Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991 Joined: May 2002
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I hit a page I wrote years back and noticed that I had proposed some counter-questions...
Dembski's "Intelligent design" questions for teachers -- answered
Quote | Appendix: Ten Questions About "Intelligent Design"
Q1. Why do "Intelligent Design" advocates talk about "Intelligent Design theory", but have never actually proposed a theory that passes scientific muster?
Q2. If "Intelligent Design" were true, there should be biological systems that we have a lot of data about their origin and for which we should not find any plausible evolutionary process to explain it. Why have none of these sort of systems been found?
Q3. In the "Intelligent Design" textbook, Of Pandas and People (OPAP), it talks about how transitional fossils in the whale lineage are lacking, and that maybe they never existed. Since OPAP was published, many whale fossils have been found that fill in the periods in question. Why should we consider the current claims of "Intelligent Design" advocates to be any more reliable than the claim about fossil whales in OPAP?
Q4. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why do "Intelligent Design" advocates do much of their speaking at churches?
Q5. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why are there 900 articles returned for a search on "cold fusion" from the ISI Web of Knowledge, over 900 articles returned from searching PubMed for "horse feces", and almost none for the sort of thing that "Intelligent Design" advocates mean when they say "intelligent design"?
Q6. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why is it that only Christians can be officers of IDEA Clubs?
Q7. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why did William Dembski say that it was merely the Logos theology stated in the idiom of information theory?
Q8. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why have "Intelligent Design" advocates spent most of their time trying to change K-12 science classes, and hardly any of their time trying to convince the scientific community that they have a good, scientific idea?
Q9. If "Intelligent Design" is all about science, why does the Discovery Institute hire a big public relations firm like "Creative Response Concepts" instead of funding some research studies?
Q10. If "Intelligent Design" is all about paradigm-changing science, why can you find earlier forms of all their arguments in earlier creationist and natural theology literature?
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-------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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