Evolution

Those of you who’ve followed my posts and comments will have picked up that my view of Intelligent Design is pretty complicated. On the one hand, I defend design inferences, even strong design inferences. I’m entirely comfortable with questioning Darwinism (if that view still has enough content to identify it as a clear position, anyway), and have a downright dismissive view of both naturalism (if that view… etc) and atheism. I regularly see the ID position butchered, mangled and misrepresented by its detractors, most of whom should and probably do know better.

On the flipside, I don’t think ID (or for that matter, no-ID) is science, even if I reason that if no-ID is science then so is ID. My personal leaning has always been towards theistic evolution, and I see evolution as yet another instance of design rather than something which runs in opposition to it – a view which I know some ID proponents share, but certainly not all. I think non-scientific arguments for and inferences to design have considerable power, and see little reason to elevate particular arguments simply because some insist they’re “scientific”.

Here’s another part of that flipside, and the subject of today’s post. One of the more prominent ID arguments hinges on the trichotomy of Chance, Necessity, and Design. The problem for me is that I question the very existence of Chance, and I see Necessity as subsumable under Design.

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In the last year and a bit I’ve done a lot of work in trying to understand and then critique the approach of Dr. Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute in Cambridge (UK). I know that many readers of UD are familiar with Alexander’s big-selling work, “Creation or Evolution – Do We Have To Choose?”. This book is probably (alongside Francis Collins) the work with the most traction by Darwinists seeking to argue from a Biblical Christian viewpoint. I’ve previously drawn attention to IVP’s “Should Christians Embrace Evolution”. In this post I want instead to draw attention to my own response, “Creation or Evolution – Why We Must Choose”. If you don’t want to read the blurb and just want Read More ›

Science and scientists, especially in America, are wonderful. I am currently laying on my couch, playing music from my laptop, and will probably turn on my HDTV later on to just enjoy a nice relaxing evening. Without scientists none of this would be possible.

However, sometimes scientists need to “know their role.” What I mean by that is how whenever faced with a dissenting viewpoint, some scientists tend to produce massive arguments to discredit the dissenter; one of the problem with this, however, is their arguments are based upon logical fallacies. That might make for a good way to vent, but it doesn’t make it a good argument.

Take, for instance, Dawkins, Panda’s Thumb, et al, and their recent treatment of Dembski’s class curriculum. I could offer quotes, but I’m sure we’ve seen most of them. Rather, what I believe to be an adequate summary of the arguments against Dembski’s curriculum is as follows:

“Bill DUMzki r dum! LOL! Iz Xian + ID = soopid. Dawkins r in Demzkis boat, eatin all hiz cookies! LOL!!!!1111!!1!!11!!!1”

I wish I could say I were exaggerating, but unfortunately the only thing I changed was the composition of the words.

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The Vatican apparently seeks to understand biological evolution, as long as speakers do not address the issue of origins whether advocates of Intelligent Design, Creationists, or Evolutionists. That appears to a priori exclude the foundational issue of causation. It also appears to assume that papers on “biological evolution” do not have any unstated assumptions on mechanisms or causes. It will be interesting to see the papers and results from this conference. See following articles and Dembski’s previous post: The Pope Circling Around ID:
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“Intelligent design” not science: Vatican evolution congress to exclude creationism, intelligent design

Speakers invited to attend a Vatican-sponsored congress on the evolution debate will not include proponents of creationism and intelligent design, organizers said.

The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 2009 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.” Read More ›

Professor Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, has argued that science teachers in the UK should allow alternatives to evolution to be discussed in the science classroom such as creationism and intelligent design. Banning such discussions he argues is counterproductive and only serves to alienate school children from science, especially with so many children from Muslim, Christian and Jewish backgrounds in the state education system. He commented that; “My experience after having tried to teach biology for 20 years is if one simply gives the impression that such children are wrong, then they are not likely to learn much about the science…” Reiss, who is an ordained Church of England Minister, was speaking at the British Association Read More ›

A very interesting programme on the problem of inbreeding with pedigree dogs has recently been shown on BBC 1 in the UK; “Pedigree dogs exposed,” Tuesday 19th August 2008 21.00 BST. Although this programme didn’t set out to be anti Darwinian, there are some very interesting observations that come out of it that are really quite damaging to neo-Darwinian explanations. In fact the programme stated that the whole concept of purebred dogs came out of the eugenics movement of the 19th century.

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Cross-posted at The Christian Watershed

On May 8, 1945 the German government officially surrendered to the Allied Forces, thus ending the War in Europe (the War in the Pacific would continue another three months). The Nazis was a horrible government that aside from its treatment of the Jewish people and other “unwanted,” regularly practiced infanticide. Their justification for such an action was they believed the perfect human (read: healthiest human) was the Aryan human; all other babies of unwanted races or that were not healthy at birth were killed off.

63 years later we are faced with a Nazi-like mentality once again – this time, however, the threat is occurring in the nations that defeated Nazism in the first place. The London Times has reported that parents are on the verge of having an easy, non-invasive procedure done to determine if their child has Down’s Syndrome. If so, the parents are then left with the choice to abort the pregnancy or prepare for a child with special needs.

I must ask, how is this way of thinking any different from the Nazi mentality of killing off weaker children in order to have a better society? I know that such a question will automatically get people to accuse me of downplaying the Holocaust, attempting to compare a medical procedure to the horrors of the Holocaust, and that somehow I’m an anti-Semite for bringing this issue up (even though I’m an ethnic Jew), but I believe it is a very legitimate question. How is the mentality that it’s okay to abort a child with Down’s Syndrome – because he won’t lead a productive life, is weak, and will be “inadequate” according to our definition of normal – any different from the Nazi way of thinking? Read More ›