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Webinar: The Promise of Design Triangulation

This Saturday, September 12 at 6 pm Pacific time, Discovery Institute’s Science & Culture Network Chapter in Colorado is sponsoring an online seminar, with me, about an ID proposal, design triangulation. Details are here: “The Promise of Design Triangulation.” Please join me.

For the past few years, I have been telling myself, and students, “Conceive of design as a scientific theory as if Charles Darwin had never lived.” By that, I mean that we must imagine ourselves confronting the task of understanding and explaining the biological world NOT chiefly in a polemical or argumentative context, but simply facing the data with all the causal possibilities on the table.

“Boo Darwin” is relatively easy, and often fun. “Boo Darwin,” however, is not the same enterprise as “Now here is my design theory.” I want to make sure that as intelligent design matures — and, slowly, ID is maturing — that we have empirical content of our own to offer science. That’s all.

A thought on processes. Either a process works, e.g., to construct sequence specificity, or it does not. If it does not, there’s no point in attaching the phrase “intelligent design” to it, as if that will make the process magically sufficient. A defective naturalistic theory is not repaired by positing design as its behind-the-scenes assistant. Scrap the process, and try something else.

Paul Nelson

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Paul A. Nelson is currently a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and Adjunct Professor in the Master of Arts Program in Science & Religion at Biola University. He is a philosopher of biology who has been involved in the intelligent design debate internationally for three decades. His grandfather, Byron C. Nelson (1893-1972), a theologian and author, was an influential mid-20th century dissenter from Darwinian evolution. After Paul received his B.A. in philosophy with a minor in evolutionary biology from the University of Pittsburgh, he entered the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. (1998) in the philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory.

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biological worldbiologyCharles DarwinColoradodesign triangulationDiscovery Instituteintelligent designprocessesScience & Culture Networkwebinar