September 13, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

On August 26 Blogging Heads aired John McWhorter’s interview with Michael Behe about Behe’s latest book, The Edge of Evolution. The firestorm resulting from McWhorter’s open admiration for Behe’s work reminds me of the Muslim reactions to published cartoons of Mohammed, and the reasons are similar. Both reactions are reactions to degradation of men held as sacred in their respective belief systems.
In his book, Behe acknowledges value in Darwinian evolution theory, but then suggests the unthinkable: that there are limits to what Darwinian Theory can explain. This would be “the edge,” and Behe demonstrates the edge with multiple examples. The examples are not simply theoretical, but empirical. This is a threat to the view that Darwinian evolution is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all other explanations. Before Darwinism, claims of universal application were reserved for concepts such as omnipresence or omnipotence, which of course were reserved for references to deity, and then only in certain religions.
I think we need another book entitled The Edge of ID. This might help Darwinists with the problem of conflating Intelligent Design and Creationism. ID asks the question, “Is there evidence of intelligent design in the world we experience and can empirically measure?” The edge is empiricism, and involves no historical or religious texts. Religion on the other hand attempts to answer “Who is the Designer?” and draws extensively (sometimes exclusively) upon ancient texts. ID never crosses the line of the repeatable experiment.
Perhaps this inability to see the edge is why staunch Darwinists do not see the edge they cross from Darwinian science into the religious realms of explaining all and taboos of questioning the text. Everything has an edge.. unless of course it is the One God.

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September 6, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Irony permeates the evolution-ID debate. Even so, I’m amazed that I did not catch this one sooner.
The whole argument for preventing ID from entering the education system is that it is religion. It is religion because to test any ID question assumes that there may be an intelligence beyond all matter and energy that imposes purpose upon the cause-and-effect world that we experience. A designer is thus a possible cause of matter, or energy, or its manipulation; and intelligence suggests the manipulation has purposive direction.
The whole reason for the inception of Darwinian evolution was to find a way to explain the diversity and complexity of life, including all cause and effect for it, without dependence upon a cause outside the material system—no outside cause; no designer, no purposive direction. Assigning “designer” due to final cause is not a consideration.
In order for Darwinian evolution to be the source of the diversity of life, there must be no final cause. Final cause implies some force, pre-existing condition, and/or purpose that inevitably draws a process in some fixed direction, which would then be the final cause. In order for final cause to be avoided, all biological change, including mutation, must be either random or based purely upon circumstances resulting from previous randomness. No conception of future outcomes can ever be a factor for what happens in the present or what happened in the past.
Here is the irony: Darwinists object to ID because it investigates the possibility of final cause, but the objection itself is based on final cause.
Let’s review that slowly:
1. ID looks for final cause.
2. Darwinists say that considering final cause is not science; it is religion.
3. Darwinists object to ID because of where it might lead.
4. Where something might lead is a final cause consideration.
5. The Darwinian objection to ID is a final cause consideration.
6. The Darwinian objection to ID is not science; it is religion, based on their own definition.

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