Paris Peace Accords 23 Oct. 1991

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Dr. Stephen Meyer DARWIN'S DOUBT at Socrates in the City [legendary Tom Wolfe in audience]



In September 2013, Dr. Stephen Meyer joined host Eric Metaxas for a stimulating conversation before a live audience about Meyer's bestselling book Darwin's Doubt. 

Stephen Meyer is the author of The New York Times best selling book Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013).


[Submitted by Ms. Theary C. Seng]





[If legendary Tom Wolfe finds this interesting, so should you.  It really, really is a thought-provoking discussion, deeply engaging and informational.]

Eric: What does “intelligent design” mean?

SM: There are certain features of life in the universe that are best explained by a purposive intelligence rather than an undirected material process, such as in the realm of biology, natural selection acting on random mutations.

Contrast intelligent design with that of one meaning of evolution that the theory is designed to challenge.  There are 3 THEORIES OF EVOLUTION:

1.      CHANGE OVER TIME. Life is different now than it was a long time ago.  Also refers to the observable modest changes that we see taking place in the structure of organism, e.g. the famous Galapagos finches.  Not contentious or disputed.

2.    COMMON ANCESTRY.  Could refer to universal ancestry, that all organisms are connected by, what Darwin called “descent from modification”, from one single simple primordial form way back when.  Or, it could be a more limited thesis: certain groups of organisms are related by a common ancestry.  The Darwinian idea is that the history of life is best represented as a kind of Tree of Life.  … Intelligent design is not challenging that either, although advocates of ID are skeptical of that.

3.    NATURAL SELECTION.  Unguided, undirected process, known as natural selection, acting on random mutations that has produced all the forms of life we see but also has produced the appearance of design that nearly all biologists acknowledge.  Richard Dawkins, the foremost spokesman for so-called Neo-Darwinism says that biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.  It is the counter-intuitive nature of the Darwinian idea, that yes, things look designed, but they are produced by an undirected, unguided process that produced the APPEARANCE of design.  They would say, natural selection mimics the power of designing intelligence, but it is not designed or guided in anyway.  Proponents of Darwinism: We have designed without a designer. Sometimes called “blind watch-maker hypothesis” after title of one of Dawkins’s famous books.  Intelligent design is challenging [this 3rd meaning of evolution].

The term “intelligent design” was selected intelligently to make clear which of the three meanings of evolution we’re challenging explicitly.  We think there are certain features of biological systems that were actually designed, and you can tell by examining the scientific evidence.

Eric: … no agent, utterly random…

SM: I prefer the term “undirected” or “mindless”… because you can have something that’s random, that appears random to us, that actually has a hidden hand behind it.  The Darwinian insists that the appearance of design is an illusion.  If it’s an illusion, it follows logically that the process that produced the appearance of design was not mindful, was unguided and undirected.  That’s the crucial tenet.  This idea is hard-baked into the logic of Darwinism.



2 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:54 AM

    KI was founded by Mr. Heng Soy (Tan Phalkun) in the sole purpose of giving Khmer people a place to express their opinion freely regarding the situation in Cambodia.

    Unfortunately, after his death, these new KI's administrators have turned this blog into a business, highly likely accepting a huge sum of money from Ah Kwack Hun Sen and Yuon. They have successfully chased away the vast majority of Khmer people from that Blog when these crooks required their IDs.

    Who dares to say the truth in that KI with their IDs?

    Some still said something bad about Ah Kwack Hun Sen, but how do we know that those critics are real people? They are maybe just Hun Sen's agents who come to lure people into Hun Sen's trap ( with their IDs ).

    Therefore, those crooks at KI must stop abusing Heng Soy's principals and lift that ID's requirement so that people can say something to help Cambodia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, now they track your IP and activities, live! Deal with it...LOL!!!

    ReplyDelete