Barry Arrington has a new post at UD:
where he objects to the discussion, particularly by thaumaturge, on an earlier thread:
The earlier thread is based on the accusation that Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins “believe the fundamental questions in biology have been settled and all that is left is to suss out the details.”
Suppose that I were to argue that
- water is wet;
- therefore roses are red.
You would be right to accuse me of faulty reasoning. There is no inference from the wetness of water to the redness of roses.
The argument at UD is of a similar form. Barry Arrington and others are claiming that because Coyne asserts that evolution is fact, therefore he must believe that biology is complete (in the sense that the fundamental questions of biology have been settled). But there is no such inference. Just as the wetness of water says nothing about the redness of roses, so a belief in the facticity of evolution says nothing about whether there is a belief in the completeness of biology.
To illustrate the point, suppose I were to say that number theory is fact. That would not, in any way, imply that I believed mathematics to be complete. Indeed, Gödel’s theorem showed that mathematics is not complete, and it did so by showing that number theory is not complete.
Ironically, while Barry Arrington has been engaging in fallacious reasoning (as detailed above), he has also started another thread:
where he accuses Kantian Naturalist of fallacious reasoning.
So yes, Barry, you are correct. Language is not infinitely malleable. And you have been bending it and twisting far beyond what it can bear.
Barry is a prime example that ID is NOT based on logic or rational thought.
A ⇒ NOT A is a very useful logic circuit in electronics. It produces an oscillator whose ongoing behavior is a superposition of A and NOT A.
What UD thread is saying that evolutionists are saying the mechanism for biological origins has been settled. EVOLUTION.
Evolutionists treat it as a fact.
Then evolutionists shy away from such assertions because of some species of doubt.
The answer to all this is not weighing the evidence but first determining is evolutionary theory is based on the scientific method.
Methodology is king in science.
I say evolution is NOT a scientific theory but only a hypothesis.
Even if true it would only be that because one can’t test past and gone events and processes.
Creationists should aim at methodology claims of evolution and evolutionists should aim at creationists that they have done science before drawing their conclusions and this means its well done investigation and not so easily dismissed.
“Even if true it would only be that because one can’t test past and gone events and processes.”
Tiktaalik, ERVs, etc…
The earth is spherical rather than flat; therefore geography is complete.
The planets orbit the sun rather than the earth; therefore astronomy is complete.
Evolution is distinct from origin of life. And origin of life is a biological question.
Who is saying that origin of life is settled?
KN and Allan have obviously gotten under Barry’s skin.
(Yuck)
So you admit that UD is mischaracterizing the science; because that is not what anyone in science believes.
What do you mean by “it?”
The evidence for evolution having happened is overwhelming. The mechanisms are what are being elaborated by ongoing research. Do you know what any of that involves?
You appear to be babbling; and, I would suggest, not one ID/creationist knows how to write a research proposal, submit it for peer review, get funding, and then carry out a real research program that adds to our knowledge. Not one ID/creationist has ever done it.
ID/creationism was started formally as “Scientific” Creationism by Henry Morris in 1970 when he founded the Institute for Creation “Research.” Nothing has come of it since then and up to this very day. Creation “Science” had to morph into Intelligent Design “Theory” in an attempt to get around the 1987 US Supreme Court decision on Edwards vs. Aguillard. ID/creationism is a sectarian socio/political movement; not a science.
It’s not about what YOU say. Learn the difference between the concepts of theory and hypothesis.
Ken Ham’s “scientific categories” for misinforming children is not what scientists do. Ken Ham’s “science” doesn’t work in the real world. That is why all the creationist “scientists” at his organization have never done, and cannot do, any scientific investigation. They have their own “research” journals that consist of nothing but sectarian apologetics.
Science training in the schools and universities produces scientists who are productive members of society who extend our knowledge about and control over our environment. The ID/creationist socio/political movement produces confused and ignorant camp followers like Robert Byers who have never had a whiff of science in their entire lives.
Science produces useful knowledge; ID/creationism produces socio/political rancor and costly socio/political conflict.
