by jschwehm 11 Replies latest jw friends
Hi Alan:
I have been visiting my JW in laws and had the opportunity to read the June 22nd Awake! The author of the article on Creation quotes the big names in the Intelligent Design movement throughout the article in a very favorable light. I was just wondering if you were aware of this and what your thoughts were on it.
Jeff S.
I'm sure Michael Behe's name was used. They love that guy.
Intelligent Design is a fancy name for creation -- it is not evolution. Creationists coined the term to try and make creation appear less "religious" and more "scientific."
JWs have long taught an idea similar to ID. For example, when I asked about how many species of animals are around and then compared that to the total possible floor area in Noah's Ark as described in the bible, I noticed that there was no possible way to fit them all in.
The response I got was that Jehover put a bunch of "basic" species in the ark and then after the flood he caused them to diverge a bit into what they are now.
Examples:
Basically they are saying that Jehover put a bunch of sample Phylum and Genus on the ark and then diverged them into the species we now know. So I ask if this was the same as evolution, and the elder freaked out and said NO!
Evolution is defined as: Gradual random changes over time based on non-random laws.
Sounds like the elder was describing evolution to me!
Of course that's evolution, but they prefer to call it "variation within a specie." They don't seem to get that variation adds up and eventually translates into "speciation" or the development of an entirely new specie.
The 1985 Evolution book slams "scientific creationists" which is what IDers are, I think. Maybe the Society has become more accepting of that term, but nothing really has changed... it's still just creation by God. They do not accept evolution at all.
Thanks, Jeff. I'll get hold of a copy and take a look.
Intelligent Design is indeed just a fancy name for creationism, but practiced by people much more astute than the dummies who advocate Young-Earth Creationism. ID's leader, Phillip Johnson, in a book intended for young Christians, wrote that his goal was to put Christianity back into its rightful place as the intellectual center of Western thought. So when people like Johnson, Behe, Dembski, etc. claim that their agenda is secular, they're lying.
AlanF
Michael Behe, interestingly enough, supports some aspects of evolutionary biology. I know he believes that humans and apes have a common ancestor.
The article, which I read a couple weeks ago, is very misleading in true WT fashion. Besides the "big names" of the ID movement they also quote other scientists who in no way support the notion of a literal view of the Bible or God. They quote Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies, for instance.
It's a pretty shitty article, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.
B.
Nature is very intelligent. And now that she has produced very smart organisms things are really speeding up.
I don't think its fair to demonize proponents of Intelligent Design-- admittedly an unproven but not exactly indefensible hypothesis-- as fire-breathing creationists, or to lump them all together with the Six-Day anti-evolution fundamentalism. In fact, I'm not even sure that secularism and ID are mutually exclusive.
Behe responds:
