This guy is profoundly wrong.

Here's the fallacy:

To say "life needs meaning" suggests that "life" operates somehow as speech, indicating meaning outside of itself.

Plato solved the problem by suggesting that worldly things -- and particularly abstract concepts -- were emanation-copies of pure things, perfect and outside of time. Never did figure out how the emanating worked (see the Parmenides).

Christianity followed the model, but called the thing from which the emanation came God. Never did figure out how to reconcile a perfect and unchanging God (Anselm) with the historically active deity of Exodus. Instead, they called the contradiction a mystery, and Jesus was the reconciliation. That doesn't mean anything.

DI works the same way, proposing that because "life" needs meaning outside of itself, it must have meaning outside of it. No word yet on why it needs meaning outside of itself, or how that meaning is supplied.

Occam would suggest that DI is needlessly complex, and so should be dismissed for simpler, wider-ranging, and more internally complex explanations.

There are good Discovery Institute employees. They should be shot last.

"...more internally *consistent* explanations..."

the caption on the photo of the monkey says it all - truth doesn't automatically conform to what you want it to be.

And as for not wanting to displace Darwinism, that's an outright lie. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-uKRfNdKoU

"And the marmot puts the chocolate in the aluminium sheet."

What those scientists will have us believe. What a conspiracy!

Before we allow ID ideologues go into further details about ID they need to first explain:

1-What is their definition of intelligence?

2-If this is not a religious arguement then who was the designer? (my suspicion is Karl Rove*)

3-Using the theory of intelligent design please list the medical breakthroughs that have been discovered?

-Matt 

*Unlike ID proponents I will say that I have no evidence that they believe that Karl Rove is the intelligent designer.  But I have to say it just feels right.

"ID theorists discern positive evidence of a designer’s hand at work in that history."

Discern all you want.  You need evidence to make it in science, not just incredulity.  What discoveries support ID?

"The identity of the designer, of course, is not a scientific question but a philosophical or theological one."

What?  Why isn't it a scientific question?  Anything that acts on the natural world would have natural effects.  If we were put here by, say, aliens, we could look for tools left behind, structures, coded messages in our DNA, discontinuities in DNA from gene splicing and other genetic manipulation etc etc.  Saying you can't ID the IDer is nothing but a cop-out for your own lack of evidence that there is one at all, or that there is any phenomenon that indicates anything other than naturalistic processes on Earth unfolding over billions of years.

There is no scientific evidence of an intelligent designer at all--That's the whole problem. You can't teach ID alongside actual science--it's not science at all, but faith-based thinking. Just because certain people believe there was someone/something who had a hand in evolution or in putting people and animals on Earth doesn't make it so--and that belief doesn't make it science or scientific theory. Certain people believed the world was flat, and you would fall off the edge if you traveled too far. Certain people believed the Earth was the center of the universe too. ...

That is the response to these people. Discovery is trying to insert religious ideas (overwhelmingly Christian ones) into our shared public schools all over the country, and they are harming all of us--religious and secular alike. If parents and/or kids want religious instruction there are private schools and afterschool programs, etc, where they can get all they need.

oops--meant to say: It's not fear but scorn--that's the response...

I is always disappointing to read the hysteria from people who are simply not familiar with the topic and refuse to read about what the scientists at the DI are saying.

The notion that life requires meaning is philosophical and not a scientific challenge.

As for Occam's razor--it has been invoked with greater credibility by design advocates since it is premised on a much simpler and believable truth, namely that life was designed to be as it is and does not require the intervention of countless miracles that cannot be examined or tested. There are deductions and tests for design and life as we know it appears designed--even in the opinion of the materialists. They seek to confound others by saying because life has the appearance of design--it could have come about through a process of with unknown mechanisms and round about random chances so that it is really not designed. Most people just don't buy it because of Occam's razor and what science has revealed in the past 40 years.

Darwinism is dead and it is revealing that all the attempts to rescue it by anti-God crusaders still fails to offer an alternative that makes sense to people. Amino acids do not proteins in random or "natural" ways. Cells cannot come form proteins by some known mechanism that has predictable rules. Life forms "emerge" without any scientific explanation over and over--it is the job of science to describe how.

Darwin is impotent in describing the reality of the world--it is only when a scientist can say that the processes are designed, is there any understanding.

Your parting shot that you wish to kill all those opposed to the brain-dead Darwinist clap trap is not without parallel and you are merely echoing the thoughts and beliefs of many angry atheists who cannot bear the thought of God as creator and cannot find evidence for their counter theory that the manifest intelligence in nature exists without a designing intelligence.

