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.
A man I should've heard of. Thanks for mentioning him.
That's a happy cat.
Ummm, that's not how carbon dating works. It is based upon the measurable ratio between two carbon isotopes as they are found in organic matter.
I find it rather humbling to think there is something beyond ourselves, and that that "something" is not random chance.
Of course, we all know those who believe in evolution aren't vain. ;-)
Of course, we all know those who Of course, we all know those who believe in evolution aren't vain. ;-) in evolution aren't vain. ;-)
I don't 'believe' in evolution. I think it is the theory that best explains the evidence.
Douglas Hofstadter.
The shame of it is that while his first book was a brilliant exposition of computational theory, his later books fell off the wagon and ended up in a ditch. Still GEB is a classic AI-oriented book on basic computational theory.
A lot of Edge.org contributors are very vocally at odds with one another. Which is part of the point. And a few of the contributors are genuine twits as well.
From Reverend Al Dente no doubt.
I think we're more than just random bits of chemistry that somehow got strung together into a self-conceptualizing entity that calls itself "alive". I think there is something else out there.
Evolutionists aren't vain, then? :)
I have read GEB. "Awful" is a good description.
Just wanted to let you know when reading through some of your links on #70 that "Evolution as Fact and Theory by Stephen Jay Gould" is no longer active (shame because I want to read it). Hopefully there is an update for it.
QM does seem to be random rather than unpredictable though.
A lot of Edge.org contributors are very vocally at odds with one another. Which is part of the point.
Yes, of course. But I was just (idly) wondering how Hofstadter feels about having his most famous work dissed by a very smart and very competent logician/mathematician.
I think we're more than just random bits of chemistry that somehow got strung together into a self-conceptualizing entity that calls itself "alive".
Good for you. What does that have to do with the TOE? The TOE does not say this.
I think there is something else out there.
Good for you. What does that have to do with the TOE? The TOE doesn't say anything about this.
Evolutionists aren't vain, then? :)
What? How are people who think the TOE best explains the evidence vain for thinking that? Please explain.
YEC INTREP
That link was broken for a few months, then it started working again. Now -- as you report -- it's broken again. Never fear, I've found another copy online: Evolution as Fact and Theory. I've just read it and I'm not sure it's word-for-word the same essay I originally linked. But it's a good read anyway.
I have read GEB. "Awful" is a good description.
I've got the book (somewhere in a cardboard box), and remember that, as I was reading it, I felt like I was watching a fairly smart guy showing off without solving any significant problems.
Actually, gravity is less understood than the processes of evolution. Newton's Law of universal gravitation wasn't able to predict certain astronomical observations which are predicted by Einstein's General Relativity Theory. Neither Newton nor Einstein pretended to explain the cause of gravity, their models are descriptive. Newton said:
I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain.
Note that physicists are attempting to create more complete and powerful explinations of the world including gravity, including theories of "quantum gravity." Real science is not as cut-and-dried as creationists think.
Darwin pointed out evidence of evolution, but others had done so before him, his important contribution was to give a powerful explanation for evolution, the process of natural selection. Evolutionary science has itself evolved in the century and a half since Darwin published his theory, but his insights remain central.
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.