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To: fizziwig; LiteKeeper
From an ID website:....

See the website for the long answer.

The Short Answer:

OK, I went to the website and read it. Your short answers were a direct quote, so let me take them one at a time.

Point A: Yes, science is not done by committee, but it is done by publishing and by peer reviewing. And, the peer review process is necessary to keep out the crazy stuff. I have been a peer reviewer. It is a tough process. Moreover, it is much tougher to reject a paper than to accept it. I actually discussed this at length on an earlier post.. Moreover, the process of publishing scientific results is a central aspect of science, because it allows the broad scientific community to retest and confirm your results. Most scientific fraud has been discovered using this very mechanism. The DI notion that it is not necessary to publish in peer reviewed journals is a weak excuse at best. This notion of "we must test the theory ourselves" but not publish and therefore not allow anyone else to test it is ridiculous.

Point B: This is essentially a rehash of point A. It is basically an excuse that they cannot get their papers published. But again, real science does publish. Real science can get past the peer reviewers, who are more likely to accept than reject (it is easier). And the best science engaged in the controversy and ultimately was published. I know of no real science that has not been published. Controversy is part of the process, and indeed, Physicist posted today that even Einstein had trouble publishing in the Physical Review. Can you cite any real science (other than ID), that has not been published??????

Point C: This is another excuse of why they cannot be published. It's another rehash. They cannot be published and it is everyone else's fault. It is not the fact they do bad work. It is the fault of the entire remainder of the scientific community that is against them and "doesn't understand" them. Please, enough whining. Moreover, it can easily be disproven. It turns out that there have been Creationist papers that have been published. In an earlier debate with LiteKeeper, when I challenged him about publications, to his credit, he provided several Creationist citations, maybe a couple of dozen or so. Nothing on ID, though. So it is not impossible to get these things published. And indeed, from a conventional scientific perspective, Creationism is more controversial than ID.

Point D. This point is ridiculous at its face. The idea is that there are many publications that imply intelligent design. OK, Discovery Institute, which ones??? How about some citations coupled with a direct analysis. How about some proof of this. It is a bald assertion with no substantiation. In the same vein, I could equally assert that there are scientific publications that imply the existance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

My fundamental problem with ID is that every time I ask for a proof of the assertion, I get silence. I have asked for publications. Answer: nothing. One poster stated that ID was correct because "I can do the math." So, naturally, I asked him to post the math. Answer: nothing. And on and on.

So, we have another assertion: "Lots of scientific papers imply Intelligent Design. Do the authors of these papers know this??? Which papers??? Explain the direct connection. How many papers???

31 posted on 11/22/2005 9:33:35 PM PST by 2ndreconmarine (Horse feces (929 citations) vs ID (0 citations) and horse feces wins!!!!!)
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To: 2ndreconmarine
" Moreover, it is much tougher to reject a paper than to accept it."

Unless you know that accepting it will cause you to lose friends, lose grants and lose your honored standing. Then rejection becomes the easy course.

38 posted on 11/22/2005 9:50:24 PM PST by cookcounty (Army Vet, Army Dad.)
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To: 2ndreconmarine
The math is simple, and persuasive. But the question is persuasive of what. The odds of mixing together the various chemicals that form a cell in my body, and having them form a DNA molecule matching mine are infinitesmally small. We don't know how to explain say the design of an eyeball, as a scientifically possible evolution with any statistical chance of occurring in the span of ten trillion universes, even once, on one planet.

However the argument that "We don't know how it happened, so someone must have designed it" answers nothing for me. It just regresses the magic.

The above is from “Humility” -- March 20, 2005 -- For 1st Mennonite Church of Denver. Though I am sure it has been quoted many other times and places.

I'm just still trying to understand.

40 posted on 11/22/2005 9:53:51 PM PST by ThePythonicCow (To err is human; to moo is bovine.)
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