I believe that Barry’s original 2012 outburst of bannination was based on
* his assertion that defenders of evolutionary biology were trying to argue that things were true because they were false, and
* therefore they were basing themselves on things being both true and false at the same time, and
* since this was outrageous, they had to be made to agree that assertions could not be true and false at the same time, and
* if they wouldn’t agree to that, it was justifiable to ban them.
(Hence the connection to the present debates over “rules of right reason”).
He then made up a litmus-test question about whether objects could be in one place and in another at the same time. That brought up quantum mechanics, and superposition, and such. And since many defenders of evolutionary biology noticed that and hesitated to endorse the statement, they all got banned in one of the craziest and most self-defeating actions ever taken. Then some reasonably-honorable creationists objected that this was not cool, and they got banned too.
Thus TSZ came into existence, once we had all recovered from our astonishment that anyone would think that kind of bannination would help Barry’s cause.
Have I got the history correct?
The whole thing is silly because no one was defending their position by arguing that True is False. Whether their arguments were valid or not, they were all trying to use Plain Old Ordinary Reason. Which is why the whole argument about rules of reason is beside the point.
But it is an astonishing example of Shooting Yourself In The Foot.
Well, TSZ was started well before I was banned, partly because I wanted to set up a place where conversations could continue at a more leisurely pace. It wasn’t really so that the banned could be included, as sockpuppets seemed to do the trick at TSZ (no, I never had a sock, although I did sign in under my own name, having originally been signed in as Febble, and been banned by DaveScot as Febble, quite a while back).
Upright Biped thought it had been started expressly for him – this was not the case of course, although I did start off with a thread for that particular conversation. I’d actually registered the domain name a longish time earlier, with the idea of setting up a site something like this one.
I never did find out what specifically I had been banned by Barry for – it was a silent banning, and as far as I know, I did not violate the law of non-contradiction (though I thought the shibboleth was quite absurd). What I did do was post a highly critical post of Barry, over the way he’d treated someone else (can’t remember who, can’t remember my post, which I assume is no longer there, though I haven’t checked) and assume that that was the reason.
Alan Fox told me yesterday that Barry was prepared to unban me. I posted last night on Uncommon Descent, although my post hasn’t appeared yet. In it I did say that I thought the law of non-contradiction was only applicable where the concepts of “thing” and “is” are clear, neither of which can be taken for granted at quantum levels, nor even outside certain assumptions we make about the way we as biological creatures parse the world (into “things” that exist over time).
So it may never see the light of day. We’ll see.
Actually, it may be that I have to email Barry for him to see my post at all.
I may do that. Still rather busy though!
sez mike elzinga: “…not one ID/creationist knows how to write a research proposal, submit it for peer review, get funding, and then carry out a real research program that adds to our knowledge. Not one ID/creationist has ever done it.”
I disagree. The relationship between Creationism and science is not like that of matter and antimatter; rather, it’s like the relationship between fish and bicycles, or, better, the relationship between being a scientist and being a baseball fan. We’re not talking about things which are intrinsically contradictory, we’re talking about things which have no innate connection to one another.
Of course, it’s true that Creationists can’t do science in any field which offends their Creationist leanings. The thing is, Creationists can do perfectly good science in any field which does not offend their Creationist leanings! If it were true that Creationism was an absolute impediment to science, no person who is a Creationist could do science in any field whatsoever—but that just isn’t true.
S.J. Gould wasn’t doing science when he attended baseball games; instead, he was doing science when he actually did science. Similarly, Creationists aren’t doing science when they do Creationism; instead, they’re doing science when they actually do science. And just as it’s possible to be a scientist and a baseball fan, because those two things simply do not intersect in any meaningful way, so it’s possible to be a scientist and a Creationist, because those two things also do not intersect in any meaningful way.
Lizzie,
“I may do that.”
Please don’t. Reason and evidence are like oxygen to the hermetically sealed echo chamber that is UD. They allow in just enough for the regulars to survive, but resent having to do so.
