Darwin's Doubt, Intelligent Design And Evolution.

[Khandro]

Has anyone watched this film, an interview with Stephen Meyer?

I found it rather compelling, and I thought he answered well the critics who have wished to steer him into the religious standpoint which is not what it's about at all.

[vetuste_ennemi]

PZ is a proper scientist, Khandro. Again, haven't seen the whole thing. But the first diagrams are taken straight from the opening chapter of Meyer's book. Here Meyer shows his first diagram (of the fossil record from the Cambrian , the new phyla appearing as discrete and unconnected vertical lines) alongside a schematic of the same phyla as represented by the "tree of life" as inferred by Darwinism with its various nodes and branches. PZ overlaid the one on top of the other to illustrate Meyer's conclusion more clearly than the ID man himself: that all the nodes and branches are missing. PZ went on to describe this as a misrepresentation of the evidence, as many of the "missing" intermediate forms do occur in the (geologically) brief period of the Cambrian (20+ million years) itself and in the fossil record of the pre-Cambrian (mainly soft bodied animals). I'm afraid all my natural prejudices combine to accept PZ's case and reject Meyer's. I have given you chapter and verse, by the way, of Meyer's demonstrable distortion of the words of the divine Eugenie Scott.
I can understand, by the way, that PZ's demeanour can seem provocative and irritating. Dr. Miller on the other hand is always impeccably gracious, just as is
Yours faithfully,
VE.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Another one of the diagrams in the PZ lecture (the one illustrating the oxygenation of the atmoshere and the oceans) came either directly from, or from the same source used by, The Cambrian Explosion (Erwin and Valentine).

[Khandro]

v_e; I don't want you to form the impression that I am a defender of Meyer willy nilly, all I have said throughout is that I find his thesis interesting and it was monstrously misrepresented by PZ, by silly jibes about 'Jesus' and 'creationism'.
He makes enormous sweeping presumptions on such things as worms with the beginnings of brains and eyes, and once skipped over that, was able to say how everything further, simply took on a Darwinian course - well that isn't the issue for ID.
No one I respect including Meyer, says that Darwin was wrong, but that he got to only part of the truth.

[Khandro]

Having finished Behe's - 'Darwin's Black Box', I conclude, that he gets my vote, based largely on the 'irreducible complexity' theory within the realm of biochemistry.
Along with Francis Crick, I believe that life on Earth originated from an external source (call it whatever you like), an undirected origin on this planet being virtually insurmountable.