[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Reaganite1984]

I usually admire Bethell's writings, but on this issue-in fact, most scientific issues-he's out in left field.

[js1138]

The recent irruption of atheism can be traced to the Darwinian creed, for the well publicized testimonials of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens all have recourse to Darwinism at various points.

This writer is obviously qualified to set educational standards. I look forward to his recommendations for the spelling curriculum.

[GodGunsGuts]

ping

[cornelis]

I feel sorry for Derbyshire. Perhaps he craves attention. Whatever the reason, he’s chosen a road that will lead to more of the same.

[tacticalogic]

The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted in support of any cause whatsoever. Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at AEI, made this clear in his admirable introduction. Darwinism has over the years been championed by eugenicists, social Darwinists, racialists, free-market economists, liberals galore, Wilsonian progressives and National Socialists, to give only a partial list. Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, Communists and libertarians, and almost anyone in between, have at times found Darwinism to their liking. Spencer himself first used the phrase “survival of the fittest,” and Darwin thought it an “admirable” summation of his thesis.

That seems to belie the oft made assertion that Darwinism caused all of these things.

[freespirited]

But fitness is not and cannot be defined except in terms of existence. If an animal exists, it is “fit” (otherwise it wouldn’t exist).

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

[GodGunsGuts]

==The creationists could be ignored...Intelligent Design is not like that. It is aggressive and therefore potentially dangerous. It says to the Darwinians: “You don’t have the evidence to support your claims. Your lab results and fossils don’t support your theory. Organisms are way too complex to have arisen by chance. Take all the time you want, it won’t be enough. Even though we don’t know how it happened, these critters must have been designed somehow.”

I disagree with Bethal on this point. A new movement such as ID tends to view many or all of their arguments as novel, but the creationists have been using many of the same arguments for years, debating evolutionists on university campuses, and otherwise taking the fight to the enemy...and they will continue to do so until the issue is decided once and FOREVER.

[narby]

By: Tom Bethell American Spectator July 1, 2007

Well, there's the first lie.

The Discovery Institute must have gotten a few more million bucks in donations. They've pumped out a lot of cr@p recently.

[Riodacat]

The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted in support of any cause whatsoever.

Unlike religion?

[betty boop]

The point is that in Darwinism a philosophical assumption, rarely explicit, circumscribes the “scientific” conclusions that are permitted. The assumption is this: Only naturalistic explanations can be allowed within biology. Naturalism implies the exclusion of mind, intelligence, or absolutely anything except atoms and molecules in motion. Nothing else exists.

Wonderfully informative article, GodGunsGuts. Thank you so much for posting it!

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

There is considerable confusion about the relationship between the two so let me try to elucidate. Creationists for the most part say: “When it comes to origins, we take our guidance from the Bible. What others say about natural selection, shared ancestry and so on is of little importance to us. We already have our faith and our Book and we are sticking to it.” It is separatist in spirit. “You scientists can do your thing, just let us do ours, which is study Genesis and pray.”

This is qualitatively untrue. Whether one agrees or disagrees with them, any reasonable person has to admit that Creationists such as Morris, Whitcomb, Parker, etc. have certainly been very strong on dealing with empirical evidences that call evolution into question. In fact, they propose and conduct original research to test their hypotheses, just like other scientists. And they are even starting to get cited by mainstream scientific journals (though not often).

The ID scientists are largely rehashing the same arguments that Young Earth Creationists have been making for decades.

[AndyTheBear]

So the Darwinian theory is not falsifiable by any observation.

Not so. Darwin himself proposed the grounds for which his theory could be rejected. He predicted that as we gathered more fossils we would start to see more and more hybrid species at various stages between the previously know ones.

Thus his theory does indeed meet Popper's test for the demarcation into the realm of science.

But this didn't last long, because the test failed. As we gathered more fossils, they continued to fall into discreet species. While it is not surprising modernized variants such as "punctuated equilibrium" fit the fossil evidence better, it is does not seem clear to me how it should be continued to be called science, since it seems to simply explain away anomalies rather then expose itself to any falsifiable test.

[Coyoteman]

Intelligent Design is not like that. It is aggressive and therefore potentially dangerous. It says to the Darwinians: “You don’t have the evidence to support your claims. Your lab results and fossils don’t support your theory. Organisms are way too complex to have arisen by chance. Take all the time you want, it won’t be enough. Even though we don’t know how it happened, these critters must have been designed somehow.”

(And we know that because the Bible tells us so but we can't say that anymore because the U.S. Supreme Court tossed creation "science" so we are flogging ID now and if that fails we'll come up with something else.)

[js1138]

That is incorrect. From scraps of unearthed rubble, archaeologists infer design when no trace of the designer remains.

The artifact remains, and that is a trace of the designer.

Archaeological artifacts are assumed to be the product of humans because we have observed humans making similar products and have never observed similar products made without human intervention.

The principle involved is best illustrated by seeing what happens when the difference isn't clear. It is possible to find sharp pieces of flint that are the result of natural processes, and when this happens, there is controversy. The critical issue here is that we know the capabilities, motives, limitations, and quite a bit of the history of humans. We infer design because we can directly study the behavior of the designer.

In the case of evolution, we also know a great deal about the capabilities and limitations of the designer. We have observed every action and every aspect of variation and selection, both in the wild and in the laboratory. We know how the algorithm behaves and we know its limits and capabilities.

We have, of course, not directly observed the entire history of life. But then we have not observed a redwood grow from a seed to a giant. We have seen snapshots in the life of a redwood, but no one has seen the entire process. It is reasonable to infer the process from the snapshots?

[jeddavis]

Richard Dawkins famously said that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

A 160 IQ is probably a sort of a limited asset when your ass is burning in hell....