Nagel and his ID opinion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 29, 2015, 18:42 (3368 days ago) @ David Turell

An essay written after the Dover trial rejected ID in the classroom:-http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/papa_132.pdf-"ID is a different story. Its defense requires only that design be admitted
as a possibility, not that it be regarded as empirically unassailable. It
would be difficult to argue that the admission of that possibility is inconsistent
with the standards of scientific rationality. Further, if it is admitted
as a possibility, it would be difficult to argue that the presently
available empirical evidence rules it out decisively, as it does young earth
creationism. To rule it out decisively would require that the sufficiency of
standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of
life should have been clearly established by presently available evidence.
So far as I can tell, in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary, nothing close to
this has been done."-I suggest reading the whole article. It is a forerunner to his book, Mind and Cosmos, 2012-A Christian review:-http://senseofevents.blogspot.ca/2015/01/prominent-atheist-professor-says.html-"Prof. Nagel tells us that he "has for a long time been skeptical of the claims of traditional evolutionary theory to be the whole story about the history of life" (p. 202). He reports that it is "difficult to find in the accessible literature the grounds" for these claims.-" Moreover, he goes farther. He reports that the "presently available evidence" comes "nothing close" to establishing "the sufficiency of standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of life" (p. 199).-" He notes that his judgment is supported by two prominent scientists (Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, writing in the Oct. 2005 book Plausibility of Life), who also recognized that (prior to offering their own theory, at least) the "available evidence" did not "decisively settle[]" whether mutations in DNA "are entirely due to chance" (p. 191). And he cites one Stuart Kauffman, a "complexity theorist who defends a naturalistic theory of emergence," that random mutation "is not sufficient" to explain DNA (p. 192)."-Antony Flew's deistic view: (same article)-"This is basically the same rationale that the 20th century's leading philosophical atheist, Antony Flew, used finally to reject atheism and declare he was a deist. He said,-"There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."