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.
Welcome to Free Repulic!
I don't think God is entertaining Himself at our expense althought I'm sure He is frequently heartbroken at our foolishness.
God's word in Romans 1, verses 19 - 20 says,
"because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse.
Yes ... or at a minimum, abolish the teaching of macro evolution religious indoctrination in the classrooms.
Or bump placemarker.
Whatever.
He makes the best case I've ever heard, in the fewest words, why the public school system should be abolished.
And your alternative for educating millions of young people is...?
Why? There are plenty of theories in science that are proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I just have a problem with some of the interpretations of the evidence as it regards evolution.
For instance, now that Britain has found that its soil is releasing carbon due to global warming, wouldn't it be prudent to question the method of carbon dating? Isn't the "given" that carbon gets released at a steady rate over the millenia now debunked, and that the rate is determined by the warming and cooling cycles of the earth?
I am not a scientist, but I can think through evidence fairly well, and make connections to patterns.
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Actually the usually inspire me to post a Native American creation story. Haven't been inspired by this thread yet, but the day is still young!
Gleiser's piece was perhaps the weakest, I agree. But it was a brief op-ed, which may have been edited down.
FAITH in the unproveable is essential either way.
nope.
do look into the way radioactive Carbon14 is produced in the upper atmosphere.
When truth retreats tyranny advances.
Science has proven no theories; it is against the scientific method. Science can find evidence which supports theories, and it can find evidence to reject theories, but it cannot prove any theory.
The use of "prove" is very different between scientists and non-scientists, as is the use of the term "theory."
Quantum mechanics is a pretty fancy way of saying "random bits of matter that accidentally came together". Does the randomness of the mechanism of atomic formation mean that the universe was an accident? I don't think so.
Does the randomness in the mechanism of evolutionary change mean that life is an accident? I don't think so.
Nah. Like I said, I'm not a scientist, nor do I have any great interest in proving or disproving anything to people who are unwilling to see beyond their own beliefs.
I used to believe in evolution. But my questions quickly became unaswerable.
And here I thought it was because you actually learned that ID and Creationism are not the same thing.
There are plenty of theories in science that are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
There are always doubts, but some are more reasonable than others. An evolutionist would argue that when confronted with the truly vast array of evidence with which he is familiar in his work, it's not reasonable to doubt that random variation and natural selection produced the organic world that we currently inhabit. There is simply no other empirical explanation able to account for it. Perhaps some day one will arise, but, until then, we go with what we know.
You're saying, "if it isn't done by a federal government organ, it can't be done at all"? What a strange thing to say! Lots of alternatives exist, including privatization, or elimination of the national bureaucracy and handing jurisdiction over to the states or counties.
your question regarding C14 dating would be answered if you'd trouble yourself to look into the way it is formed in the upper atmosphere.
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