They don’t deserve you, or any one else with scientific knowledge and intellectual integrity. If any of them have a valid point to make, they can crawl out of their cesspit and make it in an open forum. If they lack the strength of character to do so, let them fester and choke in the benighted miasma they have created.
Patrick: [to Lizzie]: “They don’t deserve you, or any one else with scientific knowledge and intellectual integrity.”
I agree with Patrick.
There is no reason they couldn’t comment here if they had any courage to defend their position.
By commenting at UD, you accept going in that their side gets preferential treatment that even extends to when your post appears, if ever.
Before I was banned, there were comments of mine that were held in moderation for over a day. How can you have a debate in an auditorium with a 24 hour delay on your microphone?
Its best they stay in their playpen until they have an actual ID position they can defend.
Well, I don’t have much time at the moment anyway, and when I do, I’d rather spend it here 🙂
Lizzie: I did not violate the law of non-contradiction
How could you?! Nothing can violate Teh Law of Non-Contradiction!!
I was referring specifically to the intelligent design/creationists and their socio/political shenanigans started by Henry Morris back in the 1970s with the Institute for Creation “Research” and its spin-offs, Answers in Genesis and the Center for the (Renewal) of Science and Culture at the “Discovery” Institute.
When I speak of ID/creationism, I am referring to this well-defined, politically active sectarian movement. Perhaps you may not be familiar with its history. I have been watching it from the time it began.
There are creationists – e.g., Francis Collins – who are perfectly capable scientists. They are not part of the ID/creationist political movement.
ID/creationism always means that sectarian socio/political movement and its pseudoscience. The denizens over at UD hate people who know their history; they want to obliterate that history and pass themselves off as real intellectuals. They can’t because they carry all the intellectual baggage the inherited from Henry Morris.
“…his assertion that defenders of evolutionary biology were trying to argue that things were true because they were false…”
?
Neil Ricjert
The thread was about the major things about biological origins was settled.
Thats what I was addressing. Not origin of life!
Mike Elzinga
They do so say they have settled how biological change has happened. They cry evolution did it!
Creationism , led by Mr Morris, has changed North America on the issues of origins.
Everyone knows today everyone disagrees on origins and both sides equally persuade millions of people as far as they pay attention.
We do all right and expect to win.
ID is just non-YEC people figuring out evolutionary biology or any opposition to the clear evidence of a creator is not shown by the evidence of nature.
You say there is heaps of evidence for evolutionary biology!!!
Can you name one?
None of these or any are biological scientific evidences for evolution.
Be precise!
How is any one evidence9biological scientific) for descent?
As long you keep morphing your assertions and continue to distort science, there is no point in discussing this with you.
I can name many. But in order for you to understand, you would need to know some science; which you don’t, and which you won’t. I’ve watched your shenanigans.
I have never wasted time on students who refuse to learn anything; I just flunked them. Time is better spent on those who want to learn.
sez mike elzinga:
Yes, I understand that.
Sure. But even within the ‘belly’ of the ‘beast’ that is the IC/Creationist movement, there are people who can do good science. Not many, sure. But though these people are few in number, they do exist.
Example: Andrew Snelling. This guy is very much a Jekyll-and-Hyde type; by day, he’s a flat-out YEC, and by night he somehow manages to write and publish real geology papers which make use of the millions-of-years paradigm that YEC-Snelling is dogmatically obligated to reject. I don’t know how he manages to square that circle in his head, but if I had to guess, I’d say Snelling regards his real geology work as some sort of intellectual game, in which he accepts, for the sake of the game, premises which he absolutely believes to be false.
Example: John Baumgardner. This is the YEC geophysicist who came up with the risible ‘runaway subduction’ hypothesis to ‘explain’ Noah’s Flood. He’s the lead developer of a program called Terra, which is apparently one of the better software models of mantle convection. If you feed the Terra software real-world data, it seems to do a very good job of replicating real-world geological behavior, which is why the Terra software is well-regarded; Baumgardner’s (ab)use of his Terra software to generate bogus ‘support’ for YECism is clearly a case of GIGO.
