First, I know google is my gawd...but aside from that...

Help me with the names of any or many non-Christian or non-religious scientists that believe in ID over evolution.
All help will be appreciated.

There are none.

I asked a similar question on another board where people were always discussing intelligent design as not religious. Silence is the only answer.

Check out Ben Stien's movie "no intellegence allowed" he interviews some scientists that I think fit that catagory, I'm not sure. It's been a while since I watched it.

His initials sometimes make me think--during those long hours behind the wheel--that if there is indeed an energy force behind human affairs, it has a particularly appropriate and wicked sense of humor...

Wiki lists his religion as Jewish, so it appears the I.D. crowd is well-represented theologically... There does appear to be a dearth of atheists among their numbers, however...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Stein

>Stein was the commencement speaker for the Liberty University 2009 graduation on Saturday, May 9, at Williams Stadium. At this ceremony, the University awarded him an honorary degree. According to the school, Stein "delivered a message of creationism, patriotism, and value for humanity to graduates and their families."

Liberty University was founded by no less than the late Jerry Falwell...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2010 03:08PM by SL Cabbie.

...I had a heated discussion today with a BAC. This is a bright person. (We believed foolish things as Mormons). This person claimed there are non-religious/non-Christian scientists that do support ID and denounce evolution.

I am baffled!! I figured it would be a good topic for this forum. I know when I grew up in Mormonism, I thought they were compatable somehow. Actually, truth be told... I was not thinking much about this topic as a Mormon.

"This person claimed there are non-religious/non-Christian scientists that do support ID and denounce evolution."

If it's their claim, then they should offer proof. Not you.

The two principle "clowns" I'm aware of, Behe and Dembski, are mentioned, as is the role of the hyper-conservative "Discovery Institute":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

>Religion and leading proponents

>Although arguments for intelligent design are formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer,[n 20] the majority of principal intelligent design advocates are publicly religious Christians who have stated that in their view the designer proposed in intelligent design is the Christian conception of God. Stuart Burgess, Phillip E. Johnson, William Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer are evangelical Protestants, and Michael Behe is a Roman Catholic, while Jonathan Wells is a member of the Unification Church [Cabbie Note: Ah, a Moonie!]. Phillip E. Johnson has stated that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments that are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately reintroducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design identified "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message".[n 21] Johnson emphasizes that "the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion"; "after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact [...] only then can 'biblical issues' be discussed".[n 22]

>The strategy of deliberately disguising the religious intent of intelligent design has been described by William Dembski in The Design Inference.[84] In this work Dembski lists a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options for the identity of the designer; however, in his book Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, Dembski states that "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ."

You know me and my background as well as any here, upper class Lady, and I can tell you I've reached the point I won't bother arguing or debating with these sorts (particularly after no less than the Salt Lake Tribune opted not to print a reply of mine on the subject after soliticiting me to "shorten it"). I'm not a scientist and don't play one here, but I do have three PhD friends/consultants who are genuine scientists (only two post here; the other is engaged in conservation work), and they feel similarly. It's not worth the bother, and my experience is the ones who come here trying to proselytize are all unsophisticated creationists who believe parroting a few talking points will give them access to an armory of silver bullets and wooden stakes.

I am familiar enough with the Discovery Institute and the tactic used I saw through in a NY minute! I researched that in the recent past. I really do need the info...if ya know what I mean, and Cabbie, you probably get my reason....hugs and thanks.

Wishful thinking is probably the best description there is.

A "scientist" that would subscribe to that is substituting faith for logic and reason.

They want to use their watches or eyes metaphor for creation and then a chain of limp spaghetti to tell you what kind of morals you should have or even what type of underwear to buy.

I really want to read the SCIENCE behind intelligent design.
I want to read some scientific papers that have been published on the subject.
I want to read the proofs for the theorems.

A quote from Discovery Institute co-founder Philip E Johnson: "This [the wedge strategy promoting ID/creationism] isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." Phillip E Johnson, Co-Founder of The Discovery Institute and considered the father of the intelligent design movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson sited from Witnesses For The Prosecution - World Magazine, 11/30/96

The Discovery Institute has received millions of dollars in donations for the organization but only a fraction - something like 10-15%) of their budget is spent on research. Most of their money goes into PR and promotion (sound familiar - like TSCC) in an effort to proselytize their ID message.

The Wedge Strategy's first stage was intended to confront evolutionary theory - to pummel it thoroughly with the intent of undermining it - and then begin to introduce ID as an alternative. The idea wasn't that ID was correct science but rather that it was viewed as being more compatible with religion and would bring more people into the fold - just as Johnson's quote above indicates. These are really dishonest and devious people promoting this nonsense as science.

