I see we are to be dominated by theologists, as per the original feature journal. I’ll add this to the melting pot.-
The concept of ID seems to have sprung from perceived ‘holes’ in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Life seems too ‘ordered’- should not a ‘random’ process result in a ‘random’ result ie. should life not be a mess, a quagmire, not as beautifully organised as it is? The answer to this is no. Pure luck has played a massive part in your existence. Take the unbelievable situation & de-emotionalise it. Work with it for the past, present & future.
The uncertainty that seems to surround Darwinism could be one of determinism. In no way does Darwin suggest that we are subject wholly to the forces of nature in this process. We contribute to our evolution, conciously or not, & should do so in a fashion that benefits all humanity.

Out of interest, for those reading this forum who think that ID should be taught in science classes, do you also think that a young earth model should be taught in science as well?
From what I have read on sites like AiG etc. it appear that the two go hand in hand. Or is there a group of people who think the earth is 4.3B years old but who also believe that macro-evolution etc. doesn't exist? Would you also want to teach that physics is wrong when it comes to radioactive decay or that hydrodynamics is wrong when it comes to geology? Maybe we could teach some alternative views on astronomy that allow for only 5000 years worth of photons?
I'm just wondering where you would want the line drawn with regard to all the branches of science and what sort of criterion do you use to decide? If we had two theories for the speed of light, how would you decide how much of each to teach?

I have been following the creationist/ID attempts for over twenty years, waintng for them to come up with a plausible description of how the natural world came into order. Sadly they have only given false hope to hundreds of thousands by ignoring or, sadly, distorting the work of thousands of scientists as if there was a massive conspiracy on their part. Ignorance is forgivable, but willful ignorance is shameful. How Brendan Nelson can give such a flacid response to the question of ID being taught in schools is dificult to fathom. By leaving it up to misled parents to decide what is taught in science classes opens the way for a range of unfounded assertions to be taught. There is plenty of scope to teach a range of creation scenarios, but not as a science subject.

Peter's argument ties in with his previous writngs with respect to the church trying to conform to the Enlightenment, and coming off second best. A spiritual understanding of our place in the universe is crippled by focusing on the material.

Peter, your reasoning needs more clarification at certain points to be convincing:

1)Psalm 19 & Romans 1 and other passages have already been noted. Calvin (reformed) minimised general revelation for similar reasons I think, so you have good grounds for caution. But to completely reject these sorts of passages without resolving the issues they raise is problematic.

2)“science should be left to the scientists” … hmmm... I think a wider debate is often appropriate, just as at times it may not be appropriate for the police anti-corruption unit to be the only control over perceived corruption by a small number of police. Perhaps you should define who you mean by the terms “scientists” and “the church”. Furthermore, my understanding is that school science classes aim to prepare future generations of scientists, but also of engineers, technologists and users of technology. I think it is good training to relate science to life-questions. Making science more interesting might arrest the lamentable decline in enrolments in Australian science faculties. I majored in physics – a declining breed it seems.

3)You claim that God created a setting without the thing? hmmm... Hebrews 11:3 deserves more attention, despite the debate about its grammatical structure.

4)You dislike ID because it assumes that the designer is intelligent, and our view of intelligence is human, and therefore we create the designer in human image. Yet your argument is not necessarily so. Postulating the existence of a designer does not necessarily infer anything much about her character (even less than 1Co14:33), any more than the laws of thermodynamics deny that people can influence the distribution of energy. In fact it may even (dare I say it?) be good science to postulate a designer: “Today we observe stuff caused only by a designer therefore in the past this sort of stuff must have been caused by a designer.” Difficult to test – but so is the converse.

5)Why must the supernatural necessarily be beyond our experience? Subatomic particles were once beyond human experience, but can now be studied.

Zytheran: Yes, there are people who believe in an old earth who don’t find current theories of macro-evolution convincing. A couple of my physics lecturers at what I believe is the largest university in Australia fell in this category, I think. Also, young-earth views do not necessarily deny the physics or hydrodynamics you mention, but may question the validity of some (unverifiable?) extrapolations and inferences drawn by some theories about the origins of stuff. Personally, I think it is good scientific practice to keep an open mind to both options. But I do think that random macro-evolution should not be taught as fact, or as the only possibility. Also, a claim that life was not caused by an intelligent designer seems no more provable that the converse—both are probably statements of faith, but the latter is at least notionally provable in the legal sense (if the designer talks with us). Of course we should not discount the possibility of science explaining the detail about how life might have randomly formed, even though we have been waiting at least 2500 years for it (maybe that’s not quite fair, even if it is true).

My my, this is fun.

Boaz,

>>The classic example is that of Rudolph Bultman eminent German theologian, who spun it like this. "People today are not raised from the dead, therefore Jesus could not have been". Which is on a par with "There are no Date Palms today in such and such an Oasis of the Arabian desert,.. therefore there could never have been."<<

You happily debunk Herr Bultman's position, but use precisely the same reasoning to support intelligent design. The absence of evidence (palm trees, raisings-from-the-dead) is an exact parallel with the absence of evidence for ID. As Grey so succinctly puts it in his post, Flew's "evidence" is

>>That the vast complexity of dna WAS evidence of intelligent design<<

In other words, ID is evidenced by a lack of evidence on how DNA might exist without ID. There seems to be a touch of circularity here. It does the venerable professor no credit at all to relinquish his prior position, purely on the basis that he couldn't get his head around the complexities of DNA. And to excuse this lack of rigour by baldly stating that he is "following the evidence" is very poor form. You cannot define evidence simply by calling it evidence.

Grey also very carefully separates the two halves of my comments on using the scriptures as self-evident proof statements, which is also, in my book, poor form. The fact is, I am unwilling to accept the scriptures at their face value, and use them as proof statements in and of themselves as some do. To use this as evidence of an "inability to see outside of [my] own presuppositions" is a precise inversion of the reality. I am sure that there is a word that describes this rhetorical device - describing the fallacy in your opponent's argument in terms that exactly define your own - but if there isn't, there should be.