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.
Thanks for the ping!
You're late!
Allowing voices of faith to be heard regarding creation is "trashing science"? Cut it out, you sound like a fruit loop.
I see. So you were just pretending that your criteria for judging the validity of a scientific theory is that it's has been "proven". Your actual criteria seems to be that any theory that makes Deb uncomfortable, or conflicts with her religion, is invalid (or "a joke").
Fine if it works for you, but in it's very nature such a criteria can only work for you. It falls a bit short in the area of general applicability.
an aside: a thought just ocurred to me - highly invaginated and layered surfaces break up an outline and delay pattern recognition far more effectively than do flat and smooth surfaces of the same hue value pattern.
couldn't see my dog in the low light outside, and stumbled over her, ok?
That being given, has any thought been given to the camouflage value of such surfaces being one of the pricipal factors favoring the initial development of feathers from scales? I've seen a lot of speculation about thermal insulation, but I don't recall seeing anything on camouflage.
Thought I'd pass it along.
(you've obviously never won an argument)
We're discussing allowing "voices of faith" to overrule science. The hidden agenda is allowing "voices of faith" (CS/ID) to be taught in public schools, undermining the scientific method. Where will our scientists come from if students are taught from an early age that science is all phoney? Certainly not the US!
I hope you never see the world you are trying to create!
So for your viewing pleasure, a creation story.
And good night all.
Long ago, before there were any people, the world was young and water covered everything. The earth was a great island floating above the seas, suspended by four rawhide ropes representing the four sacred directions. It hung down from the crystal sky. There were no people, but the animals lived in a home above the rainbow. Needing space, they sent Water Beetle to search for room under the seas. Water Beetle dove deep and brought up mud that spread quickly, turning into land that was flat and too soft and wet for the animals to live on.Grandfather Buzzard was sent to see if the land had hardened. When he flew over the earth, he found the mud had become solid; he flapped in for a closer look. The wind from his wings created valleys and mountains, and that is why the Cherokee territory has so many mountains today.
As the earth stiffened, the animals came down from the rainbow. It was still dark. They needed light, so they pulled the sun out from behind the rainbow, but it was too bright and hot. A solution was urgently needed. The shamans were told to place the sun higher in the sky. A path was made for it to travel--from east to west--so that all inhabitants could share in the light.
The plants were placed upon the earth. The Creator told the plants and animals to stay awake for seven days and seven nights. Only a few animals managed to do so, including the owls and mountain lions, and they were rewarded with the power to see in the dark. Among the plants, only the cedars, spruces, and pines remained awake. The Creator told these plants that they would keep their hair during the winter, while the other plants would lose theirs.
People were created last. The women were able to have babies every seven days. They reproduced so quickly that the Creator feared the world would soon become too crowded. So after that the women could have only one child per year, and it has been that way ever since.
"How many Scientific theories are dependent upon an unobservable and unmeasurable force acting upon matter with an unknown mechanism?"
You may chose to believe that all airplanes fly because an "intelligent designer" keeps all the air molecules moving just so right. Or that bridges stay up when you are crossing because some god keeps all the iron atoms and their electrons doing just the right thing. This is where ID breaks down completely. Is it 'irreducibly complex' to have atoms and chemical bonds?
Good old secular engineering is a better explanation for airplanes flying than either prayer or than "unobservable and unmeasurable forces".
You still are an ape.
You noticed!
Typically, you indulge in reverse thinking. Evolution is the doctrine that just rode into town on the noon stage. Creationism existed in classrooms for centuries and we still managed to produce scientists.
You and your brain partners have become tiresome. Go play with your slinky.
Your last line illustrates the point I'm making;
Therefore evolutionary theory presupposes the existence of living organisms. Their existence is a boundary condition of the theory.
Someone who believes in creation would say it this way;
"Therefore creation theory presupposes the existence of a living creator. His existence is a boundary condition of the theory."
Without living organisms to start with the TOE is absolutely meaningless. This is why the Origin of LIfe Prize is so interesting. Someone is finally realising how important origin of life is to the TOE and openly addressing the issue. Whether or not it will change the boundries of the TOE or spawn an entirely new theory remains to be seen.
What do you think when you see the words,"The winning submission will likely provide both a novel and cardinal conceptual contribution to current biological science and information theory."?
Sticks and stones, Monkey Boy. Try not to eat your poop.
And burn them.
Ah, a modest recognition of Darwin Central's contribution to the preservation of Western Civilization.
You have done more than that. Conservative values and rational values have to be consistent. You have stood up for both, eloquently.
Evolution is really a very beautiful set of inter-connected insights, from the green porphyrin ring of chlorophyll to the red porphyrin of hemoglobin; from grasses growing at their base to the rise of large herbivores; from the oft-repeated bilateral symmetries to common reproductive systems. Evolution makes sense out of the enormous variety of observations, drawing richly on biology, geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and almost all of what we have come to know about our world. It really is beautiful. And more beautiful than the random, ad hoc super-natural interventions imagined by the IDists.
Only the ones that didn't float.
why are random selection and intelligent design mutually exclusive.
They're not, in principle; one could easily imagine a cosmos in which an intelligent designer imposes various levels of order on an underlying process that's undergoing random variation. Indeed, Plato's Timaeus describes such a cosmos—the Demiurge whips the pluripotent and randomly shaking Receptacle into shape using mathematics and the eternal Forms.
But the project of modern empirical science dispenses with final causes, intentions, in favor of lawful but impersonal energetic interactions. The evident successes of science bespeak the wisdom of this project.
quack, quack.
Isn't it obvious? The "winning anwser" will be "the Bible told me so".
Without living organisms to start with the TOE is absolutely meaningless. A silly and unsupportable assertion.
The TOE offers a very good understanding of why blood in mammals is all based on the same haemoglobin molecule. ID offers no explanation at all. TOE explains why fetal development is much the same in all mammals and vertebrates. ID says "God did it".
In view of the facts of similarities over many species, we might fairly conclude that the "intelligent designer" was lazy in using the same ideas over and over and over again. I mean, why use the same blood types again for humans and chimpanzees? A really good designer would learn from past mistakes.
of course.
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