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This [the intelligent design movement] isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy.
--
World Magazine, 30 November 1996

 

Phillip E. Johnson

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[...] ironically, the jihadis are just as opposed to the theory of evolution as creationists. So they have that in common [...] This is an area in which Islamists agree 100% with the Discovery Institute and creationists. If that makes you uncomfortable ... well, it should. [...] I'm making a very narrowly defined point. The proponents of "intelligent design" are on the same page with radical Islamists, on that issue. And the devaluation of science by Islam, in favor of religion, is largely responsible for the appalling state of the Islamic world today. Western civilization has advanced to its current point because we DO have a strict division between these two disciplines. Science is not religion, and religion is not science. If we lose that clarity, we're in danger of losing everything. As I've tried to say at least 20 different ways, this is not a put down of religion. Religion is a civilizing force, as long it's not allowed to rule people's lives. The intelligent design movement is trying to erase these lines and bring us back into the Dark Ages. We should learn from the failure of Islam, but this is an issue that is obviously not going to rest easy.

 

Charles Foster Johnson

 

Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.

 

William A. Dembski

 

The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

 

William A. Dembski

 

I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.

 

Phillip E. Johnson

 

It’s time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward.

 

Deepak Chopra