RE: My article "Intelligent Design on Trial"

>>> Gregory Arago <gregoryarago@yahoo.ca> 03/03/06 6:56 AM >>>asks me the
following question:
   
  Ted wrote in his article "Intelligent Design on Trial":
  "In order for ID to provide a plausible alternative to evolution, its
proponents would have to address the one issue they least want to face: the
age of the earth and the universe ." (Winter 2006 Issue)
   
  The question 'which evolution' has been asked, but no one has yet
responded. If (big if) ID (hypothetically) limits itself to pattern
recognition and specifying complexity, for example, I see no reason why it
*must* address the issue of the age of the earth. Likewise, it may provide
an alternative to a specifically defined type of evolution, say, information
evolution, but not others.
   
  Can this be agreed upon or would it redefine what ID is trying to do too
far from reality?
 
Ted responds:
The context in my brain (and in the unedited, longer version of my
published essay) is as follows. I buy Kuhn's idea (p. 77 in Structure of
Scientific Revolutions) that scientists abandon a paradigm only when another
paradigm is sitting there as a more plausible alternative. We can argue
about that, but I agree with hit and its a premise for my claim. Thus, if
evolution presently functions as a "theory of everything" that can tell us
when/where/how things have come into being, such as dinosaurs and the moon
and the Milky Way, then ID will need to do the same thing in order to become
a new paradigm. ID will need to spell out an age for the universe, etc.
And when they do, as I've told my ID friends many times, the wheels will
come off the wagon. Popular support will largely disappear, as the many
creationists who support ID will no longer do so; and the leading IDs
themselves will no longer agree on parts of their "paradigm" as they
articulate it.

t
Received on Fri Mar 3 09:37:34 2006