Mr.
Ahmed K. Sultan Salem,
Your
article "The Non-Science of Intelligent Design" was one of the best I
have read. You were able to express with clarity my discomfort with ID.
Like you, I find the arguments compelling (increasingly so). But I do not
accept the competence of science to discern metaphysical truth.
Good
luck in your studies. I am confident you will do well.
Regards,
Jim
Driskill
Dear
Mr. Salem,
I
enjoyed your article, "The Non-Science of Intelligent Design". The
fact that an article on ID appeared in IslamOnline was very intriguing to me and
I was happy to see the discussion of ID in an Islamic context rather than the
usual Christian vs Anti-religion battle in the USA.
Judging
by your article's title, at first it looked as though this was just another
ID-bashing article. But once into the text it soon became apparent you were
really trying to educate your readers about the merits and problems on both
sides.
A
very well-considered and well-written article.
Perhaps
another angle to be considered is that scientists judge intelligence by
behavior. The fact that there are laws, even governing chance and chaos,
necessarily means nature has intelligence. So perhaps the real issue is
"design" and not "intelligence".
Perry
Skeath
Silver
Spring, MD
Ahmed
K. Sultan Salem wrote in his "The Non-Science of Intelligent Design" (July
18, 2005) that "Science uses necessity, chance, or a combination of both to
explain different phenomena."
It
needs to be pointed out that any argument that invokes chance as an "explanation," and
seeks to derive the complexity and richness of life from a simple
beginning, as Darwinism does, is irrational and blatantly violates the principle
of causality. As the late Pope John Paul II indicated during a 1985 general
audience, to credit the development of this most wonderful life to a simple and
random cause "would be equivalent to admitting effects without a
cause."
Indeed,
any valid scientific explanation is explanation by cause. Chance, randomness,
purposeless processes, and similar confessions of ignorance, do not belong to
the domain of science. By arguing that blind processes, operating long enough,
will produce any level of complexity, we can “explain" anything. If we
are ignorant of the cause of an effect, all we have to say is that random
processes did it, given enough time. But this is not an explanation. There is no
way to observe, reproduce, test, negate or prove wrong anything based on random
processes. The terms "randomness" or "chance" merely cover
our ignorance of the real cause of any effect. As someone said, "The
doctrine of chances is the bible of the fool."
Kazmer
Ujvarosy
Forefront
Research
