Posted on 11/13/2005 6:07:54 AM PST by NYer
I notice the main article was no exception. I swear I didn't know someone had already used the word "howler" on this thread.
I thought that the author was kind of making a mistake there about the flagella thing.
I swear I didn't know someone had already used the word "howler" on this thread.
That monkey in Brazil is getting pretty loud.
the spin begins
Being heard is not the issue at all. The issue is "venue". That each subject is taught in an appropriate time and place. A private church is the proper place for teaching ID, not a public school. A public school is the proper place for teaching scientific theory, not religious propaganda. The ID fanatics have strapped on their suicide belts of religious propaganda and want to set themselves off in the public schools. It will not lead to more "Christians" as they hope, but too more atheists and worse, the Koran being taught in American public schools. Be careful what you wish for.
Then he no doubt knows what these "special kind of bacteria called flagella" do to little children, and he no doubt admires and loves the designer for thinking this one up.
yep. good response, too.
The problem here is that intelligent design is not a theory. It's only a hypothesis.
Herein lies the problem of I.D.
The belief in the existence of a Designer (caps intended) has been one based on faith. Faith, by definition is not proof or provable.
The statement: "If 'a' is so; then 'b' must be true", more simply; "See the beautiful complexity of this watch? There MUST be a watchmaker who made it"), is not theory.
It's supposition. "Pre-theory" if you like. Not the stuff of science class. There is a cutoff.
Personally, I cannot imagine Lamborghinis, Reuben sandwiches, Maui and Harry Reid are simply the result of an unfeeling cosmos clacking some quarks together at random. They are all sublime and wonderful examples of a watchmaker's art.
Well, not Harry Reid. But you get my drift...
If "ID" was truly a "new" idea, it might be rational to hold out some hope for that scenario. Unfortunately... "ID" is thousands of years old, and *still* hasn't come up with squat.
As I wrote in earlier thread:
Because the scientific community is a monolith, impenetrable and often hostile to new theories, intelligent design proponents have to turn to the public schools to recruit support, a witness said Monday. [...] Fuller talked of intelligent design as being a possible scientific-revolution in waiting in which it challenges the "dominant paradigm" of evolutionary theory. [...] But during cross-examination, he said intelligent design — the idea that the complexity of life requires a designer — is "too young" to have developed rigorous testable formulas and sits on the fringe of science. He suggested that perhaps scientists should have an "affirmative action" plan to help emerging ideas compete against the "dominant paradigms" of mainstream science. [...] As a philosopher, Fuller testified he remains open to all new views, even though he maintains that at the moment, evolutionary theory is a better explanation of the biological world.And in reply to an attempted rebuttal:What the heck is this "new views" propaganda? "ID" isn't a "new" view, it's a very, very *old* view. It existed for thousands of years before science as we know it today began around 1650, or evolutionary biology in 1859.
"The idea that the complexity of life requires a designer" is hardly "too young" to have "developed rigorous testable formulas", it has BEEN AROUND FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, and *still* hasn't managed to come up with anything that holds water in a testable, falsifiable manner.
"ID" has been the world's oldest dead-end hypothesis.
Science in general, and evolutionary biology in particular, arose after thousands of years of ID's *failure* to advance human knowledge or produce workable theories or techniques. *Science* is the "newcomer" here, and has managed to gain enormous widespread acceptance and produce *incredible* results (which a couple of centuries ago would have been considered utter sorcery), precisely because it proved vastly more insightful than the age-old presumption of "ID".
And during centuries of stunning scientific progress in every field imaginable, ID has still produced... nothing but further excuses of how they "just need a few more years, then you'll *really* see results!"
Perhaps Fuller should get a clue.
"I want to see where intelligent design is going to go," Fuller said.
Fuller should brush up on history. I've seen where ID has gone. Absolutely nowhere in over 10,000 years. What are the odds it'll finally produce some results *now*?
What is in fact young and absurdly underdeveloped [...] is the notion that a generalized test for the products of an intelligent actor might be feasible.
*Everything* about ID is "absurdly undeveloped", and my point is that they have no excuse, since the ID postulate is hardly a "new" one, it has been around for millennia.
And yet, throughout all of human history, and throughout the entire rise of science, and despite millions of "true believers" across all that time who desperately desired to produce some evidence of ID to shut up those uppity "naturalists" (think of all the brilliant minds who were devout "IDers" and adept at science, like Newton), they've still come up empty after all this time.
Old religious views (the only such views around for 'thousands of years') don't propose such a test (or care about one, since they take a supernatural 'designer' literally on faith.)
See above. There have always been countless of the devout who also sought in vain for "evidence of ID" within philosophy, within science, etc.
Is it really so clear that one can't come up with an information theoretic test [...] ?
What *is* clear is that the IDers have so little evidence or established body of work that even after all this time, they admit that their "science" is in its "infancy" with regards to results. And yet, for some reason, they're absurdly confident that they'll have a breakthrough "any day now", if only those cranky scientists will lower their standards enough to let the IDers catch up...
I think the word intended was "flagellate." Probably, the author misheard it. Still, he's out of his depth in a mud puddle.
I can just hear him say, "Get flagella out of here!" I think you are probably right, though I'm no scientist.
Then why the rush to censor competing theories?
The fact that "IDers" *have* to rely on faith clearly indicates that they can't rely on actual evidence for their position, because they have none.
several inaccuracies...
1. Abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of speciation through mutation and selection known colloquially as "the theory of evolution"
2. Random mutation is one described and statistically predictable (meaning: given a large population of operant genetic samples, a known period of time, and known environmental factors, the rate of mutation is predictable even though the precise loci of individual mutations cannot be predicted) mechanism. Another is polyploidy. Another is viral insertion.
3. you evidently do not understand the second law of thermodynamics, and misapply it in your starting assumptions.
4. there is no censorship of ID - there is open dissection, analysis, and rebuttal of it as non-science. It has no positive data, describes no mechanism, makes no predictions, and is not falsifiable.
The rules are not knowable, not even under basic arithmetic.
But, we can be sure that no future Universe will violate this.
A basic property of ID is the hypothesis that the rules in whatever state they are discovered, favor humanity.
The rules may be something like Darwin's pareto optimization.
That there exists pareto optimization just highlights the game theoretic nature of the Universe.
I would expect that there is sufficient fodder in this concept alone to argue that certain Darwinian theory is a special case of ID.
Then why the rush to censor competing theories?
Nothing's being censored. Get a grip.
As I pointed out earlier, however, people are refusing to allow lies to be told in science class. That's not censorship, that's basic academic standards.
Similarly, science journals prefer not to publish shoddy crap, which is why most "ID" articles to date (when the IDers bother to submit any at all, which is rare) get bounced -- they suck as actual science. And the reason for this is because ID itself is a pseudoscience pretending to be a real science.
So are snowflakes. You can make the argument that God made every snowflake. But quite obviously He did not do so in the manner implied in Genesis. A "Special Creation" of every snowflake.
Life is beautiful, but species came about via evolution, which many Christians think was Gods most elegant creation.
The author says he wanted the low-down, so he went to the ID side and talked to one guy. That's apparently how you get the story on a controversy.
He didn't understand squat. He came back and wrote it up. The editor looked at it, said, "Man, I don't understand all that technical stuff but that's heavy!" and rubber-stamped it to go.
If he'd talked to ANYBODY else and showed them what he had from his Meyer interview, that person would have said, "Bud, you've confused organs and organisms."
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.