In the News

In Uncommon Descent a commentary is offered on P. Z. Myers' recent claim.

The author wishes to quiz the top 25 most influential atheists about the status of the newborn.

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Some atheists, who are intellectually honest about their worldview, express their rather hopeless view of their existential meaning. This can be reflected in their view on the pre-born or newborn.

While this may be "off topic" with regard to ID, their views have important consequences for the pre-born, and now, newborns. Some suggest giving parents a one-month option, after birth, to rid themselves of the new child with no civil penalty. A few years ago, this would have been considered barbaric, even in academia.

In a thoughtful consideration of the status of our most vulnerable, the SLED test is a fairly compelling argument for the pre-born as being fully human.

The SLED test...

Suppose an adult parent is busy with a task, and his or her young child enters the room and says, "Can I killed it?" Almost instinctively the parent would ask, "What is it?" If it's a spider crawling on the child's arm, the answer would likely be "yes". If it's the family pet, the answer would be unequivocally "no". So, it makes a great deal of difference on what "it" is. And, so it is with the pre-born and the newborn. Since the pre-born has unique human DNA and is living and growing, it qualifies, using the SLED test, as being fully human. IMHO, it's not really all that difficult. But, many would try to justify their claims using some rather convoluted reasoning.

ENV reported that...a 2009 peer-reviewed scientific paper by David Abel in International Journal of Molecular Sciences titled "The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity" asks, "If all known life depends upon genetic instructions, how was the first linear digital prescriptive genetic information generated by natural process?" The author does not consider himself per se a proponent of intelligent design, and warns materialists that there is an easy solution to the challenges posed by intelligent design: "To stem the growing swell of Intelligent Design intrusions, it is imperative that we provide stand-alone natural process evidence of non trivial self-organization at the edge of chaos. We must demonstrate on sound scientific grounds the formal capabilities of naturally-occurring physicodynamic complexity." However, while the author notes that much effort has been spent "arguing to the lay community that we have proved the current biological paradigm," he concludes that the actual evidence for self-organization is "sorely lacking" and has been "inflated."

The author emphasizes a distinction between "order" and "organization," arguing that self-ordered structures like whirlpools are readily constructed by natural processes, but "have never been observed to achieve 1) programming, 2) computational halting, 3) creative engineering, 4) symbol systems, 5) language, or 6) bona fide organization"- all hallmarks of living organisms. In contrast, living organisms are built upon programming and are highly organized...

More on this honest assessment of the state of affairs...