Evolutionists should have dumped Darwin decades ago when it became apparent that his hypothesis was falsified. But Darwin was a god to the true believers, which put them into a position of defending the indefensible.
Posted on 05/24/2007 4:45:28 PM PDT by Zender500
When sixteen leading Darwinists write essays on a crash schedule to get a book out by the end of the school year, you might suspect a sense of urgency, and indeed, editor John Brockman opens Intelligent Thought with a plea for his colleagues to defend Darwin-based civilization from “the Visigoths at the gates,” the proponents of Intelligent Design, “whose only interest in science appears to be to replace it with beliefs consistent with those of the Middle Ages” and who pose “the gravest of threats to the American economy.”
Brockman, a literary agent who went from pop publicist to managing popular science writers like atheists Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, has a long history with this particular body of “preeminent thinkers,” as his book boasts. He publishes Edge: The Third Culture, an online salon where the authors claim to offer a new culture of intelligentsia who are interested in “thinking smart” and not in “the anesthesiology of wisdom.”
On this site, Brockman shared an e-mail sent to him from a Darwinian who teaches freshmen at Columbia, who was concerned that students aren’t rejecting Intelligent Design for the right reasons, but “merely because the religious and conservative stripes of ID can sometimes look a little uncool.” He and his colleagues wrote Intelligent Thought to present the public, especially students, with scientific reasons to reject Intelligent Design.
The book is published as a collection of essays from sixteen of Brockman’s Edge contributors, including Dawkins and Dennett, Harvard’s Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne, professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, and Scott Atran, research director in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.
Not Scientific
Despite the promise of the subtitle, much of Intelligent Thought is devoted not to scientific but to philosophical and especially
(Excerpt) Read more at touchstonemag.com ...
Good, they need to be running scared.
“...concerned that students aren’t rejecting Intelligent Design for the right reasons, but “merely because the religious and conservative stripes of ID can sometimes look a little uncool.”
ha ha :)
For example, Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind, who discovered string theory, writes that most of the universe is “hopelessly hostile to life and uninhabitable. But here and there some small pockets happen, by chance, to be more conducive to life, and that’s where life forms.”
For Susskind, this rules out any possibility of intelligent design, because he assumes that the designer would have chosen to create a universe full of life everywhere, rather than one as hostile to life as the one we observe. Because the universe he perceives does not match the universe he thinks a designer would make, he rejects design.
Interesting. So why aren't the evolutionists calumniated by their scientific brethren for making the kind of pronouncements they're always attributing only to the intelligent-design proponents?
Perhaps more alarming for the Darwinists who rushed it into print, Intelligent Thought lacks the originality and creativity needed to invigorate an argument for Darwinism. Instead of illuminating “the real science of evolution,” these sixteen prominent thinkers reveal their philosophical biases against design.
Change the prepositional phrase to by design and watch the fulminations erupt.
He “assumes the designer would have chosen...”. What
monumental arrogance. God said, “As far as the heavens are above the earth, so are My thoughts above your thoughts.”
How many other sciences are devoted to the legacy of an early 19th-century founder, with no changes or deviations?
Physics? Chemistry? Math?
For the longest time, science advocates have held that science isn’t deliberately launching targeted attacks against religion, but rather simply calling the evidence as it sees it. However, it is beginning to appear that there is a growing scientific mindset preparing to mount a direct assault in response to the increasing tempo of attacks being brought by their religious adversaries.
I honestly don’t know how well religion will fare in a holy war against science in this day and age. I do wonder if the fundamentalist supporters of such ideas as geocentricism and intelligent design fully realize that they have been hard pressed just to hold their own in this struggle so far, despite the fact that until now their scientific opponents have mainly restrained themselves to defense. Some of them may find themselves a bit overwhelmed if ever they do end up facing a determined, concerted large scale offensive against their beliefs.
I continue to hold that science has neither any business nor inclination to meddle in religion. What I do see, though, is a growing encroachment upon scientific positions by people motivated solely by fundamentalist religious beliefs. So far, there really isn’t a full blown war going on between science and God, despite its imagined existence among zealots on both sides. I shudder to think of the end result should one really occur - both religion and science make essential contributions to life as we know it and it would be devastating should one destroy the other.
“How many other sciences are devoted to the legacy of an early 19th-century founder, with no changes or deviations?..”
Modern studies on evolutionary relationships are primarily based on DNA and backed by an ever expanding fossil record.
Thus your question does not apply to the theory of evolution.
They aren't arguing against the theory of evolution, they are arguing against that evil, nasty Darwinism, and those evil, nasty Darwinists to support it.
What is Darwinism, you ask? That is a deliberately loaded term used by creationists to include all scientists who disagree with them. You can't properly hate a group until you can come up with some suitably derogatory name for them.
Never mind that the theory of evolution has been advanced by 150 years of testing and a vastly increased knowledge base, its still all "Darwinism" to them.
I think there’s a confusion here between the idea of a universe with physical laws designed to accommodate, or even generate, life, and a designer who intervenes in the universe as we know it to cause life to come into being.
These are very different notions, but one is as likely as the other to be under discussion when Intelligent Design is mentioned.
Sort of like anti-Guliani-ism?
Sorry. I get irritated by name calling and jihads of all types.
Evolutionists should have dumped Darwin decades ago when it became apparent that his hypothesis was falsified. But Darwin was a god to the true believers, which put them into a position of defending the indefensible.
Sorry, that happens not to be the case.
Kind of like the "Cretard" label that is thrown around on your website.
So --- to tone down the [ahem] discussion, then labeling those whom disagree with some point of view or another, should be avoided?
That is, unless one's aim is to express hatred, albeit as daggers, at first hidden among what argument is otherwise reasonable.
We've all seen plenty of that sort of behavior around here. Those portions of the going-ons, never fail to bring more heat than light, regardless of who is wielding the blades.
Kind of like the "Cretard" label that is thrown around on your website.
My website? I run five websites, and none is even closely related to "cretard." But if you mean Darwin Central, I do not run that site. I am a guest there and, for reasons unknown to me, a moderator there. (Must be my good looks.)
Lets keep our accusations to my posts here, eh?
And here, it is "Darwinists" that is the pejorative term that you see on a daily basis. That term is used almost exclusively by creationists. It is such a characteristic term that almost any anti-science or anti-evolution article will include it for its "shock" value. Its a codeword, and pure propaganda.
Pejoratives should be avoided, yes.
"Darwinist" is a pejorative. So is "Cretard." Neither is helpful in a rational discussion.
Folks slip up sometimes, but those terms should be avoided in a reasoned debate.
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