Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.
NY Daily News ^ | 11/18/05 | Charles Krauthammer

Posted on 11/18/2005 4:34:43 AM PST by StatenIsland

Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.

Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous - that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious. Newton's religiosity was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.

Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," wrote James Gleick in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation - understanding the workings of the universe - as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the Earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked on upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical, and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.

Which brings us to Dover (Pa.), Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.

Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" - today's tarted-up version of creationism - on the biology curriculum. Robertson then called down the wrath of God upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.

Let's be clear. "Intelligent design" may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge - in this case, evolution - they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species, but that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science - that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution - or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying - by fiat of definition, no less - that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and to science.

The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernable direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which the Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?

He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions - arguably, the most important questions in life - that lie beyond the material.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Originally published on November 18, 2005


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevolist; intelligentdesign; krauthammer; pleasenotagain
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 201-220221-240241-260 ... 341-345 next last
To: Physicist

Thanks.


221 posted on 11/19/2005 6:28:05 AM PST by mlc9852
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 219 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
Bitteschön. Now, if someone were to accept the reconstruction and dating of those skulls as substantially correct, would he be compelled to accept the evolution of hominids as fact? If he accepted the evolution of hominids as fact, would he be compelled to admit their ancestral relationship to today's man? Would be be compelled to admit their descent from chimp-like ape?
222 posted on 11/19/2005 6:46:44 AM PST by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 221 | View Replies]

To: Physicist

What exactly is a "chimp-like ape"? A chimp or an ape or something else?


223 posted on 11/19/2005 7:27:36 AM PST by mlc9852
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 222 | View Replies]

To: Stingy Dog
All this fracas for a quote!! Phew!

All this fracas for a quote on someone's home page, which is normally taken to be a place for expressing one's philosophical pre-dispositions, on the world's most heavily traveled conservative web site, on a crevo thread. Thus showing the world that we are not only 18th century luddites, but we're racial bigots as well. Maybe you could show cartoons of rich people eating poor people, & make the essay complete.

224 posted on 11/19/2005 7:36:52 AM PST by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 199 | View Replies]

To: donh; highball; CarolinaGuitarman; ml1954; Stingy Dog
All this fracas for a quote!! Phew!

Sam Francis articles aren't welcome here, because racists aren't welcome here. Here's page from the racist site American Renaissance about it:

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/02/free_republic_v.php

Here are some interesting articles from VDARE.com, the site that publishes Sam Francis' column:

http://vdare.com/blog/021405_blog.htm#b1
http://www.vdare.com/misc/gheen_050216_jimrob.htm

Commentary by David Duke on Sam Francis:

http://www.davidduke.com/index.php?p=250

A note from David Duke — I have known Sam Francis for almost two decades. When many political pundits were afraid of associating with the “former KKK’er turned elected official” Sam wasn’t. When I entered some presidential primaries he invited me to the Editorial Board of The Washington Times where I was asked to explain and expound on my Presidential Platform. Sam was right there in the lion’s pit –sometimes backing me up from some scurrilous attacks before I had a chance to respond. I remember well the dinner we had that night in the Orleans restaurant in Arlington when we shared each other’s views of the world and each found a true brother in the Cause. Many times Sam Francis defended me in his newspaper columns and dared to stand up against the anti-White racists and the Jewish supremacists.

An interesting conversation between a member of the Vanguard News Network and Sam Francis, in which a neo-nazi complains that Franics doesn't hate Jews enough:

http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/2005/CantSayThat.htm

You simply cannot go much further than I have already gone and expect to be published at all in anythng like mainstream media, and anyway, aside from the current war, I think there are other problems besides the Jewish role in stirring up blacks and pushing immigration. Both blacks and hispanics have now acquired their own racial consciousness and are not necessarily under Jewish control.

In post #1156 in the other thread Stingy Dog wrote:

Someone on this thread asked me unpolitely to remove it. Something to the effect that he was offended by it. Since I did not fully agreed with the quote, I decided to remove it.

No one asked you unpolitely to remove the Sam Francis quote. To the contrary, people asked you unpolitely how the hell did it get up there in the first place.

You're trying arent you all? You think you can stifle me by digressing from the topic, don't you?

I believe in stifling racists. Any normal person would have said something like "Oh my goodness! I had a quote from a racist author on my profile page? Sorry, I'll take it down immediately." Your mealy-mouthed non-repudiation of the Sam Francist racist crap leads me to believe that you do agree with the quote and just got caught red-handed.

225 posted on 11/19/2005 8:26:57 AM PST by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 224 | View Replies]

To: Liberal Classic; Stingy Dog
"Any normal person would have said something like "Oh my goodness! I had a quote from a racist author on my profile page? Sorry, I'll take it down immediately."

It's not just that the quote was from an author with questionable racial views. The quote itself was racial. It railed against race-mixing as an attack on *the culture*. If Francis had made reasonable statements about a different issue and Stingy posted that, not knowing his other statements, he could be forgiven his ignorance. But he chose to post an unambiguous quote about race-mixing. And he has said his homepage was where he wanted to have a summary of his beliefs,

"I had just posted today trying to start a small, but concise, homepage, to let everyone know a little about me and my ideology, beliefs etc."

Well, now we know. :)

226 posted on 11/19/2005 8:44:41 AM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 225 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
What exactly is a "chimp-like ape"? A chimp or an ape or something else?

I mean a species of ape that is morphologically similar to a chimp: an ape such that if a specimen were found alive today, it might be taxonomically categorized as a third species of chimp.

