From: Denyse O'Leary (oleary@sympatico.ca)
Date: Thu Nov 06 2003 - 09:22:25 EST
Michael Roberts wrote:
> WHAT IS DARWINISM?
>
> The whole problem with Denyse's interviews and the ISCID article is that it puts up Darwinism as a strawman. I dont know what Darwinism is as it has as many definitions as there are people. Of course, this approach is to retain the big tent of ID.
> It also prevents us from considering non-reductionist and non-atheistic and non-chance views of evolution .
The Darwinism taught in the school system and university is
reductionist, atheistic, and chance-oriented. And it reflects not only
Darwin's view but that of key evolutionists today.
You are free to promote a different view, but you will need a very thick
skin to promote it in the school system and university. I sincerely wish
you luck.
> Before we can consider all this;
>
> What is the status of the age of the earth and the fossil succession over time?
Well, as far as I can tell, the earth's pretty old, and a lot of fossils
have gone missing. Or never existed. Hard to tell which.
Denyse
> Any discussion which does not deal with that is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark
>
> What is chance and natural selection?
>
> A lot of confusion is caused by the loose use of terms such as chance, Darwinism and Naturalism.
>
> Michael
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gary Collins
> To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 9:45 AM
> Subject: Re: asa-digest V1 #3761
>
>
> --Original Message Text---
> From: asa-digest
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 05:20:01 -0500
>
> Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 07:51:08 -0500
> From: "Denyse O'Leary" <oleary@sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: Intelligent design controversy in Canada
>
> List members may be interested in an online interview with Kirk Dunston
> of the New Scholars Society in Canada, where he talks about intelligent
> design, Darwinian evolution, and genome mapping. The controversy is only
> now spreading to Canada.
>
> One of his comments:
>
> http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/031023evolution
>
> Natural processes, over the history of the universe, have the potential
> to produce up to 70 bits of information. Unfortunately, just one,
> average 300-residue protein requires about 500 bits to encode. The
> simplest theoretical life form would need somewhere in the neighbourhood
> of 250 protein-coding genes.
>
> There is also an interview with me at
>
> http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/031030evolution
>
>
> One of my comments: I only discovered how much trouble Darwinism was in
> when I took a year out of my life -- late 2002 to late 2003 -- to study
> the situation. I was appalled. Darwinism has nothing like the support
> that we are accustomed to for theories in physics or chemistry.
>
> Denyse
>
> I read these articles - thanks. One thing I was hoping to find, but didn't,
> is some justification for the mysterious figure of 70 bits of information,
> which appears as though it is a "given" for some reason.
>
> I also recently came across an interesting essay by William Hasker,
> entitled "How not to be a Reductivist." He quotes Thomas Nagel, who
> 'admits quite candidly,
> I hope there is no God! I dont want there to be a God; I dont want the
> universe to be like that'
> as saying,
>
> "My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is
> responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the
> tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain
> everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled
> modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing
> a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.
> Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be
> entirely explained by the operation of the nonteleological laws of physics on the material
> of which we and our environments are all composed."
>
> and adds,
> "Nagel himself, even though he shares in the cosmic authority problem, strenuously resists this
> facile appeal to Darwinism."
>
> The whole essay can be found at
> http://www.iscid.org/papers/Hasker_NonReductivism_103103.pdf
>
> /Gary
>
>
-- To see what's new in faith and science issues, go to www.designorchance.com My next book, By Design or By Chance?: The Growing Controversy Over the Origin of Life in the Universe (Castle Quay Books, Oakville) will be published Spring 2004.To order, call Castle Quay, 1-800-265-6397, fax 519-748-9835, or visit www.afcanada.com (CDN $19.95 or US$14.95).
Denyse O'Leary 14 Latimer Avenue Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5N 2L8 Tel: 416 485-2392/Fax: 416 485-9665 oleary@sympatico.ca www.denyseoleary.com
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