I always find it interesting when Adrian Warnock produces a spectrum on some topic. I almost always disagree with some point on the spectrum, but the exercise is worthwhile. After all, if I produce a spectrum, there will doubtless be people who disagree at some point. This time Adrian has produced a spectrum on beliefs…
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 features of the universe and…
Image via Wikipedia 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 occasionally…
David Opderbeck has an excellent post on the question of whether intelligent design (ID) is religious and how this relates to our view of natural theology. (HT: Through a Glass Darkly) In the post, he gets into an issue that I have raised before, which is the question of whether we really want to advocate…
Charles Jones has a post a Power of Suggestion in which he notes the following: But evolution cant allow things, because its unguided. And it cant make any mistakes, because it makes no decisions. Take note: whenever people try to explain how something happens through evolution, they always resort to the language of design. Now…
Carl Zimmer has a post on the Loom that discusses irreducible complexity along with some examples. I found it very interesting how we start with a bicycle as irreducibly complex, a claim of an intelligent design (ID) advocate, and then see how the irreducible is reduced through the magic of Google. There are many ways…
The news of Chris Comer’s suit against the Texas Education Administration claiming she was forced out illegally should come as no surprise to anyone. The reasoning behind the dismissal clearly silly, and the explanations did not ring true as the real reasons she was asked to resign. But as a moderate who likes to see…
I may be hopelessly naive in the matter of probability, though it is the one area of math that I have actually studied, but I am simply not terribly impressed with probability arguments. That’s probably (!) a major reason why I’m not impressed with intelligent design (ID). I’m particularly not impressed with probabilities calculated for…
I have always preferred our classic statements of rights, such as the bill of rights, to such statements as Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” What interests me is that while our classic statements of rights indicate things that the government is not permitted to prevent you from doing, the latter two freedoms from Roosevelt’s list, and especially…
. . . in NRO. Quoth he: “The ‘intelligent design’ hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization.”
