From: Marcio Pie <pie@bu.edu>
> There's a review of "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics"
> (edited by Robert Pennock) in the latest issue of Science:
>
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5564/2373
>
> Here are two interesting quotes:
>
> "Johnson continues to conflate these two forms of naturalism even after
> being called on the issue many times, but he has no choice. If he gives up
> the conflation, he has lost, because he cannot call naturalism a
> state-supported, established religion unless it explicitly denies the
> existence of God."
I don't think that Johnson needs for "naturalism" to explicity deny God in
order to be an established religion. As I understand it, Atheism explicitly
denys the existance of God (as contrasted with the agnostic who claims to
not be able to know if God exists or not) and I don't think anyone would
consider Atheism an established religion. On the other hand there are well
established religions which do not have a supernatural God or gods, i.e.
Buddhism and Shintoism. Thus an established religion does not need to have
a supernatural God to be considered a religion. Naturalism or even
Methodological Naturalism can be considered religions in the general sense
so long as their adherants persue and believe the principles with zeal or
conscientious devotion. Both Naturalism and Methodological Naturalism,
within which the scientific method is usually conducted, are philosophical
assumptions that must be accepted as valid by faith. While we can show that
certain assumptions are true over and over again, the logical extention of
those assumptions into the past is based on the assumption that the past was
the same as the period of time over which experiments have been conducted.
That is something that cannot be known for certain, unless we have other
evidence to confirm or deny it was so, specifically, witness evidence.
>
> "People like Plantinga and Johnson claim the high ground without earning
> it, and so they seldom hold it long. Johnson believes that the more people
> learn about the philosophy behind evolution, the less they'll like it.
> Wait until they learn what's behind intelligent design."
>
I am unable to get to the on-line article. Just what does the author say is
behind intelligent design?
Allen
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