You will always be # 1
By me.

Dougie.

You will always be,
Number 1 by me.

Kutless- Shut Me Out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_2TE7dldGs

Barry congratulations and best wishes for your new role

Welcome Barry. Enjoy your past essays, and the comments they have engendered!

One of my favorites, and one I have cited on occasion, is the keynote address delivered at the Research and Progress in Intelligent Design Conference at Biola University, 10/25/02.

http://www.designinference.com.....cience.htm

In it, he not only states well the case for ID as science, and its potential benefits, but summarizes well its inherent problems, and posits possible solutions. Unfortunately, many of these problems are still with us, specifically, the need for ‘on the bench’ and ‘in the lab’ projects. I see that as our next major hurdle, but feel it is achievable. From the address, Bill said,

“Intelligent design as a scientific and intellectual project has many sympathizers but few workers. The scholarly side of our movement at this time consists of a handful of academics and independent researchers. These numbers need to swell, and we need to be properly networked. We need to know who’s out there working on what.

To this end the Internet will prove invaluable. Intelligent design is at this time still an academic pariah. Consequently, it is difficult to concentrate our forces in any one institution. And yet, when I speak about intelligent design on university campuses, I almost invariably encounter at least one scientist on faculty eager to do research pertinent to intelligent design.”

On the surface, little seems to have changed. We still see academia and the science foundations as vehemently opposed to ID, or to any rational challenges to evolutionary theory as currently stated, a variant form of cultural inertia. But what we don’t see as clearly, is the upcoming crop of new scientists, who, given the enclave of logic and reason that ID has provided, and from enlightenment, not just via the classroom, but from the plethora of the more balanced and objective sources that the Internet provides, will not be as willing to accept the time worn and outdated paradigm that has stubbornly persisted. As the old dogs retire, the new pups will have prominence.

If ID has stagnated to a degree, let’s dust it off and renew it, perhaps referring to it as neoID. I’ll make a prediction. We will soon see a new enlightenment period emerge, based not on philosophical enlightenment, but on factual emergent data. These revelations will add to our understanding of origins, and perhaps, provide a better understanding of our place in the cosmos.

Darwin’s 150 year anniversary is upon us, and I will make a second prediction. It will be remembered, and rightly so, as commemorative of Charles Darwin, but allegorically, if Darwin’s theory is viewed as a projectile, then 2009 will have been its apex.

May it outlast and outshine PT, SW, PZ, RD and …