Is Biological Life the Product of Intelligent Design?

[Spence]

Join us on Thursday, March 29 as Kirk Durston, Intelligent Design (ID) Speaker, addresses the issue of ID in biological life, explaning how it is the best explanation for the information encoded within the genomes of life.

Time: 7:30-9:30pm; Kirk will do a one hour presentation followed by a question and answer session lasting no longer than one hour.


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I know what his stance is, what are some likely questions I could ask during the Q&A session?

[SNOWBALL]

ask him to explain vestigial organs.

[Spence]

I'll bring that up for sure, any more ideas? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Phil153]

Ask him if schizophrenia is a biological or god-designed disease.

[Skidoo]

Ask him to explain all the evidence that excludes Intelligent Design.

[hellbender]

First of all---don't waste your two hours! But if you do...

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ask him to explain vestigial organs.

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Nah, don't ask a question rightfully answered by the consensus of relevant scientific experts. If Durston allowed such consensus to negate his beliefs, he wouldn't believe them anymore. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Ideally, you can question his methodology. These sort of questions might catch him off guard:

- "How do you explain the complete absence of published results by ID scientists? If ID is the correct model for predicting biological complexity, shouldn't ID scientists have a huge edge over their naturalistic counterparts?" (You can double-check this, but as of a couple months ago no hardcore ID scientist had ever published a peer-reviewed journal article.)

- "If naturalism is truly insufficient to explain biological complexity, why can't it be readily and trivially falsified everywhere we look? ID seems to be mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity."

- "Why does every major research department, Academy of Science, and judicial ruling categorically reject ID? Are you more willing to assume such a conspiratorial, wholesale lack of scientific integrity than you are willing to doubt that ID really is 'the best explanation' for biological complexity?"

- "What would you allow to falsify your position on ID? Please provide at least one empirical result that would accomplish this."

And, my favorite:
- "You are director of The New Scholars Society, whose mission statement is '...to promote Christian scholarship in every field, with a special interest in those areas where philosophy, faith, and science begin to intersect.' Can you describe how you keep your religious presuppositions and organizational directives separate from your personal research as an objective scientist? It must be very difficult."

[Skidoo]

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If naturalism is truly insufficient to explain biological complexity, why can't it be readily and trivially falsified everywhere we look?

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Would you mind specifying a necessary characteristic of a non-naturalistic biological entity?

[hellbender]

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If naturalism is truly insufficient to explain biological complexity, why can't it be readily and trivially falsified everywhere we look?

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Would you mind specifying a necessary characteristic of a non-naturalistic entity?

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No can do. However, say biological life was in fact replete with "irreducible complexity"...then we would not have a naturalistic explanation for life, and a supernatural explanation would be best. Yes?

Edit - by "naturalism", I'm referring to a methodology, in case that wasn't clear.

[Skidoo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If naturalism is truly insufficient to explain biological complexity, why can't it be readily and trivially falsified everywhere we look?

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you mind specifying a necessary characteristic of a non-naturalistic entity?

[/ QUOTE ]

No can do. However, say biological life was in fact replete with "irreducible complexity"...then we would not have a naturalistic explanation for life, and a supernatural explanation would be best. Yes?

Edit - by "naturalism", I'm referring to a methodology, in case that wasn't clear.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sort of, but life has not, in fact, been shown to be reducible to universally observable (i.e. including outside life itself) properties of nature. The claim is made on occasion, yet no such details have been published.

[pokerbobo]

Ask him why so many species have gone extinct if they were intelligently designed.

Ask him if he supports the "biblicly correct" museum tours that tell people dinosaurs are only 6000 years old?
(this will see how religiously motivated he is) I find it evil to spew nonsense to impressionable children, using false info to fit your holy "facts" is really low.