Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

“Science Wars” — transcripts now available

William Dembski
November 29, 2005
Intelligent Design
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The transcripts for the American Enterprise Institute’s October 21, 2005 shindig on ID (“Science Wars: Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design?”) are now available here: http://www.aei.org/events/filter.all,eventID.1169/transcript.asp.

Comments
"A complex biochemical machine has many parts. It has a function that natural selection can favor, but the individual parts, according to Dr. Nelson and Dr. Behe, have no function , and therefore, natural selection cannot shape them." Such a statement implies Miller is either stupid or dishonest. Either way, I'm glad he's on the other team.dougmoran
November 29, 2005
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I only read the 1st debate between Dr. Nelson and Dr. Miller. At least two things struck me. 1) The contention by Dr. Nelson that students are getting only one-half of the debate. That was a fair contention and he provided examples of journal articles and books including text books that are actively presenting the criticisms of ID. So the question "Should ID be taught in schools? is not the question. The question should be, "Should BOTH sides of the ID be taught? Should BOTH sides of evolution be taught?" 2) The other thing I gather just from reading, not from hearing, the debate was the "nervousness" on Dr. Miller's part. He was ready to jump at a moments notice; EVERY single thing he said about ID was negative; he put the straw man arguments time and time again; he misrepresented Dr. Nelson more than once; he actually misrepresented what was or what was not the most current literature on a top; etc. etc.. He is the little Dutch boy trying to plug ever leak in the dyke. One other thing Dr. Miller did that really troubled me. In talking about the possible precursors to the flagellum, he showed the simpler membrane and presented AS IF it was a precursor. But when Dr. Nelson asked him point blank if he thought the membrane was ancestral, Dr. Miller--diingeniously I thought--said, "I don't know." But then proceeded immediately to argue that he really did think it was ancestral. And another thing.... Bringing in Dr. Nelson's theological views. This is actually just another facet of the thing Dr. Nelson began with. Science textbooks allow the criticism of ID, but not the suport of it and that is supposedly OK!!! Dr. Miller wants to put Dr. Nelson's theological views on the table, but Dr. Miller is allowed simply to assert the he is "a Christian" and leave it at that. If it is important to know Dr. Nelson's theological views, I would like to know Dr. Miller's views on these subjects: miracles (do they occur? have they occured in real-time history?), inspiration of scripture (did God *really* speak to the prophets?), the resurrection of Christ (where is Jesus now?). I SUSPECT, but since he hasn't enlightened us don't know, the his views would be outside the stike zone of historical, orthodox Christian doctine.Red Reader
November 29, 2005
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yeah they aired that on cspan2 the other dayIDEA_AASU
November 29, 2005
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Kenneth Miller rebutted 2 strawman arguments for ID while claiming it was simply negative argumentation against evolution. I thought the guy was Catholic. Doesn't Catholicism have something to say about bearing false witness? At least he admitted ID was testable - but then failed to present an actual argument for ID to test (he presented the canard that ID claims no subsytem to an irreducibly complex system is functional, rebutted that, declared victory, and pranced around).jaredl
November 29, 2005
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As usual, the ID researchers smashed the evolutionists. On the topic of transcripts, it would be nice if the Discovery Institute put up the remaining Dover transcripts on their Dover page so we don't need to go to the webpages of the atheistic NCSE and the secularist ACLU.CharlesW
November 29, 2005
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