Hip-Hop Band Weighs in on ID

_{William Dembski

July 28, 2005

Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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Here’s an email I just received that signals the extent to which ID is making cultural inroads:

[T]he message on Darwinian Evolution is getting out to the young people. Check out this hip-hop band’s song called “Agency”. It is an all out attack on Macro-evolution, Chemical Evolution, Common Descent, even Scientific Naturalism, on the whole. The song also states that “ID is a more possible explanation” and is very friendly to the ID movement and general ID thesis. This rapper is genuinely angry about the rhetoric employed by Darwinists-basing most of their arguments against ID on ad-hominem attacks and “Creationist” labels, in their refutation of ID, rather than addressing the scientific merits of the theory .

If the pop-culture is starting to understand the gross inadequacies of Neo-Darwinism to explain the origins and the diversity of life in this universe, perhaps a paradigm shift is closer than we think.

The band is called FM108 and tackles issues of biological origins, in addition to issues of criminal justice, particularly wrongful convictions and a variety of other pressing world issues. For more info contact me at: [snip]

Hear the song “Agency” by FM108 @ http://www.newmusiccanada.com/genres/artist.cfm?mode=longBio&Band_Id=13736

Comments

[...] Agency, by FM108. [...]Teleological Blog » For the Record: Intelligent Design’s Audio and Video, its Hip-Hop and More on Music_{September 16, 2005
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listen at your own risk Imagine Linkin Park on an off day, mixed with a beat cribbed from a Yamaha keyboard, vocals by your jaded high school biology teacher....decorabilia_{July 30, 2005
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I do have to ask. What does hip-hop have to do with science? There are at least two songs that I have heard in the last few years that speak about Darwinism and Darwinists are not jumping for joy. It is the up and coming scientists that determine new paradigms, not the up and coming musicians. Also, country musicians, or even pop music, talk about God in their songs and this publicity has not changed science (I am not saying that ID focuses on God, but rather my point is that just because a trend in music talks about a particular subject matter that is against mainstream science does not mean that will be the new paradigm in the future). "Kennedy is no scientist or philosopher of science, so presumably he has spoken to the experts, who assure him that intelligent design is not science. Indeed, Kennedy himself offers no argument for why intelligent design fails to be a scientific theory. So, is that how the public debate over intelligent design's role in public school sciences classes will end? Experts on one side will say that it is a genuine science and experts on the other will say it isn't? And politicians will then take their cues from their preferred experts?" --Dembski "Edward Kennedy -- Expert on Science?" sartre_{July 30, 2005
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Speaking of hymn and music, one of the fore-fathers of ID, Marcel Shutzenberger wrote at http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm: "Speaking ironically, I might say that all we can hear at the present time is the great anthropic hymnal, with even a number of mathematically sophisticated scholars keeping time as the great hymn is intoned by tapping their feet." We can now add anthropic hip-hop to the hymns. scordova_{July 29, 2005
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The whole opus of sacred classical music that more and more young people listen is a hymnal of ID movement. How on earth do you explain such beauty using only material causes?Srdjan_{July 28, 2005
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More and more young people is embracing ID, very good!!!Daniel512_{July 28, 2005
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ID has tremendous cultural appeal and that will only hasten the inroads it will make, I recall that this last spring I was making a presentation at the invitation of the FreeThinkers, an atheist and agnostic college group, I was discussing the influence ID had on Antony Flew's conversion from atheism to theism. The one comment, of all things that got the warmest reaction out of the crowd of atheist and agnostics was when I said, "when I think of the girl I'm going out with, I often think, 'only God could have made her.' " They all said, "awhhhhhh"... I think, somewhat seriously, that there is much material that would be good themes for an ID friendly song that would have broad appeal, and in many ways show the philosophical superiority of conclusions derived from the scientific inferences of ID over the philosophical positions of Weinberg and Dawkins. As Polanyi pointed out, the scientific enterprise is fueled by human passion, despite the fact it is supposedly meant to be a dispassionate undertaking. The culture is ripe for being infused with a renewed passion for science in the "search for purpose in the universe" (the subtitle of Richards and Gonzalez "Privileged Planet"). The theme of universal purpose which ID suggests, the extravagance and beuaty of nature, the wonder of romantic love -- all these are well allied with the the underlying ID inferences of the movie Privileged Planet. It would be a theme that song writers can cash in on and which would help infuse ID deeper into the mainstream. I remember being at the Smithsonian when Guilermo Gonzalez said, the original title of "Privileged Planet" was something like, "The Correlation of Habitability and Discoverability". The audience was absolutely in stitches laughing. Ahh, all the difference a little re-packaging makes! Early in my foray into ID, I recall reading the conversion of Harvard PhD, Patrick Glynn. His exposure to Darwinism at a young age made him an atheist. It was his love affair with his eventual wife, Gabrielle, that made him friendly to ID, and coupled with scientific discoveries, he eventually rejected his Darwinian views and became ID friendly. Glynn wrote: "I embraced skepticism at an early age when I first learned of DarwinÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s theory of evolution in, of places, Catholic grade school. By the time I received my PhD (at Harvard) at the end of the 1970s, I was a convinced atheist. The embrace of atheism did not bring joy. Somewhere, I had clung to the hope that I might be proven wrong. The day I grasped that the entire tradition of Western philosophy, from ancient to modern times, was essentially a refutation of idea of GodÃ¢â‚¬â€was not a happy one. But the conclusion seemed inescapable." His change of heart happened when he had: "an encounter with love sufficiently deep to bring an intimation of the divine... I encountered Gabriele. Someone once said that it is hard to fall in love without thinking of God. Such was my experience. Ours was a wonderful romance that would culminate in marriage two years later. But these romantic feelings pointed me toward something deeper.... For reasons that I hardly understood, I began to utter from time to time a little prayer of thanksgiving.... .... I turned to the physical sciences and discovered that the random, materialistic universe had effectively been refuted or overtaken by an entirely new vision." I'm sure some innovative song writer could cash in on these themes. What a wonderful way to inspire interest in the scientific enterprise of ID.scordova_{July 28, 2005
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FM108 could be the Buddy Davis of the ID movement. :)Qualiatative_{July 28, 2005
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