ID Denies God and Science.

[Zep]

Eye carnt evan spel karsts.

 

[Roadtoad]

Sorry, but you are incorrect here. In multiple ways.

That is not what science says, and even this form of ID is not scientific.

First, science does not say that it's random. Current theories in fact believe that it had no option but to be the way it is. The current research going into string theory, M-theory, and similar GUTs is expected to answer that part of the question.

However, current theory makes no claim as to the "source" of physical laws, whether a god or random or little green extra-dimensional jello molds. It's an area that is not addressed by current theory, and that is the subject of additional research.

The version of ID you claim is scientific posits the existence of a designer, when there is no evidence to suggest such. It's an unsupported theory..no element of current theory requires a designer, so Occam's razor shaves it off. Additionally, positing of a designer is simply a logical fallacy of begging the question. It doesn't answer the question of origins but simply pushes it back...because the next question to ask is "Who made the designer? What laws does he follow? How were those Laws created?" Without making certain assumptions about the nature of a designer, even your version of ID theory answers nothing (makes it unscientific) and simply brings up more questions. It has zero explanatory power and is entirely unsupported by evidence.

That's the real trick, Huntsman, (and by the way, welcome home, Boss). The question becomes one of evidence.

My contention has been that one of the strongest forms of evidence for the existence of God is a changed life, at least as far as the Human Experience is concerned. Problem is, (and I know this from my own salvation experience), much of the changing can be attributed to any number of sources, including a change in relationships, maturity, the receipt of newer and better information, and so on. Further, you have the behavior of many "Christians" which challenges and even refutes the very Gospel they claim they follow. (Jerry Falwell, for example, was an ardent segregationist in the 1950's.)

Take this out further to ID, and you can begin to see the holes in the fabric. How do you determine what makes up the evidence, and its validity? Most people go into this with an a priori insistence that God exists. If you had to take it the other way around, you would have trouble proving the case.

Just another couple of cents worth in the debate.

 

[athon]

To echo the sentiments of others here, RT, 'well done'. Very nicely written post.

Unfortunately we do get carried away with feeling somewhat frustrated with how most people think. But we must keep one thing in mind; rational thought is a very inhuman thing.

We are still animals in our hard wiring. The luxury of contemplating the universe in terms of laws and predictability is just that; a luxury. It takes time and energy, where superstition and assumption takes very little of either. Sure, when using superstition we can be wrong every now and then, but for the most part it used to provide for us more benefits than sitting on our a*se and gazing at our navels.

Over the millenia, our way of life has allowed the reverse to happen. We have the time and the resources to be able to use our energy-consuming brains to challenge superstition and develop a superior way to predicting nature. Unfortunately, in a geological scale, the time we've been practicing this is minute. Our society, our traditions, our way of life, even our thinking is still reflecting an eternity of emotional reactions and patter-making methods of decision making.

We are essentially irrational creatures who have stumbled across an interesting trick our brains can perform. I know that with time, it will imprint itself onto our society, and it will be considered strange that people once believed in strange things. But 'time' is not a few mere generations.

People think mankind has stopped evolving. We're watching evolution take place right now; a socio-cultural evolution where energy-conserving superstition will be left behind because we now have the luxury to spend the time on reason and thought. It'll just take some time to catch on.

Athon

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I think that the main problems with the attempts to force science to validate religion are that the effort itself undermines that religion. Or as Douglas Adams wrote;

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

You cannot validate religion by 'proving' ID to be true. It's a fools errand, but it doesn't stop fools running it.

The irony is that genuine religious faith does not need these proofs and by making their faith contingent on their human-scale and inadequate attempts to come up with a religiously consistent theory to satisfy their sectarian view of Christianity they can only destabilise their own faith by making it vulnerable to scientific discovery that contradicts their theory. This is why ID and other religiously inspired ideas of science become progressivle more baroque and strange as any new scientific information must be bent to fit their preconceptions instead of being allowed to paint a picture of the world as it is.

I am happy to hold both religious and scientific views of the world and to give a resolute, and I hope humble, "Don't know", when asked to fully reconcile them.

Life is a long, strange trip and it is presumptuous to pretend to have all the answers. Just enjoy the ride.