by Stephen Goode The Darwinist hegemony in the natural sciences may be threatened by a cutting-edge, revolutionary movement that sees intelligent design in nature - and a Designer. Chemist Charles Thaxton was amazed 15 years ago when The Mystery of Life's Origin, a book he coauthored on chemical evolution with two other scientists, provoked a very positive response from scientists around the country. Thaxton, a visiting assistant professor at Charles University in Prague, expected a negative reaction, if indeed the book (which since has come to be regarded as one of the opening salvos in what is called the Intelligent Design Movement) even was so much as noticed. After all, The Mystery of Life's Origin, which became a best-selling college text, tentatively proposed the case for intelligent design in nature and pointed out serious flaws in Darwinism. Such views were regarded as unthinkable and most definitely unscientific by the vast majority of scientists at the time, not only because Intelligent Design suggested that evolution wasn't the random, chaotic process most biologists believed it to be but (even more unacceptably) indicated the probable existence of a designer - God, perhaps - who was responsible for the design. The notion that a designer might be at work behind nature was a concept no self-respecting scientist wanted to bring into the scientific scheme of things. "I didn't think anyone would accept the book. When we wrote it, it was like being a lone wolf out there," Thaxton tells Insight. "Hard-core materialists aren't going to tolerate intelligence in nature," he says. "Then I got lots of calls from scientists and mathematicians who did" - men and women in a variety of scientific fields who were coming to the same conclusions that Thaxton had described in The Mystery of Life's Origin. They (like Thaxton and his coauthors) daily were coming across data in their laboratories and scientific pursuits that no longer could be explained by the standard model of Darwinian evolution. Such data could be better - and more scientifically - understood by arguing that certain highly complex entities in nature - the DNA molecule, for example - had been designed to do what they do and hadn't evolved randomly, by accident, which is how Darwinian evolution says they came about. William Dembski was one of those who got in touch with Thaxton. Dembski, a young man with a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, a second Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a master's degree in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, had a strong conviction that Thaxton not only was right but onto something that was going to revolutionize the way man looks at nature and the way biologists approach their field. He wanted to be part of that revolution. Dembski recently published his own addition to the ever-growing Intelligent Design Movement, a closely argued book that he calls The Design Inference, in which Dembski (whose impressive list of degrees led one friend to describe him as "the perpetual student") brings to bear his knowledge of symbolic logic and mathematics to argue in favor of design in nature. Dembski's book is one of the latest and most impressive contributions that grace Design studies (the name its adherents like to call it), which is a new branch of science that has grown increasingly sophisticated since Thaxton's contribution 15 years ago. Between Thaxton's coauthored book and Dembski's very recent contribution, the Intelligent Design Movement has traveled quite a distance, and more developments are on the way, its adherents promise. Intelligent Design now has its own professional journal, Origins & Design. Many of its advocates belong to a think tank, the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, though many of those associated with the center are located elsewhere: Dembski, for example, is in Dallas, and Thaxton remains in Prague. And the movement has its own magazine for nonscientists, the glossy quarterly Cosmic Pursuit, in which scientists such as Thaxton and Dembski present their ideas for the general reader. What, then, are those ideas? First, they argue that their defense of Design arises directly out of the empirical data they have observed as scientists, rather than from any theological or philosophical notions they may hold. "Discoveries in mathematics and biology are making way for Design and a Designer," says Thaxton. And Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemist who is author of one of the Intelligent Design Movement's most important texts, Darwin's Black Box (1996), tells Insight, "Intelligent Design flows directly out of the data that now are available." What makes this claim significant is that it makes Intelligent Design a phenomenon to be dealt with and studied scientifically rather than a topic left to religion or other pursuits. It's a claim that leads directly to the other principal argument made by Intelligent Design adherents: that science as it now is constituted isn't adequate to deal with the discovery of intelligent design in nature because science is too closely wed to materialistic and naturalistic interpretations of what nature is. This is a very revolutionary claim. What's at the basis of the argument, says Dembski, is a controversy over "the nature of nature." Dembski finds naturalistic science "impoverished" when it comes to handling intelligent design. How impoverished? Because materialism and naturalism assume that natural explanations will suffice to answer every question that arises in science, and this simply won't do when it comes to dealing with the phenomenon of Design. (Indeed, any Intelligent Design Movement advocate will tell you that understanding how to deal with design in nature scientifically is one of the chief problems facing the movement.) Intelligent Design does not argue any specific theology. "The word 'Designer' doesn't necessarily mean the God of Genesis," says Thaxton (though it doesn't exclude Him). "My view is that from the empirical data we have we cannot make affirmation of a deity. It is the possibility of a deity that we arrive at." Thaxton explains that it is a "generic design that we talk about in Intelligent Design. When people want to go beyond that, that's where their particular views about God come in." What makes the Intelligent Design Movement so revolutionary is that it goes full force against the perceived wisdom of science, and