Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Occasionally a social issue becomes so ubiquitous that almost everyone wants to talk about it -- even well-meaning but uninformed pundits. For example, Charles Krauthammer preaches that religious conservatives should stop being so darn, well, religious, and should accept his whitewashed version of religion-friendly Darwinism.1 George Will prophesies that disagreements over Darwin could destroy the future of conservatism.2 Both agree that intelligent design is not science.
It is not evident that either of these critics has read much by the design theorists they rebuke. They appear to have gotten most of their information about intelligent design from other critics of the theory, scholars bent on not only distorting the main arguments of intelligent design but also sometimes seeking to deny the academic freedom of design theorists.
In 2001, Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s research on galactic habitable zones appeared on the cover of Scientific American. Dr. Gonzalez’s research demonstrates that our universe, galaxy, and solar system were intelligently designed for advanced life. Although Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in his classes, he nevertheless believes that “[t]he methods [of intelligent design] are scientific, and they don't start with a religious assumption.” But a faculty adviser to the campus atheist club circulated a petition condemning Gonzalez’s scientific views as merely “religious faith.” Attacks such as these should be familiar to the conservative minorities on many university campuses; however, the response to intelligent design has shifted from mere private intolerance to public witch hunts. Gonzalez is up for tenure next year and clearly is being targeted because of his scientific views.
The University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, is home to Scott Minnich, a soft-spoken microbiologist who runs a lab studying the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic rotary engine that he and other scientists believe was intelligently designed -- see "What Is Intelligent Design.") Earlier this year Dr. Minnich testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the teaching of intelligent design. Apparently threatened by Dr. Minnich’s views, the university president, Tim White, issued an edict proclaiming that “teaching of views that differ from evolution ... is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses or curricula.” As Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf asked in an editorial, “Which Moscow is this?” It’s the Moscow where Minnich’s career advancement is in now jeopardized because of his scientific views.
Scientists like Gonzalez and Minnich deserve not only to be understood, but also their cause should be defended. Conservative champions of intellectual freedom should be horrified by the witch hunts of academics seeking to limit academic freedom to investigate or objectively teach intelligent design. Krauthammer’s and Will’s attacks only add fuel to the fire.
By calling evolution “brilliant,” “elegant,” and “divine,” Krauthammer’s defense of Darwin is grounded in emotional arguments and the mirage that a Neo-Darwinism that is thoroughly friendly towards Western theism. While there is no denying the possibility of belief in God and Darwinism, the descriptions of evolution offered by top Darwinists differ greatly from Krauthammer’s sanitized version. For example, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins explains that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In addition, Krauthammer’s understanding is in direct opposition to the portrayal of evolution in biology textbooks. Says Douglas Futuyma in the textbook Evolutionary Biology:
“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”3
“Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next. … However elevated in power over the rest of life, however exalted in self-image, we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals. …”5
Mr. Luskin is an attorney and published scientist working with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash.
One would have hoped that HE's editors would have called the writer on the ellipses. Editiorials are often filled with hyperbole, sometimes told in parables, but ellipses are just too, too conical.
That organized matter operating under predictable laws will be found.
Was this before or after the "Would you like to pet my pussy?" "OK, but first you'll need to move the cat." exchange?
The machines used in playing card factories are intelligent?
But you can raise the same objection to a song, or to this post, or to the shape of a snowflake. Where did the chemical properties of an atom "come from", as it was being built of protons, neutrons and electrons? The constituent particles didn't have these properties beforehand, and the properties are certainly real and meaningful, but nevertheless we know exactly how they come about, without invoking anything mystical, and without even insisting that the properties were there since the universe began.
As for how the human brain comes to have values--preferences--we don't yet know, but we've only just begun to measure how the brain works.
Values are human--likely pre-human--inventions, albeit ones that constitute a prerequisite for any sort of meaningful society, even a family. Likewise, letters are human inventions. The ability to distinguish good from bad is as artificial as the ability to distinguish A from B. Are "A" and "B" "real and meaningful"? Were they there since the universe began?
Those gentlemen must have been extremely insightful to criticise the theories of someone who hadn't even been born yet.
Oh, yeah, they certainly do. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms don't possess the properties of water. Water certainly is more that the sum of its parts. "What was added and when" that made this particular molecular combination of hydrogen and oxygen a nearly universal solvent (even in their molecular forms H and O don't have this property) that gave water the unique ability to expand rather contract on freezing, and etc?
I guess not obscure enough. But someone always gets it when I make a reference, even stuff I'd swear nobody else here would know.
I hate having something in common with Teddy.
Yeah, but in a just world, Teddy would be drinking from a screw-top bottle and begging for change at the bus station.
ID hasn't met the burden of ".9999999999 probability". ID hasn't even met the burden of "0.5 probability". ID hasn't made any solid (or even tenuous) case that any of its "probability" calculations are even remotely grounded in reality. Anyone who regularly works with statistics & nonlinear (i.e. chaotic) mathematics understand well that retrospective probabibility calculations in systems with blurry boundary conditions have no real meaning.
Find some and get back to us. Come up with a specifically-stated hypothesis, set up a reproducible test, have it be successful and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. If it survives, you have a decent hypothesis. Then you can work on building a general theory to explain it.
