Hi Allen,
Maybe the first sentence of the review will clarify the author's position
on what's behind ID:
"Intelligent Design (ID) is the cryptoscientific arm of a sociopolitical
movement of conservative Christians who are upset about the displacement
of their concept of God from institutional life in the United States and
are determined to do something about it."
-m
On Thu, 28 Mar 2002, Allen Roy wrote:
> 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
>
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcio R. Pie
Department of Biology
Boston University
5 Cummington St.
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: (617) 353-6977
FAX: (617) 353-6340
http://people.bu.edu/pie/
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