If Creationism—honest-to-God, come-to-Jesus, Gish Gallopin’ Creationism—genuinely was an absolute impediment to doing any kind of science whatsoever, people like Snelling and Baumgardner shouldn’t exist. But they do. Therefore, I conclude that honest-to-God, come-to-Jesus, Gish Gallopin’ Creationism is not an absolute impediment to doing any kind of science whatsoever.
Compartmentalization is a well known aspect of human behavior. Social behavior as well as intellectual.
But when creationists are in creationist mode, they seldom, if ever, do good science. Some of them are good at digging up intriguing gaps in knowledge.
Someone like Dawkins should write a history of gaps.
Mike Elzinga,
This isn’t a classroom.
this is a forum between equals. ( I think it is)
This is a talk place. Why ban me from the conversation???
Everyone can say everyone can’t learn because they disagree still.
You say you know many reasons for biological scientific evidence for evolution.
what would you tell your stidents is your best one.
Here’s your chance to name one and prove how a creationist fails in understanding!
Teach don’t preach!
i’m not a bad guy. I want the truth to prevail.
If you were my student I would tell you that there is no royal road to mathematics or to biology.
Yeah, I am familiar with these characters.
It has to be some ideological, socio/political culture war thing with them. They would obviously get fired if they used their YEC “theories” in their work; so you know they genuflect to authority in the workplace.
But, away from the workplace, it’s a different “authority” and the social pressure of proselytizing in their sectarian subculture. Whatever authority “enhancement” they get from their day job is simply used for making themselves more “authoritative” within their subculture.
I have known a number of fundamentalists like this over the years; and I have always had the eerie feeling that something was not quite right with them. They can be really creepy.
Robert Byers said this:
Then Robert Byers said this:
Get your accusations straight. You have been around on the internet and on Panda’s Thumb long enough to be able to start making more precise distinctions than a young child is capable of making.
I don’t waste time on people who don’t learn but simply taunt. If you really want to learn something, start back in middle school and work your way up like everybody else does.
Well, first of all, Robert, I think it’s important to be clear that “evidence for evolution” isn’t the same as “evidence that no deity was involved”.
And second, it’s important to be clear what you are asking for evidence for – there is a vast amount of fossil and genetic evidence to support the idea that all living things are descended from a population of far simpler ancestors.
Therea’s also a vast amount of genetic, observational (lab and field) and computational evidence that once you have a population of self-replicating critters, that population evolves to fit its environment, and, if that environment is rich enough, diversify into different lineages with different adaptation. Again, this has been directly observed, and that it happened over deep time can also be inferred from the fossil and genetic evidence.
On the other hand we are still short of a complete model of how that simple ancestral population of self-replicators came into being in the first place, although there are some promising leads.
And of course we still don’t know, and may never know, how the universe came to exist in the first place, and take the form it does, although we do know that the part of it that is observable is only a tiny fraction of the whole, and we have no good reason to assume that the parameters it has are the same throughout the non-observable parts.
That doesn’t mean we can conclude there is no God. It just means that we won’t be able to establish whether God exists through science.
Not unless God is just another, albeit more awesome, inhabitant of the universe like ourselves.
We are not equals. I know the concepts and history of ID/creationism; I have been around the entire time this socio/political movement has been in existence.
I also know the real science.
You know only the talking and taunting points you memorize from ID/creationists. You know neither the history of ID/creationism nor the real science.
If you want truth to prevail, you would not have said this:
Instead you would have recognized that UD and the ID/creationists like Ken Ham are telling you what scientists are saying.
You would have admitted that you have never been told this by any scientist; EVER. As I said, no scientist believes this; yet you came right back with a morph of your original accusation, a morph that conflates the origins of life with evolution.
You repeat a conflation that you already know is wrong; just as Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Ken Ham and all the minions at UD keep repeating over and over and over. You know it is wrong, yet you do it anyway. You claim that you want the truth to prevail.
And you misuse the word “evolution” as though it is a mechanism.
