Oh, and I didn’t think it a good use of my time to respond to the other allegations. Dr. Heddle apparently has made up his mind in relation to ID.

Dr. Heddle,

“Grassie has not asked Dembski to leave friends high and dry, he has asked him to take a scientific and educational stand on the age of the earth.”

Errr…Dembski has done that many times before now. Here is just one recent instance:

http://www.designinference.com.....eodicy.pdf

“I’m going to argue that cosmic and
transhistorical consequences to human sin are eminently tenable, though not because, as young earth creationists suggest, the science of
astrophysics and geology got it wrong about the age of the Earth and
universe. In fact, I’m going to argue that viewing natural evil as a
consequence of the Fall is entirely compatible with mainstream
understandings of cosmic and natural history.”

“Even though I accept standard
astrophysical and geological dating (12 billion years for the universe, 4.5 billion years for the Earth), young-earth creationists deserve credit here.
They see the crucial significance, theologically, of preserving the link between evil (both personal and natural) and human sin.”

The key is, Bill isn’t going to create a personal schism by continually harping on the age of the earth. He’s noted before that YECs and OECs can rarely work together even when it comes to issues they agree upon–the personal divide has grown too wide. He’s also not going to skewer someone for not accepting his preferred hypotheses based upon Intelligent Evolution which are obviously very different from any Creationist model derived from specific interpretations of the Bible. Heck, the lead moderator of UD is an agnostic.

The point is to focus on where we all agree: Darwinism has problems. Once the paradigm shift is over then I’m hoping that everyone will still continue to amiably work together to discover which of the competing hypotheses is correct. Unfortunately, based upon human behavior, I personally expect the “Big Tent” to collapse and the competing camps will start sniping at each other…but that’s in the future.

“The way Dembski responds is a dishonest ploy: he acts shocked and appalled that he would be asked to “ostracize” his friends and only associate with “the right kind of people.”

I read what Grassie wrote before Bill responded. I interpreted what Grassie said in the same way that Bill did. Now you may be correct and both of us misinterpreted what Grassie meant but I believe you owe Bill an apology for calling him dishonest since he clearly has taken a public stand on the age of the earth and the universe.

**Unfortunately, I posted at He Lives before this one last thought came to me:

In fact, I’d go one step further and criticize Grassie since–at least to my mind–Grassie was purposely attempting to make it appear as if Bill dishonestly took money for a book but never did the work. That’s a serious allegation.

Fortunately, there’s none connected with the Smithsonian /sarc.

We have got to find something to get momentum going again.

This makes ID sound like a political movement, where nothing will happen if we are not in the streets rallying the troops.

The funny thing is, a lot of scientists who don’t know it (or won’t admit it) are doing ID research. If nature really is intelligently designed, anyone who looks will find evidence of it whether or not it says “ID RESEARCH DEPARTMENT” on their door.

i’m not a very political person and i don’t want to get into what i think of the liberal wing of the democratic party.

So, as it applies to this blog posting, The Templeton Foundation should be aplauding Dr. Dembski for his choice in surrounding himself with many differing opinions.

As to ID reasearch projects, I suggest, if it hasn’t been done yet:

If life is a replicating, information processing subprogram within the larger program of the universe, then why not at least attempt to model the idea of a subprogram developing within a larger program. If it can be shown that a program can be designed to create a secondary information processor within the original program, using only the information which has been put into the original program at its creation, would this not further show that ID is scientifically verified and again more plausibly and scientific than the creation of information processors by random accidental, chance processes. This would add even more scientific merit to the fine-tuning argument.

This would be analogous to the designer being extra-universal and designing the universe to eventually produce life; however life would be a necessary result of the initial conditions of the universe and not the result of blind, accidental, highly improbable occurences.

Don’t worry, there are a lot of people who are “at work”. The problem is that very few of them can work on this full-time, as opposed to the thousands of scientists who are free to persue all aspects of Darwinism full-time. Labs cost A LOT of money, and ID doesn’t have government funding or large backers behind them. For a comparison, I believe more money was spent on the PBS Evolution miniseries than in the entire history of the Discovery Institute’s CSC.

As for Democrats, you may be correct regarding the Democratic _leadership_, but I think you are woefully inaccurate as far as the Democratic party _members_. Most Democrats are Democrats because they think that is the best way to have compassion on others and the planet, and they want to have compassion on others and the planet because they have made their own design inference, and don’t want to harm the design.

We have got to find something to get momentum going again. Are you guys still building a lab at a major university?

I mean if the Dems (lets not delude ourselves, they are not friendly to ID) in 2008. The atmosphere in this country towards ID will probably become hostile.

All my hopes.