particularly biology. Darwinism pervades every aspect of Western civilization, Dembski notes. And Darwinists argue that there is no design in nature, none at all that would suggest a designer. Everything in nature, say the Darwinists, is the result of random evolution, with no design that would suggest direction or planning. Here is how one of the world's foremost Darwinists, Oxford University's Richard Dawkins, described this worldview in his 1995 book, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, a direct attack on the possibility of design in nature: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." The Darwinian position was put in even starker words by Peter Atkins in his book The Second Law, which appeared in 1984, the same year that Thaxton and his coauthors published The Mystery of Life's Origin: "We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the universe." Against this dominant Darwinian view, Thaxton's argument for Intelligent Design, reduced to simplest terms, runs like this: The DNA molecule, the basis of life, is a message, he says. It is information coded in a double helix. It's not like a message; it is the message. The molecule itself is an elaborate, complex design that is a message. We humans know from experience that, when there's a message, an intelligence created that message, Thaxton says. No other explanation will suffice to account for the existence of the message. We don't receive letters from a random, undirected source, for example. Thus the implication is clear that DNA, a message, was produced by intelligent design. "We know from experience that when there is a design, there is a designer." Behe takes on Darwinism from a different angle. A Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, Behe argues that life at its most fundamental is "irreducibly complex," a phrase he has added to the Intelligent Design debate. To explain what he means by irreducibly complex, Behe talks about a mousetrap, a human construction made up of a base, hammer, spring and holding bar, each of which is needed for the mousetrap to work. Without any one of the aspects, the mousetrap would not be a mousetrap.
Continued: Nature, too, has examples of irreducible complexity - the system in a cell that targets proteins for delivery to subcellular compartments, for example. Almost every one of the components that make up this system is necessary for the system to work. Without one of the components, the proteins are not delivered to their proper destination. Behe argues that the development of such an elaborate and complex system in Darwinian evolutionary terms by one small step after another simply won't do, because during any step prior to all the complex parts working together, the system would be nonfunctional. What is the probability of all those parts that have to work together starting to work together at a given moment? Just as the irreducible complexity of a mousetrap indicates a design that renders the possibility of its parts working together, so the irreducible complexity of the cellular protein-delivery system indicates design. Behe likes to quote from Darwin himself to show the importance of irreducible complexity when it comes to Darwinian theory. In the Origin of Species Darwin wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." Behe believes that the existence of such a complex organ already has been demonstrated. It's very important to scientists such as Thaxton, Behe and others in the Intelligent Design Movement that their design arguments be recognized as scientific. Indeed Thaxton, a Christian, spent a great deal of time asking himself, "Am I outside the bounds of science?" and finally decided that he wasn't but adds that it's incumbent upon Intelligent Design adherents that "we come to a realistic understanding of what the movement is without destroying the integrity of science." Thaxton takes a certain solace in the fact that the contemporary Design Movement isn't introducing something new to science. The great physicist Sir Isaac Newton (who died in 1727), for example, wrote, "This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Dembski likes to mention the English divine William Paley who published his Natural Theology in 1802 in which he made his famous argument that if we came upon a watch in a field, we would assume that it was made by intelligence because its various parts are directed toward one aim: the telling of time. (Paley also had much to say about the complexity of the mammalian eye, which seemed to him to indicate design. Darwin, who was equally in awe of the complexity of the human eye, concluded that, despite this complexity, the eye could have evolved small step by small step over time.) Behe is optimistic about the future of the Intelligent Design Movement: "I don't know whether it's going to be two years or 20, but that's where the data of science is heading," he says. "Scientists sense that something's not quite right. There are new ideas we need new definitions for." Dembski, whose recent book, The Design Inference, presents in great detail how the Intelligent Design argument satisfies logic and probability, likes to compare the movement's influence on science to the freedom and democracy movements and their effect on Eastern Europe. Criticism of Darwinism now threatens the hegemony of Darwinism, he says, just as the move toward freedom upset the Soviet empire. Dembski emphasizes that the Intelligent Design Movement must prove its scientific mettle, but he nonetheless waxes expansive about where Intelligent Design thinking may lead: "Questions of morality can seemingly be added." Also possible: "revival of the whole notion of natural law." Thaxton, who will chair a seminar on "Detecting Design in Nature" at the annual gathering of the American Scientific Affiliation in July, compares the situation Intelligent Design now is in with where quantum physics was a century ago. Max Planck, the quantum theorist, despaired somewhat about getting his theory accepted by his fellow physicists, Thaxton points out. He concluded that for his theory to gain respectability, a whole generation of scientists would have to die off and be replaced by younger men and women with more-flexible minds, ready to move in the direction data took them, which would be toward the quantum hypothesis. What has to be done to make Intelligent Design accepted, he concludes, "is to overcome the inertia of the age."
