Posted on 11/15/2007 5:26:11 AM PST by js1138
A few short years ago, nobody had ever heard of “Intelligent Design” (ID). Today it is alleged to be one of the hot button issues of our times, the latest front in the culture wars. The sudden prominence of ID is traceable, in my opinion, to two factors.
One is that, even ten years ago, ID had enough confidence and honesty to go by its birth name, “Creationism.” Whereas today, it has been dressed up in a lab coat and a mail order Ph.D. and is trying to pass itself off as a scientific theory, thus the sudden re-branding as “Intelligent Design.”
The other reason is that the mainstream media (and other spokesmen for the liberal establishment) love the idea of associating the conservative movement with ID, so ID has gotten much more than its fair share of press time.
The Left believes, correctly, that Intelligent Design is a political loser, and so they gleefully attempt to hang it around the neck of every right-of-center movement from libertarian neo-conservatism to isolationist populism -- shouting all the while “See, the American Taliban has come for your children! Elect a Democrat before it’s too late!”
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
The author just lost all credibility, second paragraph in.
Yeah. It’s a moronic piece. And obvious that he hasn’t read such things as No Free Lunch or just doesn’t care.
You walk up to a Maserati Merak for instance, open the engine compartment (behind the driver) and look at all of those downdraft Webber carburators, velocity stacks, and other complex components and ask yourself the question: "Could this have just sort of happened, i.e. could the wind and rain just sort of blown all of this steel, aluminum, porcelin, rubber etc. into this sort of a thing by haphazard chance?"
And then you realize that the simplest one-celled animal on the planet is vastly more complex than the Maserati engine, and the conclusion is pretty obvious.
In other words, it's only for the purpose of arguing with extreme blockheads like evolutionites that anything as complicated as ID is needed. Most people grasp the idea easily enough.
True that. I’d put Dembski and Behe up against Mac Johnson in a debate about science, and bet the house on the former. Shoot, I’d put Dembski and Behe up against any of the yahoos who routinely stump for evolution here on FR, and bet the house on the former.
Right. Not even Leonardo da Vinci.
Of course you would. But insults in the second paragraph aside the author is basically correct. ID is Creationism under an alias. And ID theory consists not of trying to prove their viewpoint, i.e. identify their designer and His methods, but trying to disprove Evolution and claim victory by default.
I’m no scientist, but even from the little I have read about ID I can tell that he hasn’t done his homework.
This statement alone shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. Have you even read any of the literature by men like Dembski and Behe and others, or are you just repeating the talking points you found at TalkOrigins?
ID = Creationism for Dummies
Sorry folks, I see no conflict between evolution theory and the Bible. One is science based, the other is faith based. Lets teach science in science class.
Yes, “Mindless Chaos” certainly makes much more sense on every level.
< /s >
Plus, it makes one feel so much better about one’s immorality and autonomous idiolatry.
And "God did it" may provide a satisfactory answer from a theological standpoint but it makes for very poor science.
Depends on what you mean by "evolution theory".
I, for one, have religiously ignored the topic before now. [Meaning, until the present, I have had no real idea what it was all about] I have done this partly out of a sort of professional courtesy to its supporters, with whom I share most other beliefs (and in many cases a personal affection), partly out of a belief that the idea was too obscure to argue over, [ an idea which he has just finished saying that he had religiously ignored until now] and partly because the idea is so patently ridiculous to me [patently ridiculous based on his studied ignorance of anything to do with it] that I felt that pointing this out would be somewhat akin to telling a friend that they have really, really bad breath. I mean - it would be an uncomfortable moment for both of us. But then how will they ever know, if I don’t tell them?His piece isn't informative of anything but his ignorance and prejudice. It's a screed that uses his supposed conservative identity as a way of saying, "hey, pay no attention to that thing over there. You can believe me because I'm a conservative.
So in light of the issue’s new prominence and with a desire to improve the mental hygiene of others, I would just like to say that Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea --scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems [meaning he was born and bred in a particular theory and everything else looks ridiculous. Sort of like kids first realizing that meat was actually muscle or that it was sex between their parents that got them started] to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all [all said, of course, on his professed ignorance of the subject and predisposition to discount it completely--and I, as a professional biologist who did his Ph.D. thesis work in the field of molecular neurobiology, can say that any of the mechanisms, genetics, and physiology of that field can be described, understood, and manipulated without any reference at all to its supposed evolutionary history. The most a discussion of evolutionary history contributes is on the level of "Hey, we see this cool gene here and it's so important to development, it must be evolutionarily conserved (an act of question-begging), so let's see where else it shows up! Hey, it shows up here and here and here, too! Wow, these things must all share a common ancestor or they wouldn't have this common feature (another exercise in question-begging)]
Scientifically, attributing every aspect of biology to the arbitrary design of a divine tinkerer [again he shows his ignorance of the subject as well as his prejudice] explains as much about biology as attributing the eruption of volcanoes to the anger of the Lava God would explain geology [Like Dawkins, he argues from a false analogy based on question-begging].
Maybe we should start calling it Intelligent Meteorology? IM, for short.
And Dembski and Behe identify the intelligent designer as whom?
Ping to an "ID" article with some "real meat on its bones"...
Yeah, but at least he provided us with the opportunity to promote Ben Stein's upcoming movie, 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.' Can't wait to see it. 'Expelled' will be mandatory viewing in our homeschool. Take that!, know-it-all school boards of the world.
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