Creationism v. Intelligent Design v. Evolution

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inocente said:
Nail on the head there. It’s a strange feature of the times we live in that some atheists and scientists show greater spirituality than some theists. They know that science doesn’t have all the answers, but they can’t get any answers in church when the religionists are too busy trying to make religion scientific.
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Could a few folk, not on CAF, be “dumbing down”?
 
buffalo said:
I cannot reconcile the above with the following questions.

Questions:
  1. Does design exist?
  2. Is it detectable?
  3. What is the problem with science pursuing it?
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My humble answers are:
  1. yes
  2. yes.
  3. no problems that I can see
Now that I have answered the questions, it is time for me to return to the real issue for Catholicism, that of human nature’s origin.
 
grannymh said:
My humble answers are:
  1. yes
  2. yes.
  3. no problems that I can see
Now that I have answered the questions, it is time for me to return to the real issue for Catholicism, that of human nature’s origin.
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Just one question:

Why do you think there are so many against researching ID?
 
Someone’s said this already, I’m sure, but one of God’s most majestic features in the Universe was the set of physical principles by which it consistently functions. A universe in which the reality on the moon is analogous to the reality on the earth. Where the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, and all the celestial bodies are bounded by gravity.

Me, I’ve got a lot of confidence in the peer review process and the scientific method. Darwin’s evolution hypothesis (and the subsequent work of centuries of other scientists) would not have been made a Theory if there was any presentable evidence to contradict it. Living life, in the world, changes according to the needs of the environment through the process of natural selection, just as wolves became all the different breeds of domestic dogs through human-led artificial selection.

Having said that, the Theory of Evolution does not make a claim to:

  1. *]The origins of the universe
    *]The origins of the planets
    *]The origins of life
    *]The existance or non-existance of God

    It is simply concerned with the behavior of generations of life after it is already “in play”, and I think the otherwise is a common misconception.

    As far as the rest of it goes, abiogenesis, the study of nonliving matter forming rudimentary living cells, is a frontier of science yet not fully understood, as with most of science. The big bang theory, while comprehensive, does not either rule out God.

    By definition, science cannot exclude faith, and I’ll say it again that the best thing god ever did for His children was to create a universe in which our minds and the logic they can hold are able to comprehend and understand the mechanism by which he created it; evolution, the fundamental forces, thermodynamics… these are the paint-brushes he used.
 
Al_Moritz said:
The fairytales are not on the side of evolution, they are on the side of ID. I have believed in them, no more.
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The “he said-she said” argument goes no where when considering the OP poll…

For the record. I feel bad that the Catholic Position was omitted in the OP poll. Maybe some day in the far future, another thread will address the differences between the Catholic Position and the OP choices.

For now, I rest my case.

Blessings,
granny
 
grannymh said:
Could a few folk, not on CAF, be “dumbing down”?
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I’d have thought maybe the opposite, too many attempts at detailed certainty. I don’t remember either the gospel or evolution as being great philosophical challenges when learning them as a teenager. Granted rocket science and brain surgery were a bit of a slog for the first couple of weeks, but once you’ve worked out which end of the hammer to hold they’re a doddle. 😃
 
HerrZJA said:
Someone’s said this already, I’m sure, but one of God’s most majestic features in the Universe was the set of physical principles by which it consistently functions. A universe in which the reality on the moon is analogous to the reality on the earth. Where the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, and all the celestial bodies are bounded by gravity.

Me, I’ve got a lot of confidence in the peer review process and the scientific method. Darwin’s evolution hypothesis (and the subsequent work of centuries of other scientists) would not have been made a Theory if there was any presentable evidence to contradict it. Living life, in the world, changes according to the needs of the environment through the process of natural selection, just as wolves became all the different breeds of domestic dogs through human-led artificial selection.

Having said that, the Theory of Evolution does not make a claim to:

  1. *]The origins of the universe
    *]The origins of the planets
    *]The origins of life
    *]The existance or non-existance of God

    It is simply concerned with the behavior of generations of life after it is already “in play”, and I think the otherwise is a common misconception.

    As far as the rest of it goes, abiogenesis, the study of nonliving matter forming rudimentary living cells, is a frontier of science yet not fully understood, as with most of science. The big bang theory, while comprehensive, does not either rule out God.

    By definition, science cannot exclude faith, and I’ll say it again that the best thing god ever did for His children was to create a universe in which our minds and the logic they can hold are able to comprehend and understand the mechanism by which he created it; evolution, the fundamental forces, thermodynamics… these are the paint-brushes he used.
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  1. The problem is that textbooks include philosophical statements:

    “[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
    (Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

    “Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
    (Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

    “By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
    (Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)"

    Peace,
    Ed
 
Al_Moritz said:
Because he already knows what ‘evidence’ Meyer will present. And I know too, and I am not interested.

Why am I not interested? Because I have been an ID proponent myself. As such I have had a detailed discussion with atheistic evolutionists that dragged over weeks since I took the time to refute everything they said in detail, and which in the end I clearly won (not that I was ultimately right), given my vastly superior biochemical knowledge (I am a scientist in biochemistry). I even developed my own argument why biochemical pathways have to be irreducibly complex, before I even was familiar with any of Behe’s arguments.

But then I studied the real evidence and everything collapsed. I studied some more and even an origin of life by natural causes now seems highly likely to me, or to put it another way: I would find it highly unlikely that God would have had to perform a miracle for life to get started.

I have been one of you guys. Let me repeat: I have been one of you guys. You don’t have to try to convince me of the merits of the ID arguments. I know ID. I have been a hardcore IDer myself. But then I opened my mind and studied the real scientific evidence.

And finally I discovered that ID also implies lousy theology. This is the last bit that I really do not need.
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How odd. I used to be one of you guys.
 
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