Ted:
>While I agree with your observation that anti-religious crusades
> exist and the above assertion may often be driven by that, I
> also wonder if it is possible to think of matter and energy as
> still very mysterious "entities" after all this time that just
> might be capable of more than previously thought. Rather than
> assuming that a materialistic conclusion diminishes or reduces
> human experience, we can do the reverse and conclude that matter
> and energy are far more complicated and mysterious than we ever
> suspected.
> Or we may yet observe a consistent affect that resists classification
> as either matter or energy. (Have the IDs already found it?
> Well, I'm watching and waiting.)
Hi Ted. I think any disagreements you and I have would be minor. You might
not agree that Darwinism has been an albatross that had a stifling effect
upon biology. Darwinism discouraged scientists from trying to gain insight
into the infinitely complex and mysterious nature of living matter and
energy. The dogma that mutations must be random has discouraged scientists
from investigating any possible mechanisms which might influence mutations.
Whatever brings bout change in living organisms, those influences are subtle,
slow and will be difficult to detect. The dogma that "nothing caused them;
they were random!" didn't encourage scientific investigation. "Lamarckism
has been discredited," was scornfully declared to discourage anyone from
looking for environmentally directed influences. If ID accomplishes nothing
more than end the insistence upon chance as the driving force in nature, ID
will have proved to be a useful scientific assumption.
Except for an occasional independent individual, scientists are sensitive to
the beliefs of their peers, and biology has been dominated by people with a
philosophical axe to grind. I don't know much about the thinking of actual
working scientists, but most of the people passionately defending Darwinism
on these internet discussions remind me of aging hippies. The Love
Generation once enjoyed their ability to shock. Forty years later, society
hasn't been taken over by sexual promiscuity, but it no longer has much shock
value. Whatever Darwin's intention, Darwinism was enthusiastically promoted
by atheists eager to deny the existence of teleology. Darwin's suggestion
that nature was a random process without plan, purpose, design or meaning
appealed to them. Today atheists are a dime a dozen, and no one pays much
attention to them. Like sex, atheism has lost the power to shock. Many of
today's Darwin defenders appear still caught up in their own adolescent
rebellion against the religion of their parents, and indulge it by doing
battle against "creationists". The truth is one doesn't even have to be
religious to consider "random mutation and natural selection" a silly
explanation for macro evolution.
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
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