Five critiques of Intelligent Design

Edge.org ^ | September 3, 2005 | Marcelo Gleiser, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Scott Atran, Daniel C. Dennett

[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.

[King Prout]

why would anyone argue with being deemed a heavily armored highly skilled Byzantine cavalryman?

[King Prout]

"obcious"?

[VadeRetro]

You don't have to be Byzantine to be a cataphract. But, anyway, it beats being a helot.

[ml1954]

I *said* spare me the pre-programmed in-the-box regurgitated answers, I have heard all of them. Will it help if I say I do see the pre-programmed logic in them??

I am only programmed to respond to rational questions. If you have any other questions please press 1. If you'd like to hear about our other products, please press 2. If you'd like to repeat your question and get a different preprogrammed responder, please press 3.

[dynoman]

natural processes and material properties are NOT random and by their natures impose patterning and order

This is truth?

The Omniscient Jury has returned the final verdict?

[Oztrich Boy]

Around the 1920s, the evolutionary point of view (or their representatives, really) was arguing for a CHANCE to explain their position. They were granted that chance.

NO the scientific view was standard. Then certain polictians, pandering to the backwoods religious, tried to force Creationism into the system. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

[Doctor Stochastic]

A bigger cataphract!

[Vive ut Vivas]

This "lesser species" BS is exactly why it's hilarious when the creationists claim it's the scientists that are arrogant. Who thinks they are made in the image of god and are the "highest species"? Who's arrogant here?

[snarks_when_bored]

... it should be noted that the sequence of digits to the right of the decimal point in their infinite expansions is effectively random.

This is only true with probablity one. There are irrational, verily, even transcendental, numbers with non-random decimal expansions.

.10100100010000100000....

An example which no polynomially bound statistical test can prove to be non-random:

1101110010111011110001001101010111100110111101111...

Each of the above has an obcious construction rule.

Yes, and I almost included

0.123456789101112...

and

0.101001000100001000001...

in an earlier post, but didn't. I've got to remember that there are readers here who know what expressions like 'except on a set of measure zero' mean.

[dynoman]

Read post 201. The challenge is coming from evolutionists themselves. I'm just watching.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Finger Fehler
Finger Failer

CV interchange error.

[VadeRetro]

Lovely! Phalanx for the memories!

[snarks_when_bored]

Hey, VR, at least he didn't call you a catamite...

[King Prout]

dynoman,

with what assessment do you disagree?

that matter and energy display stable and reliable natural characteristics?
that the interaction of matter and energy can be, at least under some common conditions, statistically predictable?
that the relations of large aggregations of matter and energy can produce patterned cyclic behavior?

what?

seriously: what, besides naked incredulity, do you bring to the table?

[Doctor Stochastic]

We're out here holding up the tails of the bell curve. Without us, it would be exp(-x**3).

[King Prout]

well, I suppose you could be a Persian Dehgan. tough bastards, those, and the model for the Byzantine cataphract.

just about anything beats being a helot.

[Coyoteman]

We're out here holding up the tails of the bell curve.

Which tail?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" *Why* can't the TOE say something about origin of life??"

For the same reason that quantum mechanics can't, or that economic theory can't. It is outside the scope of the theory.
The TOE ONLY deals with self-replicating organisms. It does not pretend to be a theory of everything and anything. It has boundaries, like all scientific theories.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Bigger catamite:

[VadeRetro]

Did Nobel invent that?