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George Gilder, Metaphysic (Derbyshire refutes another creationist)
National Review ^ | 7/13/2006 | John Derbyshire

Posted on 07/13/2006 3:18:03 PM PDT by curiosity

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To: PatrickHenry
If something is not yet explained by natural causes, why is ID the only possible explanation?

What is unnatural about intelligent design?

81 posted on 07/13/2006 6:59:43 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: PatrickHenry
7. The rapidly-growing biotech industry, which is profit-oriented and thus non-ideological, employs thousands of scientists. Why don't they employ "creation scientists" or ID theorists to exploit their insights?

I missed this one. The gene gun and John Sanford.

82 posted on 07/13/2006 7:01:37 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Tribune7
"The point isn't that it's the only possible explanation, the point is that it's the best explanation for what is known."

It's no explanation at all. It's "I don't know, so God did it".

"Because it is the better explanation."

You ignored the question. If something can be explained without invoking a designer, invoking an unknowable designer is not the best explanation.

"Complexity and specificity."

Indistinguishable from a universe with a designer but with laws of nature.

"Sure. Mix up a soup of chemicals and watch the flagellum come together."

An ID'er would just have to say that that is how the designer designed it. How could someone dispute them?

"They were designed to have a limited time like biodegradable plastic?"

You don't have an answer.

"Because there is a limit to human mind."

That doesn't explain why the *Designer* doesn't require an even more powerful designer. It's just a cop out.

"What came before the Big Bang according to materialism?"

I don't know about according to materialism. But according to science, the question makes no sense. There was no *before* the Big Bang.
83 posted on 07/13/2006 7:09:14 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman (Gas up your tanks!!)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

Where did the forces that structure the universe (physically, biologically, etc.) come from. That bind atoms and molecules together?


84 posted on 07/13/2006 7:14:52 PM PDT by RetiredArmyMajor
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

Next time I post those questions I'll be more specific, in order to exclude certain nonsensical responses.


85 posted on 07/13/2006 7:15:26 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (The Enlightenment gave us individual rights, free enterprise, and the theory of evolution.)
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To: Darkwolf377

I clipped that same section with the intention of writing that it bears repeating. :) It's belief vs. facts. If someone just believes, there's no reasoning with them, so I rarely bother. It's just like with the Global Warming crowd.

Hardly.

Derbyshire has the habit of calling pretty much anyone who has any doubts about any aspect of Darwin's theory a misguided Creationist--- for instance, he's called the biologist Richard Lewotin one for having the same doubts about the Bell Curve that Stephen Jay Gould expressed. Leon Wieseltier was supposedly also a Creationist, despite the fact that anyone who is familiar at all with him knows he's relentlessly secularist.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTI1YzM2ODI0MmNiMDM2MTk5NWJjZjMwYjY4MjJjZjM=

The article is nothing more than a series of insults and straw-manning of Gilder's points. For instance, Derbyshire's point about Max Planck ignores the fact the physicists have in the 20th century tended to be more open metaphysics itself than biologists. That's not anything new-- as a pioneering biologist, Aristotle was similarly more of an empiricist than his teacher, who saw mathematics as the model for thought. And Derbysire is wrong to say that biology today has no time for such conflicts-- there are tons of interesting ones, such as holism versus reductionism, functional organization, what constitutes a species and the question as to whether species themselves can function in the evolutionary process rather than simply resulting from it.

Derbyshire is just as off base when he calls the atheism of Richard Dawkins a side project that has nothing to do with his expertise as a zoologist. Dawkins might be incorrect, but if he is, he is incorrect as a biologist, since according to him, the "Blind Watchmaker thesis" is inseparable from explanation in biology.

I have to admit one thing-- if anything makes me wonder if I'm too uncritical when I read Ann Coulter or some other polemicists I'm generally sympathetic, it's when I read Derbyshire and wonder whether, if his opinions agreed with my own more often, would I overlook his sloppiness and vituperation plus brute assertion in place of argument?

86 posted on 07/13/2006 7:15:42 PM PDT by mjolnir ("All great change in America begins at the dinner table.")
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To: RetiredArmyMajor

"Where did the forces that structure the universe (physically, biologically, etc.) come from. That bind atoms and molecules together?"

Nobody knows.


87 posted on 07/13/2006 7:16:28 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman (Gas up your tanks!!)
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To: mjolnir
I have to admit one thing-- if anything makes me wonder if I'm too uncritical when I read Ann Coulter or some other polemicists I'm generally sympathetic, it's when I read Derbyshire and wonder whether, if his opinions agreed with my own more often, would I overlook his sloppiness and vituperation plus brute assertion in place of argument?