This is the bottom line prediction of ID theory--intelligence-rich phenomenon invariably exist from an intelligent source. If you can show this theory to be wrong-headed, you would be the first. It is a scientific deduction based upon natural observation.

I regret you prefer the faith based, the irrational, the untested and unproven. I am not angry about it but I am quick to observe that people who have blind faith about things can fall for dangerous notions. Check out the science and let the truth lead you to conclusions that are your own. You say you are a history teacher and I hope you give your students a bit more care and courtesy than you demonstrate on a public blog.

David Klinghoffer wrote "the Discovery Institute would protect, from legal or other harassment, teachers who include in their class discussions a review of the scientific evidence for an intelligent designer."

What is the scientific evidence for an intelligent designer? That evidence seems not to be forthcoming, instead all the DI's CSC does is attack evolution with the same poor creation science argument techniques of quote-mining and misrepresentation, as is demonstrated repeatedly on blogs such as The Panda's Thumb, Pharyngula, and other blogs at Science Blogs, as well as in journal articles, books, and in the courtroom in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

The fossil record.  It is a nightmare for Darwinists since science reveals a narrative precisely in opposition to what a naturalistic theory might indicate.  This is the primary reason why most people fail to fall for Darwinism.  Darwinists posit that given enough time and successive improvements (caused by unknown mechanisms thrown into the catch all of natural selection, luck, and mutations) higher and higher life forms "emerge"--without any evidence that this is possible.  Instead, what is clearly observable is that things break down over time, species become extinct over time, naturally.  To summarize, life "emerged" (in defiance of any naturalistic prediction)as quickly as it possibly could on earth and almost the entire history of the planet in time has held ONLY bacterium or very primitive life.  Then, almost out of the blue almost all life forms suddenly emerged--only about 500 million years ago and with only a few exceptions, nothing has changed since then--one literal big bang of life. 

This is consistent with the 15 billion year ago Big Bang in which in one instant and in one huge explosion, the universe came into existence at a beginning point with all the laws of nature held with it.  Neither event is "natural" in any way.  The Greeks are the great naturalists--they had it "right."  The universe is eternal, they said.  Nope it is not.  It all happened very quickly so we must now assume ANOTHER fundamental assumption.  The naturalists cannot be right when science agrees the universe is eternal and they cannot also be right if science discovers there was a beginning and the universe began dramatically at a point in time. There was nothing and then there was a universe with a beginning point. If one could suggest a scientific discovery with the potential to convince anyone of a supernatural event, the Big Bang must be it.  On Earth, there was only bacterium and then, boom in a tiny period of time, all that is around us came to be.   Life is possible on this planet because of too many preconditions that could be described as very , very lucky.  One can imagine luck. Sensible people armed with the fact of how lucky we actually are to live on a planet that has the potential to support intelligent life are either incredibly grateful for such a miracle or believe that it was a set up job.  People insist that anything is possible over "billions of years" without thought or reason.  By what mechanism?  And please stop saying that billions of years is the reality.  Almost everything came about very, very suddenly--get informed, please--it happened in only a few millions of years.

So many recent understandings and discoveries are much more consistent with ID as the better theory than a naturalistic process.  To be short, our generation is unique in our ability to process these kinds of discoveries since we have computer technology and it turns out that life processes resemble computer chips in many significant ways.  This is the kind of discovery that would make a 19th C Darwinist freak.  Cells are not simple 'protoplasm'--they are miniature machines that act like computer chips and are understood as nanotechnology.  It is another sound prediction of ID theory, basic life building blocks are irreducibly complex and are so information dense, this infers a intelligent source.

BTW, much of the technology in my computer  was created and designed by Israelis.  I need to know nothing of the Israelis that designed this computer to know that it is a designed and did not evolve from another machine, that was a natural product of some unknown natural process.  I know it was designed and since I know enough about its recent history. I happen to know that some of the components are Israeli in origin.  Of what value is my knowledge that some components are Israeli?  Why must I know and understand them as individuals?  My computer is designed--that is enough.

A supernatural being without material form cannot be studied scientifically.  The effects of God's creation can be designed and it is our calling to  study nature, God's creation.  Every generation before us used science to find out about God's creation as an honor to our Creator.  This generation is content on dismissing God as creator even as a possibility, ruled by the force of law.  God's creation can be studied and we can test nature to see if it is there are signs of intelligence or signs of pure randomness, luck, and known natural processes.

If amino acids have no known way to combine to become proteins, how can we infer much more miraculous and complicated matters? 

"Almost everything came about very, very suddenly--get informed, please--it happened in only a few millions of years."

1. This is like saying that you played the same lottery numbers for 20 years, and when you finally won it happened all at once.

2.  The emergence of complex life "very suddenly" was not random -- it coincided with the accumulation of significant amounts of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere.  This enabled the possibility of ATP production via a chemical reaction 18 times more efficient than without oxygen.

Where did the oxygen come from?  That's what all the bacteria had been doing for billions of years -- photosynthesizing and releasing oxygen, but that oxygen couldn't build up in the atmosphere until it had reacted with all the unoxidized sulfur and iron just lying around, and that took a long time.

The fact that complex life did not exist before conditions were appropriate is no surprise.

Gaining this knowledge required that humans learned a little chemistry and studied a lot of rocks, but it was worth the effort, no?

OK, Grant, thanks for conceding that the emergence of life was not random.  And thanks for asking where did the oxygen come from.

 The actual answer is not at all as simple as you suggest and without an atmosphere composed of nitrogen and oxygen, any oxygen that could be created by the tiny output of bacteria would be lost.  This ties into the existence of water and the question as to why our earth is 70% water.  The point here is that the pre-conditions for life (not to mention how life could have initially been created) are NOT a simple chemical reaction from bacteria (which is a life-form!!) creating an atmosphere?? huh?  Time is not at all a need commodity.  What is needed is many things happening together in a non-random way--a veritable coordination of dozens of pre-conditions that all came about, not merely one miracle but an entire cascade of miracles that produced an atmosphere, water and then oxygen-based life forms.  The bottom line question remains how many miracles does it take before you might see design at work? 

Investigators in Malibu this week are quickly convinced that the latest wildfires were set by humans--that is, designed and not natural.   Fires are very natural but investigators are quick to say that with only one pattern--it was not the natural way since they know humans are a possibility concerning the cause of a fire.  By contrast, to assess a supernatural event--the standard is far, far higher. Miraculous occurences may simply be random.  At some point, a series of miracles appears designed since faith in randomness cannot be unlimited.  The poor arsonist cannot defend himself by claiming that it was another natural fire when there is evidence of intervention.  I lack the faith in randomness to believe that so many factors all happened in the correct sequence in just the right way at just the right time.  It is not simply the luck of the draw.  It is too exquisite, too perfect to be random and natural.  This is the sensible conclusion of most people.  

Wow D.N.K.,

Why not just admit you have a bias and blatantly refuse to believe other than you believe? I mean, if you wish to defend your opinion as fact then fine, go for it. But please don't try to cloak your opinion as science. Even as long ago as the time of Galileo, those dedicated to theology agreed with the advice of Galileo's colleague,
Cardinal Baronio, that the Bible "tells us how to go to heaven, not how
the heavens go."

Quite frankly, if I were inclined to believe life on earth were "designed" by some invisible hand of intelligence, I would be far more impressed with the ability for life to begin once and the fundamental model to be re-used and modified through - dare I say it? - some type of natural selection, than to posit the "Intelligent Designer" was so limited as to require ongoing intervention.

Finally, if there is an "Intelligent Designer" it would have been far simpler to leave a clear path that would not be misinterpreted as natural selection. I mean, if "nature" has this "intelligence", why would it be so unintelligent as to leave room for this debate and lack of clarity? From my humble perspective the whole ID thing is scarcely different from superstition. But having said that, I do defend your right to your opinion, regardless of how wrong it may be.

GLB, it is quite interesting that you so wrongly accuse me of prejudice and I am quick to say that I am approaching the topic in an open-minded manner and concede that there are two possibilities.  1) the evolution of life is natural, random and without purpose 2) life is designed, purposeful and caused by a Creator.  I feel that science reveals that life is designed.  It would be worthwhile to hear from you and others that you can also concede that the majority of Americans might be correct and your opposition might be those with the better truth.  If you have not prejudiced the question, it would be interesting to hear what scientific understanding has convinced you that the universe and life on this planet came about as a pure product of luck and natural processes.  In my experience, many people who buy into the party line concerning the "Darwinian truths" accept it only because they cannot bring themselves to even consider another point of view. 

