To improve their standing the anti-Darwin lobby have changed their tactics, so now instead of arguing for creationism they call their theory "intelligent design".Mark Steel explains.
Mostly this consists of trying to illustrate how species are too complex to have been formed by nature. But then they can't help themselves, so you get articles such as the one by prominent advocate of intelligent design, David Berlinski, that starts: "Charles Darwin says, 'In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals.' Another man, Adolf Hitler says 'Let us kill all the Jews of Europe.' Is there a connection? Yes is the obvious answer." So there we are – study the differences between finches and you're half way to organising a holocaust.
Friday, January 09, 2009
The opposite of science
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4 comments:
It's all framework, cherry picking and no actual empirical research. Just like anti-abortion and anti-gay "junk science"...
Craig Y
Have a look at www.richarddawkins.com and the forums there. Mr Wishart was a blogger there too.
Also tbr.cc has been a forum for this stuff. All Ian's literary influences such as Stepner, Shapiro, Behe etc have turned up.
Intelligent Design is about God of the Gaps as we know. Micro Evolution versus Macro Evolution, as if there was any real difference in the processes involved.
They have conceded the micro but in doing so agnostics need to claim the macro.
Interesting, but isn't it all really just different faces of the same? You can't answer the question posed by the ideology of creationism/intelligent design versus evolution without being a complete hypocrite. It is simply put, an unanswerable question, at least by definition of all the rules by which we concede as a species at this time, as defining "fact".
We don't know the answers, but there is largely a line in the sand and most people land on one side of the the line or the other, but neither side will concede that the other simply does not have an answer to the question.
Agnostics, by definition, attempt to be pragmatic, by being line-walkers. Most agnostics will simply acknowledge, "I don't know."
There are hypothesis on both sides of that line, each with supporting theories and "evidence".
But again, I would argue that we simply don't know. And when we point fingers at one side versus the other, we are being hypocritical or simply pressing our personal dogmatic approach of "what works for me, what is "truest" to my way of thinking MUST therefore be imposed on the everyone else. It is our nature. *shrug*
"Intelligent Design" is the opposite of science, in that it asserts that observable phenomena (e.g., the existence of multiple species) cannot be understood by studying natural forces.
It's worth repeating: ID asserts that things we can all see cannot, in principle, be understood by studying the workings of the world.
Also, the ID proponents insist that THEY get to say WHICH things were "specially created," which puts them beyond understanding by analysis.
Well, nice to be them, I guess. It doesn't move the state of things along though, does it?
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