You have not said WHY ID/creationists say that the origins of life can’t have occurred. You have not said WHY ID/creationists say the evolution didn’t happen.
You simply parrot ID/creationist notions that the origins of life and evolution can’t be explained by science. Yet you have no way of knowing if that is true because you have never made the effort to understand any science. And yet you claim you want the truth to prevail.
Do you know anything about atoms and molecules other than what your ID/creationist overlords tell you?
And again, you claim you want truth to prevail. WHY would you want that if you stubbornly refuse learn any science? How could you possibly know what the truth is if all you are willing to accept is your sectarian indoctrination and what your sectarian indoctrinators tell you about what scientists say?
Really?
How about Learn, don’t spurn!
Start with this exercise that any high school chemistry/physics students can be asked to do.
If you don’t understand what any of this means, you need to start over and rebuild the education you pretend to have.
If you are not willing to do that, then you are being disingenuous about wanting the truth to prevail.
No, I don’t recall any attempts to subvert logic in support of anti-ID or pro-evolutionary arguments. One would certainly hope the opposite was true. But if one is presented with a particular case (eg can a physical object exist and not-exist at the same time?)”, it is legitimate to explore the question, even to declare that one thinks that it can. Whether that has any bearing on the possibility of detecting design in an object agreed to exist, Heaven knows.
And given the logic-mangling that goes on daily, Arrington’s Razor is a particularly chucklesome means of determining who is U and who is non-U in their fitness to debate. I would be inclined to accept the LNC for logical propositions, but given the Inquisitorial manner in which the demand was presented, I would be even more inclined to ask BA to tell me how many fingers I was holding up. Doesn’t matter; I was banned anyway, the question unasked.
Well, everyone has been “exploring the question” for a while now. Maybe it’s time to ask why the UD types are wasting our time with a diversionary question.
A similar thing happens when they drag us off to discussing the Origin Of Life when we are busy pulverizing their arguments against evolution.
Here is Arrington’s latest compilation of ID/creationist angst.
From Lastyearon:
From kairosfocus:
From Eric Anderson:
I am reminded of an incident many years ago as I was walking across the Diag at the University of Michigan. A student who recognized me, ran to catch up with me, and started grousing about his recent flunking out of school – he thought very highly of his own intelligence.
He said to me, “There isn’t one damned professor in this university that can teach me anything!”
I said, “Yup.”
Never saw him again.
Lizzie,
Lizzie
AHA.
You say there is all this evidence for evolution(scientific biological) and creationists say there isn’t.
There is just speculation upon speculation. its about evolutionary biology to me and not about origins of life or proving god existence.
This could be “settled” by threads presenting this evidence.
Why are evolutionists persuaded about something most unlikely.
Robert, do you accept DNA evidence for establishing paternity in court?
We know that you believe God created “kinds” of animals (that later evolved into countless species) so how is a scientist supposed to determine said kinds, and with what evidence?
By the evidence.
You are mystified as to how people can spend entire careers studying evolution and find only confirming evidence. Perhaps there is a reason for that other than their being stupid, blind or corrupt.
But asking people to ‘post it’ is pointless, as you simply sniff it, make up your own reality and babble about ‘lines of reasoning’, as if that was somehow unjustified in a science. You want a video.
But Byers..
We point you at all sorts of evidence.
You simply say it ISN’T evidence. ((thus showing that you are one of those who simply rides roughshod over definitions when the definition doesn’t suit you)
That’s fine. You’re perfectly entitled to think as you please. You’re perfectly entitled to Make Stuff Up – a time-honoured tradition amongst creationists.
But you have no evidence for your Stuff. We have mountains of it for our Stuff, and it makes no difference in the real world if you choose to say it isn’t evidence.
Furthermore, it’s a rude habit and an abuse of civilised discourse to demand evidence for one view without being able to give evidence for your own, opposing, view.
Double standard, Byers. Again, a time-honoured tradition amongst creationists, but ultimately counterproductive.
