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

To: Ichneumon
Sheesh
I thought I was reading a post (novel) from freaking ROSS on Friends~~
For every piece of evidence you showed defending the monkey theory, there are also plenty of scientific writings defending Intelligent Design. Just one is a book called "The Case For A Creator" which references many of these writings. While I appreciate enthusiasm & data, there is such a thing as an almost paranoid over kill. This is my opinion.
892 posted on 02/02/2006 3:12:00 PM PST by Cindy_Cin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]


To: Cindy_Cin

For every piece of evidence you showed defending the monkey theory, there are also plenty of scientific writings defending Intelligent Design.

Really? Where are they?

894 posted on 02/02/2006 3:14:33 PM PST by ml1954 (NOT the disruptive troll seen frequently on CREVO threads)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 892 | View Replies ]

To: Cindy_Cin
For every piece of evidence you showed defending the monkey theory, there are also plenty of scientific writings defending Intelligent Design.

I regret to inform you that while this is what the Intelligent Design folks would like you to believe, it's not even remotely true.

There are quite literally *millions* of pieces of evidence supporting evolutionary biology and hundreds of thousands of published research papers. There are at most a few dozen mass-market books on "Intelligent Design", one or two defenses published in science journals, and not a shred of original research or positive evidence on the topic.

For a second opinion, check out How can you tell it isn't science?, which examines "ID"'s paltry output of actual publications. Excerpt:

Personally, I think that the most damning argument can be made just by looking at what the Discovery Institute has published.

[...]

That's not a lot by scientific standards. Last semester, I wrote a review article for a class that discussed the geographic modes of speciation observed in Hawaiian insects and spiders. That's a limited group of organisms, living in a very limited area, and I was only looking at one aspect of evolution in the group. I still wound up citing 124 separate articles - almost four times as many as the DI lists as supporting their position. As a scientist, I do find the lack of publications to be a significant strike against them, but I can understand that a non-scientist might not see the significance as clearly.

So, instead of comparing the scientific output of the Discovery Institute to the scientific output of scientists, I'm going to compare it to something else. Let's see how their scientific output stacks up against their public relations machine.

In addition to containing a list of "scientific articles" supporting ID, the Discovery Institute lists favorable news articles. Some of these are written by reporters or op-ed columnists not affiliated with the Discovery Institute. Others are written by DI fellows. Many are press releases issued by the DI.

Let's see just how their PR output stacks up against their scientific output. To do this, I combed through the list of articles linked above, and counted only those articles that were both related to evolution or ID and that were written by someone affiliated with the Discovery Institute. What I wanted to see is how long it would take for me to reach a total of thirty-four of those articles - that's the same number as the number of items (duplicates included) on their list of "scientific" articles.

The first of the articles is dated today, and the 34th (working backward) is dated 10 November 2005. That's a period of 77 days. That works out to a rate of about 0.44 press releases per day. Now, let's look at the scientific output. The first article in the list of scientific articles is dated in 1985, but I'll be generous and round it to an even twenty years. If you do the math, that puts the scientific article production rate at 0.0046 per day.

Let's look at that again:
Press Releases: 0.44/day
'Scientific' pubs: 0.0046/day

To me, that's the comparison that shows the Intelligent Design Movement's priorities far more clearly than almost anything else. This is a group of people that are pumping out press releases and op-eds at about 100 times the rate that they are producing material that they claim is scientific.

Just one is a book called "The Case For A Creator" which references many of these writings.

Feel free to present some of the alleged evidence for Intelligent Design here. But to save us all time, be sure not to repeat any of these common fallacies.

899 posted on 02/02/2006 3:27:57 PM PST by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 892 | View Replies ]

To: Cindy_Cin
For every piece of evidence you showed defending the monkey theory, there are also plenty of scientific writings defending Intelligent Design.

Oh, and you might also benefit from reading this: The Mirage.

901 posted on 02/02/2006 3:29:50 PM PST by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 892 | View Replies ]

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