This week a court in the US will hear the case of a former “team lead” NASA scientist who—according to the evangelical plaintiff—was fired due to his belief and promotion of intelligent design. Why do you feel that belief in intelligent design and a Creator is apparently not tolerated in many academic and scientific research arenas?
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tom felten on March 12, 2012 at 9:07 am
You can read about the NASA case here.
twinoaks on March 14, 2012 at 8:42 am
The real reason ID is met with such strong opposition in much, not all, of the scientific community is because to have ID you need an intelligent designer. To admit that would be to admit we are answerable to that designer and takes away our “freedom” to do as we please.
The scientific method is all about being able to verify or falsify a theory through repeatable experimentation and observation. The theory of evolution is no more scientific by a strict definition of science than ID.
I do not have enough faith to believe in a theory (evolution) that no one has ever observed happening, has never had any part of it repeated in a laboratory setting, contradicts well established laws of physics, mathematics, and biology, no one has ever come up with a plausible mechanism for how it could occur, and the only direct evidence (the fossil record) flatly contradicts it.
Why is there not strong opposition to evolution? It seems to me the evidence in the fossil record supports ID much more strongly than evolution. All species appear in the fossil record fully formed and disappear in the same form they were first found. Just what one would expect with ID. By contrast, after all this time, we have found no clear transitional fossils. Why do you think some have come up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium? They can’t find any transitional fossils either.
zero_g on March 14, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Hi twinoaks,
The only strong opposition to evolution come from people who don’t understand it. This is expected as it is a very difficult science to understand. Some of these are due to ignorance but some were generated by people who cannot resolve the conflict between what is written in the Bible and reality. These people tend to look at evolution as a threat to their faith, so they are very passionate about it.
The BioLogos.org site has some posts which clear up the misunderstandings you mentioned above.
twinoaks on March 16, 2012 at 7:27 am
Hi zero_g
Thank you for the suggested web site. I have marked it. I am not afraid to ask the hard questions. Nor am I afraid of where truth may lead. If you also have the courage to challenge your assumptions and beliefs, may I suggest the book Darwin on Trial, by Phillip E. Johnson.
zero_g on March 13, 2012 at 1:59 pm
As Richard Dawkins once said… “ID is just Creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”
I think most in academia and scientific community see ID at best as a philosophy and at worst as a religious movement.
If I was running a program like JPL, on the leading edge of human discovery, I would question the scientific accumen of someone purporting a belief in ID. It seems to run contrary to a job of discovering the unknown.
The fundamental cause for this treatement of ID is in it’s name. The “Design” word does not bode well in the scientific community. Science is about real observations and physical measurements. Design is a subjective term. Same goes for the word “Intelligent.” I think that is the basis for the knee-jerk reaction to ID, but the so called “peer reviewed” articles (which Dawkins would call the cheap tuxedo) are a perceived joke to the scientific community, maybe even mocking academia.
I’ll go further and suggest that the ID movement has kept many scientists away from religion. If the ID people would stop trying to blend religion and science, we would have an easier job as “fishers of men.”