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The Forum > Article Comments > Intelligent design - damaging good science and good theology > Comments

Intelligent design - damaging good science and good theology : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 9/9/2005

Peter Sellick argues it is not a good idea to teach intelligent design in our children's biology classes.

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Pericles
"Or if someone were to find evidence for intelligent design. Now that would convert me."

I think that is what the zealous evolutionists are scared of.

Of course, if Anthony Flew thinks there is evidence for intelligent design, maybe you should take another look?
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/12/09/210618.php
Posted by Grey, Friday, 9 September 2005 10:58:42 PM
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This essay makes excellent sense, of course. Why religionists would WANT to get mixed up science is beyond. If Intelligent Design WERE science -- that is, if it were based on any kind of scientific evidence -- it would be liable to change. Suppose they got a bunch of funding from fat-cat partisan backers like Pat Robertson and the U.S. gov't and opened up an Intelligent Design Institute where they started doing genuine research. And what if their targeted inquiry into design-related questions produced solid evidence that human beings WERE the product of design... by extraterrestrials?

Not to give anything to Intelligent Design, I think it is important to distinguish between the evolution of life and its genesis. Evolution is pretty well incontrovertible, but I think it's fair to say that scientists do not fully understand how life came into being in the first place. Possible problems with hypotheses about the latter should not be presumed to cast doubt on the former.
Posted by gnosys, Friday, 9 September 2005 11:28:45 PM
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Hoping the following may fit in,

Just guessing, but one who believes more in moral philosophy, did Darwin himself ever deny there was not a being out there similar to Aristotle's Great Creator, not necessarily human. Darwin also claimed he was still a devout Christian, criticising those go-getters who began using his evolution theory, to become more inhuman and merciless in war as well as business deals. Also Darwin never really denied Aristotle's conception of a deity, and his compassionate moral reasoning as many have praised him for, was in many ways far moral and superior to those fanatical Christians today who believe in the necessity of total war and preemptive strikes, much more Old Testament Promised Land-style Biblical teachings than the more charitable teachings of Jesus the Nazarene.
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 10 September 2005 12:11:11 AM
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What sort of evidence would serve as evidence of intelligent design? If an extraterrestrial life form had a finger in the primeval soup then that finger must have acted on the physical environment according to the laws governing that environment. In that case we would observe remnants of that activity. Unless, of course their role was simply to infect the earth with pre-exiting cells that evolved to produce life on earth. In that case the problem of the origin of life is displaced to another place and another time. If however these aliens somehow guided evolution in its path, how would they have done that given what we know about how the physical world works. Such an enterprise would have needed vast laboratories capable of doing on a massive scale what our DNA labs are beginning to do on a small scale. You would think that we would know about such and undertaking.

The idea that some supernatural entity could have had a hand in evolution is even more problematic because it posits a realm of which we can have no evidence: the supernatural. We can have no experience of this realm because it must exist apart from the world that we inhabit. Any incursion of the supernatural upon the natural transforms the supernatural into the natural as a force or influence like any other natural force or influence.

The God proclaimed by Christian theology cannot be identified with either of the above two options. For as Karl Barth says: “while there is a godlessness in the human, in view of the Word of reconciliation there is no humanlessness in God.” God does not dwell in the above where the human is not present. ID gets it wrong because it ignores the humanity of God and that this God is earthbound and tied to us. It posits a god who is supernatural but which nevertheless may influence material processes. We must get back to the particularity of the Christian tradition, the God we worship is revealed in human history as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and no other.
Posted by Sells, Saturday, 10 September 2005 11:18:13 AM
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While I agree that ID should not be taught with Science, I very much doubt your reasoning "We must get back to the particularity of the Christian tradition, the God we worship is revealed in human history as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and no other."

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide

As I doubt you Sells.
Posted by Trinity, Saturday, 10 September 2005 12:18:24 PM
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Sells,

I can readily agree with your general argument about the folly of ID, but not with the rejection of the idea that God is in nature. “The Word of God is written in two volumes: the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Creation.” These words of Thomas Aquinas keep echoing in my mind as a reminder of my experiences with the natural environment. As a result of these experiences the concept of “immanence” seems indisputable to me. Matthew Fox’s “creation spirituality” – as distinct from “creationism” and “intelligent design” theories – must surely be an approach whose time has come.

Do you reject this?

Crabby
Posted by Crabby, Saturday, 10 September 2005 2:03:15 PM
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