TimChase
Posts: 5 Joined: Mar. 2005
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Quote | Perhaps one day the scientific community will be convinced that ID is worthwhile. Only through this route -- convincing the scientific community, a route already taken by plate tectonics, endosymbiosis, and other revolutionary scientific ideas -- can ID earn a legitimate place in textbooks.
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This article looks good -- but I am going to have to give it more time than I have right now. However, I am not sure how much of a respected place Intelligent Design can earn, given the nature of the beast. For example, in response to Behe's argument from irreducible complexity, the most important point in answering Behe (and his argument of Irreducible Complexity) is to recognize that once we declare a structure or protein to be irreducibly complex, and therefore the product of an intelligent designer, the inquiry ends, and there is no further explanation, no further attempt to understand how the thing came into being. This is the very opposite of science, where every discovery leads to further inquiry and further discoveries. Behe is simply dressing up the argument that "It is that way because God made it that way" in pseudoscientific language. This is similiarly the case when ever an intelligent designer is involked (unless one is willing to admit that one's intelligent designer is something which can be studied, experimentally prodded, and scientifically categorized -- not the kind of thing an ID adherent is wont to do.) It is thinking like that which would have left us stuck in the caves, entirely ignorant of electrons, microscopes, cells, DNA or proteins. But at the same time, detailed, technical responses to specific points raised by Behe (such as David R. Mitchell's recent article Speculations on the evolution of 9+2 organells and the role of central pair microtubules (pdf)) have considerable value -- if for no other reason than demonstrating that evolutionary theory is alive and well.
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