GaryGaulin
Posts: 5385
Joined: Oct. 2012
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| Quote (Jerry Don Bauer @ Nov. 25 2012,10:04) | | Quote (Dr.GH @ Nov. 21 2012,21:41) | Jerry Don Bauer???
I am feeling old. |
You ARE old, Doc....lol...
OK, fed about 500 homeless and hungry people a NICE TG dinner in my ministry.....I think we can gear back up over the next few days.
I scanned back over the old thread and feel I pretty much answered the questions there if people will go back and read the posts in detail.
I would like to begin this thread by simply throwing out an olive branch; over the years I have noticed something about my friends on the other side: You seem a bit paranoid in that you hone in on the radicals who embrace Intelligent Design at the peril of grasping the overall perspective of it. You let them freak you out.
You ignore the majority of us who's views may not be that different than yours, or at least the majority of those who study origins as a science.
As example, I, as an individual, do not want to see Darwinism thrown out of public schools, I just want to see it taught in truth and it's tenets, both pro and con, examined in honesty. Is there something wrong with with truth in science? I think most of you would agree there isn't.
I would also like to see the tenets of ID taught in the same manner, after all, it was the concept of ID that brought us most science, a good chunk of philosopy; and the gist of theology throughout history. Yet, there are some (just as radical on the Dawrinist side, I'm afraid) who would like to see THIS fact ignored in our public schools because of THEIR religious beliefs.
Ignore the Ken Hams...most of us think their views are nuts as well. Examine the truths of a concept that has; and will forever more, permeate society around the world. And understand that this is NOT some newfangled concept designed to pull science out of schools and infuse religion therein. This is only what you've been told by some of your own radicals. Were the early philosophers religious nuts?
Socrates [1a], Plato, Diogenes, and Aristotle were just a few of the philosophers to argue for teleology when contemplating the origins of life. The opposite pole of the spectrum, the materialists, were represented by such great minds as Democritus, Leucippus of Elea, and Epicurus of Samos.
Socrates once presented the human eye as evidence of the wisdom of intelligent design:
"Is not that providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner conspicuous, which because the eye of man is delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, whereby to screen it, which extend themselves whenever it is needful, and again close when sleep approaches?…And cans't thou still doubt Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?"
Although theologically, ID is often traced back to Paley's watch on the heath, what is little known is that much earlier, it was firmly entrenched into philosophy and later, others would tie intelligent design directly into science.
Another example of the philosophy aspect was St. Thomas Aquinus' 5 ways where he mused both Intelligent Design and also conceived a Prime Mover in the universe hundreds of years before Newton would firmly entrench into science the same concept in the form of a law: objects at rest will stay at rest and objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by a force.
And, more specific to science, was the work of English physician William Harvey, considered by many to have laid the foundation for modern medicine. Harvey was the first to demonstrate the function of the heart and the circulation of the blood.[2]
According to Barrow and Tipler [3], Harvey deduced the mammalian circulatory system using the epistemology of teleology: "The way in which this respect for Aristotle was realized in Harvey's works seems to have been in the search for discernible purpose in the workings of living organisms- indeed, the expectation of purposeful activity . . . he tried to conceive of how a purposeful designer would have constructed a system of motion."
Harvey commented to Robert Boyle (the father of modern Chemistry) how he conceived the layout of the circulatory system. He reasoned the shape and positioning of the valves in the system and invited himself to imagine “that so Provident a cause as Nature had not so placed many values without Design; and no Design seem'd more possible than that, since the Blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent, by the veins to the limbs; it should be sent through the Arteries and return through the veins.”
Today, modern ID is a totally science based discipline that has no ghosts, gods, fairies, leprechauns or metaphysics in it anywhere. But you have to weed out those, just as are present on your side, who wish to twist and manipulate the discipline to suit their own religious beliefs,..... and they abound in number. Ignore them.....seek truth:
1) ID is a methodology that employs science and mathematics to detect purposeful design in systems and artifacts. That's it.
2) Other branches of science also use many of the same tenets to detect design in an artifact or a system such as paleontology, archeology, cryptography and forensics. Of course, when those same tenets are used in ID, often it is termed to not be science anymore by many detractors.
3) Forget the identity of a designer. Do you need to know the name of the designer of your hair dryer in order to know it was designed? Does an archeologist need to know the name of the designer to conclude that a primitive artifact is a tool rather than a rock?
