Re: [asa] ID- has nothing to do with God?

As an example of that confusion, the recently published book "Intelligent Design 101" contains chapters by various authors, one of which is by Casey Luskin on "Finding Intelligent Design in Nature." In his conclusion he writes, "Many scientific organizations have rejected intelligent design for political reasons by purposefully mischaracterizing it as a supernatural explanation that is not testable. The evidence briefly outlined here explains that intelligent design is a testable scientific hypothesis based upon our understanding of the type of information produced when intelligent agents act. Intelligent design does not necessarily appeal to the supernatural, but rather appeals to an explanatory cause with which we have much observational experience--intelligence."

I may be missing something here. If this "intelligent agent" can be either natural or supernatural, what is the case for the natural version? Usually natural would mean operating through the weak, strong, E&M, and gravitational forces. A natural intelligence means that some intelligence must have been embodied in a physical form and able to manipulate biochemical molecules on a nanotechnoloogy scale. And it would have had to do so for the past 3.5 billion years and continue to do so but without being detected other than by its end results. But apparently, ruling out that possibility constitutes "political reasons by purposefully mischaracterizing."

I believe it was in 1999 when Dembski published his book "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology". By being a bridge I suppose it can be either or neither or both, depending on the audience and the situation.

Randy
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dehler, Bernie
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:27 PM
  Subject: [asa] ID- has nothing to do with God?

  The ID movement is confusing. They go out of their way to claim it has nothing to do with religion. and now comes their conference on theology! If they aren't a Christian group, how can they speak on theology??? I think they lost their agenda. are they floundering now?

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Received on Wed May 21 09:46:14 2008