Coulter vs Darwin

Godless | 06/06 | Ann Coulter

[Right Wing Professor]

Been watchin' Leno??

Seldom stay up that late. He's good though.

[tomzz]

It gets a lot better than that. Get yourself a copy of the book if you haven't already. Ann Coulter is making it unrespectable to be an evolutionist in the same way that Joe McCarthy made it unrespectable to be a communist, i.e. by simply telling the truth about them and their lame doctrine.

[Elsie]

Oops...

I left off the ref's.


All taken from HERE--> http://scriptures.lds.org/

[VadeRetro]

The proponents of Darwinism already force a philosophy more baseless than astrology into science education.

Whatever happened to the reasonableness of our inferences from the evidence? Have you had a revelation in the last half-dozen pages of posts?

[DaGman]

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. But surely you do not compare Coulter to Williams Jennings Bryan. Surely?! Surely!!?? WJB studied science. Coulter's slam at Darwin is meant to sell books to a certain segment of people who disbelieve science, regardless of the science. Big difference.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Whatever happened to the reasonableness of our inferences from the evidence? Have you had a revelation in the last half-dozen pages of posts?"

That's nothing; in earlier threads he has said that astrology could be scientific. He said:

"I consider astrology to entail a fair amount of direct observation, and insofar as it does so, to be scientific in nature."

Consistency is not his strong suit.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Theological debates have texts with which to work, texts which serve as a norm for all concerned. The divide between militant proponents of Darwinism and those who see the evidence differently does not enjoy a norm, but is rooted instead in the subjective opinions of each observer.

It is too much to ask for perfectly ethical debates when one side is not constrained to a standard other than personal preferences, and when even those who have a standard (text from the outside) are personally attached to the ideas they espouse. Let readers distinguish between the substance of an argument and the manner of delivery. In this debate, it is not the evidence that is so much a matter of contention as to how it is interpreted. May I add that we seem all too unaware of how much indirect observation is made in science, and how little we know after all these years.

I consider it to be a good thing to have a variety of ways of understanding the physical evidence placed before our eyes. I consider it a sad testimony to our condition that we would invoke the law of the land to have our interpretation of the evidence specially protected while silencing the interpretations of others.

[VadeRetro]

He stole that from Behe, anyway.

[VadeRetro]

Joe McCarthy made it unrespectable to be a communist

Not in my universe. He's the stick the left has been beating us with for the last 50 years.

[VadeRetro]

Just to amplify a bit. Anybody can be called a Nazi. Call anyone a communist, he'd better be in a Red Army uniform or you're likely subject to judgement by a PC tribunal.

Joe gave the country to the PC police. They do to us what he tried to do to them. Thanks, Joe!

[tomzz]

McCarthy was personally responsible for the defeat of a baker's dozen dem US senators. Think that doesn't have something to do with the dems hating him? Enjoying any sort of actual success against democrats is the biggest crime in the world to those people.

[tomzz]

The other really big thing which Joe McCarthy did, was to actually make it unrespectable to be a communist in America. In 1948 in America, that was not the case. We had one military base which was so totally infiltrated all they could do with it was shut it down, we had nuclear scientists wanting to give the A bomb secret to Russia, and we had a vice president (Wallace) who was an outright communist, in fact had FDR died in 1940 this would have been a communist country.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Reasonableness applies to attempts at conjecture based upon the evidence. The unreasonableness comes in when it is further assumed (and I am not accusing all Darwinists of doing this) that history is merely a concatenation of processes that came about without the aid of intelligence or design. I do consider Darwinism to be a theory based upon common sense, but I do not consider it to be particularly scientific. It certainly is not worthy of exclusive status in public school science classes.

[VadeRetro]

Sounds a little tin-foil to me. Sen. Joe had nothing to do with exposing Klaus Fuchs. He caught a slightly pink army dentist, I think.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Stop the evisceration, please.

Fruit Bat Soup

The following is a genuine recipe from Micronesia. Fruit bats, or flying foxes, are furry, fruit and nectar eating bats about the size of small rabbits. They make very affectionate pets.

Ingredients:

3 Fruit bats, well washed but neither skinned nor eviscerated,
Water
1 tb Finely sliced fresh ginger,
1 lg Onion, quartered,
Sea salt to taste,
Chopped scallions,
Soy sauce and/or coconut cream.

1. Place the bats in a large kettle and add water to cover, the ginger, onion, and salt. Bring to the boil and cook for 40 minutes. Strain broth into a second kettle.

2. Take the bats, skin them and discard the skin. Remove meat from the bones and return meat, and any of the viscera you fancy, to the broth. Heat.

3. Serve liberally sprinkled with scallions and further seasoned with soy sauce and/or coconut cream.

Yield: 4 servings.

(From "The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook" by Jean Hewitt (c) 1971)

[Fester Chugabrew]

I haven't had a chance to read much of Behe (yet). Only his response to the Dover ruling. Does he also ascribe a certain amount of objective, direct observation to astrology? He should. But astrology gets into trouble where Darwinism does: In conjecturing beyond what is observed to declaring meanings, implications, and applications that have no certain basis in reality or are morally repugnant.

[VadeRetro]

The unreasonableness comes in when it is further assumed (and I am not accusing all Darwinists of doing this) that history is merely a concatenation of processes that came about without the aid of intelligence or design.

You're begging the question here, simply defining a refusal to put design in as unreasonable. If it's not obvious when and where design comes in, it's reasonable to take that "wait-and-see" attitude. If there's no positive evidence for design, only a series of alleged failures of the ToE (and most of those are false), it's even more reasonable to just explain as much as we can without the non-explanatory explanation of ID.

[VadeRetro]

They make very affectionate pets.

Affection AND food! Excellent!

Reminds me, my fat old cat is overripe to be harvested for the crockpot.

[Fester Chugabrew]

So what do you consider to be "obvious," or "positive evidence" of intelligent design? It seems to me the standard is: "If I don't see an intelligent agent arranging matter so that it performs specific functions, then it is unreasonable to infer that such an agent may be involved in cases where I observe organized matter performing specific functions."

To the extent Darwinists, or evolutionists rule out intelligent design, or consider it unscientific, they make themselves no better scientists than anyone else. Both sides need to get a grip and realize the issue does not so much effect science itself, but rather manifests the philosophies we each bring into the scientific arena. None of them should enjoy special protections by law.

It is clear both sides consider the other to hold preposterous views, which in turn generates a certain amount of invective. When I say the tenets of Darwinism are reasonable and common sense, it is because I am putting myself in its shoes to view the evidence, and taking up the general assumptions they do. When I ridicule Darwinism as science it is because they hold their explanation of the evidence to be above reproach or question, and nowadays invoke the law of the land to silence questions, including questions about the assumptions they make.

[VadeRetro]

Behe said astrology meets the same slightly loosened definition of science he uses to claim that ID is science.