I'm waiting for one of these people to show me the science...

But those who are promoting ID the hardest aren't really scientist nor do they care about science really is or what has made it as successful as it is in revealing reality to human understanding. They want to destroy evolutionary theory by whatever means possible and they haven't been successful outside the science classrooms. They don't care if ID is real science or not - they just want their alternative taught as if it were science so kids can continue to believe in religion (hopefully, their version of religion).

but not in the science department.
I just had a "discussion" with a Facebook friend about this. Silence followed. I'll have to check and see if I'm defriended.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle and Mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe are two whose names were mentioned a lot and who were quoted a lot in my conversations with biblical literalists. Wickramasinghe testified for the ID'ers in an Arkansas trial, and both have made statements which appear to refute evolutionary theory but when one really digs into what they say, we find that they do accept evolutionary theory with a few variations. Together, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe formulated the panspermia hypothysis (I don't know that they collected enough evidence to call it a theory) which says that life began in space and came to earth most likely on comet. They have some interesting evidence to support their hypothosis. There is evidence of organic material in deep space and it is interesting that life began almost as soon as the earth became able to support life.

Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Buddhist originally from Sri Lanka. Some of his statements such as "Life could not be an accident, not just on the Earth alone, but anywhere, anywhere at all in the Universe. The facts as we now see them point to one of two distinct conclusions: an act of deliberate creation, or an indelible permanence of the patterns of life in a Universe that is eternal and boundless. For those who accept modern cosmological views as gospel truth, the latter alternative might be thought unlikely, and so one might be driven inescapably to accept life as being an act of deliberate creation. Creation would then be brought into the realm of empirical science" are endlessly repeated by creationists as supporting their views.

Of course they leave off the rest of his statement "The notion of a creator placed outside the Universe poses logical difficulties, and is not one to which I can easily subscribe. My own philosophical preference is for an essentially eternal, boundless Universe, wherein a creator of life somehow emerges in a natural way. My colleague, Sir Fred Hoyle, has also expressed a similar preference. In the present state of our knowledge about life and about the Universe, an emphatic denial of some form of creation as an explanation for the origin of life implies a blindness to fact and an arrogance that cannot be condoned.” Chandra Wickramasinghe
Evidence in the Trial at Arkansas, December, 1981

Wickramasinghe later wrote of his experience in Arkansas, "It was only after meeting "creation scientists" in Arkansas who believed in the literal truth of the Bible, including a belief in an Earth no older than 6000 years, that I began to doubt the wisdom of our decision." (A Journey with Fred Hoyle: The Search For Cosmic Life, Chandra Wickramasinghe, 2005, p.151). He also wrote, ""The creationist is a sham religious person who, curiously, has no true sense of religion. In the language of religion, it is the facts we observe in the world around us that must be seen to constitute the words of God. Documents, whether the Bible, the Quoran or those writings that held such force for Velikovsky, are only the words of men. To prefer the words of men to those of God is what one can mean by blasphemy. This we think is the instinctive point of view of most scientists who, curiously again, have a deeper understanding of the real nature of religion than have the many who delude themselves into a frenzied belief in the words, often the meaningless words, of men. Indeed, the lesser the meaning, the greater the frenzy, in something like inverse proportion." [Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution, London: J M Dent, 1993]

In a 2005 interview in Phenomena magazine Wickramasinghe said:
SM: You do actually align your theory with Darwinism, would that be fair to say?

CW: Yes. Some of our critics over the years were people who thought we were challenging evolution. Evolution was a very hard won battle in the late 19th century, as you know, and any subsequent challenge of that would understandably not have been taken lightly. We did not challenge evolution per se, but what we did say was that evolution had to be considered in the context of a continuing input of genetic material from space. This is inevitable if Life was introduced to the earth from outside in the first place, if it came from comets.

Many of Fred Hoyle's statements are similar to Wichramasinghe's but I don't seem to have them saved anywhere I can find. At one point under cross examination in the Arkansas trial, Wickramasinghe said that anyone who believed that the world was less than 10,000 years old (it may have been a higher number) would be crazy.

I wouldn't say that Fred Hoyle or Chandra Wickramasinghe believe in a classical version of Intelligent Design per se. Certainly some of their statements would seem to lead one to believe that this was true but it is difficult to say when at least on of them answers a direct question and affirms acceptence of evolutionary theory.