So let’s see if you can burst out of your bubble, Byers. I gave you my favourite bit of evidence for macroevolution – the vestigial hind limbs in whales. You didn’t like it , but I hold to it,because your alternative is evidence-free.
Now, will you please have the common courtesy to return the favour, and give us your best bit of evidence for a young earth. I’m having a little bet with myself that you dare not.
Thanks in advance
“pulverized” has become the mot du jour over at UD here on and elsewhere.
It prompts KF to reissue his hollow “essay” challenge, the absence of responses to which permits him to aver that evolutionists indeed have nothing. One explanation could indeed be that we are FoS, though UD’s cowardly moderation policy, KF’s deplorable habit of editing directly into comments, and framing an “evolutionary” challenge as “the decisive case for evolutionary materialist origin of life and body plans” don’t encourage participation.
The OoL is not explicable by evolution, as UB frequently points out, and nobody proposes otherwise. As to ‘body plans’ … which? There is for example a detailed analysis here of ascomycete body plans and their sequence of emergence according to their mapping onto phylogenetic data from a presumably body-plan-independent gene (rDNA or RNA polymerase). No-one could possibly give detail about the selective processes involved in generating the evolutionary novelties that show up in the phylogeny. It would require knowledge of historic environments and populations. Hence, one wouldn’t be in a position to write an essay about it. But clearly, whatever the processes were, they operated through descent – itself a process, accepted even by YECs as capable of producing divergent species. There are no apparent significant discontinuities in this data, which covers an entire phylum. I wouldn’t present this as a clincher for ‘Darwinism”, but I would ask what is the ID account of this? Where, in the phylogenetic data (Fig 3), would one place a barrier that ‘microevolution’ cannot have crossed? And how did Design get across it, while still leaving a continuous descent signal?
Allan Miller,
I don’t need 6000 words to begin KF’s challenge. I’ll start off with the same question I asked Robert Byers:
Do you accept DNA evidence as used in courts as proof of paternity?
If KF is serious he will accept this as my opening statement. I assume there will be a bit of back and forth on this.
petrushka,
KF has apparently responded, but not on a forum where I can participate.
It looks like that kairosfocus character over at UD is sneering at your question.
This is how one knows that ID/creationists have never done even a high school level physics and chemistry calculation and therefore have no clue what they are asserting. Kairosfocus asserts:
Proof by assertion; no Q.E.D. needed.
Kairosfocus buys into the tornado-in-a-junkyard “argument.” In order to believe that hoax, he would have to believe that the molecules of life are composed of junkyard parts and/or letters of the alphabet; things that don’t interact in the way atoms and molecules do.
Kairosfocus also can’t figure out what is wrong with Granville Sewell’s “thermodynamic argument;” so he swallowed that one hook, line, and sinker as well.
One doesn’t need to write a 6000 word essay on why ID/creationist pseudoscience can’t explain the origins of life and evolution. ID/creationist pseudoscience is bent and broken science concepts designed to comport with sectarian dogma; of course it can’t explain the real world.
So kairosfocus has set up his “challenge” expecting that everybody outside his sectarian subculture thinks science concepts are what he himself thinks they are. So nobody can use real physics, chemistry, and biology concepts because he has no clue about what any of that means.
He can’t pass a basic concept test on entropy and the second law. When Sal Cordova referenced that test while showing off at UD, kairosfocus had no clue.
He can’t even scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram sized masses separated by distances on the order of meters and calculate the energies of interaction in joules and in megatons of TNT. So there is no way he can know the significance of these calculations when trying to justify the tornado-in-a-junkyard “argument.”
Therefore kairosfocus is right; ID/creationist pseudoscience can never explain anything in the real world. No essay needed.
One problem with KF’s essay challenge (which I was briefly tempted to rise to!) is that he mandates this structure:
And I have no idea what “empirical warrant that meets the inference to best current empirically grounded explanation [–>IBCE] test for scientific reconstruction of the remote past” means.
And that’s probably the entire problem. If that string of words was coherent, perhaps ID would be.
