If you Google Dr. Laughlin's quote you will each and every reference to it is using it to support ID. (Every one except the stand alone reference on RussP's Great Quotes page and now RussP's repeat of the quote on FR).
If you Google Dr. Laughlin’s quote you will each and every reference to it is using it to support ID. (Every one except the stand alone reference on RussP’s Great Quotes page and now RussP’s repeat of the quote on FR).
When a Nobel-laureate in physics blasts the Darwinian ToE, you can expect it to be used to support ID. If he hadn’t anticipated that, then he apparently doesn’t follow the online debates over evolution.
Actually, I think the Nobel Prize is often overrated. People tend to think it confers a god-like infallibility, but it doesn’t. What it does is shield the recipient against being labeled a crank, which is why I used Laughlin’s quote.
I am curious, however, about Laughlin’s actual position on evolution. He obviously has problems with the ToE, but yet he does not seem to accept ID. I’d like to know what he thinks the alternative is.
(YOU)”If you Google Dr. Laughlin's quote you will each and every reference to it is using it to support ID. (Every one except the stand alone reference on RussP's Great Quotes page and now RussP's repeat of the quote on FR).” (emphasis mine)
Do you (in this context) equate ‘endorsement’ with ‘support’? If you do, then I must inform you that I do not. We can offer a quote in support of a position, or some aspect of a position, without representing the quote as an endorsement of said position. You seem to implicitly acknowledge this fact when you exempt RussP’s use of the quote from your general observation about its use otherwise in all of Googleland. I must say that I am not ready to accept the idea that in all instances of the quote in Google are we to admit the term ‘support’ and the term ‘endorsement’ as having the same meaning, but neither is it worth the exhaustive effort of running down and analyzing every instance of the use of the good Professor’s quote. Nonetheless, I cannot help but note the irony of the fact that, by exempting RussP from your general citing of Google, you have fairly laid yourself open to the charge of taking him out of context.
I’ve pinged RussP in order to offer him the opportunity of correcting any misimpression I may have regarding his thoughts or attitudes respecting this issue.