An introduction to Intelligent Design

For people who want a brief introduction to Intelligent Design I can recommend an essay in the book 'Debating design; from Darwin to DNA. In this post I'll comment briefly on the essay 'Who's afraid of ID?' by Angus Menuge.

Quotes and comments;

p/32. 'Intelligent Design (ID) argues that intelligent causes are capable of leaving empirically detectable marks in the natural world. Aspiring to be a scientific research program, ID purports to study the effects of intelligent causes in biology and cosmology. It claims that the best explanation for at least some of the appearance of design in nature is that this design is actual. Specifically, certain kinds of complex information found in the natural world are said to point convincingly to the work of an intelligent agency. [1.]

A prominent critic of ID that Menuge discusses is Barbara Forrest.

p/33. 'According to Forrest, the ID movement is “the most recent – and most dangerous – manifestation of creationism” (Forrest 2001, 5).

- This remark makes no sense to me. If all is matter in motion (as F. believes) how can anything be dangerous? i.e. if nothing has meaning, how can anything matter? If all is merely matter in motion why should it matter what happens; why should it matter that particles collide with particles?

What she's doing is taking theistic ideas and using them (without warrant) to attack ID. She's forgetting that she's merely a bit of matter drifting through the void. She forgets that her worldview renders everything meaningless. She's playing the game of placing bits and parts of her worldview in airtight compartments... and pretending they have nothing to do with one another.

There's no way the theory of evolution allows one to say anything is good or bad. One wonders how she manages to ignore this. If she wants us to take the evolutionary wview seriously shouldn't she take it seriously herself? In other words; while she claims to be a Materialist, she's using theistic ethics. Because she can't live in terms of her professed wview she pretends her metaphysics have nothing to do with her ethics. Apparently she thinks ethics is something one can fabricate out of thin air.

p/33. Furthermore, Forrest contends, ID “really has nothing to do with science”.

- That's a strange remark for a mindless bit of matter to make. Is she again forgetting who she is? that she's a mindless bit of matter drifting in a cosmic void? One might wonder how a mindless bit of matter can know such a thing?
One might wonder how a universal such as 'science' could exist in a materialistic (chance) universe. Once again she has no warrant for making her statement. Apparently she thinks she can ignore her wview whenever she happens to find it inconvenient. Apparently an intellectual doesn't need to demonstrate coherence in his or her thinking.

This remark by Forrest is typical of what we see in the science establishment. What we see is not a concern for truth, but an attempt by members of a certain group (materialists) to take over an entire field of endeavor. This has happened many times in the past; an obvious example being how humanists took over what were once christian universities. The current project to take over science (in the name of Materialism) is just more of the same. To see this all you have to do is ignore the noble sounding rhetoric and focus on the actions of this group.

33. [Forrest feels that] 'The real goal, apparently, is to make scientists think of the religious
implications of their work.'

- Can she know the 'real' goal of ID proponents without talking to them, without getting to know them? She's very talented if she can. (I get tired of academics telling us they have inside knowledge as to what people 'really' think, into what they're 'really' doing. All this mystification goes back to Freud who claimed to know what was going on with people far better than they knew themselves.
If we're all just bits of mindless matter one wonders how these crystal ball gazers can know these things. (For one thing they have to assume all people are the same; and this would mean believing all people are the same as they are. (Assuming everyone is the same is one of the major mistakes intellectuals of our day make.)

45. 'Of course, critics may claim that the real reason that proponents of ID find it difficult to publish is that they are mixing science and religion. This was commonplace in the writings of Newton, but modern science believes that the objectivity of its results depends on excluding religious interpretations.

- Science isn't a person; therefore it has no beliefs, nor can it. Over and over we see materialists like Forrest trying to conflate materialism and science.

Notes;
1. Debating design; from Darwin to DNA - editors; M. Ruse and W. Dembski
- essay; Who's afraid of ID? by Angus Menuge