Show Me the Science [Critique of Intelligent Design, by Daniel Dennett

New York Times ^ | August 28, 2005 | Daniel C. Dennett

[AZLiberty]

...

Is "intelligent design" a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn't such a hoax be impossible? No. Here's how it has been done.

...

[WildTurkey]

I think you just gave razorbak a bad hair day.

[b_sharp]

"The eggs were found in dirt, what does possible "recent exposure to erosive forces" have to do with that?"

No they weren't. They were found in a layer of partially covered sandstone which had gone through multiple episodes of erosion and build up. In the badlands of Alberta where more eggs have been uncovered there are layers of 'solid' rock above and below the layer the eggs were found in. This is obvious because many 'hoodoos' neighbour the dig sites.

[Dimensio]

Nah. razorbak will simply ignore any facts that contradict his/her/its smears. That's how dishonest creationist hacks like razorbak work.

[b_sharp]

"Also, if you don't know in detail how a thing happened, you don't know how to compute the odds of it happening. Period."

BINGO. Give that man a huge cigar (from Cuba no less).

[b_sharp]

"That's OK. I've BEEN UP IN THE BLACK HELICOPTERS! OK?"

You keep bragging about this I'll pay the pilot to throw you out next flight.

Please wipe your shoes off before coming back into the DC building, I'm tired of cleaning the gum off the floor.

[b_sharp]

"I didn't make up that analogy some militant evolutionist did, what was his name, oh yeah, Richard Dawkins. Now go ahead and accuse me of making an argument form authority"

Sorry dude, that little bit was invented by Paley, just under 200 years ago.

[WildTurkey]

I just picked up a deck of cards and dealt the first five cards.

2clubs, 8diamonds, 10hearts, 4 spades, jhearts. Imagine the odds of getting that exact sequence. And I got it on the first try!

[Doctor Stochastic]

I've BEEN UP IN THE BLACK HELICOPTERS! OK?

Did they demonstrate "Whisper Mode" (usually done by feathering the oars.)

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"And truly, time showed that Sedgwick was right to have doubts. The 20th century has gone down in history as a dark age when people underwent massacres simply because of their race or ethnic origins."

The rise of electricity also correlates with the violence of the 20th century.

"As for the other races which he saw as "inferior," he maintained that it was essential to prevent them multiplying and so for these races to be brought to extinction. So the traces of racism and discrimination which we still come across in our time were approved and lent justification by Darwin in this way."

This is a total fabrication. Please state the actual quote from Darwin where he calls for force in stopping anybody from breeding. This of course would go against your earlier quotes, where he felt that natural selection would do the job of exterminating what he considered to be weaker races. He also did not look at this as a good thing but as an inevitable event.

"EVOLUTION

A truly perfect scientific theory which explains in detail how everything in the universe came into being"

An absolute lie. It says no such thing.

"Haeckel brought Darwin's theory to Germany, and prepared it as a program ready for the Nazis."

Another lie.

"This theory(Punctuated Equilibrium) of random occurrences of almost instant "hatchings" of totally new types of plants or animals is supposed to have produced all the life forms on our planet."

This is another lie. Gould said no such thing, ever.

"SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

One of the most fundamental laws of science which essentially states that nothing can increase in order, complexity, or information but rather everything from the universe to the one-horse shay will in time fall apart (not assemble). We may be sure, however, that the mind-boggling increase in order, complexity and information accomplished by the evolution of chemicals to man in no way violates this law or it wouldn't have happened."

The Second Law says nothing of the sort. Try again.

"PROTOZOA

As the name implies, these are known to be the first true animals on earth. If these primitive organisms had continued to adapt to their changing environment they might still be with us today."

Protists are not in the Animal Kingdom.

"SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

The most important contribution of Darwin to biological thought which states that only those organisms which are fit survive, or in other words, survival is the result of being fit. By this kind of logic it can also be proven that loss of vision is a principal cause of blindness."

Darwin didn't coin the phrase (Herbert Spencer did), and it didn't occur in the earlier editions of The Origin Of Species. It does not say *Only the fit survive*, it says that those organisms best adapted to their specific environment will have a better chance to reproduce. It is a stochastic process.

"VESTIGIAL ORGANS

Organs or other body parts, left over from evolutionary ancestors, which are no longer used or needed by an organism that has become more highly evolved by abandoning organs and getting simpler."

False. Darwin specifically said that vestigial organs were organs that were not being used for their original function, not that they had no function now. Only creationists insist that evolutionists say that vestigial organs have no function.


Had some time to further explode your shoddy post. (Not that you wrote most of it).

[RussP]

"If you think that I am IDer because I believe that God laid out all the rules for the physical universe and life at the moment of the Big Bang, then so be it. I am IDer in that context. I am and IDer in that context if and only if the concept includes God was "hands off" from that moment."

Then I'd say you're an IDer alright. I just don't understand why you think it was "hands off" after the Big Bang.

By the way, I'm sorry for my rudeness last night. I tend to get that way sometimes in retaliation when I feel that evolutionists are being arrogant and unreasonable with IDers. But rudeness is just as wrong for me as it is for them. I just wish I could remember to reply politely regardless of how I feel I am being treated.

[dynoman]

Topical Index

Good grief you have a lot of work ahead of you if you are going to critique every subject at that site. I think you should send your piece to the site's author, I think he would be interested in what you have to say.

[dynoman]

But Dawkins wrote a book on it.

[Jeff Gordon]

I'm sorry for my rudeness last night

Your apology is accepted, sir. I was not offended.

I just don't understand why you think it was "hands off" after the Big Bang.

Because that is the way I would do it if I were God. As I explained in another posting, I would rather spend my time fishing then dealing with ongoing project issues that I could have solved with omniscience and omnipotence.

[Dimensio]

But Dawkins wrote a book on it.

Do you understand what Dawkins meant by The Blind Watchmaker?

It was a rebuttal to Paley's argument, not a corroboration of it.

[Junior]

That's not what I said (but then again, we know you have trouble with reading comprehension). I likened them to IDers who claim they are not touting religion. I also explained why I think they're a creationist front group. You may have difficulty understanding what I posted, but I'm sure the average lurker doesn't.

[Junior]

If it's Occam's razor, creation is the simplist explaination, isn't it?.[sic]

Beep. Circle takes the square. Occam's razor requires the simplest explanation consistent with the evidence.

[Junior]

Five minutes on Google. That would be all it would take for your average creationist to not embarrass himself. I suppose it's too much to ask, though.

[js1138]

That he considered whites to be superior to darker skinned peoples only placed him squarely in the majority opinion of his day.

And somewhat ahead of the average Freeper, based on the Bell Curve thread last week.

[dynoman]

But Dawkins wrote a book on it. Do you understand what Dawkins meant by The Blind Watchmaker? It was a rebuttal to Paley's argument, not a corroboration of it. Yeah I know that. So what?

[js1138]

So the Origin of Life Prize is run by a bunch of ID proponents?? If you are going to make that charge you will have get a lot more detailed and specific than you have been.

The only biologist on the board is a "theoretical biologist" specializing in biosemiotics. If you google biosemiotics, you don't find a lot of biology. What you find are papers with titles like Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity and The biosemiotics of emergent properties in a pluralist ontology.