Is the following a product of chance, or design? Do the numbers that appear come from the unplanned, or are they a result of a programmed effort to appear in manner that seems to be without pattern of relationship or order? If a pattern or design is unseen or undetermined, is it a noiseless tree falling in the forest that no on hears? Table of Random Numbers. Updated 2005/12/29 16550 50386 37541 82807 82329 10249 41429 17342 67295 36958 84164 22026 03525 61505 23469 89571 79588 99800 86547 34635 03288 86031 13068 45605 76160 27164 94302 51949 21330 18026 85285 53073 79477 75273 06673 46769 36897 45417 52046 28991 59940 99928 45534 57487 06890 83907 25809 62158 80851 64845 30698 39552 75445 70244 19443 96353 19024 93296 58377 65322 41596 87023 91721 67699 04650 65668 80140 06392 06414 99886 88202 68707 58222 66579 96198 10693 90994 00584 30840 83202 78016 51647 75035 05480 03740 18904 59096 23137 11151 80798 62285 65060 66111 52599 87101 01004 54530 56188 49645 01651 20935 58993 23688 03051 86471 10645 41844 20045 12537 38149 35038 74359 03822 38794 41318 11629 08921 93545 64149 18821 43450 76219 77357 84459 32663 91801 53770 97690 70336 68759 13814 58498 94118 22472 54149 72828 34297 77219 78711 97807 33840 88200 23329 67865 01654 33243 76558 65644 20973 24459 07813 40520 47535 64317 11550 66836 59633 60849 92790 42288 87749 41381 07144 36805 29036 99341 11859 80627 94366 34615 66290 08503 92999 59132 07482 53319 90459 59462 35428 72960 69891 97833 64212 79954 46964 05933 50188 84711 71868 09149 29311 36596 17053 07480 66282 38840 88946 64915 26887 44477 47949 19488 08433 31646 42374 74842 95865 14173 89121 08799 83730 29201 65039 05557 25171 39544 70680 05405 59733 38577 61305 06494 73508 44372 63428 08735 32328 71560 94177 47873 36018 26712 66769 13462 00534 90375 00401 55486 56142 97074 97974 94972 39771 80916 90938 66290 81527 31836 53227 48143 49430 50662 63031 26710 05333 15498 31578 60034 16914 19058 82106 46649 17116 53598 05355 76863 09349 32238 92025 00323 24773 33319 13069 53341 63368 69724 65101 86503 86096 67487 88197 33988 81545 98682 40480 30260 60575 62819 33729 60858 65872 14477 44659 64774 32898 85585 25808 83185 18174 30990 26822 63229 73745 36930 36052 81105 12579 17230 51369 68664 49411 94967 58373 49809 41106 42921 97768 06722 44898 81040 25163 06444 06547 89857 17542 22362 03702 06872 61084 07944 29279 78833 15805 55133 03610 96279 36260 39172 00955 07118 41462 30575 29131 74989 76313 95329 34292 20102 67578 27968 27064 55384 90366 67773 41635 75495 42740 37354 39468 15157 65545 26217 80852 07579 20287 93161 03361 85024 72715 06053 10487 20180 86478 07016 00771 02330 06681 74906 25764 67743 37781 64047 32563 38363 05767 84785 21423 23546 66345 13317 37345 63534 32414 97498 09277 60696 56341 32085 08962 22843 15295 55338 62519 15935 59796 82868 58503 17448 22072 09544 64585 51514 59931 05392 83988 69311 05209 40909 87410 31345 14661 00071 71749 07766 97300 39946 60275 56751 73656 91360 26327 67749 16041 89497 84715 11321 64673 23283 80945 64455 89286 66504 80228 75058 72476 53783 29601 42999 36471 60986 15678 38062 82258 03592 86871 48085 53895 94726 07003 75688 57655 29358 35305 94027 06035 52011 42452 27182 81565 34442 10953 28625 51309 02238 39750 54069 19298 89003 12800 73577 53864 40517 60248 52086 14578 58973 50921 80346 06055 93897 30196 66959 37265 68325 77814 85925 25869 83251 70129 39001 18266 48457 50798 23215 44578 14387 75357 61118 09874 99702 14880 04930 63324 26024 64284 79713 68441 84151 62802 01738 40622 92604 46612 15315 82275 59085 49335 12992 96944 48567 88774 83128 94572 82802 79328 83806 13227 24106 11698 78035 54683 78065 32541 01494 83591 09907 87721 95459 58795 36718 38616 46244 32920 25967 53801 91592 01773 39395 37459 92174 10047 49383 47719 65083 17556 01176 26689 89410 83671 41716 17863 96625 95372 36123 57171 83850 49699 18048 09257 44445 35677 38082 72162 59186 48247 41623 94754 47577 52194 81547 64691 47255 09929 75769 94896 48962 88261 37716 94441 04743 40793 10830 21444 66663 85635 78830 19575 43659 10516 66220 14800 91302 91386 30325 25183 23473 42167 97991 10473 10902 18605 25970 41233 62325 46716 41728 32330 67518 85026 17701 68473 85834 21056 34274 58416 66962 45789 08807 45444 70748 02023 06115 27860 27538 87137 78437 29372 51463 82936 44379 72573 93680 34879 37567 37495 28185 33426 40073 26707 62063 10454 06879 57239 66633 03709 71240 62081 75431 20688 27491 81704 24685 84287 44086 60178 45569 69765 04261 67365 14290 85895 24867 66199 78618 85530 72226 80682 68861 24633 99225 http://www.larryhatch.net/RNDTABLE.HTM
