Re: ID at NRO

John Derbyshire wrote:

"...The notion of the ID-ers, that you can find Him by
staring hard at the gaps in our current scientific understanding,...."

Gaps in what? To be honest here Derbyshire should have put "scientific understanding" in quotes. The "understanding" of things such as how the eye came to be rests wholly on plausibility argument, not on science in the usual sense. When it is understood that the foundation is plausibility argument rather than science, then design proponents may be perceived as not "staring hard at the gaps" but rather invoking a whole new competing paradigm. To those who hold this ID paradigm the evolutionary account does not leave gaps but is itself a gap unable to explain origins. There'd be more meeting of minds, and fewer extreme rejections, if evolutionists saw ID not through their own paradigm, as Derbyshire does here, but as a completely different paradigm.

Of course, evolutionary theory is legitimate science, while ID may never be science. Still, there's no guarantee that biotic origins have a scientific explanation, so ID is worth including in the hamper of potentially valid ideas.

Don
Received on Sat Feb 12 04:08:37 2005