Plead the First

I’d like to use this post to begin a follow up on a discussion I was having with someone on the News and Record’s Letters to the Editor blog, home to a host of some of the most partisan posters on the Internet.

The debate between Evolutionists and Creationists has been going on for quite some time now, making its way back into the news recently with the Kansas State Board of Education’s debate on Intelligent Design and Evolution in their school curriculum and with President Bush’s remarks on the issue.

A recent letter to the editor in the News and Record pointed out the difference between science and philosophy, correctly noting that evolution is sound science and implying that the philosophy behind Intelligent Design is not scientific. “If you want to find out why atoms interact, ask a scientist. If you want to know why life has meaning, do what I and my colleagues in the sciences do: Ask your pastor, minister, parish priest, rabbi or imam,” said the writer.

In the course of the comments, a poster named ECUMAN said:

[W]hat you mean is all philosophies should be excluded from science classes except materialistic naturalism, no matter how illogical it can be at times … [T]he second definition is the philosophical definition of materialism and naturalism that everything MUST have a materialistic explanation. That is the definition that is arbitrary and that I take issue with.

I responded:

It is not arbitrary… the assumption of materialism is fundamental to practicing science. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the way the world is, it’s just that this assumption is useful for making science work. By definition, the supernatural, or immaterial can’t be quantified or observed by science. So trying to make such explanations a part of science is incoherent.

And you know what? This assumption of materialism…. it works. How’s that computer that you’re typing on working out for you? Have any lifesaving medical procedures done lately? Evidence of the usefulness of the assumption of [materialism] in science is all around you.

We briefly discussed the necessity of materialism to science, and at one point I commented:

If you look at ID arguments, you’ll see that they are all just criticisms of evolution. They look for an area where something is not fully explained, or where there is disagreement, and rather than say “we don’t know that yet” they say “an intelligent designer did it”

To which ECUMAN replied that there was more to it than that, and a good place to find a summary of the evidence for ID was in the book “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel. I asked for a brief overview of the strongest evidence presented there, and ECUMAN listed the following:

1. The evidence for the Big Bang
2. The difficulty of life beginning in the cosmos, this solar system and this planet by accident.
3. The complexity of biological life.
4. The amount and complexity of information found in DNA.
5. Accounting for human consciousness.
6. The problems with the evidence for macroevolution.

Since then I’ve visited the library and checked out a copy of the book, and I’d like to spend a few posts going through it and addressing the points raised by ECUMAN. Some things I’ll be looking for: Are they in fact arguments that fit the definition of science, or do they lean more towards philosophy? Do the arguments indeed point towards a creator? Can I actually finish reading a library book before it’s due back?

This is a very cool way to use the Internet:

Tipping off the police has never been easier.

Law enforcement agencies in the Triad increasingly are using the Internet as a tool to collect and deliver information. This creates a situation where residents can more easily discover what police have found going on in their neighborhoods — or let police know what they haven’t discovered.

The Greensboro Police Department’s Web site allows residents to submit anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers.

People who are hesitant to actually speak person-to-person to tip off police about something might not be so reluctant to anonymously use a website to do so.

High Point’s department began putting incident reports and other information online. The service rapidly became popular, with more than 4,000 requests made during the first half of September.

“It’s getting a lot of use,” said Lee Hunt, a crime analyst for the department. “We hoped it would happen.”

The site allows users to map out activity, which permits residents to see what is going on in their neighborhood.

I took a look at High Point’s site — visually, it could use some love, however, functionally it’s intriguing. When we first moved down to the Triad we actually went to downtown Greensboro and spoke with the police to get similar info about areas where we were looking at apartments. An online database makes that process a lot easier. Looking at some of the reports, details are often sketchy, or altogether absent (“I responded to the above location in reference to a property related issue”), but the reports seem to be useful for getting an idea about the type of crimes or frequency of incidents in an area. It would be nice to be able to search by zip code, or neighborhood though, something in between the street and city level.

I created this account simply to post a comment over on this blog. Will I actually make use of my new blog? We’ll see.