Comments on: The Discovery Institute’s Misplaced Outrage

By: Bob Calder

Bob Calder — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 16:01:44 +0000

Getting back to the top somewhere, the attack has to be ad hominem because there is no argument to dispute. The ID position is ignorant. Ignorance is not a point of view. Period. Some of the proponents (quoted) misuse information which is stupid rather than ignorant. This makes them evil in an essential manner I find indisputable.
I defer to Philosopher’s technical expertise in correcting me. I beleive the ID argument is the result of emotional attachment to poor theology.

By: Robert Landbeck

Robert Landbeck — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:00:43 +0000

COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED. A real monkey wrench is about to hit both sides in the ID vs Evolution debate and particularly religion is in for difficult times. For a wholly new interpretation of the teachings of Christ, contained within the first ever religious claim and proof that meets all the criteria of the most rigorous, evidential, testable scientific method, is published and circulating on the web. It is titled The Final Freedoms. An intellectual, religious and political bombshell!
It is described as a single Law and moral principle, offering its own proof, one in which the reality of God confirms and responds to an act of perfect faith, by a direct intervention into the natural world, providing a correction to human nature including a change in natural law [biology], consciousness and human ethical perception [proof of the soul], providing new, primary insight and understanding of the human condition!
So while proponents of ID may have got the God part right, if this development demonstrates itself to be what it claims, and the means exist to do so, all religious teaching, tradition and understanding of ID are wholly in error, while the proponents of evolution who have rightly used that conception to beat down the credibility of religious tradition, but who have also used it to deny the potential for God, are in for a very rude shock.
However improbable, the impossible now looks all too possible. No joke, no hoax and not spam. The implications defy the imagination!
Pre publication review copies of the manuscript, The Final Freedoms, are a free pdf download at http://www.energon.uklinux.net and http://thefinalfreedoms.bulldoghome.com

By: MDymond

MDymond — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:47:02 +0000

Just an opinion, and we all seem laden with those, but perhaps we should focus our efforts, leaving our thining egos at home, on a serious search for the origins of humanity and maybe even, “why we are.” Let’s leave God out of this.
A little cooperation and, most needed, a little collaboration would go a long, long way.
We need a clear, unobstructed view. Is that too much to ask…to hope for?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 08:22:12 +0000

Ericl,
I most strongly must disagree with your depiction of “Biblical astronomy” particularly what you claim as the Jewish version. You really ought to get a hold of yourself and carefully read Judah Landa’s recent work titled IN THE BEGINNING OF, A NEW LOOK AT OLD WORDS. You will discover that what you think about the Bible could not be further from the truth.

By: DaveScot

DaveScot — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:35:23 +0000

Ed’s now trying to insist on Panda’s Thumb that ID cannot be separated into Cosmic ID and Biological ID.

http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001179.html#more

Ed says:

Their own definition combines biological ID with cosmological ID, which means the designer is responsible not only for living things, but for creating the universe itself.

I wholly agree with Ed that Cosmic ID is metaphysical. It’s countered by theoretical physics’ multiverses and there are no experiments or further observations in either Cosmic ID or the competing multiverse theories that will forward either argument.

However, Biological ID is not just metaphysical and may be considered separately from Cosmic ID. We can’t duplicate or test multiple universes but we can certainly slice & dice the machinery of life. Humanity can already make directed genetic changes (intelligent design) to living things and I stand ready to throw a genetically engineered rotten tomato at anyone who disagrees. So while designing a universe probably requires omnipotent Godlike powers, designing a flagella only requires a human genetic engineer, a gene splicing machine, time, and money.

That is what separates Cosmic ID from Biological ID and contrary to Ed’s assertion that ID proponents must embrace both or neither they must do no such thing – CID and BID are separate claims.

