I.D. revisited...

The national debate on whether Intelligent Design should be taught in high school biology classes is still on-going...

On thursday, I set in for another I.D. lecture - this time, someone from the scientific camp.
And it's interesting to listen to his arguments against I.D... and cross refrencing it with the lecture I sat in for - by one of the nation's most proponent of the I.D. "theory" - Dr Dempski
(You can check out a couple of his I.D. books in Christian textbooks)

It was really fun and it did confirmed my doubts about a couple comments.

What of the few things Dr Dempski said about the theory of evolution was that it is inadequate to explain things in nature and that differing views within the scientific community about evolution indicates that there are flaws and its not a perfect theory.

I beg to differ on this point - there are many theories in science that are constantly being fought over at this point of time - even Einstein's theory of relativity has its share of differing views..
But do these imply that Einstein's theory is wrong? Not quite so!
Before a hypothesis can become a theory, it has to go through a long repeated process of making predictions based on the model, test it, use the results to modify the model. And scientific theories are the result of immense volumes of such rigourous testing before it is considered a theory. However, at the fringes of the theory, there can be various camps - based on their research, each camp is claiming a different prediction based on their interpretation of that theory.. and so they would fight it out by finding a way to test the predictions.. and see if their results varify it...
They're not fighting over the validity of what the theory has been developed, but fighting over how to refine the model further..

Looking at I.D. Theory, it did not go through any of that sort of scientific rigourous testing. Also, based on its arguments, it's simply not testable - and it the theory cannot predict anything.
It elevated its status to a theory without any solid scientific foundation and aims to compete with evolution theory.

How about evolution theory not adequate to explain life?
Science is about how - how various creatures have been created...
Evolution has an explanation on how many of the creatures we've seen came about, and has been over and over again validated by various fossil finds. Granted that there are a couple of differing camps on how evolution really occured, the process is still the same - by natural selection.
Some people gawk at the idea that the change in a few genes can cause such huge differences - for eg - a mouse and a human could not have had the same ancestors..
well, there has been plenty of experiments where scientists had found mice growing a human ear on their back when a couple of human cells are put on the developing embryo - it showed that the mouse's genes and system can develop human parts just by adding the correct mixture of signals to its cell!
Amazing!

I also watched a documentary on child birth deformities.. and saw one baby who had his/her legs connected. - this could be due to a simple genetic deformity... but the implications are that.. he/she may be horrible at walking, but at swimming, he/she might be fantastic - you know like a merman or something.. But my point is that in a relatively minute portion of our written history, we can see how certain genetic change cause a relatively big change in a mammal. What more if we had millions of years of genetic changes.. its not that improbable..


Anyway.. as much as Dr Dempski fights against scientist over what is the "best science"

What really affects me is my belief in whether God did create the world!
Many people have differing views.. especially in United states, many of my christian friends would probably not agree with me but I do believe that it does not contradict the bible that evolution was a way the God could have created the world.

On the other hand, intelligent design theory does not offer me any idea on how God created the world - it simply tells me that God's handiwork is in every single creature.. which I can very well see it without the need of someone telling me about the "pattern of God".

Furthermore, I think it's a fallacy to try to determine what the Pattern of God is..

Imagine - if you're an ant, crawling on a huge canvas of monet's best painting... by studying the pattern of the brush stroke, the composition of paint used.. even carbon dating the paint.. etc etc..
when you get all the results from that... how will those numerical values and results let you know that it's a monet?

You need to know how Monet's other paintings to determine so...
In the same way, in order for intelligent design to be useful in bolstering faith - it needs to find a seperate world that God created... to find similar patterns between that and ours.. in order to be sure... this design is indeed from the same God!

my problem with I.D. is not because its bad science.. but its claiming to be good science that can compete with evolution theory. It may not upset most of the people who do not do much science, but it definitely polarizes the scientific community from religion.
I have a good friend Taka who just became a christian - he's been researching for all his life.. and he's more astute in determining what's proper science and popular contraversial "theories"..
If he sees tons of christians throwing themselves blindly in support of I.D... I'm sure he's going to really wonder if Christianity is just as irrational as any other cult.

To me, in the face of such polarized debate, especially standing in no man's land... the most important thing is to realize what my faith is based on... is it based on what the bible tells me? or is it based on someone's "scientific" interpretation of what the bible tells him.

Even as an undergrad science student, I can see how I.D. is a very unstable idea.
The fact that many christian advocates are latching themselves on something called a scientific theory to explain away evolution theory indicates to me that there's a sense of fear and doubt about the bible being disproved by science.
But I dread the day when I.D. finally fades in the face of continued research... will these people who attached so much significance to I.D. lose faith ?

Hope more of these people will understand that scientists are propelled by the curiousity about the how's of the unknown territory and NOT because they want to disprove religion... And believe it or not, if Science EVER tries to disprove religion... that science, will be thrown into the bucket of bad science too... among I.D. and any other science that tries to prove religion...

We have a logical mind for a reason...we should carefully weigh out and evaluate each side of an argument before accepting it. It's a hopeless endeavour for us to leave our mind outside the room, to debate, infuriate people who have been studying and researching on such topics for years, and claim that an untested theory rivals them.
I can't see how that can help spread the gospel, spread God's love.