To distinguish these from Intelligent Design, they could be called Intelligent Intervention. Alternatively, the empirical evaluation could be considered ass a subset of Intelligent Design in the broader sense of empirically identifying intelligent causation.

“From your list of refereed monographs and journal articles, I expect you should be able to objectively evaluate Intelligent Design sufficient to grasp its foundational concepts. (Assuming you can lay aside personal prejudices or other issues you may have with religion or with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems and other ID practitioners.)”

I would also add: Assuming you can lay aside your bias and personal religious attachments to atheism as an a priori truth. I wonder do you have the integrity and courage to look beyond your own predisposition, or will you forever look with the self-serving arrogance of a true believer. You’re a religion professor. Define true believer. Can you not see how it applies to you? No, I suppose not. That is afterall the characteristic of a true believer, blindness and discrimination.

A genuine search for truth demands a willingness to sacrafice our own sacred cows whenever the light of evidence shows them to be transparent. However, it seems that Darwinists fight for survival by creating strawmen to slay. If you knew how transparent this practice of equating Intelligent Design to your imagined concept of Christian God is, you would see why Darwinism is so rapidly failing in the eyes of honest observers around the world.

Very well said.

I also add that Dr Avalos may find it useful to read the online chapters [and then the paper version] of the book that launched the biological form of ID, Thaxton et al’s The Mystery of Life’s Origin. Follow up readings on developments since then should of course also be helpful, but we are dealing with primary foundational sources here].

A browse of say Barrow and Tipler’s work on the Anthropic Principle may then be a good start to seeing where those who are talking on the Cosmological side of inference to design are coming from. Follow up readings in the likes of say Sir Fred Hoyle, and of course lastly but not leastly Mr Gonzalez’s own work may help see what those who are looking at cosmological design issues are saying.

But then, of course, as a duly appointed full professor at ISU, Dr Avalos knows that going to the original sources is a basic principle of professional scholarship.

GEM of TKI

Having read some of your comments on Intelligent Design, may I encourage you to read original ID source material sufficient to grasp the basic principles ID. E.g.,

“October 15, 2004 Iowa State Daily: Professors question intelligent design theory
Arguments that the universe was intelligently designed fail to identify anything substantive about that designer, two ISU professors said in a presentation Thursday — a failure they said destroys the scientific validity of those arguments. Hector Avalos, associate professor of religious studies, and John Patterson, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering, both said advocates of intelligent design — which purports that design of the universe by an external agent can be detected in nature — don’t represent anything new in science.”

If this news item is accurate, it appears that you have been viewing ID through rose colored glasses of religious movements., I.e., you expect ID to “identify [something] substantive about that designer.” In so doing, you appear to be imposing your expectations of a religion on ID and then criticizing ID for not meeting your expectations of a religion.
Foundationally, ID looks for objective empirical evidence in nature for a designer.
By contrast, information about any “designer” must of necessity come from communication from or with that designer.
Note the difference between empirical evaluation of physical phenomena and evaluating communication. This essentially is the difference between studying “the book of nature” vs “studying the book of revelation”.

If you wish to at least be credible in your comments on ID, let alone professional, may I encourage to you undertake an objective evaluation of ID – and NOT presume it is a religion or expect it conforms to journalism or Darwinist’s common misspreceptions of ID.

For example. Please begin by reviewing “ID Assumptions” at ResearchID.org
http://www.researchintelligent.....ssumptions
———————————–
Primary Assumptions for Open Science & Intelligent Design

1) Intelligence: Direct and indirect intelligent causes exist, including human beings and intelligent systems made by them.

2) Design: Intelligent causes design, build, and/or operate systems.

3) Detectability: Intelligent causes may exhibit phenomena that can be objectively detected.

4) Principles: Intelligent causes apply or embody design principles, rules, and/or laws, which may be discoverable from observable evidence, or similar principles may be inferable.

5) Openness: Observable phenomena may be within open systems accessible to the input or intervention of intelligent causes, some of which may be detectable, and might be reproducible.

Secondary ID Assumptions – Uncertainties

6) Means: An intelligent design is nominally a “gray box” wherein observers may not fully understand all the phenomena involved, or how the design was originally prepared or implemented.

7) Identity: The identity of the intelligent cause(s) are uncertain.

Capabilities: The capabilities of the intelligent cause(s) are inferred to be sufficient to achieve the inferred design, but are otherwise uncertain.

9) Beliefs: The beliefs of Open Science & ID theorists and practitioners are uncertain beyond the above assumptions.

Please read the related discussion.

If you objectively examine these ID assumptions, you will see that ID can evaluate whether a designer exists, BUT NOT who the designer is or what the designer is like.

These last two questions are properly in the realm of religion. You should address them to persons who claim to have communications from such a designer or to communicate with the designer. Criticizing ID for not addressing religious questions just reflects on you as an amateur having little understanding of ID and having assimilated others’ missunderstandings of ID.

