Theological Notebook: Allen speaks to Schönborn

[novak]

John Allen in his The Word From Rome column this week, follows up his previous story on Cardincal Schönborn's essay on evolution by speaking to the Cardinal himself for some follow-up:Two weeks ago, I reported on reaction to a July 7 op/ed piece in The New York Times by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, in which the cardinal argued that

Comments

[kesil]

I absolutely and vehemently disagree with the conclusion that these unnamed "observers" make...Schonborn certainly is making a claim about science at odds with scientific discoveries

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[seeker101]

The plot continues to thicken. Notice the comments at the bottom of the story (of course, it is a Catholic site).

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=38829

[seeker101]

BTW, this is referenced in the posts. May have some interest? I have yet to read it, but may take a gander later today.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177

[kesil]

Conscious and rational agents have, as part of their powers of purposive intelligence, the capacity to design information-rich parts and to organize those parts into functional information-rich systems and hierarchies. Further, we know of no other causal entity or process that has this capacity.

Awful, awful. What bothers me about ID'ers especially is their use of obfuscation to make their argument look just scientific enough to convince other ID'ers. The article's laden with absolutes and nevers and clearlies, but is throwing out assertions like the above that just don't hold up to the scrutiny of evidence. We do know of causal processes that have the capacity he's talking about, and they have been studied and elucidated.

But what really bugs me about ID is that it takes the easy way out in science and faith, when the reality is so much richer and more satisfying, if harder to grasp. It trades depth for certainty.

[seeker101]

Within this controversy, how does one identify 1)True science and 2) The true scientists?

Can one at least safely say that the ID'ers have, within their midsts, some true scientists?