Nobody will take you seriously until that's done, because that's how the science game is played. But then you've already come up with the vague, ill-defined "theory," so you'll have to backpedal a bit to overcome that initial loss of credibility.
Just as those who are pressing for ID are doing so over an issue that has no effect on their family's well being, and risking that I and many others will drop their support of the Republican party over because of it.
This knife cuts both ways. IDers need to drop this issue. It can do nothing but harm, and has no hope of doing any good should ID be adopted in schools.
I refuse to support lies, whether those lies come from socialists, or "Christians" promoting the latest fundimentalist fad.
Based on what evidence? And how would that be relevant, even if true?
You typed alot but basically your full of tautological non-speak. As you know, a tautology has the appearance of being explanatory, but is not.
Rude, pointless and obviously incorrect.
It is a statement which, due to its circular form, is true by definition. So your all about words, not about the empirical world. You have managed to explain nothing about our observations. You masquerade as though your conveying knowledge and information when in fact you convey nothing. It reminds me of the doctor saying "Your father's deafness is caused by hearing impairment."
Your incapacity or unwillingness to follow is not a demonstration that I have no point to make.
What can one expect from a person of your perspective...
And what perspective would that be, pray tell?
How about this "The universe has survivable properties because we survive. Now, that would be profound compared to to the nothingness of your post.
Well, if you're through clearing your pipes, perhaps you might be calm enough to follow the argument--I'll try to make it even simpler: The Einsteinian universe and the Newtonian universe make, perhaps, the paradigmatic example of science's generously expansive nature regarding theories. The grand design of the universe that these two theories propose could hardly be more dramatically mutually exclusive. And yet, both theories are happily and fruitfully employed in science and technology to this very day.
Hence my point, which is hardly tautological, but might be taken for so, if you suffer from an extreme case of philosophical dyslexia--or are being sort of intellectually lazy: science is not capable of categorically proving or disproving things such as, just to pick an example at random, your contention that the discovery of natural abiogensis eliminates God as the ultimate cause of life.
It is noteworthily vacuous to call pointing out that two supposed opposites are in fact not, a tautology.
The universe is replete with organized matter that behaves according to predictable laws. You need look no farther than the front of your nose at any time. From both an inductive and deductive standpoint, the theory of intelligent design makes sense.
But you, too, must have some other theory to explain the presence of organized matter that behaves under predictable laws. What is it? Evolution? That works, too. There is nothing in the universe that cannot be explained by "natural" causes. Evolution is a legitimate theory, to be sure. But it is not the only one capable of explaining the data.
And if you live under the illusion that science, in order to be science, must omit any notion of God or the supernatural, then you adhere to a dogma of your own. An unscientific practice at best. Bigotry at worst.
You are again making a value judgement. Hydrogen has unique properties. It's the lightest element, the building block of all others. It can hydrogenate fats, explode, make fuel cells, and be used in nuclear reactions. Oxygen is magnetic in liquid form, supports combustion, can be used as bleach, gives us the aurora, and serves to send environuts into a conniption fit in the form of ozone.
Look at it the other way, you lose a lot of valuable qualities when you combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water. From this viewpoint, the sum is less than the parts.
That organized matter operating under predictable laws will be found.
You just got through saying that a thoroughly hoc theory (one that can account for anything) is a good theory, and now this? Parading an arm waving generalization as a testable prediction, and a presupposition common to all scientific theories as the implication of a particular theory (ignoring for the moment that ID isn't a theory)?
Seriously. Are you purposely engaging in some sort of satire?
Is this an admission that ID is strictly an anti-evolution philosophy?
Why do you have such trouble understanding that the falsification criterion you supplied just will not work? Showing that some aspect of one theory is valid cannot be used to falsify another theory unless you can show a true dichotomy. In the case of Evolution\ID this has not been shown. If evolution is valid, this does not mean that ID is not valid, there could be cases where the original was created by an IDer but substantially modified by evolution. Of course the reverse also holds.
I repeat, ID simply can not be falsified by proving evolution, nor can evolution be falsified by proving ID*, there is no dichotomy.
*Evolutionary mechanisms can be falsified, but not by proving ID, unless it can be shown that no change occurs but through ID.
Your proposed hypothesis was not a case for ID, it was an observation of the obvious status quo. Restate the hypothesis to support a tenet of ID, and propose a test.
From both an inductive and deductive standpoint, the theory of intelligent design makes sense.
You're talking logic and philosophy, but the subject is science.
And if you live under the illusion that science, in order to be science, must omit any notion of God or the supernatural
We are talking about the natural sciences. You know, as opposed to supernatural (ID). That pretty much frames the debate from the beginning. Or do you think they should be mixed? Do you think we should teach natural selection in church? Of course not, you only want your beliefs taught in schools as science, no reciprocity.
Has anyone ever actually directly observed an electron take a quantum leap thru an N-P junction, a star cook up an element from two other elements, a galaxy form, a continent drift, or grass grow? Despite it's frailty, science marches on the back of inductive reasoning from incomplete evidence. Like many creationistas before you, you have gotten all quivery and preachy about this discovery which all scientists make by about 6th grade.
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