Mark Ryland at the Vatican Forum in Rome

Are you going to the conference, Dr. Dembski? I hope so. And I hope you will enjoy the beautiful Italian weather there.Red Reader

January 19, 2006

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I loved this quote from Pope John Paul II: “To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems.” The Darwinists love to scream that the IDers say, "God did it", leaving nothing more to be investigated. This is, of course, not true, and, as Pope John Paul pointed out, quite the reverse of the situation. Take for instance the case of so-called "gene recruitment". According to the neo-Darwinists this means that a gene has been modified in some way and taken over by some other part, or organ, of an organism--the 'modification' and the 'taking over' all done by chance. End of story. But understanding that we're dealing with an intelligence here, the natural questions that occurs to me are: Is there some kind of mechanism (cellular/genetic) that 'modifies' the gene? Is there some kind of regulatory system that is latent within the DNA, but which is now activated? The Darwinists, in the face of the 'recruitment' of genes, say, "Evolution did it" and move one. It's the IDers who have the questions---------but not the laboratories!PaV

January 19, 2006

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From the Boston Globe yesterday, one gets the story "Vatican Paper hits Intelligent Design." This does not seem bode well for convincing the catholic hierarchy of the scientific worthiness of ID. The article in Tuesday's L'Osservatore Romano quotes an evolutionary biologist from the University of Bologna as stating ID "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified." This echos remarks made by Vatican chief astronomer, Rev George Coyne, last year. Catholics, like all other christians believe in God and the risen Jesus Christ, but RC Church has taken its position that God does not need to intervene in nature to produce new species. That through his natural laws, new species including man will develop. Good Luck though I have my doubts about the reception Ryland's thoughts on Intelligent Design will recieve at the forum, especially if its primarily attended by Vatican personel, rather then the general public in Italy.doran

January 19, 2006

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Here's some other news from the Vatican that readers of this thread may find interesting: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1519041. This is one sentence which captured my attention: "Facchini said he recognized some Darwin proponents erroneously assume that evolution explains everything." What, exactly, does this mean? Is he saying that there are gaps in modern evolutionary theory? If there is something in life which lacks an adequate evolutionary explanation, then how do we know that evolution did it at all?crandaddy

January 19, 2006

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