That’s a rather “head in the sand” proposition. It reduces truth to an individual belief and insults both faith in God and evidence for Evolution. If you’re waiting for a blinding light and a revelation that Evolution is true than clearly, you will never accept the fact that Evolution has merit. The point is that Evolutionary Theory is a working hypothesis that creates a framework of understanding that is both self-consistent and consistent with observations in fields as diverse as paleontology, molecular genetics and neuroscience. It is the fundamental glue that holds

Your first sentence betrays your basic assumption: that for a scientific principle to have explanatory power, it must end debate. Science is a search for Truth, for many Theists, Truth is something that has already been attained. It is a basic mis-apprehension of Truth vs. Theory vs. Hypothesis that is at the heart of this debate. You cannot learn or have your mind expanded or changed if you are convinced that you have already attained an understanding of Truth. Historically, the Church (and I use that term in contrast to individual belief) imposed a worldview based on Aristolean “science” for thousands of years until a few folks in the thirteenth century decided that maybe observing the world around them might give them better insight into the natural world than they would get by blind accetance of millenia old pronouncements. This is Science –
Turns out Copernicus’s understanding of planetary motion was incomplete, Kepler filled in the pieces. Newton’s laws of gravity and motion, although useful for almost all situations, are merely a subset of a more complete understanding of that was provided by Einstein. And the evolutionary theories first proposed by Darwin, Lamarck and others, have been modified and updated to better fit the increasing data.

Theists (Christians and other) need to engage the real world and not depend on an incomplete and probably erroneous interpretation of Scriptural Truth to support (or deny) positions based on hope and belief.

The earth is not flat, the earth is not the center of the Universe, life does not spring form non-life and no human institution is infallible.

As Francis Collins has said “Evolution is God’s way of providing upgrades.” He is both an Evangelical Christian and man of Faith and a world renowned scientist who doesn’t see the contradiction that other Christians apparently see between Faith and Evolution. In my own situation, as a person of Faith – I fail to see that there is an issue. There are those who seem to use Evolution as an excuse not to entertain the possibility of God, there are those who fear that Evolution makes God superfluous. These are uncareful positions in my opinion but they are rampant nonetheless. To say that we know “how” God may or may not have done things seems to be a rather arrogant place to be as a person of Faith. The use of the word “Believe” with regard to Evolution underscores my argument.

Ironclad understanding of the process and mechanism of evolution is not necessary for it to be a useful tool for science. I encourage you to read Thomas Kuhn “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I encourage everyone who wants to understand how scientific theories are born, evolve (pardon the pun), and change and are rejected or modified to read this book. Just raising objections is not a part of the scientific method – without an alternate hypothesis which is testable and provides an alternate path of investigation, it just seems like sour grapes. Raising objections with experiments or data to show holes in another theory is a part of the scientific process – this is not what ID supporters do. They don’t engage the science community, they go to court to effect changes in science curricula.

Remember – Charles Darwin didn’t come up with the idea of evolution. He came up with a theory that involved observation and provided the means and the framework for further study. The “idea” of evolution is old and had been raised in several different forms in the scientific literature for at least 100 years before “Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man” was published. Also note, Darwin was a scientist of some note even apart from his work in evolution. You should read some of his work on the importance of earthworms . . .

And I repeat. ID makes God very small.

And – you are correct. Many evolutionists use “belief” words and sound as though they treat evolution as a religious alternative. This is their problem and doesn’t reflect on the theory itself. Many who use that sort of language do not see the irony.

I appreciate the references for scientific method and will look them over, despite the fact that I probably fool myself into thinking I know a thing or two about scientific methodology and even critical reasoning.

Started reading Sagan’s Demon haunted world long ago, don’t remember finishing it; too bitter. I read the wiki link you sent. I see criticism of Behe’s ID stance. I apparently didn’t make clear that I am not interested in scientific supporting ID; as you mentioned, and, in fact, I wrote before editing my last entry, God is supernatural and those who hope to prove or disprove his existence are wasting time. Very little interest in that.

