Materialists like to portray any kind of creation or design thinking as non-scientific, but thinking doesn't have to conform to rigid formulas of what science is, to discern the deeper realities of what we see in the world.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Richard Feynman said that if we were able to pass on just one sentence of scientific knowledge to another civilization it should begin, 'All things are made of atoms...'' [1.]
- Advocates for scientism like to draw a distinct line (in the sand) between science and non-science. There is no such line however, and we can see the truth of this in the story of the atom. As far as we know, this story began 25000 years ago with the Greeks. They 'discovered' the story not by the 'scientific method' but by speculative analysis. What Feynman calls the most vital bit of scientific knowledge we have thus began as philosophy.
My point here is that while ID might not quality as science (in the pre-digital sense of the term) this does not disqualify it from being a meaningful, helpful or useful, in thinking about biological forms in a new and illuminating way. The ID theorists of today might (at some later point in time) be seen to be roughly in the position of Democritus and his students as regards the unfolding of a new way of looking at the world.
The code-like sophistication of DNA (etc.) demands a new way of looking at things.We can't know at this point what such a model will ultimately look like, but I think the ID theorists are on the right track. That they only see dimly may be true, But I think they're at least looking in the right direction.
2. 'All things are made of atoms...'
- It seems to me that the materialist has yet to learn a major lesson of atomic theory. i.e. The key to understanding X is not the stuff it is made of (atoms) but the arrangement of that stuff. The key point of ID theory is that the arrangement we see in living forms is not one that arises from purely physical laws. It's not a chemical arrangement; but one that is non-physical; one that can only have an intelligent source. We might say that the arrangement is not natural (i.e. does not stem from the realm of physics.) We all know that inert matter arranges itself (or gets arranged) in certain known ways - and not in other ways. e.g. sand never arranges itself into a computer chip; nor does iron arrange itself into a car.
Notes.
1. A portrait of the brain - Adam Zeman; p. 14.
2. For more about the idea of biological information I suggest the article; 'Scientific laws of information and their implications—part 1 - by Werner Gitt
'The grand theory of atheistic evolution posits that matter and energy alone have given rise to all things, including biological systems. To hold true, this theory must attribute the existence of all information ultimately to the interaction of matter and energy without reference to an intelligent or conscious source. All biological systems depend upon information storage, transfer and interpretation for their operation. Thus the primary phenomenon that the theory of evolution must account for is the origin of biological information. In this article it is argued that fundamental laws of information can be deduced from observations of the nature of information. These fundamental laws exclude the possibility that information, including biological information, can arise purely from matter and energy without reference to an intelligent agent. As such, these laws show that the grand theory of evolution cannot in principle account for the most fundamental biological phenomenon...'
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