George Gilder, Metaphysic (Derbyshire refutes another creationist)

National Review ^ | 7/13/2006 | John Derbyshire

[Tribune7]

the fact that it encompasses more than those two mechanisms,

And they are?

[js1138]

And you've observed this?

Does a jury have to observe a crime before convicting?

[Tribune7]

Read what I said. . . The requirement that we know exactly how is bogus.

This part? LOL

[Tribune7]

Does a jury have to observe a crime before convicting?

So how do you think Darwin would do in a trial?

[js1138]

This part? LOL

Yes that part. You are intelligent enough to know what forensics is. You probably believe that criminals deserve to be in prison, but you are also smart enough to know that a jury is not a witness to the crime.

Criminals are, in most instances, convicted as a result of multiple, independent lines of evidence.

One of thes lines of evidence is motive.

Tell me again what motive the Designer had in creating a device whose sole purpose is killing infants and cjhildren?

[js1138]

So how do you think Darwin would do in a trial?

Ask the school board in Dover.

[Quark2005]

Outstanding post.

[Tribune7]

Fair point

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" But the funny thing is they apparently feel the same about evolution, which certain upsets some people LOL"

Nonsense. Your link was about 20 college presidents, not scientists.

"Ahh, no. You don't understand what I mean."

Sure I do. You want untestable claims to trump science because you don't like the results of science. You made your point quite clearly.

[maica]

Because anyone who raises problems with Darwinism is slapped down as a neanderthal (no pun intended), as a "religionist," as an adherent to backwood superstitions, is typically silenced in academia, run off, shouted-down, scorned, looked-down upon, sued by the ACLU, despite the real problems that Darwinism has. In other words, Darwinism isn't a science, but is a worldview that is protected by a fortress mentality. It doesn't answer objections, but only attempts to destroy its detractors. It neither welcomes nor entertains serious challenges. Gilder's right.

####

I wish I could write as well as you. Great synopsis of the situation.

[Oztrich Boy]

Once upon a time -- and well-post Darwin -- Christians like Pasteur and Kelvin, who accepted Design axiomatically, ran the scientific societies. Quite a bit of progress occurred during their reigns.

You have absolutely no idea how scientists work, and the relationship of that to how scientific societies and those who head them operate.

[steve-b]

Information, designed by intelligence, makes everything happen. The information in a computer program makes your phone bill happen (and the programmer's intelligence makes the program happen); the information in DNA makes proteins happen. This is a one-way process: Your phone bill can’t make the computer program happen (nor can the program make your intelligence happen), a protein can't make a gene happen, etc. Nothing at the lower-information level — a phone bill, a protein — can make anything at the higher-information level — program, gene — happen. This refutes materialism's assertion that higher information-bearing structures can arise from lower ones. It also refutes evolution, which has high-information-bearing substrates arising out of low-information-bearing ones.

The fallacy here is that theory of evolution does not assert that new species arose from old ones in a vacuum, but rather that it happened as a result of the varying reproductive success of life forms in their environment. If you wish to interpret that to mean that the universe generally (a "substrate" bearing more information than any one living thing) caused the new "information-bearing substrates" to arise, go ahead -- that's a metaphysical idea that is beyond the confirmation or denial of science.

Three or four paragraphs into George's piece, seeing where we were headed, and having accumulated considerable experience with this kind of stuff, I did a "find" on the phrase "scientific establishment." Sure enough, there it was: those obscurantist, defensive old stuffed shirts of "consensus science" — the Panel of Peers, George calls them — keeping original thought at bay.

LOL -- it's kind of like searching a DUmmie thread for "impeach".

"No? Well, look, no offense, George, but I'll tell you what. Go back to your Institute, hire some bright new researchers, teach them your metaphysics and your new methodology, buy them some computers and lab equipment, and let them loose to do some science. When they've got testable theories and reproducible results, I'll pay attention. Until then, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my own lab."
What would you say to this guy, George?

George could always snag one of the standard "socialism would work if only it were implemented in its true and proper form" arguments and do maybe a half-dozen term search-and-replace operations.

[Tribune7]

Tell me again what motive the Designer had in creating a device whose sole purpose is killing infants and cjhildren?

We know infants and children (and teenagers and everybody else) die and often suffers when doing so.

You can say we are all here by accident and there is no meaning to suffering.

You can say God is cruel and takes pleasure in suffering.

Or you can point to Jesus, recognize the suffering, recognize that God takes no pleasure in it, and recognize that you can't make the equation perfectly add up other than noting that the spirit is far, far (infinitely, really) more important than the flesh, which I guess is my big complaint with Darwinism.

[Tribune7]

Your link was about 20 college presidents, not scientists.

Those college presidents (and business leaders) did not think evolution was all that important.

[steve-b]

Sorry -- Derbyshire already shot down that silly argument:

In George's example the original thinker was Max Planck, whose first publication on his revolutionary quantum theory of radiation was in 1900. Poor Max Planck was so thoroughly shunned and ostracized by that glowering, starched-collar Panel of Peers for daring to present ideas that violated their settled convictions, that five years later they made him president of the German Physical Society, and in 1918 gave him the Nobel Prize for Physics! Those mean, blinkered scientific establishmentarians!

Really, creationists could give the Bush-stole-the-election-both-times DUmmie crowd lessons in the care and feeding of a vicim complex.

[steve-b]

That relates directly to the nature of the challenges; when we hear "2nd law of thermodynamics" and "were you there?" and "its just a theory" for the 50th time, what response would you expect?

The "were you there?" argument is my favorite. Even Johnny Cochran didn't touch that one, despite the fact that the argument would have utterly destroyed the prosecution case if only it were valid.

[steve-b]

Also consider the emeritus professors, the retired, the independelntly wealthy, et al. The establishment can't intimidate them any longer.

"I can define academic freedom in two words: outside income."
--Isaac Asimov

[steve-b]

Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again.

That's a common pattern in nonsense arguments. I see it all the time in (for example) moonbat conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination and the WTC attacks.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Those college presidents (and business leaders) did not think evolution was all that important."

The vast majority of scientists do though.

[steve-b]

There is no evidence of "missing links"

Well, if there were any evidence for them, they wouldn't be "missing", now would they? Duh!