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.
ID believers and Noah's Flood believers are usually the same. From an earlier post: "Fundamentalists are particularly unhappy that ID leaves scientific skepticism about the flood completely unanswered. They are aware that the flood myth is vulnerable to serious scientific critiques, doubting that it could possibly have occurred. ID is not helpful to YEC believers, and they are very disappointed."
Genesis does not mention how plants survived the "Flood". Anwsersingenisis offers many theories, none of which has a Biblical source. The New Orleans situation offers a clear test of whether plants will survive being flooded for 10 days or 40 days.
The Noah's Flood theory is clearly ridiculous. But here we will see exactly how many tomato plants, flowers, bushes, etc. survived being under water for this time. This observable evidence will not support a Noachian Flood.
To understand in a deep, fundamental way. In order to do that, science would need to embrace axioms that are outside-of-natural (extranatural, supernatural) in character. This is about things that have a will and can impose that will upon the natural, rather than resulting from some chain of natural events. Since its self defined mission is the natural, science can not possibly get a grip on the supernatural.
Unless all conditions are controlled to be the same as at the Flood, science can't even by its own lights answer this question. Something seems to have been in play at that time which allowed humans to live hundreds of years, for example. Perhaps a relatively brief dunk in virtually pure water would not have any effect on plants at that time.
I don't think the Origin of life Prize site is run by creationists, why do you imply it is with your comment, "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.
Now this is a very interesting comment. Are you really saying the TOE would have meaning *without* having existing living organisms to work with?
I was making a joke about witches in answer to someone else's joke. Try to stay calm and focus.
I don't understand at all what you are trying to get at with this question, maybe it's too late, I don't know.
I don't understand at all what you are trying to get at with this question, maybe it's too late, I don't know.
It is *obviously* too late, so, goodnight.
When you accused me of a "dislike" of random events, I made a statement denying it, but you seem to still want to believe the same. I can't make you believe me, but I can state my belief again:
There may be a degree of randomness in some things, thomas. I don't fear or "dislike" randomness; in fact my statement you used for your post above acknowledges the same exists--and in exciting ways. I do believe we are not mere products of random chance, your wordy critique notwithstanding.
LOL. Oh yes, ml1954. Me and the MSM are just alike. Twins, in fact. ;-) <\ sarcasm>
So are you, rudder. If evolution does not make this claim, then great. I guess you agree with me. Let's note the agreement, and remain pleased we've found common ground.
I have not read all of the material PH gave, though I will read some. You can spend some more time griping about my belief if you like but I doubt it'll get us very far.
Maybe so. In any event, thanks for teaching me a new word! Invaginated ... invaginated!
Me and the MSM are just alike. Twins, in fact.
When you take statements completely out of context and then try to say they mean something they don't, yes you are behaving exactly like the MSM, and Michael Moore.
"Now, if you want to assert that X is both possible and is improbable then the conversation ends because you don't understand the contradiction inherent in the proposition and there is no use discussing anything with you."
Actually, you don't understand the presuppositions inherent in your logic. _If_ materialism was true, then your conclusions would be valid.
"You ain't got one piece of "evidence" to hang your hat on for a "Designer." Not one."
Really? Is that why nearly every biologist recognizes the amount of "apparent design" within nature, and, according to even the atheists, have to keep reminding themselves that it wasn't designed? I would say that all of the evidence, even as admitted by atheists, points to design. What happened was that Darwin _thought_ that he had found a mechanism to produce design without a designer. If he did, then that does put creationist arguments largely on ice. If he did not, then you are back to the fact that life exhibits many qualities of being designed.
If you disagree that life is designed, then perhaps you should propose a mathematical model for design, and show why life is not designed according to your model.
"You may chose to believe that all airplanes fly because an "intelligent designer" keeps all the air molecules moving just so right."
That's actually true. We call this intelligent designer a "Boeing Engineer".
"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."
I call this "god" a "structural engineer".
"Good old secular engineering is a better explanation for airplanes flying than either prayer or than "unobservable and unmeasurable forces"."
So you can measure the creativity that an engineer puts to his plans? Great! I'd love to see it. And engineering operates without design of any sort? I'd love to see that, too.
I'd like to be flattered, but I think you meant to respond to #227.
And that randomness produces sequences that we percieve as complex patterns, or patterns that have meaning to people looking for meaning. For example, how is it possible that randomness can produce the birth month and day of every person on earth in only about 60,000 digits? It must have been designed!
Pi bitmapped and run through a couple filters looks like this:
God is telling us to eat Ramen noodles!
"But Darwin must be taught honestly also - it IS a theory and it does NOT explain mankind's existance even though it, so far, follows along on to changes in lesser species."
First of all, "theory" in science doesn't mean what it means in common parlance. Theories are tested, theories have evidence to back them up. We see species evolving right now, such as tuskless elephants in Asia.
That having been said, evolution doesn't make any claims about how life started, only what happened to that life once it arose. Humans evolved from earlier primates, but evolution is silent on where the earliest primate came from. That's just not its job.
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