By: Walt Glazewski

Walt Glazewski — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:36:02 +0000

It’s always interesting to me to read the various comments reflecting differing points of view concerning the “ID/Evolution” saga. I once read a definition of “metaphysics” that really appealed to me: “. . . the branch of philosophy in which is studied the ultimate nature of existence or reality. . . . There are countless metaphysics, because everyone who has ever wondered whence everything came and what it all means is a practicing metaphysician who has come up with a metaphysical system: an explanation that seems reasonable to one’s self.” In the final analysis, though, we really don’t know “what’s behind it all,” do we? And so, one picks an explanation “that seems reasonable to one’s self.”
I appreciate the term “Intelligent Design.” It’s wide open: one can interpret it in a way which seems reasonable to one’s self. Personally, the term “Creationism” (if it defines “God” in Old Testament terms, as a sort of super-person who created Adam and Eve, and who decrees punishment for those who transgress, etc., etc.) is repugnant to me. However, to think in terms–not of a finite “super-person,” but as a Presence throughout the universe, an intelligence, a “force” everywhere present–Hey! that sounds reasonable to me. (I’m afraid, though, I can’t even explain this or make this concept understandable to a relative, who happens to be a Fundamentalist Christian! Ah, well, such is life.
I have little hope that diehard advocates of either side of this ID/evolution debate are going to change their thinking. Anyway, I’ll just keep reading the blogs, and enjoying the differences of opinion. (I’ll be damned, however, if I get too emotionally upset over someone who believes differently from me.)

By: DaveScot

DaveScot — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:24:21 +0000

The Discovery Institute is a U.S. based organization. As such it draws members from a population that is 80% Christian and 10% some other form of theism. Agnostics and atheists make up the final 10%. It's little wonder that the overwhelming majority of DI members are theists.

On the other hand the National Academy of Science is also a U.S. based organization and draws from the same overwhelmingly theist population. Yet its membership consists of 72% atheists, 21% agnostics, and 7% theists.

Obviously, the religiously biased organization is the NAS as its membership's religious beliefs are far from reflective of the general population. Yet the NAS is the gold standard for advice to gov't entities setting science policy standards.

What's wrong with that picture?

Scientifically, politically, and philosophically the evolution/ID debate is predominantly atheists vs. everyone else. Politically this spells quick disaster for the evolution side because atheists are quite small in number amongst voters. Their only hope of a political win is to convince enough judges that ID is really religion and violates the first amendment establishment clause if promoted by the gov't in any way, shape, or form including research funding and public school curricula.

There are two primary reasons why principal ID advocates distance ID from religion.

First of all, it's the truth. There is nothing religious or unnatural about intelligent design. Humans are intelligent and according to evolution we arose naturally. Humans already tinker with the genetic makeup of living things. In order to reject ID as non-science one must a priori accept that humans are the only intelligent force in the universe now or ever. Such an assertion is blind faith in secular humanism and certainly not a scientific assertion. Priveleged Planet indeed. According to evolutionists mankind is so privileged as to be assuredly the only intelligent force in the universe. So the first reason ID proponents distance it from religion is because ID truly is agnostic from a scientific viewpoint.

The second reason ID proponents distance it from religion is political. If the opposition succeeds in branding ID a religion then ID is denied access to public funding for research and mention in public schools while atheist-approved evolution enjoys both funding and non-critical presentation as fact in public schools.

That leaves us with philosophical considerations of evolution and ID. Both have implications that can be drawn for use by theistic and/or atheistic views. Most sciences have philosophic implications. Science is about knowledge and philosophy certainly isn't divorced from knowledge. Philosophical implications are irrelevant. Empirical evidence is empirical evidence in science no matter how philosophers choose to use it in their non-scientific arguments.

By: John West

John West — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:34:35 +0000

I have posted a response to Ed Brayton's comments about my previous blog here.

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:35:37 +0000

Ed,
I didn’t make the argument that ID is religious in nature because ID advocates are religious
Thanks for clarifying. I think it’s easy to see how that impression comes from your article when you say “they must pretend that ID is purely a scientific matter that deals with inferences of design”
I made the argument that ID advocates (at least the ones of which I spoke) say contradictory things on the matter
Ironically, though, your citations do not support that argument. You haven’t shown Person X saying at one time, “ID is about validating the claims of the Bible” and at another time “ID is not about religion.” There are enough people interested in ID that Person X may have a different viewpoint than Person Y, but that doesn’t mean either of them is being dishonest. Or even if Persons X and Y are being dishonest, that shouldn’t necessarily reflect on Person Z.
It also seems perfectly valid to me for a person to support ID because of their personal religious beliefs, yet in their formal scientific arguments they leave the identity of the “designer” as an open question.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 03:53:09 +0000

It’s probably unwise to so directly conflate ID and scriptural versions of creationism. The former tries (at least nominally) to run an argument that does not depend on scripture or revelation; so it goes no distance at all towards refuting it to run a _reductio_ on the latter’s use of the Bible.