“I am persuaded that most Christians today are willing to accept scientific explanations of phenomena that were in the past attributed to God and otherwise inexplicable.”

I think it would be true of all Christians that they would attribute both all scientific and all miraculous phenomena directly or indirectly to God. For in Him all things hold together.

There is a common line taken by TEs that Christian ID proponents argue the world is divided into things that God made, and things that made themselves. I do not think that is how we see it. I think we say that extra information, outside fundamental created laws, is necessary for the generation of some observable phenomena. We would also say that this information has not been demonstrated yet to be intrinsic to the cosmic matrix. If it is found in the cosmic matrix, it will simply confirm one model of ID, the fully enabled model.

It does seem evident that many on the other side (TE) seem to believe that God must by definition be invisible to scientific observation.

Should we be defining what God must and mustn’t be? Should we not rather build up a picture by observation and interpretation of data?

I think that the fingerprints of God are easily visible in the maths and physics / chemistry of the cosmos. There is not much room for doubt there. Either there are infinite universes or ours is designed.

As for biology, there is either a way for unguided physical forces to generate life or there is not. So far there is no scientific theory for the origin of life. There is an open $US1million prize to be claimed if you have one. Dawkins believes and has stated repeatedly that life came from luck. ID argues that the evidence points to a designing intelligence.

Assuming an origin for life (luck or ID) with DNA/RNA proteins in working order, we may then believe in the Dawkins extension of luck myth, to help us make sense of life or believe in a more grand, extension of ID myth.

We then explore and interact with reality, and experience either the transformation of myth into a working hypothesis, or we find another myth and start again.

Dawkins has cemented his myth. He is no longer asking questions. He only builds on what he knows to be true.

Christians should always ask questions because we believe there is a real God behind the mist, who says He wants to be known.

Thanks for your many thought provoking comments. The fact that you are still here means that you are respectful of a search for truth and that you are saying things that need to be said. This blog is generally not open to those who themselves are not open.

Bob

The discussion here leaves me feeling that even Biblical studies, which is placed firmly in the humanities, can be more scientific than ID in this regard.

As a Biblical studies student I can say without reservation that the fantastic probabilities needed to believe in evolution are no where near the likelihoods used in Biblical studies. For example, the estimate of the date for the writing of the gospel of John is less than 1/200. On the other hand, the likelihood of a living cell forming from pre-biotic molecules is as near to zero as can be calculated. If ID should be placed in the humanities, then evolution must be placed in the department of fictional writing.

ReligionProf (again):

“If I want to change a paradigm in my field, the way to do it is to do research, present papers at conferences, and publish articles and books, and attempt to persuade my colleagues and work together to explore the issue further”

I have already commented (but you have not answered) about research and publications. Again, you seem to not understand that the issue, here, is not to do specific research in favour of ID (which could anyway be done, if and when the necessary resources will be made available by the prevailing lobby), but rather to correct the false interpretation of the existing data by the general scientific culture. A lot of data already show that ID is right and darwinism is wrong. The problem is not, as you suggest on your blog, that we IDist are imagining a conspiracy. The problem is that we have been trying, as you say, to “attempt to persuade my colleagues and work together to explore the issue further”, and the reaction by the official academy has grown ever more intolerant and dogmatic as the ID arguments became more precise and scientific. That’s a truth that you (or anybody else) have not to accept as “obvious”, but which can be debated in the least details (and has been debated many times, here and elsewhere). But the results? Have you ever read Pharyngula? Have you ever read (and tried to understand) the gross objections to Behe’s and Dembski’s patient arguments, by most biologists? Have you ever read (and tried to understand) what you have been reading in your blog? This is not a conspiracy, it is only a feast of intolerance, superficiality and arrogance. And a desperate defense of what cannot be defended.
So, before writing again on your blog of typewriters, of probabilities, of DNA bases and similar, or before hiding behind the obstentation of supposed demonstrations of the evolution of the eye which have never been given, I ask you: can you meet a serious discussion about probabilities, random searches, and the meaning of information in biological structures? Can you address in a credible way Dembski’s extremely detailed arguments? Have you read Dembski’s and Marks’ papers (yes, exactly those censored on the Baylor site) demonstrating that evolutionary algorithms used in darwinian simulations are a fraud? Isn’t that research? Isn’t that discussion? And what has been the answer from the other side?

