Creationism does NOT belong in science.

James R<< It seems to me that most claims of ID are negative. They proceed along lines like: "Darwinian evolution can't explain X, so X must have been intelligently designed". However, no compelling evidence of intelligent design is provided. And, of course, it is not true that if Darwinian evolution can't explain X, X must be due to ID.>>

Yet when I ask ID critics what type of data they would consider as evidence for ID they often say, " Find something that would not be predicted and cannot be explained by evolution " thus pushing the ID proponent in the very direction of the stereotype held by the ID critic. If an ID proponent were to seriously try to provide what the ID critic demands he/she would come off as an anti-evolutionist or Creationist. Thus, attempts to find the evidence the ID critics want would fuel their stereotypes about IDers and reinforce their notion that ID = nonsense. Open-minded people would not be playing these games.

 

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I have never heard of anyone who wanted intelligent design taught in schools who wasn't a fundamentalist Christian. If you aren't a fundamentalist Christian, you're the first. Virtually all of the people who organize campaigns to get ID taught in schools are creationist Christians who only support ID because it's one step closer to biblical creationism.

I understand your frustration that people dismiss ID arguments as creationist nonsense, but it's a completely understandable reaction when 99% of the people talking about intelligent design are creationists who are merely using the phrase 'intelligent design' because you can't say 'creationism' in front of a judge. Can you list any serious ID scholars who aren't fundamentalist Christians? I've never heard of any.

 

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Warren: All ID actually asks at the moment is “teach the controversy”.

Nasor: I have never heard of anyone who wanted intelligent design taught in schools who wasn't a fundamentalist Christian. If you aren't a fundamentalist Christian, you're the first. Virtually all of the people who organize campaigns to get ID taught in schools are creationist Christians who only support ID because it's one step closer to biblical creationism.

Warren: I'm not a fundamentalist Christian and I don't follow the school thing very closely so you could be right. I'm sure the young earth creationists out number the ID'ers by a large margin. I've been associated with the ID movement from its beginning and I know for a fact that it didn't grow out of YEC. Creation Science has its roots in the Genesis account of creation - a religious source. The courts ruled that because of its religious source, Creation Science promoted a religious viewpoint and is thus in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

I agree. The ID inference, however, is rooted solidly in direct physical evidence that was discovered in the twentieth century, not by theologians or religious prophets or by searching holy scripture, but by secular scientists in secular universities and laboratories whose research was paid for by secular public funds. This evidence was enough to cause some scientists to become suspicious that the origin of life may be the result of advanced bioengineering rather than the work of a blind watchmaker. This suspicion is now being followed up by investigation..

ID has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the supernatural. ID presumes natural causation, even if cause(s) are unknown. If anyone ever comes up with a hypothesis that could by testing establish an unnatural cause, then by all means test it! Why not? For now there is no empirical reason to suspect unnatural causation. There is, however, valid reason to suspect intelligent causation when confronted with aspects of biotic reality that look like bioengineering and/or nanotechnology, neither of which is unnatural. Intelligence and teleology are also not unnatural. If they were, we wouldn’t be here asking questions and typing answers in communicable language. These qualities may have to be extended beyond our own brains if we want to understand life, that’s all.

As for what should be taught in school I don't think ID needs any sort of broad coverage in high school. I just think it should be made clear that some conclusions of science are based upon the underpinnings of materialistic philosophy. And that there are some serious thinkers that question this assumption and are trying to evaluate whether design might be inferred. Without this slim inclusion, you're teaching materialistic philosophy to impressionable youth, and I think this is wrong.

Teleology is already apparent in the purposefulness of biological processes. All we have to do is NOT TEACH that the purposefulness of biological processes has been scientifically proven to be illusion. Because that's not true.

What is true is that there is an invalid a priori assumption of ateleology in biology, and this invalid assumption is attached to what is taught. Philosophical materialism disguised as empirical science.

Eliminate that metaphysical corruption, and the apparent teleology can speak for itself.

Warren: Some advocates of Darwinian evolution try to conflate intelligent design (ID) with creationism. In fact, intelligent design is quite different from creationism, as even some of its critics have acknowledged.

Nasor: "I understand your frustration that people dismiss ID arguments as creationist nonsense, but it's a completely understandable reaction when 99% of the people talking about intelligent design are creationists who are merely using the phrase 'intelligent design' because you can't say 'creationism' in front of a judge. Can you list any serious ID scholars who aren't fundamentalist Christians? I've never heard of any"

Here is a small sample.

