Why I Believe in a Designer but Don’t Accept Intelligence Design

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This was triggered by Ed Brayton’s answers to the short ID quiz, and particularly by the first question.

1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain [...]

Book: Thank God for Evolution

Dowd, Michael. Thank God for Evolution. New York: Plume, 2007. 380 pages + front and back matter. ISBN: 978-0-452-29534-6.  (All numbers in parentheses are page numbers from this edition of the book.)

I was interested in this book from the moment I saw the title, not because I immediately expected to agree, but because [...]

Evolution and Continuous Upward Progress

Image via Wikipedia-Perhaps not so much with this upward progress

Peter Kirk has written a post titled The Gospel is not incompatible with theistic evolution, in which he responds to an article by Dr. David Shackelford. Peter’s response covers most of the ground.

I wanted to add something here, however, regarding “continuous upward [...]

Two Science Links – Yellowstone Caldera and Ants

What do they have to do with one another? Actually, nothing, other than that both are about science and I thought they were interesting. I haven’t written anything on science for awhile and these stories were there!

The first addresses concerns about the Yellowstone Caldera and whether it’s likely to erupt. The conclusion? It’s [...]

Troy Britain Tours Young Earth Creationist Dinosaur Park

He doesn’t like what he sees.

On Evolutionary Christians

The Christian Post has an article on a series of teleconferences that are available via evolutionarychristianity.com. The post uses scare quotes to set off the word “evolutionary” and in some ways I find the title troubling, just as I do the term theistic evolution.

While I believe acceptance of the theory of evolution will [...]

How Certain is Science?

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Rationally Speaking has a great article on the uncertainties in scientific research and what they mean about science. I think a good deal of the problem here is that people expect certainty, and science doesn’t provide this. Occasionally one can get near certainty, but absolute certainty is elusive. On the [...]

Another Note on Design

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Since I hadn’t commented on the Intelligent Design controversy for some time, I want to add a couple of notes to what I said yesterday.

I absolutely believe in design. I believe everything is designed by God. I believe God is involved in everything. In teaching on this subject I have [...]

On the Design Inference

I’m definitely going to follow this new series on Science & the Sacred. The first post is Why Dembski’s Design Inference Doesn’t Work. Part 1.

I’ve rejected the design inference on the grounds of garbage-in garbage-out. You can’t determine how likely a chain of events is when you don’t know what events constitute the [...]

Common Ground on Genesis

On the Spectrum blog there’s quite a lot of discussion of the age of the earth and a search for common ground. The problem with the phrase “common ground” is that it can mean many different things. Two recent articles on the age of the earth had quotes that caught my attention. As far [...]