Let’s not speak of conspiracy. A conspiracy requires intelligence, organization, secrecy. Here we can only see a public display of brute force, of obstination in ignorance, and of self-evident arrogance.

Interesting that what you picked up in my comment was the mention of YEC and you passed over my criticisms of Sean Carroll. That by itself is revealing when we are talking about support for Darwinian evolutionary theory. You wander off to a peripheral point.

Please provide us with some concrete examples based on science that ID is wrong on as opposed to saying practicing scientists disagree with ID. What specifically do they disagree with? You already admitted that ID and YEC are different so criticism has to be based on what ID alone espouses and have no relation to YEC.

You offered Sean Carroll and we are willing to discuss any claim he has made. Go to his two books and bring up his claims and we can have a discussion. Have any biologist of your choosing help you with the task. We welcome it. Why don’t you?

You can then be the judge whether we are more honest and knowledgeable or your experts are. Don’t resort to arguments from authority. Would you have accepted arguments from authority about religion in the early 1500′s.

The arguments about publishing is nonsense. Follow what has just happened at Baylor to see if you think publishing is all that easy or if it isn’t being actively inhibited. Do you believe ID has obstacles for publication that have nothing to do with the scientific merit? Or are we all just paranoid here?

http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....06105.html

Discusses it in the context of digital sampling and the Nyquist limit, analog-to-digital conversion, millisecond precision, combinatorial code representation of 4-D signals, motion pictures, image processing, neuronal and genetic codes, etc.

No it is about how DNA testing of criminals have shown that certain criminals were guilty or not guilty of certain crimes.

Equivocation*- If we can track people via DNA then if chimps and humans have similar DNA we can track both populations back to a common ancestor.

Another bit of bait for the gullible…

(*the theory of evolution relies heavily on equivocation, ie because we see slight variations the major transitions are also explained)

Did you know that all current eyes were present in the Cambrian Explosion, 520 million years ago and none present just a few short million years before.

Also no new eyes have evolved since then. So eyes come out of nowhere and then go no further. Not a particularly Darwinian idea.

The series of drawings by Nilsson and Pelger that is often used to justify a gradual evolving of the eye is based on a computer model and in no way mimics anything seen in the real world. Anyone with a good command of Adobe Illustrator could develop similar drawings and then claim it all could happen by small incremental changes. These are called “just so” stories and were a staple of Darwin himself to show how evolution could occur. The only problem with these stories is there never has been any empirical evidence that any occurred.

So why the sudden appearance of different types of eyes so long ago and no new variations since. Who are the liars and the ignorant? We ask you to show us that ID supporters are either.

When I read the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, I do not get the impression from the many papers related to evolution that those working in that aspect of biology are either ignorant themselves or are promoting ignorance.

Do any of those papers deal with the evolution of the eye/ vision system?

Or are they basically dealing with small scale changes, like the beak of the finch, antibiotic resistance, and othger variations that arise in a population?

Reading books by major biologists (for instance I’d highly recommend Sean Carroll’s recent books on evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo for short) one doesn’t get the impression that they are ignorant, but quite the opposite.

I have read his latest two books. They are filled with wishful thinking and speculation based on an (untestable) assumption.

Back to the eye/ vision system- I would say the data, evidence and/ or observation that the eye/ vision system evolved is the same now as it was back in Darwin’s day- That is we observe organisms with differing levels of a vision system- from the light sensitive spot on some single-celled organisms to the human eye/ vision system- and say there is the evidence which shows they evolved- meaning the differing levels of systems are evidence for their evolution.

Complete trash. But the gullible buy it so it is recycled…