Foundations of ID

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Then why is ID not accepted by the science establishment. Is there perhaps a conspiracy of some sort or are biologists, chemists, et al. just stupid and deluded?

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Bias. They percieve something that could threaten their worldview, so they shutdown. They dismiss it a priori.

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If our observations are based on an intelligent designer, how would we ever arrive at a falsifiable conclusion? It seems as though the theory has almost set itself up to be neither falsifiable nor infalsifiable. How do you see us getting around that?

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Patience. We must wait, and accept the fact that our methods may need to develop for decades before we are sophisticated enough to design a falsifiable test. In the meantime, we must stay open to all possibilities.

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What about the christian scientists? do they shut down as well?

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Christian scientists are people too, so I would say yes there have been some somewhere who have shutdown. Since Christian scientists are not a part of the mainstream scientific community, this has little impact on ID.However, on the whole it has been my experience that Christian scientists are much more brave when it comes to dealing with the opposition. It's just that thier rebuttals are not listened to.Bias is something you either see or you don't. It requires a lot of empathy and a lot of introspection.

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my friend the professor is a highly regarded professor IN the mainstream sciences.

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You are arguing specifics, and I am saying that generally speaking Christian scientists are not part of the mainstream.Im happy for your friend, but surely you can see he is the exception and not the rule.

I have seen people ask for examples of a mechanism a hypothetical intelligent designer would use to implement its design.If the designer is the observer of quantum mechanics, then the act of observing the right place at the right time could be the mechanism. I predict that someday QM and ID will support each other in this reguard.A lot still needs to be done in QM, however it is true that most interpretations currently suggest an observer. That alone should be enough to make most athiests/agnostics pause.Combine that with the fact that there are doubts about Neo-Darwinism, doubts about the fossil record, and doubts about the authenticity of the bible and its easy to see how any reasonable person should have doubts. As a former athiest I know first-hand. Now I'm agnostic, baby!
However, I, unlike most of my fellow agnostics, am willing to listen to the other side, rather than merely read about the other side on Panda's Thumb or some other biased site.

QM represents an object differently depending on whether it is being observed or not being observed...right? Whenever an object is not under observation, QM represent that object as a mathamatical "wave of probability", called the object's "wave function"...right? During the act of measurement, the mathematical description shifts...from a spread-out range of possible attributes (unmeasured object) to single-valued actual attributes (measured object). This sudden measurement-induced switch of descriptions is called "the collapse of the wave function"What actually happens during a "wave collapse" is the biggest mystery in QM. Whether this shift in the mathematical description corresponds to an actual dislocation in the real world or is a purely mathematical quirk is the question. So...back to square one. No way to KNOW anything as of yet.

I meant that they will support each other in an easily falsifiable manner.

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7) There is tons of positive evidence to support ID ranging from the fossil record to probability mathematics to science based comparison studies using semiotics to complex symbiotic systems found in nature to redundant systems found in genomes.

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Just want to add a quick comment about the fossil record. Its my understanding that ID theorists reject the neo-Darwinian account of macroevolution because a) the fossil record still shows, after two centuries of digging, evidence only of microevolution (variation within biological taxa), but not of macroevolution (variation between biological taxa), b) all proposed mechanisms for Darwinian evolution on the microbiological level fail in explaining how the complexity on the cellular and subcellular level could have arisen by gradual, random mutation and natural selection, and c) the relatively short age of the universe is insufficient to allow for the complexity that now exists.This message has been edited by Limbo, 04-29-2005 09:43 PM

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6) ID does not seek to replace evolution, but seeks to pull secular humanistic religion out of science and base science back on the tenets of science. Among that religious doctrine is a philosophy based on no science at all called Darwinism. Darwinism is not evolution as the latter is science based rather than religion based.

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Pulling secular humanistic religion out of science needs to be done but I don't think that goal should be too closely identified with the foundations of ID. ID can(slowly)grow from its foundations without doing that. That is something science needs to do for itself...just like an alcoholic needs to decide for himself to get off the bottle.An independant, unbiased agency needs to be formed to examine the influence of secular humanistic religion on science.On a side note, I would just like to say that criticisms of ID based on social, religious, philosophical, or cultural grounds, including complaints about the identity, motives, or capabilities of the designer, miss the mark. Design theorists argue that specified complexity can be objectively and reliably defined and detected so that the probability of non-design nears impossibility and the probability of design nears certainty. This is intelligent design’s central tenet. It is on this point, and only on this point, that intelligent design as a scientific undertaking can be appropriately challenged and criticized.This message has been edited by Limbo, 05-01-2005 10:52 AM

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It would depend on our approach.

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Jerry, in the end is there anything specific to Darwinism and/or ID that DOESN'T depend on the particular approach scientists decide to take a priori?This message has been edited by Limbo, 05-14-2005 10:47 PM

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One could even begin to question if there could be some religious motivation in that. I liked Ooooks very honest statement to me. I think he probably is a scientist as his words are fairly wise. He mentioned something and compared it as being: "Similar to the Atheist/Agnostic Agenda you get handed once you start researching evolutionary biology."

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Once the American people sift through the NAS and media spins and realize that the philosophically bankrupt approach mainstream science takes is forcing them down a long, dark road to a philosophical dead-end, things may change. One can only hope.Thanks for the great posts Jerry!This message has been edited by Limbo, 05-15-2005 04:28 AM