Evolution as a theory has moved biological science along nicely over the past 150 years, but it has become close to a religion to some. When it becomes a religion, then it moves to a position that is above questioning…a situation with which I have a problem.

Behe’s argument of irreducible complexity seems a convincing criticism of evolution as a result of random genetic mutation which is then selected by environmental factors. And I haven’t yet found a convincing argument for how speciation occurs within a population. That is, how does a mutation result in an individual whose genetic make up is different enough from the rest of its population that it can’t breed with them, then how does it reproduce more of its own (new) kind, unless the same random mutation has created another of its (new) own?

So, I guess my bottom line there is that IDers are asking scientifically valid questions of Evolutionists, regardless of the motivation of their questionings. It may be a nuisance to hack at a theory without offering a valid alternative, but it is, nonetheless, an acceptable part of the scientific method.

And therein lies the rub . . .

As far as IDers is concerned you are right, no gross generalization of the rank and file is fair. I stand corrected. Having said that, I’m reacting to the constant legal challenges, school board decisions and the recent movie with Ben Stein that attempt to reduce truth to the vote of the majority . . . Rather than test ID in the open marketplace of ideas, and by using the process to test scientific theory that has developed over the last 500 years, public debate about ID has more to do with “fairness” and “free speech” than with science and defense of a theory through estabilished experimental protocols.

I know you are looking for an analysis of Behe. You really ought to be able to find one, somewhere. I’ll start looking. The book is quite old now by science standards, (I’m thinking I read it about 10 years ago? There has to be a scholarly review, hopefully without ridicule and emotion ;-) )and ID companion texts by Johnson and Dembski (do I have that second name right?) deal with legal and statistical challenges to evolution. Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and others writing on the philosophy of science may be a good place for you to begin reading to understand scientific methodology rather than worrying about the detail of Molecular Biology right at the outset. Two of the key factors relating to an idea as a scientific theory are falsify-ability and predictability. ID would need to develop ways to uses these cross checks. This is why ID has such a long road to climb . . . at it’s heart it appeals to metaphysical forces which are not testable.

To my thinking, Behe and the ID community make God very small and rekindle the “argument from Design” but in a much more limited way. They also reduce God to a new statement of “the God of the Gaps” which makes God very small. My opinion. That’s why I like the post by Michael Shermer that began this discussion. Science and metaphysics (personal God, or primal Force) belong in two different classes or realms.

I always love the argument that sounds something like . . . “what’s science afraid of, a little competition??” To your point – ID is at it’s heart a supernatural explanation – therefore it has no place in a curriculum about natural science. I think ID could be used very well in a high school class about critical thinking, or logic or reasoning skills. Unfortunately, hardly any public schools actually teach reasoning skills – we expect kids to learn to think by osmosis.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things about being scientific is simultaneously balancing a belief (necessary for establishing a valid hypothesis) and a disbelief (necessary for rigorous testing of same hypothesis). This conscious cognitive dissonance seems disconcerting to many. People would rather change their minds than hold two conflicting views in balance over a long period of time.

Please, don’t even get me started on our trend toward “populist” truth! Argh!

If an IDer pokes at the Theory of Evolution with a stick that finds a hole, I’m prepared to look at that hole – right now, I think Behe has. Evolution as a process is as undeniable as the tides. It has been my experience that many people cannot separate the two.

And speaking of separating, while I don’t think ID should be “taught” as an hypothesis (supernatural causes cannot be tested experimentally by a tool which is designed to examine the natural world), it is a cowardly science that won’t discuss it in any classroom, when appropriate to the nature of the ongoing curriculum, the holes that anyone, including IDers, poke in any theory, when the holes being pointed out have some merit.

If there is a concern about the IDers themselves it is that they have started with a conclusion and assume that by poking at an established theory it will fall like a house of cards. The poking is the problem because IDers don’t play fair. They engage in propaganda wars that play on fear and ignorance. The concern for the science community and I would say for all of us is that if ID is taught alongside real science, it will confuse an entire generation about what real science is. We will be taking a large step backward to the world of “populist” truth and away from a search for actual Truth.