Thus my previous reference to the Encyclopedia of Prophecy, lies in this realm of statistical evaluation on the probability that there are objectively verifiable communications from an intelligent being. Similarly, objective evaluations can be made on the validity of claims to current communication with an intelligent being such as intercession. These again fall in the realm of current religion, not at the existence of a designer or inferable laws of a designer.

Similarly see your:
LETTER: Intelligent design theory jeopardizes scientific education’s future
http://media.www.iowastatedail.....9702.shtml
See in particular the comment by Dr. Hector Avalos posted 10/27/06
“In any case, any analogies between human-made structures and purely biological
structures fail simply because they overlook the different physico-chemical properties of these entities.”
By this comment, you appear to be unaware of the foundational distinction made by Intelligent Design between Chance, Law (“order”) and Information (or “intelligence.”) The critical hypothesis or theory of ID is that neither Chance nor Law can form Design Information or “Complex Specified Information”. See Dembski’s Filter. Your comments on self assembly fall within “Law” and give no basis for information in DNA and proteins. With your comment: “Many crucial biological substances do have properties that allow them to assume very orderly structures” you appear to be oblivious of these distinctions between chance, law and design information. (NOT “Shannon entropy”.)

The critical issue is not that biological systems can form orderly components, but that there is no basis for abiogenesis to a functioning self reproducing cell with its Information processing (DNA, RNA etc), material processing, and energy processing systems within a closed system of natural causes within the Universal Probability Bound (the whole universe, over all time, over the maximum number of recombinations).

See recent evidence on the amazing capability of DNA repair mechanisms.
http://www.hhmi.org/news/pdf/elledge20050525.pdf
What basis has Darwinism for predicting any of this, starting from abiogenesis?
By contrast this is an excellent example of systems that ID would expect from a designer and which shows extremely complex specifred information that probably exhibits numerous examples of irreproducible complexity.

From your list of refereed monographs and journal articles, I expect you should be able to objectively evaluate Intelligent Design sufficient to grasp its foundational concepts. (Assuming you can lay aside personal prejudices or other issues you may have with religion or with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems and other ID practitioners.)

May I encourage you to undertake such serious study sufficient to where we can we can begin to have substantive discussions about the merits and consequences of Intelligent Design. Hopefully this would progress to where we could begin to address such issues on a professional level.

Until then,
Best regards

David L. Hagen, PhD
Research Engineer

Notice how he speaks of the lay audience magazine as passing the “review of a legitimate astronomical organization”- comparing that to Gonzalez’s record of not publishing an ID paper to a refereed journal. See how a magazine article is good enough for him (good enough to overcome Gonzalez in some manner), but what is demanded of Gonzalez is on a level much higher?

How, exactly, is it ironic that Hector wrote a magazine article, yet Gonzalez hasn’t published an ID article in a refereed journal with standards tenfold higher? Has Gonzalez TRIED to publish ID stuff to a refereed journal? Does he even have that goal/aspiration?

No one can deny what’s going on here. The patterns speak for themselves. The varying standards Gonzalez is held to that Avalos need not meet, the “irony” of the situation as Hector explains it. This just isn’t right at all.

Nor are big grants expected of biblical scholars, or of many scholars in the humanities.

But they are expected of scholars in the physical sciences.

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....-gonzalez/

Avalos then posts comments to PZ’s site talking about how HE got an article published critiquing the work of Gonzalez. Notice how he says that Gonzalez hasn’t published an ID paper in a “refereed journal.” Why would THAT matter, especially considering he switches the subject from magazine article for him to refereed journal for Gonzalez.

His point was- Gonzalez’s ideas are bunk and he did a nice job of debunking them in a magazine article. Somehow that makes Gonzalez unfit for tenure if he can’t even publish ID papers in refereed journals (what irnoy!)

The obvious conclusion is that Gonzalez isn’t worth his salt, but (irony!) a religion professor is good enough to debunk his ideas in a magazine…clearly that says all we need to know.

This innocent/victim ploy is nonsense…especially when Avalos is directly dodging the issue at hand.

Your preceding comment, however, raises another question, which is, How do you understand persecution? If you think the questions I raised on this blog constitute persecution, then you live a very cossetted life.

I suspect that you did not lose any sleep over my blog post. On the other hand, by poisoning the well for Guillermo with your petition and attacks against him on campus, I suspect that you did cause him considerable upset.

You really did institute a witch hunt against Guillermo. In referring to a witch hunt here, I was merely being ironic. In any case, please be sure to let us know what negative repercussions this post has on your career at ISU. If anything, you seem to be getting considerable mileage now by playing the martyr. So even your past detractors are now coming to your defense because of the “attack” here? You are welcome to these new supporters — I certainly have no use for them.

By the way, my wife is from Iowa, and I get up there now and again. I’d be happy to debate you at ISU if you’re up for it. My one condition is that I have as much uninterrupted time to present my case as you do yours. The title of my talk would be “How to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”