One reason that ID does not require a designer in the form of a deity is that quantum mechanics now provides evidence of an observer to provide the wave-collapse function to make matter solids/waves in the universe. Many of us look to this as the designer. One may call this observer Christ, Allah or Yahweh, agnostics may not know what to call it, and atheists can call it quantum mechanics. ID is one-size-fits-all!
4) We provide a model for initial design based on quantum mechanics just as do molecular design engineers. Unfortunately, Darwinism provides no models at all for abiogenesis.
5) ID is not a theory. There is no "theory of ID." There is no such thing as ID biology or ID chemistry. We study science just as does everyone else.
6) Again: ID does not seek to replace evolution (We ARE evolutionists) or even Darwinism, but seeks to pull secular humanistic religion out of science altogether and base science back on the tenets of science. Something wrong with this?
7) There is tons of positive evidence to support ID ranging from the fossil record to probability mathematics to science based comparison studies using semiotics to complex symbiotic systems found in nature to redundant systems found in genomes.
So..... let's discuss.
[1a] This line of reasoning first condensed and compiled by Mike Gene. Please see reference 1 and read the Web Site listed under that reference.
[1] http://www.theism.net/article....le....2
Site managed by Mike Gene. KEY WORDS: gene, socrates, paley, barrow, darwin, teleology, materialism.
[1b] Paley, W. (1802). Natural Theology, Chapter One.
[2]Keynes, G. (1928). A bibliography of the writings of William Harvey, M.D., discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Cambridge Eng., University press.
[3] The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford Paperbacks), John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler. Chapter 1,
[4] Greek term for the end--teleology is a philosophy that muses completion, purpose, or a goal-driven process of any thing or activity. Aristotle argued that teleology is the final cause accounting for the existence and nature of a thing. Teleological: an explanation, theory, hypotheses or argument that emphasizes purpose.
Recommended reading: F. M. J. Waanders, History of Telos and Teleo in Ancient Greek (Benjamins, 1984)
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Jerry, before I have to stick a fork into this overcooked forum then call it done, I wanted to let you know that (from what this forum was saying about you) I was impressed by your answers. Earlier on you were discussing quantum mechanics and right away this illustration for showing that relationship came to my mind:
https://sites.google.com/site.......ion.GIF
Personally, I do not see the “Creator” being intelligent as we are, does not have to be to “create” life. Something intelligent starts off its life knowing nothing at all, has to learn from scratch. Something all-knowing would simply exist. An always was, and always will be, sort of thing.
One area I did disagree with is there not being or needing a scientific Theory of Intelligent Design. Without it there is no way of knowing who is making more sense. In fact (although I still do not see a coherent theory from elsewhere) I used to be on the other side of the argument parroting “ID is not science” and the other slogans I picked up on the internet. That began to change after I realized that I had what I needed to clinch the theory. After following the evidence with it, I had to admit that it was an excellent scientific challenge.
The theory made me more accepting of Genesis but not religiously, I now see it as an ancient scientific theory that for its day was not that bad at all. Sure better than Greek and Roman mythology. It did not make a church goer though. My wife (a Catholic) goes with friends and/or her mother to the church she was brought up in, while I worked on projects that reconcile science and religion. After starting work on the theory that became my Sunday mission. With my having been brought up a Methodist I was in training to be a religious leader, as opposed to a follower, then when I was older finally graduated. By that time I was glad I didn’t have to go to Sunday School anymore, in part because of the teachings making little scientific sense. I still saw myself as a religious leader but from the science side of the divide that needs reconciling. I’m also still just as doubtful about ritual saving a person’s soul. It’s often used as a way to feel better for another week of being cruel to others, an excuse to do it again. If we keep coming back again (with no memory since intelligence is forced to learn from scratch each time) then it’s possible that we do in fact make our own hell where we in a sense suffer by experiencing the pain we knowingly caused to others, or the effects of change that hurts those who follow.
But before I go on all night about my personal religious views: Thanks to the theory I can now say that you are making more sense than your adversaries are. Without intelligence being part of the genetic mechanism there is almost no chance at all that living things could exist. That helps explain why CSI and such also exists, even though the odds of it are nearly zero. But as I earlier mentioned our Creator does not need to be intelligent, just the part of us that connects us to the Creator must be. Whether our Creator is consciously seeing through the eyes of all living things in the universe cannot be determined. But it now seems more scientifically possible than ever, thanks to the insight I gained from following the evidence where it leads, from the Theory of Intelligent Design.
All in all I still have to say I was impressed by your above reply, and later answers. So keep up the good work Jerry!
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The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
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