review (Jul/Aug 2011) Hershel Shanks tells a story from Biblical arachaeology that explains more than I ever could about how materialism stifles science: In his new book Excavating the City of David, Ronny Reich of Haifa University treats archaeologist Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University “dismissively” and accuses her of acting “unethically.” What did she do? She used the Bible as a guide to where to excavate.

Let me unpack this: As Eilat read the Bible, it seemed to indicate just where King David’s palace might be buried in the City of David—at least, it did to her. On this basis, she decided to dig there.

This was highly improper and unscientific, according to Ronny. When he heard that Eilat was using reasoning like this to find King David’s palace, he knew immediately that, proceeding in this way, “she would certainly find that building” (emphasis in original).

If she found the building, using the Bible, she did wrong. Shanks adds, Read More ›

That’s Dennis Jones’s challenge to those who insist, “You can’t talk about design unless you say who the designer is”:

1. ID Theory has nothing to do with creationism or a designer. There is no philosophical contemplation as to a designer any more than the Big Bang theory has anything to say about a banger.

It is impossible to complain about the “designer” of Intelligent Design Theory without resolving the “banger” inferred by the Big Bang Theory. One cannot deny there is a “banger” if they insist there is a designer, and vice versa. Read More ›

Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology. – Michael Egnor, Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook Also: Egnor on Why Darwinian medicine is a dead loss

I recently found a very nice blog post on the definition of “Intelligent Design” by non-theist Dennis Jones. If you have ever wondered what Intelligent Design is about, or whether ID is a scientific enterprise, or even if ID is making any headway in the scientific establishment, then read this blog. It’s better written than anything I’ve ever blogged about on the subject (yeah, faint praise.) Dennis, however, wants to go beyond ID, and talk about some of the other implications of ID. For example, does ID have something to say about cosmology, or thermodynamics or quantum mechanics? The thread that connects all these other scientific disciplines with ID is “information”. ID purports to discover information, the kind made by Read More ›

UPDATE:  WE HAVE HAD SEVERAL FANTASTIC ENTRIES ALREADY.  BUT THERE IS STILL TIME TO POST AN ENTRY.  I WILL JUDGE THE CONTEST ON 7-26-11

A couple of  months ago a young university student contacted my law office seeking help in a dispute she was having with a university here in Colorado. [To protect my client’s privacy, I am using neither her name nor the name of the university. ] The previous week she had voiced opposition to Darwinism to her biology professor, who proceeded to scream at her, denigrate her religious views, and generally demean and humiliate her in front of the rest of the class.  After hearing her story I sent a demand letter to the university seeking redress.  Good news.  We resolved the matter on very favorable terms.

One of the terms we insisted on was a letter of apology from the professor. This is the full text of that letter:

Read More ›

This week’s debate on Unbelievable (the radio show which regularly features exchanges and dialogues between Christians and non-Christians) features a debate between Richard Weikart and Hector Avalos. From the podcast description: Richard Weikart is a Christian and professor of History at California State University. He has drawn controversial conclusions regarding the role of Darwinism in providing a rationale for Hitler’s Nazi ideology. Hector Avalos is an atheist and Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. He disagrees with Weikart, saying that Christian anti-semitism is the more likely explanation for Nazi ideology. To listen to this week’s show, go here.