Tonight, Olivia Newton-John's long time boyfriend vanished almost seven weeks ago. Why were authorities not contacted until five days after he was due to return from an overnight fishing trip? And what's the latest on the investigation? We'll ask Scott Epperson with the U.S. Coast Guard, Christine Spiteri, reporter with Channel 9 in Olivia Newton-John's native Australia. Jim Moret, chief correspondent for Inside Edition and more. And then, is it God versus science? After creationism versus evolution, now debate rages over intelligent design with even the president stepping in.Here's the panel invited to the "debate":
- John MacArthur, pastor, teacher at the Grace Community Church; author of "The Battle for the Beginning: Creation, Evolution and the Bible;" host of "Grace to You" and president of the Master's College and founder of the Master's Seminary.
- Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. Barbara is the author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design." She is professor of philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, National Advisory Council of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
- Deepak Chopra, the best selling author of "How to Know God," and founder of the Chopra Center. His blog site, www.intentblog.com, now has a discussion on the topic of creation versus evolution, including lengthy comments by Deepak.
- Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who supports the president's position on teaching intelligent design as well as evolution, favors teaching both.
- Congressman Chris Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who disagrees with the president on the teaching of intelligent design.
- Dr. Jay Richards, vice president of the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank at the forefront in promoting the intelligent design theory.
MacArthur once again handled himself with amazing aplomb and stayed true to the Bible and gave no quarter to anyone. You can read the entire transcript of the show by clicking on the link above (but scroll about halfway down to bypass the earth-shattering and mind-blowing "news" of a missing person - what about the other thousands of missing persons? This one is famous because of a relationship with Olivia Newton-John?)
2 comments:
Although touched on briefly in the Larry King discussion, an understanding of the role of presuppositions is important. There is very little analysis of how presupposisions influence each side of the debate. For example, Barbara Forrest's presupposition is that there is nothing other than a naturalistic explanation. She fails to realize that this presupposition is no better than her accusation that John MacArthur's presupposition is that the Judeo-Christian God created all this. While this may be his presupposition, for the sake of debate, it is a much better presupposition to hold that truth is absolute. Therefore, when the evidence is examined, the most likely conclusion is adopted. This is why Forrest claims that Inelligent Design has no evidence: it's all the same evidence. The most likely conclusion (by an exceptional margin) is that there is an intelligent designer. Forrest denies that this is a legitimate conclusion because of her presupposition of exclusive naturalism. Therefore, she claims that no evidence exists for an intelligent designer.
Forrest would do well to realize that having a naturalistic presupposition that denies absolute truth is no less religious than holding that the Judeo-Christian God is the creator. With a presupposition of absolute truth, the liklihood of an intelligent designer is so great as to be a statistical certainty and naturalistic macro-evolution is a statistical impossibility.
Unfortunately, in most schools there is no instruction in science classes as to presupposition. There is simply some information passed as to the conclusions of mainstream science without any mention of the presuppositions on which the conclusions are founded. The logical fallicy here is called "begging the question" and our students come away ironically thinking that the conclusions are absolutely true.
And that's the rub. Forrest and her ilk deny the presupposition of absolute truth while holding forth that their conclusions are absolutely true.
My suppostion is that the relativist as well as the naturalist(do they wear clothes?)position is, whether they admit it or not solipsistic. They require empirical *proof* from those with whom they disagree while offering theory, heaped on top of assumption, as hard evidence of things that they can't see, touch, or smell. In reality all they can prove is that they exist themselves, but what good is that if no one believes them? They require the scientific community and the public at large to put faith in ideas in which they can not offer anything empirical, while demanding empiricism from those on the other side of the debate. I say again, they can *prove* nothing but their own existance, and that they can only *prove* this to themselves when using the standard they require from others.
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