Intelligent Design public debate

Cross Posted on my new blog www.thoughtsongod.com

Stephen Meyer vs Peter Ward

I spent the last two days reviewing debates on the issue of intelligent design, trying to find one that is worth watching. This is a clean debate with well presented arguments from the ID camp, without the use of the Bible. People who use the Bible in these debates are embarrassing, and do more damage to the credibility of ID theory than anything the materialists could ever do with pure rational arguments.

I noticed a few patterns while sifting through videos on this topic. First, those in the ID camp continually bring the Bible into the debate. This is disingenuous, in that  the Bible crosses over into sacred theology. Not only is this different than natural science, it is different than natural theology or philosophy. I’m not discrediting the ligitimacy of any of these ways of knowing, I’m simply stating that each has a right to its particular value sphere. I believe that these distinctions must be kept in mind.

Another pattern that I notice is the smug, often plain rude behavior coming from the materialist camp. In the above debate, the materialist was rather mild compared to some. I still could not help but notice that he interrupted often, threw in political one liners, made sarcastic inferences, and was forced to call out for help from other materialists that were in the audience.  These are tactics of  rhetoric.

Also notice how the crowd reacted when the materialist claimed the debate hurts true intellectual development. This is a reflecton of the attitude of many of these materialists who simply brush off any questioning of what they claim to be true, as simple insanity. Typical of any gnostic enterprise, “thou shalt not question” is the  underlying theme. Hard line materialists claim that their value sphere is the only real value sphere. These folks are known as Gross Reductionists due to their collapsing of the Kosmos into the cosmos. The conversation is very much worth having; and it has only just begun.

I also have a simple solution to the issue of science in schools. Start teaching Plato and Aristotle at the same time we start teaching earth science. This banishment of philosophy by both the church and science, does a great disservice to our citizenry.