Bush said it. It's news. It's got to be reported on. In language you're used to: They're not reporting a rumor, they're reporting _on_ a rumor that's affecting the market.

Anyways, I'm all for open debate, as long as it doesn't take away time from science class. It could be in religion class instead; perhaps science could make some inroads there. I'd be up for that.

Before ID is worthy of science class it needs a testable hypothesis, and one way to show that there is room for deities to inject miracles into the universe is to find physical interactions that violate the principle of the conservation of energy. An example of this would be a protein folding completely spontaneously, without any impetus from within or without, or a molecule suddenly accelerating without any force being applied to it.

Needless to say, given that no scientific observation/test/experiment has ever witnessed such a "miracle", literally, despite scientists looking rather closely on many occasions, scientists have come to rely on the first law of thermodynamics, and have based the entire foundations of physics on it. You have to throw that out if you believe in ID.

Do you? I must admit I hadn't realised that. I have clearly not got the measure of this whole ID debate.

Shit.

I have made an absolute fool of myself. I thought you could buy into Intelligent Design and still subscribe to mainstream science. This not being so, I think I should just shut up about it.

Somehow I don't think that's likely.

Schhtummm.

Although actually, with a deadline looming on a project I need to finish by 3 today and haven't started yet, it's time for some serious procrastination, and so I am actually having second thoughts about laying off ID.

But first - is my new understanding right or not - can I believe in this ID stuff and still believe in evolution and other mainstream science or not?? I'd rather trust the scientists on the scientific detail of reality, whilst turning to God for the spiritual stuff. Is that acceptable to the ID proponents or do they demand that you burn your Darwin?

Actually, Stefan's got a point. Obviously it's not enough for an intelligent designer to just be intelligent: he's got to actually *do* something and physically alter the world in some way. That's how, ex hypothesi, we know he's there: we can see evidence of his existence in his designs.

But if he's changing the world, then either he's part of a thermodynamically closed system, or he isn't. If he is part of the system, then he is violating the first law of thermodynamics by making changes without expending energy. And if he's not part of the system then, well, the system isn't closed -- and science relies on the universe being closed. That's kinda the definition of universe, really.

CdB, i think throwing out Darwin is strongly implied. The IDers are gunning for him in Kansas. Dunno why, Relativity isn't in the bible either. Maybe coz if god just let us get evolved rather than created, maybe his chosen creature was an amoeaba or germ rather than us people. Being microscopic, these would of course have been harder for the romans to nail into the cross, would have been poor fodder for the lions in the Circus, and not interesting to watch being eaten either.

Claude: God and Evolution

ìI happily combine belief in evolution with belief in a creator.î

So do I, with limits on evolution. Believing in an intelligent creator does not conflict with science, the study of what the Designer designed. But it does move the question of beginnings to a more remote place... outside of the space-time continuum in which we exist... and beyond which we cannot investigate.

ì...can I believe in this ID stuff and still believe in evolution and other mainstream science or not??î

Legitimate ID is consistent with other mainstream science and accepts evolution. It just does not assume that evolution can account for everything... as many evolution promoters do, but are unable to substantiate.

The complaint you have is very clear, so I think the generation of a comprehensive list would be both easy and helpful:

"It just does not assume that evolution can account for everything... as many evolution promoters do, but are unable to substantiate"

So what elements of 'everything' do 'evolution promoters' not 'account for' without being able to 'substantiate'?

Look, Sage, Science is all about coming up with naturalistic explanations for phenomena. This involves trying to break down complex interactions into simple enough "self-evident" cause-and-effect component steps. Success in this endeavor is a long term project, and there will be gaps in our understanding for a while where we have guesses but not yet concrete conclusions, and that's the case whether we're talking cancer research, cosmology, global warming or evolution.

Intelligent design attempts to hole up in the remaining gaps of evolutionary theory, like a parasite, where it insists that because scientists' high standards are not yet satisfied in these places, there is theoretically room for interventionist deities or aliens to perform their miracles (though IDists all seem to be quite sure it's just one particular deity doing the miracles).

The scientist response is not just "that too unlikely to contemplate," it's a more visceral incredulous reaction, because they see no difference between IDists positing that God injected ready-made nanotechnology into the universe at a predetermined spot x millions of years ago and the idea that evil spirits cause cancers or that demons possess the mentally ill or that the Sun is carried across the heavens in a chariot daily.

And the reason for this is that, like Felix and I mentioned earlier, old-school miracles face an irreducibility problem of their own. They amount to effects without naturalistic causes, which violates the first law of thermodynamics, and scientists are rather fond of the principle of the conservation of energy.

But there is a way for you to have your religion and science too: If you were to call the entirety of the naturalistic, measureable causes that contribute to the formation of a new complex structure a "miracle", I wouldn't have any problem with it, as we'd be arguing semantics. This sort of miracle does not presuppose that that molecules moved spontaneously, in the process undermining the most basic foundations of science. And in the case of evolution, there'd already be an alternate name for your miracle: natural selection.

This is why many Christians don't have a problem with evolution. They see God everywhere in nature, or they see science's ability to explain how compexity arises from simple processes as unveiling the mechanisms that do God's work. Sorry that this God is not quite as capricious as you were hoping for, but hey, you can't always get what you want.

I think it's obvious why Christians have a problem with evolution, as opposed to, say, quantum mechanics or atmospheric chemistry. It's because evolution is about Us Humans, and that's where Christians stop not caring about science and start feeling that it's impinging on their own magisterium. Christians could, if they want, make similar criticisms of any branch of science, but they are fixated on evolution because they think that humans are special. Well, humans aren't special. We're just another species in a long, long line of species: there have been millions before us, and, if we don't destroy the planet in the interim, there will be millions after us too. OK, maybe our ability to destroy the ecosystem off which we live is unique in the history of species. But I think it's this, rather than evolution per se, which Christians object to: the idea that we're no more special to God than the average earthworm, or maybe even the average tulip or the average lump of quartz. After all, what's so special about life?

The ability to destroy the ecosystem is not a uniquely human trait. We just do it faster. What is uniquely human is that, if we try really hard, we can be conscious of our actions.