Intelligent Design is not creationism

[ddunbar]

Quote from Teleologist:

The only way one can pin the "creationist" label on ID proponents is to define creationism so broadly that anyone that disputes that evolution is undirected and devoid of purpose is a creationist. Do the ID critics here think everyone except atheists are creationists?

Creationists on the whole believe that existence as we've come to know it is the product of a supreme being or some supernatural, yet intelligent power.

Since creationism is mostly debated in the west, its foundation is the bible. You can subdivide creationists according to the way in which the interpret the Book of Genesis.

1. Young Earth Creationists. The most ardent anti-evolutionists.
2. Old earth Creationists. Generally embrace evolution.
3. Gap Creationists. Believe the earth is old but life on it isn't.
4. Day-Age creationist - rationally interpret the word "day" in genesis based on the hebrew word "Yom" (which is used to also mean age), the fact that a human day starts with morning but a creation day starts with evening (a deliberate convention used by the author of Genesis 1 to seperate an earth day from a creation day), the way in which humanity keeps time was created on the 3rd day, and the fact that the seventh day in which God rested does not list an evening and morning. This group, like the old earth creationists, believes the earth and universe are quite old and are comfortable with scientific approximations of its age. They tend to also be progressive creationists. Meaning they believe God guided all the influences that affect evolutionary development. They also recognize that the bible lists the order of life on earth in the same sequence as observed in the fossil record.

There's a few more subdivisions but they can more or less be associated with one or more of the above.

As for ID'ers, the original group who proposed the theory are Christians affliated with the discovery group.

So pretty much if you're not a creationist in the west, you're a materialist.

 

[james_bond_3rd]

Quote from Teleologist:

The only way one can pin the "creationist" label on ID proponents is to define creationism so broadly that anyone that disputes that evolution is undirected and devoid of purpose is a creationist. So to the ID critics here that claim ID is creationism I say let's hear your definition of creationism.

Let's see what the star witness on your side, Prof. Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick, UK, says about ID:

Q. I believe you testified today that intelligent design is not creationism.

A. That's correct.

Q. But it is, in fact, a kind of creationism, is it not?

A. Well, what I mean there is that there is a historical connection out of which it grew, and we share some similar kinds of proclivities, but it's, in fact, moved in a completely different direction, it seems to me.

Q. But it's a modern view of creationism?

A. I think that's a little misleading. It's a really radical transformation. It's a really substantively different thing, and that's indicated by the kind of training of the people who are, in fact, in intelligent design. They actually are trained as scientists of one sort or another.

So he says that ID is not creationism. But wait,

Q. If you could go to the next page, Page 68, and starting on Line 21, the question is, Intelligent design is creationism, not just six-day creationism? And then your answer beginning on Line 24, It is a kind of creationism, it is a kind of creationism.

I didn't read the same passage twice. It's actually twice on there. Did I read that accurately?

A. Well, it looks like that is what the sentences say. But, I mean, if I may, let me just have a look here. Well, it seems to me that what I'm talking about here is that there is some historical connection between creationism and intelligent design. And so in that sense, there is a genealogy that goes back to that. But that's all I'm saying at this point. I'm not saying that to practice intelligent design, one has to be some kind of creationist.

So he says it is creationism. Did he get confused by all the masquerading?

Full transcript is here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day15pm2.html#day15pm681

 

[Teleologist]

kjkent1 wrote:

OK, what is your "intuitive, cumulative, circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life?"

Not so fast. I'm not about to waste my time presenting a circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life to a bunch of critics that are laboring under the mistaken notion that the case for a non-teleological origin of life is more than circumstantial. We need to resolve that issue before proceeding.

 

[james_bond_3rd]

Quote from Teleologist:

kjkent1 wrote:


Not so fast. I'm not about to waste my time presenting a circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life to a bunch of critics that are laboring under the mistaken notion that the case for a non-teleological origin of life is more than circumstantial. We need to resolve that issue before proceeding.

Is that an indirect way of admitting that you don't have a case?

 

[Teleologist]

So he says it is creationism. Did he get confused by all the masquerading?

He sounds confused to me. In any event, ID is best described by William Dembski:

ID is not an interventionist theory. It's only commitment is that the design in the world be empirically detectable. All the design could therefore have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang. What's more, the designer need not be a deity. It could be an extraterrestrial or a telic process inherent in the universe. ID has no doctrine of creation.

Intelligent design does not require organisms to emerge suddenly or be specially created from scratch by the intervention of a designing intelligence. To be sure, intelligent design is compatible with the creationist idea of organisms being suddenly created from scratch. But it is also perfectly compatible with the evolutionist idea of new organisms arising from old by a process of generation. What separates intelligent design from naturalistic evolution is not whether organisms evolved or the extent to which they evolved but what was responsible for their evolution.

 

[Teleologist]

Is that an indirect way of admitting that you don't have a case?

No, it's a direct way of saying the case for a non-teleological origin of life is circumstantial.

 

[ddunbar]

ID is not an interventionist theory. It's only commitment is that the design in the world be empirically detectable. All the design could therefore have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang. What's more, the designer need not be a deity. It could be an extraterrestrial or a telic process inherent in the universe. ID has no doctrine of creation.

Ultimately it boils down to an intelligent sentience.

Too many problems with an extra-terrestrial as the ID. For one, what created the ET? And on and on. IDer's who wish to propose the idea of an extra-terrestial as the ID generally limit the scope of the discussion to just life on earth and not the origins of the universe with all of its associated orders. As if the ET "seeded" Earth with life knowing it would evolve and perhaps helping it along at various stages.

I think it's best to limit ID at a supreme diety. One would only have to dismiss the non-sensical argument of who created the diety providing that the diety is defined as the first cause. It would still just be an "idea" without an proof but would stand up to most rational philosophical arguments.

 

[stu]

To summarize then ...


Teleologist:

What I have is an intuitive, cumulative, circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life



kjkent1
Question:

OK, what is your "intuitive, cumulative, circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life?"


Teleologist
Answer:

I'm not about to waste my time presenting a circumstantial case for a teleological origin of life

 

[Teleologist]

What would be the point of pitting a circumstantial case against a non-circumstantial case?

 

[Teleologist]

Too many problems with an extra-terrestrial as the ID. For one, what created the ET?

Seems to me this would only pose a problem for those that don't think that at some point in the future humans will have advanced technologically to where they will be able to seed distant planets with life forms capable of evolving. If this is a possible future then why couldn't a non-human ET in the past have "seeded" the earth with life?