www.felixcohen.co.uk

I'm getting into this youtube embedding lark now: here's a entertaining to and fro on the subject of the banana

I hate Intelligent Design. For me it's a thinly veiled strategy to waste my time. However, I'm going to try and agree here. Gulp. I am not a fundamentalist scientist in the mould of Richard Dawkins, but I am a skeptical atheist. Studying physical sciences taught me the value of falsifiable, empiric results, but then I did a psychology degree, and I've had to throw most of my rationalist tools out of the pram! So, I'm forgetting all my ideals about memes & selfish genes and I'm going to have a go at being a creationist for a while.

Will I undergo a spectacular conversion to Western religion, or will I spiral into an existential funk. I'm giving myself 6 days (for obvious reasons) of total creationism, a la Super Size Me, of trying to think about things as though they were designed/created, not evolved.

The lie, the pitch and the sell-out

American Religious Right vs Women etc.

With C.S Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles coming shortly to the big screen, it seems that there is a lot of debate as to the real message, so in the style of Mr Lewis himself, impact breaks the issues down for you in a post-modern Christmas allegory, where Good is slowly sub-sumed by Bad and turned into a pointless lifestyle choice with no real value.

CAST

C.S Lewis & the Inklings : A small, bookish man, and his Oxford don friends, all of whom specialise in Medieval English Literature

The American Religious Right (ARR): Ideally, George Bush. Otherwise, a corpulent televangical

The ideas of Intelligent design are becoming ever more visible in the world today. American schools and districts are beginning to teach it as an alternative to Evolutionary theory, and it is rapidly gaining credibility. It is, however, a pretty contentious area, and most scientists consider it to be re-labelled Creationism.

The idea behind ID Theory is that Evolutionary theory cannot explain the complexity of organisms in the world. It does not completely discount evolution, but states that there must, at some point, have been a designing hand in the process. ID theory is based on the work of 19th century natural philosopher William Paley, who used the watchmaker analogue; ie. If you are walking along a path, and find a watch, you will assume that it was designed by a watchmaker to tell the time.

An Evolutionary Account of Teleology: Why we Infer Design in the World around Us

“Every manifestation of design...exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation”
Paley (1802)

The question of whether design is present in the world, especially in the function of organisms has been important both in theology and natural philosophies; teleological arguments for a Creator have been discussed as far back as Plato, and ratified in Christianity by Thomas Aquinas(Houston, 1979). The answer to the question is seen, variously, as proof of the existence of God(s) or as evidence of the materialist process of evolution. The debate stems from a number of factors that shall be considered in this essay. I shall present an evolutionarily based explanation of why both believers in a creation story and scientists see design in the world, and what this might mean for reconciling these opposing views. Recently, this debate has been re-ignited by the work of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, championed by Phillip Johnson and the Discovery Institute. On the other side of the debate is a movement of neo-Darwinists, labeled the ‘New Godless’ in a recent article (New Statesman, 10/04/06) and typified by arch-atheist Richard Dawkins, whose awareness of the problem of design is shown in his title, “The Blind Watchmaker” (Dawkins, 1986). The debate has crystallized as the ID movement has campaigned for the reintroduction of teaching non-evolutionary theories in American schools. The recent Dover School Board case (Jones, 2004) overthrew the ‘teach the controversy’ notion that the ID movement was pressuring the school with; in the eyes of the legal profession; ID is still rebranded creationism. While many ID advocates do not insist, or even suggest, that God need be the intelligent designer in question, it is significant to note that Phillip Johnson has been quoted as saying:

Richard Dawkins being interviewed by Stephen Colbert. Good to see the stuffy old atheist getting a bit of a dressing down, to be honest. Why do you have to be so incredibly dull and a science' fundamentalist', Richard? The atheist/evolutionarist/humanist movement has the potential to be so cool, and a 'force for good', so please stop being such a silly pedantic little man.