Yeah.

So Ann Coulter ISN'T sloppy and she DOESN'T use vituperation and brute assertion in place of argument?

I like Ann too, but your bias is showing.

88 posted on 07/13/2006 7:41:32 PM PDT by Darkwolf377
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To: Fester Chugabrew
Nope. Belief is most often based upon facts.

YOu're as wrong as you can be.

If one has facts, one doesn't need belief, as in faith. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that.

If one has faith, there can't BE supporting facts, because then where is the leap of faith to believe?

89 posted on 07/13/2006 7:42:49 PM PDT by Darkwolf377
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
It's no explanation at all. It's "I don't know, so God did it".

Unless God did it. Why reject the possibility? It is not science to say "God didn't do it" if you don't know the answer.

90 posted on 07/13/2006 7:54:24 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: curiosity
I'm sure Professor Barr will be insulted that you are lumping his book in together with that of the charlatans at the Discovery Institute.

Yes, I thought that was odd. But then, Dembski seems almost indignant that Ken Miller and Francis Collins, both theistic evolutionists, reject ID.

91 posted on 07/13/2006 8:03:00 PM PDT by DanDenDar
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To: Darkwolf377

Hey Darkwolf, that was my point--- I guess I was unclear about it.

What I was saying was that, when I read Derbyshire, Andrew Sullivan and others who I often disagree with who unfairly argue, it makes me wonder about my own bias.

In other words, my point was the very one you made to me, I need to be more objective when I read someone like Ann. Sure,she mostly goes after people and positions I don't like and teaches me new things (the latter being something Derbyshire often does too, especially when he writes about China and mathematics) but that doesn't mean I should excuse what I don't excuse in Derbyshire or others I might disagree with.


92 posted on 07/13/2006 8:06:25 PM PDT by mjolnir ("All great change in America begins at the dinner table.")
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To: Darkwolf377
As much as you would like to portray faith and fact as antithetical there are very few cases of "blind faith." Faith normally has as its object a proposition with some basis in reality. The greater part of science is faith based, including faith we live in a three-dimensional world since the image on the human retina is two-dimensional. But how many dimensions comprise objective reality? Science must make a choice, but for any and every observer it will be a faith based choice.

Your heliocentric notions about the solar system are not based upon experience, but upon faith. Otherwise you would be living somewhere outside of this planet. By faith I believe you to be otherwise located.

Faith means trust. Few people trust what cannot be verified by fact and experience. Intelligent design is a matter of experience for most people. As for flying spaghetti monsters, pink unicorns, pixies, elves, etc., those seem to be an object of faith for evolutionists since they are the ones who continually bring them up along side suggestions of intelligent design in connection with organized matter that performs specific functions.

93 posted on 07/13/2006 8:09:48 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Tribune7
It is not science to say "God didn't do it" if you don't know the answer.

Which God didn't do it?

Do you mean Brahma?

94 posted on 07/13/2006 8:10:53 PM PDT by DanDenDar
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To: Fester Chugabrew
The greater part of science is faith based, including faith we live in a three-dimensional world since the image on the human retina is two-dimensional.

Which eye are you missing? Right, or left?

95 posted on 07/13/2006 8:17:02 PM PDT by DanDenDar
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To: DanDenDar

Hey, you have to admit the logic of Hinduism, reincarnation and all, has a much stronger internal consistancy than atheism.


96 posted on 07/13/2006 8:18:51 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: PatrickHenry
. . . certain nonsensical responses.

It is hardly nonsensical to ask what is unnatural about intelligent design. Perhaps we should consider your nonresponse to be yet another manifestation of kephalorectal proclivities.

97 posted on 07/13/2006 8:19:42 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: DanDenDar

The retinal stimulation upon any human eye, whether right or left, is two-dimensional. Thanks to the Intelligent Designer, we have more than eyes with which to observe, quantify, and explore His intelligently designed creation.


98 posted on 07/13/2006 8:22:43 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Coyoteman
What do they call them when they are found?

Yeah but where are all the links between those?

/creatinoidmode

99 posted on 07/13/2006 9:10:27 PM PDT by RightWingNilla
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To: DanDenDar
Copuld you please give an example of this.

That random mutations in genes drove evolution.

100 posted on 07/13/2006 9:19:37 PM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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