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Re: [Phys-l] Intelligent designists fight back.



One wonders the connection between conservative politics and intelligent
design. Ditto Global warming, and tobacco use is related to cancer deniers. (
Yes many of the same Characters, it's really true)


Bob Zannelli




In a message dated 1/5/2008 9:06:05 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jlu@hep.anl.gov writes:

Hi all-

I agree with the others who have said that this is utter nonsense,
but I'll take the time to give some reasons. I have, by the way,
downloaded the first morning transcript of the Dover trial. It is a
masterpiece demonstration of careful choice and preparation of an expert
witness.

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:

I think you are missing the point of Intelligent Design. It does not admit
supernatural agents any more than Darwinism does. It simply looks at the
usual evidence - fossil records, complexity of organisms, etc. -
and concludes from that evidence that evolution cannot explain the full
tapestry of what is seen - a non random, deliberate
_____________________________________________________
The choice of name "intelligent design", and the words "non
random, deliberate" already give the game away. If you are primitive
enough, a thundersstorm is a "non random, deliberate" warning to stop
offending the gods.
A favorite argument has to do with complexity - biological
structure are too complex to have occurred by chance. What Chutzpah!
Who's to say what is too complex to have occurred over a time span of a
couple of billion years (the age of the earth is about 4.5 Gyrs). Oh, I'm
sorry, I'm supposed to believe that creation occurred about 6000 years
ago.
By the way, maybe we can accomodate that view by careful fiddling
of the cosmological constant. We could then categorize it as a
fundamentalist constant of nature.
_____________________________________________
interaction of some
kind is seen to be required.
_________________________________
Required? Only if you are inclined to give up trying to answer
currently unanswered questions. That is what the whole history of science
is about.

That process may come to a different conclusion
than Darwinists, but it is no different in kind from the process
followed by Darwinists. The step to appealing to a deity as the deliberate
interaction is an entirely separate conclusion that is not demanded by ID.

ID proponents understand very well how science operates.
_______________________________________________________________
Not true: It is evident from the testimony at Dover that Behe
simply does not understand how science operates, nor is he familiar with
the facts bearing on the issues that he has raised in his writings.
__________________________________________

It is mainstream scientists who are mistakenly dismissive of ID
and who treat it as something unworthy of serious rebuttal. One
cannot blame non-scientists for failing to conclude that in a comparison
between Darwinism and ID, one is science and the other is not.

Ben Stein is a very clever and intelligent person. He has
remarkable insight into the way education works and has shown this
in the numerous parodies that he has presented of pedantic instructors.
He also has an uncanny grasp of the workings of the financial world and
has become very wealthy acting on those insights. I watch him often on the
Saturday morning financial programs on Fox News. I have taken some of his
advice and have reaped significant financial rewards from doing so.
He is not an ignoramus. Obviously, neither is President Bush or
numerous other highly intelligent people who see no reason to prefer
Darwinism over ID.
_________________________________________
Successful science is not measured by counting the number, or
wealth, or status, or cleverness of people who accept it. Your argument
demonstrates that you have no glimmer of understanding what science is
about.


Rather, it is the science community who has to get off their high horses
and come up with clear, easily understandable retorts to ID. Simply being
dismissive is going to drive more of the general population into the ID
court. They have seen scientists careen from Global Cooling to Global
Warming - they have seen demands for banning DDT followed by unforgivable
mass deaths of children in undeveloped countries because of the resulting
surge in malaria - they will not accept nuclear power because
scientists have created bombs from that science. Scientists have too
spotty a history to take a believable condescending attitude toward ID
that is readily acceptable by the general public.
__________________________________________________
What in the world does this have to do with Darwinism?



Bob at PC - who sees evolution as the only viable explanation for the
living world

(Please excuse the typos - my new wireless keyboard does not
communicate with my new Vista computer very well.)
_____________________________________________
Regards,
Jack




--
"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley







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