Re: The real lowdown on "Intelligent Design"


WS Krispy wrote:
> Decided to parahprase myself from an earlier post, because this is the
> objective (yes, I said objective) truth.
>
> The "Intelligent Design" argument is nothing new. It goes back at least
> to Zeno of Elea (generation before Socrates) and was most famously
> advocated by William Paley (born in the mid 1700s) in his "an intricate
> watch implies a Watchmaker" argument. It's respectable and can't really
> be falsified, as cannot all questions that lead directly back to the
> question of God. It's the simplest thing in the world to give God the
> role of Primum Mobile who kicks everying off from a minute germination,
> knowing perfectly how everything will roll out and develop. So it
> becomes obvious that Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design are NOT
> EVEN NECESSARILY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE: God could have designed everything
> and then rolled it up into a kind of installation program, and we are
> here observing each step of that install algorithm: we see these steps
> occur by themselves and we conclude (in this scenario, wrongly) that
> they are autopoietic (please look up "autopoietic" if you're not
> familiar-- it's one of the most important words in the language:
> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/AUTOPOIESIS.html ).
>
> But even though the above is very obvious (after all, I thoroughly
> grasp it and I'm not the absolute sharpest knife in the drawer), it is
> apparently too nuanced for 1) the teachers and functionaries on our
> school boards and governmental bodies overseeing Educational matters;
> 2) The mainstream American media, and 3) Leftist atheists/agnostics who
> don't actually use their own minds and in effect want to legislate Don
> Freemanism onto our children. If these three classes of people could
> just sharpen themselves up a little, a little tiny bit, they would see
> what my first paragraph here entails and would arrive at the plain
> solution: teach Darwinian Evolution as something that incontrovertibly
> occurred, but its occurrence does not rule out (or in) a higher
> intelligence operative on any number of levels behind the observable
> phenomena.
>
> ---
> wsk


Sir Isaac, having established rules of motion, optics and written the
mathematical principals (and the calculus), certainly had no problem
with ID. Quite the contrary:

"The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles
concentric with the sun, and with motions directed towards the same
parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the
earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the
same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of
those planets; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical
causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets
range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits; for by
that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the planets,
and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the
slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest
distances from each other, and hence suffer the least disturbance from
their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun,
planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion
of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the
centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise
counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since
the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of
the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems:
and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall
on each other, he hath placed those systems at immense distances from
one another."--the "Principia"

It is sufficient, when teaching physical laws and their history, to
explain to the students how Newton saw the perfect, finished plan.
This is not funadamentalist; it is a matter of public record.

His career had been one long quest for God; his research had spun out
of this quest, as if by cintrifugal force, but he had no doubt that his
science like his theology whoud redound to the greater glory of the
Creator, to quote T. Ferris on Newton.

This is not commonly taught in our great academic tradition where
deduction and rationalism are ALL. I wonder why they're so afraid to
teach it. No, on second thought, I don't.

.

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