Michael Behe, Lehigh University biochemist, author of Darwin's Black Box.

Dean Kenyon a biologist at San Francisco State University. For nearly twenty years Professor Kenyon was a leading evolutionary theorist who specialized in origin-of-life biology. While at UC Berkeley in 1969 he wrote a book, Biochemical Predestination, that defined evolutionary thinking on the origin-of-life for over a decade.

George Ayoub
Department of Biology
Westmont College
Santa Barbara, CA 93108-1099

Michael A. Corey is a summa cum laude graduate of West Virginia State College and an alumnus of the Claremont Graduate School, where he studied theology and the philosophical relationship between science and religion. He also studied human biological science at the West Virginia University School of Medicine.

Joseph W. Francis is an associate professor of biology at Cedarville College in Ohio. He teaches introductory and molecular biology, genetics, and immunology. His publications focus primarily on molecular cell biology and teaching methodologies using the Internet. Prior to his appointment at Cedarville College, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

Walter R. Hearn (Ph.D., Biochemistry, University of Illinois). Formerly he taught biochemistry at Iowa State University (1955-1972) and was editor of the American Scientific Affiliation Newsletter (1969-1993).

Margaret Helder completed her education in 1970 with a Ph.D in botany from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Her research interest was in aquatic phycology and aquatic ecology. Her current activities include writing general interest science articles for several publications.

William A. Dembski (Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Chicago, 1988; Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1995; M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996) is an associate editor of Origins & Design, and a Visiting Scholar at Notre Dame’s Center for the Philosophy of Religion.

David Tyler (Ph.D., Management Science, University of Manchester; M.Sc., Physics, Loughborough University) is a senior lecturer in Manufacturing Systems at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 papers and articles and has written an undergraduate textbook in the area of materials management.

Kurt P. Wise holds a B.A. in geophysical science from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D. in paleontology from Harvard University, where his dissertation focused on the stratigraphic distribution of fossils. He currently teaches at Bryan College in Tennessee, where he directs Bryan’s origins research program.

Michael J. Denton (M.B., Ch.B., Bristol University; Ph. D., Developmental Biology, Kings College, London) is the Senior Research Fellow in Human Molecular Genetics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where he has been since 1990. His main research interest is the genetics of human retinal disease. He has written or co-authored over seventy articles in professional journals, and two books, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1984) and Nature’s Destiny (1998).

Dennis Feucht is an electronics engineer, has done leading-edge electronics design of high-performance test instruments, robotics, and motion control systems for 30 years. He is owner of Innovatia Laboratories and is the American Scientific Affiliation newsletter editor.

Jed Macosko (B.S., Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the author of numerous articles on the influenza virus and is completing his Ph.D. in chemistry this spring at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996 he was awarded a two year NIH biophysical training grant for his research on membrane fusion. Currently, he is extending a protein-only spectroscopic technique to also probe RNA molecules. He is a winner of MIT’s Merck Index award for highest academic achievement in chemistry.

Hubert P. Yockey (Ph.D., Physics, University of California, Berkeley) is the author of Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1992), and has contributed to information theory in molecular biology and the origin of literature.

 

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I certainly don't have the time or knowledge to respond to your entire list, but it doesn't have a very impressive beginning.

Michael Behe's book 'Darwin's Black Box' made him a laughingstock among scientists everywhere, not because of his views on intelligent design, but because he apparently forgot nearly all of the molecular biology that he must have learned when getting his Ph.D. His book is little more than an attempt to scam people who have never had an advanced biology class. See http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/Behe.html for a point-by-point refutation of Behe's bizarre claims. Behe is also a devout Christian and senior fellow at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, a religious group that does everything it can to support the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Virtually all of Dean Kenyon's objections to evolution were explained by advances in molecular biology in the mid-70s. The discovery of why organisms tend to prefer one chemical isomer over another and how RNA is able to act as a catalyst for its own polymerization answered most of his questions. He hasn't published a serious science text since. He has, however, co-authored 'Of Pandas and People,' a notoriously fraudulent creationist text.

 

Michael Denton has a very poor understanding of evolutionary theory, which is shown in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis".

Read a review here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html

No Ph.D in biology?

Kurt Wise is a Creationist and believes very strongly in the Christian God.... check out this interview with him.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1318.asp

Once again, no qualifications in biology...

I can't help but notice that the majority of these 'intelligent designists' do NOT have any qualifications in biology...