What should be said about creationist and their quotes is that they love to take portions of comments out of context when it seems to support soemthing they want to believe. They are masters of the sound bite which is not a good way to understand the complexities of science. Science just doesn't translate well when restricted to small limited bits of information. Stephen J Gould had a great quote on this topic. I thought I had it saved as well, but can't find it. Einstein was (and still is) often characterized by many religious fanatics as a very religious person. But Einstein refuted such claims very clearly saying, "“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

in conclusion, I offer this quote from Kenneth R Miller who is a Christian and a biology professor at Brown University regarding the film "Exposed: No Intelligence Allowed": ""Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended. Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University. Miller has written several books defending evolutionary theory against creationists. He has also debated the likes of Philip E Johnson who is thought to be one of the founders of the modern ID movement and a co-founder of the ID think-tank The Discovery Institute.

... who agree on the existence of a hysterical JuHEEsus!

Truth is, its not reputable scholars but biblical scholars who mostly agree. That would be because their jobs are contigent upon the existence of JuHEEsus.

Real scientific types aren't even going to remotely entertain the notion of Intelligent Design as their jobs are more about establishing facts than promoting fairy tales.

Timothy



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2010 03:58PM by Timothy.

How do ID believers answer the simple question "who created the creator"? If life on this planet couldn't have happened by natural processes and laws, how did something much more complex and powerful come into existence to create us more simple creatures?

God has always been around (supposedly) and therefore precedes the universe.

... when one runs out of arguments.

Timothy

They insist the universe was created.

Religion has an internal paradox about creation/miracles being provable yet God being undiscoverable.
Even when I was TBM, I simply believed that evolution was true because God always provides you a choice in believing Him. A natural "mechansim-of-action" of apparent miracles was always there, ranging from sheer coincidence to the natural result of actions/decisions, such that you could ALWAYS argue both sides and the tie-breaker is belief alone. (notice I don't use the term "faith" for belief, since I think religion mistakes faith for surrogate knowledge, but I think real faith is braving not knowing).
So what are ID folks saying? God IS discoverable after all? We CAN reach the boundary of natural phenomena? Hmmm, reminds me of a bible story...
I love limitist arguments like "evolution is true but biogenesis is impossible and required direct intervention", even though evidence has been around since the '60's that RNA forms spontaneously in certain conditions, and has BOTH replication AND existential function. I wanted to ask this guy "will you stop believing then when/if natural biogenesis is proven?".
"Intelligent Design" is bogus by BOTH rules, science AND religion.

just exactly why the formation of the earth and life requires a "creator" ?

Enquiring minds like mine want to know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2010 11:46AM by Dave the Atheist.

"This [the wedge strategy promoting ID/creationism] isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." Phillip E Johnson, Co-Founder of The Discovery Institute"

Lots of you good folk have been making the case the ID is not science.
I'd like to point out that it's not philosophy either.

... when the faithful agree to allow Evo to be preached from the pulpit.

Timothy



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2010 12:53PM by Timothy.

Read the first page of chapter 1 in Dawkins' new book on the topic called "The Greatest Show on Earth." It will take you about three minutes.

He said there are NO reputable scientists who do not accept evolution. Evolution is the foundation of biology.

Here is a taste of that first page:

"Imagine you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world...the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, ....Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class's attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say 'ignorami') who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French....: all these languages and...sprang spontaneously and separately into being and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin. Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defense of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defense against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren't too busy fighting it."

I hope this passage might help our own resident Latin/history teacher, bona dea, relate to Dawkins a little more and understand his frustration.

He goes on to say that he knows many religious people who accept evolution but that religious people need to be more responsible about what they are saying from the pulpits. He has an excellent little discussion about this.

Speaking of biology, he explains how and why evolution has left hypothesis level to the level of fact theory (as in theorem in math). There is no longer any doubt in any serious mind and scientists speak of the "fact" of evolution.

So, in this first chapter he explains that he never though he would have to write a book to explain why evolution is fact. He promises you will not finish the book without having the evidence needed to put the matter to rest. Beyond reasonable doubt-which is the understatement of all time.

I'm glad he is giving others tools to use when they are confronted by "vocal, superficially plausible, and adept at seeming learned" people. It is time to address others who insist the "controversy" or "alternative theory" should be presented. It's time to address relativist intellectuals who teach all points of view are of equal value and should be equally respected.

So if people get past the first chapter where he explains the problem, they can get into this excellent book that presents more evidence than anyone could ask to settle any questions they might have about evolution.

So, no, there are no ~reputable~ scientists of biology in this day and age who do not accept evolution. There is no biology without it.

Evolution as theory is being questioned more and more by all scientists, except the die hard atheists, who are more die hard than ever. It is not a coincidence that the highest proportion of scientists that believe in intelligent design are microbiologists and astronomers, those that appreciate the complexity of our world and universe, as it is part of what they study every day.

Time is on the side of those that intelligently reject the foundations of mormonism, as well as those that accept intelligent design as an explanation for the creation of our universe.