Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

More “I don’t like ID” stuff (this time from the Jewish tradition)

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Closing our religion coverage for the day (thanks, God!), here’s some guy at the Jerusalem Post announcing that he

… disliked the Intelligent Design concept since I first heard about it several years ago. From the theological standpoint, I believe that the theory is deeply flawed. It is simply a new version of a very old error: the God of the Gaps fallacy. To put it simply, the God of the Gaps fallacy argues that God is to be defined as mystery. Where there is mystery, there is God: if we find something in the world we don’t understand, the explanation is always the same: God did it.

This is an incredibly lazy approach to the world. When explanations for objects and events are found—as they must always be—the God of this fallacy inevitably shrinks. Needless to say, those caught in the grip of this fallacy inevitably fear explanations. Each time humanity’s understanding of the universe grows, a little piece of their God chips away. They little realize that they’re worshiping a false God who needs to disappear.

So the guy doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about re intelligent design? He can trash it anyway with no penalty?

Nice racket to get a job in. Not sure how how it helps the publication.

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).

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Comments
Please reconsider the title of this post: "from Jewish Tradition" the fact that the Jerusalem Post publishes it not withstanding About the Author: website of the author of the article referred to: http://nettelhorst.com/blog1/about-me/ I’m married with three daughters. I live in southern California and I’m a deacon at Quartz Hill Community Church. I teach Bible, Theology, and languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac at the small church-based seminary Quartz Hill School of Theology. And I write books. I spent a couple of summers while I was in college working on a kibbutz in Israel. In 2004, I was a volunteer with the Ansari X-Prize at the winning launches of SpaceShipOne. I’m a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion, and The Authors Guild. - See more at: http://nettelhorst.com/blog1/about-me/#sthash.n5rib1xH.dpuf R.P. Nettelhorst, sitting under a tree at Quartz Hill Community Church.es58
January 21, 2015
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In regards to OOL there is also a tremendous amount of work to be done before being able to conclude that it's impossible to figure out. I suspect that intelligence was very much at work, but like all others I needed a theory before being able to honestly claim that I have one. And with OOL being one of the least funded and most embattled sciences of them all it's no surprise that very few are in that field. It's such a labor of love (to starve in) that colleges and universities often will not even offer it to students.Gary S. Gaulin
January 19, 2015
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Gary Sorry for the double pasting above, not sure what happened. You see ID as a God(or Intelligence) of the gaps proposal and yet, evolution is exactly the same here. If you can not show how evolution began life and yet know "evolution" did it (without any Intelligent Agent), with respect to OOL at the very least, the current theory of evolution is an "evolution" of the gaps argument. They have been trying for over 60 years to find a chemical origin of life to no avail.Cross
January 19, 2015
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I do not like to mix science and philosophy (Naturalism). In science something either exists or it does not. Period. Philosophical concepts such as "natural" and "supernatural" really only work in religion. Both words have long been used (by one side or another) to try stopping the scientific search for our Creator, whatever or whoever that may be.Gary S. Gaulin
January 19, 2015
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Gary @ 5 "there is still a fantastic amount of hard science work to be done before there are testable scientific theories to reliably conclude one way or another about a lot of things." Like OOL? If life did not occur naturally, ie chemical evolution, then an outside intelligence is required. "there is still a fantastic amount of hard science work to be done before there are testable scientific theories to reliably conclude one way or another about a lot of things." And yet, Evolution is confirmed as not theory but fact.Cross
January 19, 2015
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I agree Cross that there is still a fantastic amount of hard science work to be done before there are testable scientific theories to reliably conclude one way or another about a lot of things. That's my point, we are not there yet. And writing about not being there yet is not a scientific theory.Gary S. Gaulin
January 19, 2015
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Gary @ 1 "And now that computer models are getting better at demonstrating the sorting processes involved in the formation of our solar system" From science.nasa.gov "More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe." No one has yet detected actual dark matter or dark energy. If I could fudge my computer programming by 95% I bet I could get the right answers too.Cross
January 19, 2015
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Mahuna:
But ID remains a Theory,
I am not interested in buying your book(s) that tells me what I already know, all over again. I already spent a decade studying the ID controversy and all the damage done to those who in good faith took you at your word about having a scientific theory for the US public schools that would even withstand a court challenge. If what you said is true then you will have no problem explaining how "intelligent cause" works, by providing a testable model of your own for me to help test for you. That is what a scientific theory is and is for, so where is it?Gary S. Gaulin
January 19, 2015
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Gary @ 1, have you read ANYTHING about Intelligent Design? I've read a fair piece, and NOWHERE in ANY of it does ANYONE attempt to diminish God. ID is about the same sense of Wonder that humans have had since we first appeared. We explore something with our unique minds and discover that it shows unmistakable signs of another intelligence at work. And we can't explain how the wonder was designed, much less how it was constructed. And so we gaze in awe and wonder, knowing that we could do only the tiniest piece of what we see. And when we attempt to plug any reasonable set of values into the variables of an equation that simulates mere chance (like the Drake Equation), the odds of getting what we see around us are so vanishingly small as to be ruled out by all but the most diehard fanatics. But ID remains a Theory, and scientists like Professor Behe continue to ask others to offer alternate explanations for what they've found. Instead, what the opponents of ID CONTINUOUSLY do, and what this Jerusalem Post writer has again done, is intentionally MISREPRESENT the ID Theory, and then denounce their own misrepresentation. So, Gary, read some books, come to understand the problems with previous theories, and get yourself a clear idea of what is actually being proposed under Intelligent Design.mahuna
January 19, 2015
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I have to say that although the ID movement is a mix of competing ideas I have to agree that its most visible leadership does favor God in/of the Gaps arguments, which now include the belief that the universe was "fine tuned" by an intelligent designer that has since disappeared. Suggesting that God is either gone or is dead is alienating to much of mainstream religion. Throwing insults for their explaining the contradictions is helping to make ID an enemy of religion. And now that computer models are getting better at demonstrating the sorting processes involved in the formation of our solar system I expect the "fine tuned" (by a supernatural God) hypothesis to ultimately prove to be false. In either case it is best to wait until there is enough evidence to reliably conclude one way or another.Gary S. Gaulin
January 18, 2015
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