Darwin's Pyrrhic victory Posted: December 28, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc. "Intelligent Design Derailed," exulted the headline. "By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution," declared the New York Times, which added its own caning to the Christians who dared challenge the revealed truths of Darwinian scripture. Noting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Bush appointee, the Washington Post called his decision "a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their 'breathtaking inanity' in trying to inject religion into science classes." But is it really game, set, match, Darwin? Have these fellows forgotten that John Scopes, the teacher in that 1925 "Monkey Trial," lost in court, and was convicted of violating Tennessee law against the teaching of evolution and fined $100? Yet Darwin went on to conquer public education, and American Civil Liberties Union atheists went on to purge Christianity and the Bible from our public schools. The Dover defeat notwithstanding, the pendulum is clearly swinging back. Darwinism is on the defensive. For, as Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," reminds us, there is no better way to make kids curious about "intelligent design" than to have some Neanderthal forbid its being mentioned in biology class. In ideological politics, winning by losing is textbook stuff. The Goldwater defeat of 1964, which a triumphant left said would bury the right forever, turned out to be liberalism's last hurrah. Like Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism appears destined for the graveyard of discredited ideas, no matter the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge. In his opinion, Judge Jones the Third declared: The overwhelming evidence is that [intelligent design] is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory ... It is an extension of the fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution. But if intelligent design is creationism or fundamentalism in drag, how does Judge Jones explain how that greatest of ancient thinkers, Aristotle, who died 300 years before Christ, concluded that the physical universe points directly to an unmoved First Mover? As Aristotle wrote in his "Physics": "Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover." A man of science and reason, Aristotle used his observations of the physical universe to reach conclusions about how it came about. Where is the evidence he channeled the Torah and creation story of Genesis before positing his theory about a prime mover? Darwinism is in trouble today for the reason creationism was in trouble 80 years ago. It makes claims that are beyond the capacity of science to prove. Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter â i.e., something from nothing â that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes. Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the "missing links" between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith. And the response they are getting in the classroom and public forum is: "Prove it," and, "Where is your evidence?" And while Darwinism suggests our physical universe and its operations happened by chance and accident, intelligent design seems to comport more with what men can observe and reason to. If, for example, we are all atop the Grand Canyon being told by a tour guide that nature, in the form of a surging river over eons of time, carved out the canyon, we might all nod in agreement. But if we ask how "Kilroy was here!" got painted on the opposite wall of the canyon, and the tour guide says the river did it, we would all howl. A retreating glacier may have created the mountain, but the glacier didn't build the cabin on top of it. Reason tells us the cabin came about through intelligent design. Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith. It contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science. Where science says, "No miracles allowed," Darwinism asks us to believe in miracles. By Pat Buchanan
"Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith." Oh the irony, you couldn't make it up, I can hardly stop laughing. And creation is not faith but fact? roflmao, one of the funniest things I've read in ages. And he quotes Aristotle (the earths in the middle of lots of spheres and since I can't explain the rest there must be a prime mover, except retrograde planetary motion so we'll forget that) to try and look erudite. Fantastic.
