His books are popular science–something that ID advocates can–and do–also publish.

Thanks for the links! Both those papers were really interesting. I very much agree with Jared’s objection to ID on the basis of it being a sort of throwing up of the hands and saying, “Let’s not do any more research on X.” Seems a foolish thing to do.

I’ve thought a lot about what sorts of experiences in life are pretty much available to everyone, regardless of when or where they are born. Seems to me that those sorts of things are what we ought pay most attention to.

Gaining a completely correct and fully detailed understanding of how the universe ticks is not one of those things, because, to this point, that understanding has been incomplete and generally limited to a pretty exclusive group of fairly educated folk and probably always will be. I’m not saying that struggling to understand and striving to test and study is not important, but that in terms of our personal growth and what we do with our individual lives, the knowledge may not be so important as the process itself and what we learn about ourselves by engaging in that process. That experience is available to anyone, at any time and in any place.

It’s sorta like how even if I lived in a society that believed that the world was a flat disc on the back of four elephants, who in turn stand on a gigantic, space-traveling “star” trutle, I would still have the opportunity to choose to be kind and thoughtful and loving, as opposed to cruel and selfish and oppressive (and yes, I am a Terry Pratchet fan).

Also, here is David Bailey’s paper, that is quite good.

Where’s Jared’s post. Couldn’t dig it up and am curious. Thanks for pointing it out.

That analogy of the electric field is generally how I think of God in my own head. Given that LDS scriptures are pretty clear on the uncreate nature of spirit and matter, I tend to think that their fundamental natures constitute the laws God works with and can’t, ultimately, change. It is odd that D&C 88 and 93 equate spirit/truth/intelligence/glory/the spirit of Christ/law, as if they were all one thing. And Christ says “I am the law” and “I am the light” and God is the Light that shines through everything. I think these are literal statements, not just metaphorical.

From our human experience and perspective, that’s a pretty wild thing to say. Something along the lines of my claiming that I am “The Force” from star wars. Don’t mean to be too flip, just to point out what an odd statement this is. To me, it just makes it obvious that we really DON’T intuitively grasp what’s going on in the universe at a deep level. It’s sort of like how we’re all moving through time and space relative to each other and to every other object, but we just aren’t aware of it because we’re incapable of being aware of objects that are moving near the speed of light with respect to us. Our bodies just limit what we can comprehend and focus on. Maybe this is a good thing too. Keeps us focused on learning how to be nice to each other.