[CS] Fwd: Anthropic Principle and ID

[Elton Joe]

This is exactly the point about the faithful being faithless that I
think "Contact" makes.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lynn Miller <lmiller at hampshire.edu>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 8:50 AM
Subject: Anthropic Principle and ID
To: Elton Joe <edj03 at hampshire.edu>



Elton: You may, if you wish, forward this to your list of groups
interested. Lynn


Kenneth R Miller on the Anthropic Principle and ID
 [From Looking for God in all the Wrong Places: Answering the
Religious Challenge to Evolution, in Cracraft, J & Bybee, RW (Eds)
2005 Evolutionary Science and Society: Entering a New Generation AIBS
Washington DC pp13-21]

 *The appeal of the anthropic principle is that it provides a
cosmological rationale for intentionality in the universe. There
simply must be a designer in order to get all these constants right, a
designer who intended for us to arrive in his [sic] universe. That,
they say, validates intelligent design.*

*Maybe so. But there is a curious inconsistency in ID's embrace of the
anthropic principle. The principle s built around the realization that
nature seems to be fine-tuned so as to make life possible. But ID
actually argues the opposite--- namely, that that nature is NOT
hospitable to the evolution of life. If fact, the ID movement spends a
great deal of intellectual effort claiming that the emergence of life
would be a direct violation of the laws of nature. In effect, they are
saying that their evidence for the designer is that he [sic] made the
universe not quite hospitable enough for life to appear, and then he
had to violate those fine-tuned rules to directly design (create) the
first living thing and had to violate them again to produce each of
its major advances. How fine-tuned could the universe be if it
requires so much tinkering?*
 --


"Life is short and art long; the occasion fleeting; experience
fallacious, and judgement difficult"

 Lynn Miller
 Prof. of Biology
 School of Natural Science
 Hampshire College
 893 West St.
 Amherst, MASS
 01002
 ph: 413-559-5360
 FAX: 413-559-5360
 lmiller at hampshire.edu