Mr. Pat, may be a political sage, but after reading this editorial, he is not (in my humble opinion) able to reason from a scientific viewpoint. Evolution does not ask for a belief in miracles. As I have pointed out dozens of times previously, evolution doesn't even deny the existence of God. There is absolutely nothing in evolutionary theory that does not permit a divine spirit to direct each of the tiny incremental changes that causes the evolution of biological life. That is, it is quite possible, while utterly unprovable, to believe that the mutations that occur in the germ line of a particular strain of DNA molecule are caused by divine intervention, and such a belief does nothing to evolutionary theory. Both science and God may coexist peacefully. However, as soon as the theist directs that the changes were NOT tiny and incremental, but rather large and instantaneous, this is when the problems occur. Ignoring the fossil evidence, which although not a perfect chain, strongly tends to suggest an incredibly slow incremental march of life has occurred on Earth, and further ignoring the arguments between scientists about the meaning of the Precambrian explosion that tends to indicate that a large number of life forms appeared much more rapidly than in other periods of evolution (but still not anywhere near instantaneously), there is simply the problem of raw power requirements. Every mutation of DNA requires some tiny increment of power as a causation. And, where tiny incremental changes occur, this power need is also tiny and incremental. But, as soon as the intelligent design advocate, such as Mr. Buchanan, suggests, for example, that a bacterial flagellum was constructed all in one shot by an intelligent designer, then the issue of power suddenly arises, and this issue is no small potato, although it is routinely ignored by the ID "scientist." Let's say that one gene mutation requires one microwatt of power. That doesn't sound like much, now does it? But, wait -- it's not just one microwatt, it's one microwatt delivered to a specific location in the universe from wherever the designer is located. So, either the designer must travel to the location and bring that microwatt of power along, or the designer must generate the power somewhere else and transmit that power to the location where the mutation is to occur. Now, see there's this little detail that power is required to transmit power. And, if you're traveling a very great distance then the power required becomes very great, as well. And, suddenly what was only a tiny microwatt, quickly rises to meet Einstein's special relativity problem where the mass of matter or energy accelerated to the speed of light, causes the energy requirement to rise, until you get the point where the matter/energy shoots off the scale to... "10X10X10X10...energy raised literally to the power of infinity!" Walter Pigeon, "Forbidden Planet" (1955). So, no matter how little power is required, or how much, in order for the mind of God to get that power to one specific point in the universe instantaneously, requires not some, but ALL of the rest of the power of the universe, and more. The power requirement is infinite, UNLESS it remains subatomic. Subatomic particles that travel in the netherworld of quantum mechanics do not violate any scientific principles in order to get to a specific location and cause the tiny incremental change necessary for evolution to occur. But, as soon as you start saying that the change was not incremental, then you need power. And, not just "some" power or a lot of power -- you need all of the power of all of the stars in the universe and you need it all at once and you need it all in one place. If the lightbulb is going off right now, and you're saying, "Gee, that sounds just like the Big Bang," then congratulations, because that's exactly what would be required to produce the sort of biological changes contemplated by the ID advocate. And, such an event apparently did occur, if you ask the run of mill cosmologist about how the universe began. But, it didn't happen locally, on Earth, a billion different odd times, whenever God wanted to produce a new creature. It happened right up front, with the Big Bang itself. The point is that neither evolution nor the Big Bang denies God's existence, or even God's potentially limitless power. But, as soon as God says, "Let there be light," and creates the physical universe, then the rules that are simultaneously created, prevent God from sticking anything more than a subatomic toe into the universal ocean in order to make changes -- otherwise, God's attempt to instantaneously construct a bacterial flagellum (or Adam and/or Eve, etc.), requires God to initiate the Big Bang again, and that would destroy God's universe. Evolution and incremental change allows for the possibility of God as designer of the universe. Intelligent design and instantaneous change denies the possibility of God, unless you admit the absolute existence of magic. So, unless the ID advocate wants to have public school kids standing around a cauldron whispering incantations to cause magical and instantaneous "materializations from pure potentiality" (to quote Z, and a really beautiful bit of prose, if I do say so myself), then the ID advocate needs to reevaluate exactly what it is that he/she is advocating, because by advocating instant biological Quaker Oatmeal, the ID advocate is shooting God right in the subatomic foot.
