Veritas Forum - My Summary
Well, as expected, I don't think there was anyone there whose opinions were changed by attending this "forum". However, that isn't in and of itself a bad thing, as I did learn a great deal. I still disagree with the proponents of intelligent design, and I expected both theologians on the panel to agree with Behe. I was very surprised by Hefner's attitude; it was nice to see that my prejudiced opinion of "theologians" wasn't correct. Hopefully his example will remind me to keep my mind open and avoid assuming the opinions of others before I've even heard them.
Unfortunately, I can't say I was particularly impressed with the arguments presented for design. They mainly boiled down to something like "some stuff is so darn complicated there's absolutely no way I could imagine it could have come about by any process other than the action of a designer". Well, just because you can't imagine it doesn't make it so. Similarly, in response to Dr. Behe, specifically, just because science doesn't have an answer to a particular question doesn't mean we should throw in the towel and assume design. For example, Newton's laws were printed in the 1600's, Einstein's theories were published in the early 1900's, and in the intervening years, many discoveries were made that made it possible for Einstein to develop his insights. Perhaps something similar is needed here. I'm not saying that we should ignore problems, but by assuming design, you just saying that a problem shouldn't be studied anymore. I don't think this is a particularly useful attitude, either. I think it will always be better to try and learn things by trying to decipher the way the universe works, as opposed to positing design, which simply means we should give up.