Posted on 09/08/2005 1:33:48 PM PDT by snarks_when_bored
Five critiques of Intelligent Design
John Brockman's Edge.org site has published the following five critiques of Intelligent Design (the bracketed comments following each link are mine):
Marcelo Gleiser, "Who Designed the Designer?" [a brief op-ed piece]
Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name" [a detailed critique of ID and its history, together with a summary defense of Darwinism]
Richard Dawkins & Jerry Coyne, "One Side Can Be Wrong" [why 'teaching both sides' is not reasonable when there's really only one side]
Scott Atran, "Unintelligent Design" [intentional causes were banished from science with good reason]
Daniel C. Dennett, "Show Me the Science" [ID is a hoax]
As Marcelo Gleiser suggests in his op-ed piece, the minds of ID extremists will be changed neither by evidence nor by argument, but IDists (as he calls them) aren't the target audience for critiques such as his. Rather, the target audience is the millions of ordinary citizens who may not know enough about empirical science (and evolution science in particular) to understand that IDists are peddling, not science, but rather something tarted up to look like it.
Let us not be deceived.
Desecrators of really cute fashions items will burn in Hell!!!!
clarification accepted. thank you.
I believe in something greater than myself, and I do not believe that "something" is random chance.
I'm not assigning explicit conscious deliberate motivation to your words. Sorry if you took it that way.
However, the core idea of the creationists and the IDists is vain.
gravity is till undergoing significant refinement and testing - it got demoted from Law to Theory in the 1930's
Newton's theory of gravity completely breaks down at the subatomic level and conflicts with relativity. Einstein's theory of gravity solved the Newtonian problems, but then it runs afoul of quantum theory, which opens a bunch more questions. And quantum gravity theory is still in the relatively early stages of development.
OK, but I'm not stepping off the edge of the Grand Canyon to 'test' the theory.
"tarted up" -- good description.
Another description is 'putting lipstick on a pig'.
Your faith does not trump my faith.
That pretty much defines "reasonable doubt" doesn't it?
no one doubts the often observed and rather uniformly repeatable observation that "unsupported stuff falls down, goes splat/boom/thud"
the explanation concerning the "how" of it is the theory of gravity, and it is most definitely a matter undergoing continual testing and refinement.
I'd rather attempt that than the Grand Canyon gravity test....
...Darn, didn't work: Hilary Clinton looks just the same
nope.
dont confuse the observations of the fact with an explanation for the "how" of the fact.
you call that green rag really cute? Sure does put a nice shine on my car though
OK. Like I said--I'm not a scientist. I thought Newton's theory was that gravity existed--not the how of it.
Thats a puzzler.
You have obviously stolen someone else's sweater.
Newtons theory of universal gravitational attraction didn't just posit that gravity EXISTED, it gave a mathematical formula that can be utilized to observe and predict the universe.
Excellent!
I think of the idea as rather humbling, not vain.
"Will answer this evening. :-)"
RadioA, as a fan of many of your posts I would love to see this, please ping me when you reply.
BTW ever read 'Godel, Escher, Bach an Eternal Golden Braid' by ?? can't remember his name but it's a great book. We even had an honors math course in college that spent the whole year going over it.
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