instantaneous "materializations from pure potentiality" Please provide evidence of the "instantaneous" comments that you falsely continue to attribute to me. The ID that I have suggested doesn't require God or supernatural, it only requires order rather than chance. Not one place did I suggest that instantaneous was a requirement.
No, sorry, the ID that you have suggested, and the ID that you continue to suggest is the ID that is advocated by the Discovery Institute, Michael Behe, and William Dembski, et. al., because that is the ONLY ID argument that currently exists. And THAT argument REQUIRES INSTANTANEOUS change. If the bacterial flagellum did not occur incrementally over time, then the alternative is that it occurred instantaneously over no time. If your argument is for the former, then YOU are arguing in favor of EVOLUTION. If you're arguing for the latter, then you are arguing in favor of MAGIC. Now, if you PERSONALLY have an argument that is DIFFERENT from the ID argument that is currently propounded by the Discovery Institute, then if you are intent that YOUR PERSONAL ARGUMENT for ID should be taught in a public school biology class, then BEFORE you advocate the teaching of YOUR PERSONAL ARGUMENT in favor of ID, then it would be really nice if you would lay out your precise argument, so that someone can evaluate it for its viability. Otherwise, the biology teacher will be standing up in front of a classroom and saying: "OK kids, we're gonna talk about the two theories of development of life on Earth today. The first is evolution, which is the slow and incremental mutation of DNA that propagates and reproduces as the result of its providing a selective advantage to the host biological organism as compares with its local competition. The second theory is not really a theory, it's just an observation that life seems to look designed to some people, and so they believe that this is credible proof that, because it looks designed, then it must be designed, and furthermore because so many people agree in this premise, that the premise has been dictated to be a scientific theory, and therefore I present it today as a reasonable alternative theory to evolution, even though this 'theory' does not arise as the result of any scientific research, but rather it arises as the collective opinion of the majority of voters who pay taxes and thereby pay my salary and the salary of my superiors." The above appears to me, and I will wager to most others on my side of the argument who read your thoughts, to be your argument, and what you advocate be presented in a public school biology classroom setting. If this is NOT your argument, then what EXACTLY IS YOUR ARGUMENT??? This, by the way, is what I have now asked you FOUR TIMES PREVIOUSLY IN THIS THREAD, and it is EXACTLY THE QUESTION THAT YOU HAVE REFUSED TO ANSWER. So, are you going to answer the question now, or not?
No, sorry, the ID that you have suggested, and the ID that you continue to suggest is the ID that is advocated by the Discovery Institute, Michael Behe, and William Dembski, et. al., because that is the ONLY ID argument that currently exists. My arguments exist. They are my arguments, not the arguments of someone else. I have learned to think for myself, not simply spout a party line. There are different ID arguments. I have posted my ideas, I have posted the ideas of others. My mind is open, not shut to any particular idea. Thank your for you admission that you have been misrepresenting my statements, and my arguments with your claim of "instantaneous." If this is NOT your argument, then what EXACTLY IS YOUR ARGUMENT??? This, by the way, is what I have now asked you FOUR TIMES PREVIOUSLY IN THIS THREAD, and it is EXACTLY THE QUESTION THAT YOU HAVE REFUSED TO ANSWER. I have found that when people need to all cap, it is the equivalent of shouting. No, I have no interest in answering questions that people are yelling at me..... Your browbeating methods may work on others, or elsewhere....but they are not working here with me.