As for Galileo, you are surely poorly informed and offensive.   Until very recent times, science in the West was almost entirely the product of religious men in search of God's law in nature.  From our point of view as secular Americans, we should all tip our hats to the fact that the scientific method and all basic discoveries that still inform our sciences today came from what could be called Bible 'fundamentalists' and God thumpers.  You can happily join with the atheists of today but it is not good faith to try to somehow spin the great scientists of our past who used the belief in a Creator as their fundamental assumption into men who were somehow not religiously inspired.  For Galileo, the revelation that God's laws were understandable by men, through mathematics, was embraced.  In our day, the God of elegance is replaced (in the eyes of some) by the god of necessity and chance.

This change came about in SPITE of and not because of any scientific discoveries.  Almost all recent discoveries point to the complexity and elegance of the natural world.

I challenge you to have more than an opinion.  Please seek to have an informed one that is based on an investigation of the evidence and try not to be persuaded by those who seek to bully and demonize others in their false pride and prejudice. 

Sir,

1. I stand by my statement and believe you have a deep-seated bias and/or agenda..

2. It would appear from your comments regarding my statements from the time of Galileo you are intentionally choosing to misunderstand my comment from Cardinal Baronio. To state this well-documented comment is "offensive" merely demonstrates my point. I did not "create" this statement, I am merely reporting the documented facts. Also, I fully recognize Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Copernicus, and any number of other scientists were to their core religious individuals. In fact, some were quite frustrated the evidence they uncovered overturned their religious understanding at that time. I also recognize that Galileo's opponents would - in some cases - refuse even to look through the optical telescope Galileo had improved. The position of the scholastics at the time (in this case, the scholastics represented the Christian church) stated the surface of the moon was perfectly smooth and the optical instrument "obviously" was flawed in that it showed hills, valleys, and shadows. The scholastics view was based on their interpretation of scripture, not based on scientific observation and evidence.

3. I fully agree and have never denied that for a very long time, both science and religion worked in a very cooperative fashion and still do in a number of areas (and continue to in a number of areas, most notably medicine) - but of course, this was before the time of sloganeering, shouting, and P.R. machines. (an excellent example of the intermingling of science and religion can be seen in reviewing the work -both religious and medical - of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. I apologize for only using Christian references, but that is the background from whence I came, I have only the most rudimentary understanding of Judaism, though I fully understand the philosophic, scientific, engineering, and technical contributions of the Jewish people to the world has far exceeded their population numbers on a proportionate basis and generally the Jewish community's dedication to education, community and work ethic displayed are to be admired.)

4. You attempt to twist comments - science is about theory. Your questioning what scientific "truth" convinced me of my perspective belies either an apparent lack of scientific understanding or a biased perspective. True scientists of all stripes - religious, non-religious, political, apolitical - essentially develop models to explain observation. These models typically change over time as more information is uncovered and tested in both a predictive and backward-looking basis.  I suppose some people would refer to the most polished models as scientific "truth", though they in fact simply demonstrate the predictive power of the underlying model.  Based on documented, demonstrable theories I have formed my perspectives. Bullying and demonization are NOT part of the scientific method, they are the tactics of P.R., advertising, bias, and prejudice.

5. I can accept that life may have been initiated by a creator - in fact, I can accept that the initial phrase "let there be light" may be a poetic description of the event typically described by scientists as the "big bang". I doubt if a creator had explained the methodology to Moses he would have had the underpinnings to grasp the concept. So "let there be light" would have been more appropriate at that time (whenever that time was, 5,000+ years ago). But let's be clear, that is an opinion, not science. Now, can you also admit and accept the possibility that life may have occurred via natural and unguided events? (BTW, Darwin wasn't the first to posit the concept that ultimately received his name. Additionally he went to college to become an Anglican minister, but instead developed a deep interest in the collection of beetles and was tutored under the instruction of the Reverend John Stevens Henslow, professor of botany, once again indicating the peaceful co-existence of religion and science.)

6.  Finally, it never ceases to amaze me that people like yourself - obvious from your responses - educated and articulate, appear to be so closed minded about science, as if there was an agenda that was tantamount to the basic science. Of course, that would indicate bias.

Jesus, David, are you for real? You have taken that slight against your ego waaaayyy to far.. You are a farce...I could use "Ivy League cleverness" to argue that the clouds are made of marshmellow but that doesn't make it so...

Oooh, look, proof of intelligent design! The movie "10,000 BC"! There are people riding mammoths and dinosaurs!...David, we can just convince people its a documentary, right??!!

 Is that final?