Intelligent Design Debate
GUESTS
Guests last week included Steve Bullard of the Ft. Collins Breakfast Clun and Susan Kilpatrick of the Greeley Downtown Club. Greg Couse was inducted into the club as our newest member.
PROGRAM
Pat McKee, Philosophy Professor from CSU was here to talk to us about the pros and cons of intelligent design. McKee is a member of the Ft. Collins Downtown Club and a 43-year veteran as a professor at CSU.
McKee talked about the difference between teleological argument (1) and scientific theories. He gave the example that if you think a salmon swims upstream to spawn, that is teleological thinking. He then gave the allegory of a bag of pennies being burst into the room and the apparent infinite number of ways that they could arrange themselves when they came to rest. He went on to talk about Darwin's two basic principals of random mutation and environmental selection. That was followed by an esoteric discussion of the Big Bang Theory and how it could relate to the bag full of pennies.
Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, and windshield wipers were all invented by women.
NEXT QUESTION
Who owns all of the swans in England?
USELESS INFORMATION
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born November 30, 1835, the year that Haley's Comet passed over the earth. He vowed he would not die until he saw the famous comet for himself; he died the day after it passed over earth in 1910.
Hitler's private train was named "Amerika".
Guests last week included Steve Bullard of the Ft. Collins Breakfast Clun and Susan Kilpatrick of the Greeley Downtown Club. Greg Couse was inducted into the club as our newest member.
PROGRAM
Pat McKee, Philosophy Professor from CSU was here to talk to us about the pros and cons of intelligent design. McKee is a member of the Ft. Collins Downtown Club and a 43-year veteran as a professor at CSU.
McKee talked about the difference between teleological argument (1) and scientific theories. He gave the example that if you think a salmon swims upstream to spawn, that is teleological thinking. He then gave the allegory of a bag of pennies being burst into the room and the apparent infinite number of ways that they could arrange themselves when they came to rest. He went on to talk about Darwin's two basic principals of random mutation and environmental selection. That was followed by an esoteric discussion of the Big Bang Theory and how it could relate to the bag full of pennies.
(1) Teleology (Greek telos, "end"; logos, "discourse"), in philosophy, the science or doctrine that attempts to explain the universe in terms of ends or final causes. Teleology is based on the proposition that the universe has design and purpose. In Aristotelian philosophy, the explanation of, or justification for, a phenomenon or process is to be found not only in the immediate purpose or cause, but also in the "final cause" the reason for which the phenomenon exists or was created. In Christian theology, teleology represents a basic argument for the existence of God, in that the order and efficiency of the natural world seem not to be accidental. If the world design is intelligent, an ultimate Designer must exist.QUIZ ANSWER
Teleologists oppose mechanistic interpretations of the universe that rely solely on organic development or natural causation. The powerful impact of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, which hold that species develop by natural selection, has greatly reduced the influence of traditional teleological arguments. Nonetheless, such arguments were still advanced by many during the upsurge of creationist sentiment in the early 1980s.
Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, and windshield wipers were all invented by women.
NEXT QUESTION
Who owns all of the swans in England?
USELESS INFORMATION
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born November 30, 1835, the year that Haley's Comet passed over the earth. He vowed he would not die until he saw the famous comet for himself; he died the day after it passed over earth in 1910.
Hitler's private train was named "Amerika".
posted by Windsor Rotary Club (link to this post)
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