A typical "So's your old man" response, decorated with an utterly gratuitous smear of theoretical physics.. It makes as much sense as if I were to call Richard Dawkins an atheist & he were to reply "You're one too!" I will only reply - with slight change from the original, "He'll do something crazy! Call him back, Your Majesty! Stop him!"
Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory Arago
To: Nucacids ; asa@calvin.edu ; George Murphy
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Phillip Johnson quote on ID
Thanks George, you have provided the best moniker for 'theistic evolution' that I've yet heard - TE is Oobleck, it is goop, outrageous ooze! Yes, I know this story and am willing to pit your ID-is-Oobleck against my TE-is-Oobleck storyline any day of the week. Bartholomew's Oobleck story was one of my favourites as a child as well, along with The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.
You wrote: "So if there isn't a scientific theory & it's not religion, what is it?"
In answer to your rhetorical question: ID is a bridge to the next best thing, which will over-come the secular variety of (neo-)Darwinian evolution. Surely you are not against going against secularism, George?
Turning backward to 19th century evolutionism with a theistic twist in the 21st century is ill-advice. Why not move forward? Yet this challenge probably hits a hollow note even to theistic scientists in the most evolutionary nation in the world! ID's fetish after all echoes TE's fetish. Here I agree with Mike Gene's agnostic-ID-evolutionary viewpoint that you can distinguish non-religious ID from religious ID. He is an example, after all, of promoting intelligent design as non-scientific AND as non-religious, while yet claiming that it has an important message (mosaic) to confront.
ID is indeed (according to the IDM) 'seeking to be' a disciplined science. TE is already pretending to be both scientific and religious, yet it fails to convince because its language is quite obviously outdated. It hit the wall that PJ's quote displays many years ago. I can't help but thinking that George's theoretical physics is 'just sport' and not something that anyone should take seriously as 'science,' while at the same time respecting last night's victory of Boston over L.A. as a phenomenon of real-life experience, something that has meaning even though it is not 'scientific'.
What does attacking ID from a theistic perspective look like? Not snow, rain or fog, but just sleet.
G.A.
--- On Wed, 6/18/08, George Murphy <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com> wrote:
From: George Murphy <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [asa] Phillip Johnson quote on ID
To: "Nucacids" <nucacids@wowway.com>, asa@calvin.edu
Received: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 6:52 PM
I was talking about ID as understood by those in the ID movement.
No, I don't think I "can place all of human inquiry/expression into two tidy boxes called 'Science' and 'Religion'." 1st, there's some overlap between science & religion but if ID isn't either then it isn't in their intersection. & 2d, there are other areas besides those. But is ID art? sports? literature?
As you may have guessed, my question was largely rhetorical. ID is primarily a religious movement trying - unsuccesfully - to clothe itself with science.
& on an even less respectful note, Johnson's language about ID "scientific people ... working out a positive theory" reminded me of the King and his magicians in Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which I thought was the funniest book in the world when I was 7.
"I wish," spoke the King, "to have you make something fall from my skies that no other kingdom has ever had before. What can you do? What will you make?"
For a moment they stood thinking, blinking their creaky eyes. Then they spoke a word ... one word ... "Oobleck."
"Oobleck ...?" asked the King. "What will it look like?"
"Won't look like rain. Won't look like snow.
Won't look like fog. That's all we know.
We just can't tell you any more.
We've never made oobleck before."
Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: Nucacids
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Phillip Johnson quote on ID
Hi George,
“So if there isn't a scientific theory & it's not religion, what is it?”
What do you mean by “it?” Are you talking about the ID Movement? Or a hypothesis that the original life forms were designed?
Come to think of it, do you think you can place all of human inquiry/expression into two tidy boxes called 'Science' and 'Religion'?
- Mike Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: George Murphy
To: Jon Tandy ; 'ASA'
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Phillip Johnson quote on ID
So if there isn't a scientific theory & it's not religion, what is it?
Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Tandy
To: 'ASA'
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:30 AM
Subject: [asa] Phillip Johnson quote on ID
This was mentioned on your blog, but I don't recall that it's been quoted on this list. Phillip Johnson, as interviewed by Berkeley Science Review (http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=10&article=evolution):
"“I considered [Dover] a loser from the start. Where you have a board writing a statement and telling the teachers to repeat it to the class, I thought that was a very bad idea.”
"I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world."
Jon Tandy
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of David Heddle
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 4:17 PM
To: George Murphy
Cc: David Opderbeck; ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Theistic Evolutionists Clos e Ranks — Let the Bloodletting Begin!
Here is a recap of Miller's talk when he came to CNU:
http://helives.blogspot.com/2008/03/kenneth-millers-cnu-talk.html
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