Researching Intelligent Design
For Tony, and Tom, and anyone else interested:
Posted on: September 27 2005 @ 03:24 PM at heavenlysanctuary.com
The first book that was really convincing to me, and one I would still recommend to you, was Origins and Destiny by Dr. Robert Gange (Word Books, 1986; ISBN 0- 8499-0447-1). Origins and Destiny at Amazon. While at Andrews in 1986-87, I found a tape of a presentation Gange gave, and enjoyed listening to his humble teaching style. Then I went out and bought the book.
The coolest part of that book was Gange’s use of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and entropy, and information science (back before the popularity of personal computers, information science had a different connotation). Google the author and title for many references to it on creationist sites.
Irreducible Complexity is a concept taught in the Darwin’s Black Box book referred to above. (Black Box at Amazon). I didn’t read this one, but heard it reviewed and the concept explained by others.
There’s a cool website that is dedicated to discussion of intelligent design purely on its scientific merits.� Here is IDEA’s article on Irreducible Complexity.
One of the organizations I am most proud of in the SDA church devotes itself to keeping on the cutting edge of this debate: The Geoscience Research Institute. You may not realize it but all of their publications, from the in-depth journal Origins to their newsletter, are now in readable online form.
GRI’s FAQ is very cool, because it is so thoroughly footnoted, but it just jumps right in to questions about dinosaurs and carbon dating, ice age and plate tectonics: It is found right here. Check this out; there’s even a PDF version of it on the site.
The Institution for Creation Research is a good source, too.
Baraminology is a brand new way of looking at classification, which I just recently stumbled. Here’s an abstract on it, with web site reference:
QUOTEFor decades creationists have been using the word “kind,” “type,” or “group” for their envisioned categories of genetically unrelated organisms including all those formed by the Creator during Creation Week. Within each of these categories the various species, subspecies, and varieties were conceived to have diversified from common ancestral stock. However, until recent years there has not been a serious comprehensive methodology of classification focusing on characterizing each original category, which is separated by genetic gaps from all other categories. Now baraminology (with discontinuity systematics) has developed into a fruitful approach to classification within the creation model. Terminology and methodology have been developed, and the first scientific baraminology conference was held in the summer of 1999. An aggressive future program is envisaged.
Baraminology on creationresearch.org’s site