Truely Touched!
Posted on 09/08/2005 1:33:48 PM PDT by snarks_when_bored
Five critiques of Intelligent Design
John Brockman's Edge.org site has published the following five critiques of Intelligent Design (the bracketed comments following each link are mine):
Marcelo Gleiser, "Who Designed the Designer?" [a brief op-ed piece]
Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name" [a detailed critique of ID and its history, together with a summary defense of Darwinism]
Richard Dawkins & Jerry Coyne, "One Side Can Be Wrong" [why 'teaching both sides' is not reasonable when there's really only one side]
Scott Atran, "Unintelligent Design" [intentional causes were banished from science with good reason]
Daniel C. Dennett, "Show Me the Science" [ID is a hoax]
As Marcelo Gleiser suggests in his op-ed piece, the minds of ID extremists will be changed neither by evidence nor by argument, but IDists (as he calls them) aren't the target audience for critiques such as his. Rather, the target audience is the millions of ordinary citizens who may not know enough about empirical science (and evolution science in particular) to understand that IDists are peddling, not science, but rather something tarted up to look like it.
Let us not be deceived.
Like I said...why do the monkey people get so hysterical about Intelligent Design? Why the terror at admitting their's is just a theory?
PS: I'm sure an evolutionist stole my green sweater! Bastards!
You're right, thank you. Some of these also take the calibration curves back to about 20,000 years.
For non-scientists, if often is.
OK, bad choice of words.
Give it time.
It's not mine to give. :) I fully accept every piece of physical evidence. I just disagree with the intpretation of it most of the time.
I'm a Frizbee-tarian. I believe your soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it down.
Only for people who have a religious need for there to be a designer. On the whole, evolution is not thought to be random by anyone other than creationists and IDers.
I do happen to believe we're not random bits of matter that accidentally came together.
Who said it was accidental? The TOE doesn't.
But Gleiser's point seemed to be that this very undefined designer is, by dint of simple first cause analysis, necessarily perceived by the adherents of ID to be an undesigned designer (which, of course, neatly resolves the question of who designed the designer). And the only undesigned designer is, of course, God.
This reveals that ID is truly nothing more than a ruse for the introduction of necessarily religious concepts.
As Gleiser put it, "we fall into an endless regression, straight back to the problem of the first cause, the one that needs no cause. At this point the mask tumbles and we finally discover the true identity of the IDists' Designer. We should capitalize the word, as this is how we are taught to refer to God."
Indeed, you reinforce that very point (the perfect equation of ID with God) when you say that you "think that's fundamentally why Intelligent Design (God) is not an acceptable answer to these good folk," and that "God is fundamentally different from the Material world."
Why speak of God at all if ID is truly religion-neutral and free from concerns about the identity of the intelligent designer? Well, the answer is that one cannot speak about ID without implicating God, and therefore religion. God is simply inherent in, and inseparable from, ID.
"Like I said...why do the monkey people get so hysterical about Intelligent Design? Why the terror at admitting their's is just a theory?"
OK I'll admit that evolution is just a scientific theory, if you'll admit that ID is not science.
ps I use your green sweater to wax my car!!
I don't count as a member of any sort of 'scientific community'--I'm a layman who never really 'got it' with calculus. But you've raised an interesting point, I'd be interested in some reflections as well. I do know that among some early Greek philosophers, such as Pythagoras, numbers seemed embued with all kinds of 'arcane' and supernatural powers. All ultimately hooey, of course--but a good illustration of the power of 'awe' on our minds, our need to find patterns (even if in the fleeting shapes of clouds).
And dare I suggest (I'm grimacing as I type this bit), that even the most 'hardened' Darwinist (and these days, I'm probably not too far off from such) can experience a sense of wonder, delight, and indeed reverence in the face of the splendid complexities of the natural world?
Or is that just some dreadful bit of wet quasi-hippy drivel I've just spouted?
Fair enough.
Like I said...why do the monkey people get so hysterical about Intelligent Design? Why the terror at admitting their's is just a theory?
Yes, like you said.
"Second verse, same as the first."
"tarted up" -- good description.
LOL. I love it when people assign motivations to my words.
I believe in something greater than myself, and I do not believe that "something" is random chance.
ID = No Scientists
Perhaps the most difficult thing for non-scientists to understand is that science is NOT a matter of faith.For non-scientists, i[t] often is.
Unfortunately, yep.
I guess we can't be on the same side in every debate, huh? :)
n. pl. the·o·ries
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
faith ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fth)
n.
Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
Sorry, not the same.
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