Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Why ID Theory Has Caused so Much Controversy (or, the Rigorous Versus the Purely Philosophical)

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At UD there has been much discussion about Thomism, final causes, and the like. This stuff has been around for centuries, but we have never seen books from people like Barbara Forrest with titles like, “Thomists and Final-Cause Advocates Want to Impose a Theocracy and Destroy Science!” But we have seen such outrage and irrational screaming about ID theory. Why is this?

The answer is simple and obvious. ID theory is rigorous. It’s based on the hard sciences of information theory, computation, probabilistic mathematics, and the limits of chemical reactions, stochastic processes, and the Darwinian mechanism to produce what we see in nature — in particular, information-rich systems with the requisite hardware and software.

Let’s face it, the reason ID has created such an uproar is that it has attacked materialistic philosophy on its own grounds, and has demonstrated in rigorous terms why its propositions are simply not credible.

Comments
I'll throw in a question of my own. Let’s face it, the reason ID has created such an uproar is that it has attacked materialistic philosophy on its own grounds, and has demonstrated in rigorous terms why its propositions are simply not credible. But isn't ID entirely compatible with materialism? Granted, it would be a variety of materialism that affirms design in the universe - but the inference of design is explicitly said to be compatible with infinite regresses of (material) designers, the simulation hypothesis, and so on.nullasalus
April 10, 2011
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Okay, Gil, I'll take the bait. So why isn't Thomism considered radical? Is it because it isn't very scientific? How is that, wasn't Aquinas the foundation of scientific theory for , oh, 500 years or so?Robert Sheldon
April 10, 2011
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