I might have said, more simply, "chimp", but this traditionally leads to confusion (among creationists) between the ancient species of chimp and the modern species of chimp. So taking the word "chimp" to mean "modern chimp", I used the more accurate term "chimp-like ape" to refer to the putative last common ancestor shared by chimps and hominids.

227 posted on 11/19/2005 8:48:57 AM PST by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 223 | View Replies]

To: CarolinaGuitarman; Stingy Dog
The quote has now been replaced by:

I had a quote here, but New Jacobins forced me to pull it out.

They are of their father the devil!

This is interesting, because it contradicts what he said in the other thread. This implies he actually does agree with the citation, but removed it because he feared the consequences of leaving it up. The Jacobins caused the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, and the term has since come to mean any person who supports extremly radical or totalitarian democratic views. This seems to say people who don't oppose racial mixing are Jacobins, and enablers of the social destruction that he wants to prevent.

228 posted on 11/19/2005 9:06:45 AM PST by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 226 | View Replies]

To: Liberal Classic; CarolinaGuitarman; Stingy Dog
I had a quote here, but New Jacobins forced me to pull it out.

...by noticing it?

229 posted on 11/19/2005 9:16:18 AM PST by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 228 | View Replies]

To: Physicist
Sorry, Junior, but mlc9852 is correct. It's the subject of an implied verb "is", as in "better than he is".

Actually, it's a predicate nominative, which requires the subjective case, "he."

230 posted on 11/19/2005 9:21:00 AM PST by Gumlegs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 219 | View Replies]

To: Physicist
... and now I just got to your Fowler post.
231 posted on 11/19/2005 9:24:01 AM PST by Gumlegs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 220 | View Replies]

To: Physicist

Why would only some evolve? What do you think the chimp-like ape thought when it gave birth to a human? How did the human survive with a chimp mother?


232 posted on 11/19/2005 9:38:12 AM PST by mlc9852
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 227 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
"Why would only some evolve?"

Because only certain subpopulations within a species are subject to certain environmental pressures. If the environment is stable and is favoring the existing characteristics of a population, then stasis will be selected for.

"What do you think the chimp-like ape thought when it gave birth to a human? How did the human survive with a chimp mother?"

This is a creationist howler. No evolutionist thinks that evolution works in huge saltations. Speciation takes place in a population; the alleles in the population change in tandem. No two individuals in the population are very different than any other; they are all the same species. There is no magic moment when an individual becomes a new species. It's a process that is only evident after the fact, and it's the entire population that is changing, not just an individual. If the genetic links that existed between the subpopulation and the parent species are severed, then a new species is born.

BTW, nobody is saying we evolved from chimps either. Another creationist whopper.
233 posted on 11/19/2005 10:00:54 AM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 232 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
Why would only some evolve?

Everything evolves. Chimps and humans evolved along different paths. Chimps look, morphologically, similar to the last common ancestor, but make no mistake: chimps have definitely evolved since then. (The fact that there are two species of chimp alive today makes that clear.)

What do you think the chimp-like ape thought when it gave birth to a human? How did the human survive with a chimp mother?

It never happened that way. It was a gradual change over time. Look again at how the skulls gradually change over several million years. (Yes, I know you reject them as fraudulent. But if someone did accept them, what would he have to conclude?)

Think of it this way. Thousands of years ago, people spoke Latin. Today, their descendants speak Italian. Do you think that there ever came a time when a Latin-speaking mother was unable to communicate with her Italian-speaking children?

234 posted on 11/19/2005 10:05:51 AM PST by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 232 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
"Actually the Bible does talk about the "giants" but doesn't say where they came from. And a lot of people think Neanderthals were humans so I don't see a problem.

Neanderthals were neither Homo sapien sapien nor giants.

The only 'giants' we have evidence of, 10 ft tall Gigantopithecus blacki may have been a relative of ours but was closer to the orangutan than to Homo erectus, an ancestor of ours who lived at the time of Gigantopithecus. Does this mean the giants in the Bible are just big Gorillas?

235 posted on 11/19/2005 10:21:05 AM PST by b_sharp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: CarolinaGuitarman

See #227


236 posted on 11/19/2005 10:21:28 AM PST by mlc9852
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 233 | View Replies]

To: b_sharp

"Does this mean the giants in the Bible are just big Gorillas?"

The Bible seems to say they interbred with humans so I doubt they were gorillas.


237 posted on 11/19/2005 10:24:16 AM PST by mlc9852
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 235 | View Replies]

To: Physicist
Think of it this way. Thousands of years ago, people spoke Latin. Today, their descendants speak Italian. Do you think that there ever came a time when a Latin-speaking mother was unable to communicate with her Italian-speaking children?

Why is it that no matter how often and how clearly a creationist who makes the mistaken argument that mlc9852 has made has this explained, they still insist upon their bogus "one species gives birth to a completely different species" argument? It's as though they don't care about the actual explanation and ignore it at all costs so that they can continue asking a question about an absurd event that no one claims happened so that they can "prove" that evolution is somehow fallacious for failing to be able to explain their strawman.

Of course, I keep in mind that mlc9852 has admitted to being a liar in the past.
238 posted on 11/19/2005 10:33:30 AM PST by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 234 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852

See posts #233 and #234.


239 posted on 11/19/2005 10:33:33 AM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 236 | View Replies]

To: mlc9852
"This has been posted how many times now? I've lost count. Unfortunately, most of them are tiny pieces found and "reconstructed" for the desired outcome. Nice try, though."

All of them are mostly complete. Any filler used is gray and quite visible.

240 posted on 11/19/2005 10:35:09 AM PST by b_sharp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 201-220221-240241-260 ... 341-345 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson