Origins:  Science, Faith, and Philosophy
 

"I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan.  You are a collection of almost identical molecules.  Is there nothing in here but molecules?  I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we."
        C. Sagan, Cosmos  pg 127.
 
 
 

Goals:
 

1.  Provide a forum for open discussion and exchange of views on this subject.

2.  Survey the most important observations in various fields relating to origins.

3.  Provide a framework for critically examining naturalistic accounts of origins, discern fact from interpretation, distinguish science from philosophy.  Attendees should be able to formulate their own personal views based on a knowledge of the data and critical thinking, rather than the "authoritive" views of others.

4.  By distinguishing between origin and operation, we will present a case that the progress of science demonstrates in ever greater detail that the natural world bears witness of a Designer.  The distinction between origin and operation is made using the concept of "information".
 
 

 
We will:  analyze apologetic arguments of Design proponents and naturalists (written, cassette, video), compare to data/observations, identify how/where religious or philosophical views can be injected into the interpretation of the data, present the strongest evidences/arguments for a Designer.
 

We will not:  debate various creation models (Biblical creation model = particular sequence of natural and supernatural events that account for all observations and is consistent with the Bible)

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

     Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Books, Jan 9, 1997
 

"Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."
     S. C. Todd, Nature, 410:(6752): 423, 1999.
 

"Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally.  Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on earth.  Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere.  Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer.  Others, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder."

     R. Shapiro, "Origins:  A Skeptics guide to the Creation of Life in the Universe",  Penguin, London, p 130, 1986, 1988.