Questions From After My First Talk ("Intelligent Design-- the Convergence of Science and Spirituality"). Vernon BC Canada Feb, 23, 2006. 7:30 PM. Keynote Speaker -- William Brookfield ID scientist, Guest Speaker -- Inventer Johnathan Richie.

Person #1

"Where did the intelligent designer or God come from in intelligent design theory?"

WB--Generally speaking, design theorist are not working on that question at this time, but are instead working to make design detection as rigorous as possible. There is no consensus with regard to this question amongst design theorists. My answer is likely to be different to other theorists.

WB --Questions such as "who designed the designer?" automaticaly lead to the longer "who designed the designer of the designer?..etc. The materialist equivalent would be "What materialized the materializer of the materializer of the material?... All of these questions are infinitely cyclic or "iterating" questions that -- as far as I can tell -- require an infintely cyclic, iterating answer.

I personally believe in an infinite cyclic, evolving God -- and that our (now advanced/evolved) God was originally a "proto-god." While the emergence of order requires an explanation in terms of a prior cause, randomness does not (for it can "happen" by chance). This fact suggests an end to the causal regress of "who designed the designer of the designer? etc..." This "proto-god" existed originally in a purely equilibrious (random) state as an utterly smooth equilibrious (random) mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness. Certain ranges of this mixture rebelled against eternal oblivion -- initially as just an oscillation. The portion that rebelled (and subsequently developed itself through countless iterating hyper-cycles) is the advanced God that we have today. While our present God has evolved from the initial proto-god, the initial god, being equilibrious, exists by default in any existential primary and requires no causal prior.

Person #2.

"Micro-evolution is a 'creationist' concept, not science. Darwin didn't talk about microevolution."

WB -- "Microevolution" refers to variable reductive nichification... reduction to a particular range of genetic material...

WB-- (The microevolution /macroevolution split is but a logical consequence of the existing species/new species split. Any biologists that talks about distinct species or "speciation" tacitly assumes this split. I used the terms in the talk due to their familiarity and simplicity. I personally find them inaccurate however and prefer "Variable Reductive Niche-ification" for "microevolution" and "Specified Constructive Speciation" for "macroevolution").

Person #2.

Are you aware that Behe's argument has been refuted? .

WB -- No, I haven't seen it myself -- are you talking about Dover.. (Pennsylvania)?

Person #2.

...It's only because this audience is uneducated that they buy your argument. This wouldn't work on an educated audience.

(audience member #3. rolls eyes in disgust).

Person 2. "Darwin's natural selection is not about destruction. All of Darwin's predictions have been scientifically verified."

Person #4. Challenges person #2. I could not hear her comment (due to announcement that "anyone who wishes to leave is now free to do so").

Person #2 continues..

"Take this tie clip" (a Kenneth Miller impersonation?) A squiggling(?) tail could have been a precursor to the flaggelum"

Person #5. to person #2 "You're just making it up. You're not being realistic."

A. No. Materialism is subnatural. It results from the scientific development of only the "body" side of the Cartisian, mind-body duality. Materialism ignores and minimizes the implications of consciousness. By restoring the balance the ID and Noetic sciences are the real "naturalism." ID science (that includes material science as a subset) is natural. Material-ism is subnatural and incomplete.

Q. Do you believe that God designed the bacterial flaggella?

A. Even though I believe that God ultimately did everything, I would consider the answer "God did it" extremely imprecise and unscientific in this case. If you ask "Who built the Eiffel tower?" the answer "God did it" is true, but only in a very general, unscientific sense. At this time I believe that the French built the Eiffel tower and that the bacteria and other species possess an advanced non-local intelligence or "species brain" that does the designing.