Finally a Chance to Expound My Position on ID and have it published on the Web. The Benefits of having one's own blog.
I am supposed to be working on my dissertation, but now that I am a blogger, I can see the potentially addictive quality to it.
A few points on some recent comments on FNC (Special Edition and the Beltway Boys) by Charles Krauthammer and Mort Kondrake respectively, with reference to the President's widely misconstrued comments on the teaching of intelligent design in schools.
If you saw the New Republic survey of Conservative opinion on the evolution/intelligent design, you may have been surprises (as I was) by the overwhelming majority of those asked who were fully (or largely) persuaded in evolution as the only scientifically valid explanation of the origin of life, or at least the science of biology.
The point of this is to suggest that both Krauthammer and Kondrake, very intelligent men
whom I admire greatly, both put forth a variant of what I consider to be a distressingly widely held fallacy about intelligent design.
This is that intelligent design (the extreme religious fanatic belief formerly known as creationism - apologies to Prince) only works in the cracks and crevices and empty corners of accepted scientific knowledge - so only where there is some unexplained phenomenon can ID stake a claim - a situation in which ID will eventually disappear as secular rationalist science triumphs.
I would argue that this position is fundamentally false. ID triumphs not as a result of the unknown or the unexplained but in the coherence of the whole. ID is most effectively validated by the unity, coherence and integration of all facets of nature - not just biology - which I believe even real scientists accept that the random accidental occurrence of all the requisite cosmological components that make the universe in general and life in particular as being so fantastically improbably as to be laughable unless one was forced to accept it as the only option available - having a priori chosen to exclude the most likely, some would say self evidence, explantion.
I might also add that there is some ludicrous notion that the possibility of rational science ceases as soon as one does not accept the macro-theory of evolution, particularly when it goes to the comprehensive theory that links biology with the other components of the physical universe. I constantly read how no one who does not accept evolution as the only intellectual framework by which the world can be understood cannot participate in science. This is demonstrably false, as a recent survey of doctors shows, with approximately 70% of them believing in some higher power. Now believing in a higher power does not automatically make them creationists or IDers, but they are clearly not pure materialists. Moreover, there are thousands of deeply committed Christians fully committed to the idea of creationism/ID who are (apparently unbeknownst to them) doing science, even biology, biochemistry and other life sciences as well as every other form of science. They are fully committed to the scientific method and do not practice in some parallel creationist world of science but are found in universities and research centers across America. What they conclude is that their discoveries reinforce their sense of wonder at the inexplicable perfection and coherence of the material world. If someone else chooses to believe it is all random and purely material in its origin an design, that is a conclusion, but it is not the only conclusion. The defense that no one can verify by scientific experiment an intelligent design is, in a narrow sense true, but one can calculate mathematically the likelihood of all conditions from the big bang to the space shuttle have occurred in the necessary sequence, degree, quantity and relationship for current material conditions to exist and then apply Ockham's razor to the problem.
I know for those who are as invested in rejecting ID as we are committed to arguing that metaphyscially it is the only argument that makes sense; the others being too fantastical to even consider unless one refuses to even consider a non-random, purely materialist position, this is just another volley in a futile and frustrating debate leading nowhere except to mutual anttipathies. But, since it is my site, I guess I can opine as I see fit and than see, what if any response it elicits.
Leading to the old Zen question - if you post a convincing argument for ID in the blogosphere and no one reads it - does it really exist.
I am supposed to be working on my dissertation, but now that I am a blogger, I can see the potentially addictive quality to it.
A few points on some recent comments on FNC (Special Edition and the Beltway Boys) by Charles Krauthammer and Mort Kondrake respectively, with reference to the President's widely misconstrued comments on the teaching of intelligent design in schools.
If you saw the New Republic survey of Conservative opinion on the evolution/intelligent design, you may have been surprises (as I was) by the overwhelming majority of those asked who were fully (or largely) persuaded in evolution as the only scientifically valid explanation of the origin of life, or at least the science of biology.
The point of this is to suggest that both Krauthammer and Kondrake, very intelligent men
whom I admire greatly, both put forth a variant of what I consider to be a distressingly widely held fallacy about intelligent design.
This is that intelligent design (the extreme religious fanatic belief formerly known as creationism - apologies to Prince) only works in the cracks and crevices and empty corners of accepted scientific knowledge - so only where there is some unexplained phenomenon can ID stake a claim - a situation in which ID will eventually disappear as secular rationalist science triumphs.
I would argue that this position is fundamentally false. ID triumphs not as a result of the unknown or the unexplained but in the coherence of the whole. ID is most effectively validated by the unity, coherence and integration of all facets of nature - not just biology - which I believe even real scientists accept that the random accidental occurrence of all the requisite cosmological components that make the universe in general and life in particular as being so fantastically improbably as to be laughable unless one was forced to accept it as the only option available - having a priori chosen to exclude the most likely, some would say self evidence, explantion.
I might also add that there is some ludicrous notion that the possibility of rational science ceases as soon as one does not accept the macro-theory of evolution, particularly when it goes to the comprehensive theory that links biology with the other components of the physical universe. I constantly read how no one who does not accept evolution as the only intellectual framework by which the world can be understood cannot participate in science. This is demonstrably false, as a recent survey of doctors shows, with approximately 70% of them believing in some higher power. Now believing in a higher power does not automatically make them creationists or IDers, but they are clearly not pure materialists. Moreover, there are thousands of deeply committed Christians fully committed to the idea of creationism/ID who are (apparently unbeknownst to them) doing science, even biology, biochemistry and other life sciences as well as every other form of science. They are fully committed to the scientific method and do not practice in some parallel creationist world of science but are found in universities and research centers across America. What they conclude is that their discoveries reinforce their sense of wonder at the inexplicable perfection and coherence of the material world. If someone else chooses to believe it is all random and purely material in its origin an design, that is a conclusion, but it is not the only conclusion. The defense that no one can verify by scientific experiment an intelligent design is, in a narrow sense true, but one can calculate mathematically the likelihood of all conditions from the big bang to the space shuttle have occurred in the necessary sequence, degree, quantity and relationship for current material conditions to exist and then apply Ockham's razor to the problem.
I know for those who are as invested in rejecting ID as we are committed to arguing that metaphyscially it is the only argument that makes sense; the others being too fantastical to even consider unless one refuses to even consider a non-random, purely materialist position, this is just another volley in a futile and frustrating debate leading nowhere except to mutual anttipathies. But, since it is my site, I guess I can opine as I see fit and than see, what if any response it elicits.
Leading to the old Zen question - if you post a convincing argument for ID in the blogosphere and no one reads it - does it really exist.
posted by ColonelJim at 3:44 PM
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