Although I still think what’s wrong with ID is that Dembski messed up in trying to make an argument that we must infer a Designer, and the rest of them are scrabbling around trying to attack a strawman “Darwinism” that actually is code for “people who think that science shows there isn’t a God”.
Of whom I know none (even Dawkins). Although I know plenty, including plenty of theists, who think that science does not show there is one.
Allan Miller,
Stephen Meyer’s concern is with the origin of metazoan phyla (a.k.a body plans) during the Cambrian. However I suspect Meyer’s repeated use of the colloquial phrase (and a strong disinclination to explain what he means in layman’s terms) is deliberate obfuscation on his part. It’s readily apparent that the public sympathetic to an ID explanation are most concerned by the diversity of shapes within the phyla Chordata — they may find it difficult to believe that a fish, a frog, and a primate are evolutionary cousins but likely have a little resistance to the idea that dozen different worm phyla evolved (as well as basal forms of arthropods, jellies, etc.) some 650 million years ago.
Lizzie,
“empirical warrant that meets the inference to best current empirically grounded explanation [–>IBCE] test for scientific reconstruction of the remote past”
Sounds like a psuedo-scientific way to assuage the concerns of YEC’s like Robert Byers (that science that can only be directly observed) without admitting that ID theory, like the scientific method, depends on (logical) extrapolation of evidence. Already Ken Ham is none to thrilled with some of the developments of ID theory, and UD doesn’t want to given him or his followers any more reason to turn away (hence UD’s agnosticism on the age of the universe, et al).
I don’t think it’s that devious. I think KF probably thinks it means something. But its meaning is completely opaque to me.
But in any case – the real point is that ID is dead, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s a failed attempt to “prove” that God exists, coupled with the apparent assumption that “Darwinists” think that science “proves” that God doesn’t.
Ultimately the God question is the question “why is there anything rather than nothing?” And if people want to fill that gap with “because some creative power wanted there to be”, that’s just fine. Others of us will answer “we don’t know, but see no reason to assume that an intention was involved”.
Both answers are entirely compatible with mainstream science. I think the ashes of ID are kept alive by fear that failure to prove God is tantamount to disproving God. Not very logical 🙂
After 50 years of taunting the science community, ID/creationists pretty much follow the same script; a script that was used by Henry Morris and Duane Gish, and taught at their Institute for Creation “Research.”
They toss out tons of caricatures and misconceptions about science; and then they demand that everything be answered in atom-by-atom detail.
Duane Gish taught creationist debaters to toss out so much junk during a debate that, even if one or two were thoroughly demolished, the creationist could sneer at the end of the debate, “Well, you didn’t even answer 98% of my arguments!” I’ve seen several creationists use almost exactly the same phrase at the end of a debate; so it must be part of their formal training.
Gish Galloping and horrendous dumps of cobbled-together quote mined material have become the hallmarks of ID/creationist “debating” tactics. They all seem to do it. No matter how they are answered, they “disagree” and retort with gibberish; then declare victory.
The way UD is operating now, it seems like perseveration. They have become almost like robots or zombies in their repetition of old hackneyed ID/creationist material.
The “philosophy” discussions over there remind me of freshman dorm room arguments; with pretentious attempts at “intellectualism” and grappling with material that nobody has yet learned despite their pretenses.
(I see those blackguards, Joe and Mung, have been let out of their cages and are hurling feces again.)
Meyer also has announced that Digital Information has been found in the genome! A great discovery? Well, if it were the first thousand digits of Pi, or a copyright notice from the Designer, yes. But he doesn’t explain himself (the audience to whom he proclaims this are impressed).
And actually all he means are that alternative bases coding for proteins, RNAs, and binding sites are found. And we knew that.
The insistence that OoL is pivotal is a transparent dodge. It is entirely logically possible that a Designer created the first self-replicating cell and then went off on his holidays, never to be seen again – evolution did everything else.
Evolutionists don’t, and can’t, seek to explain the origin of evolution. You cannot do economics without explaining the origin of economies? Or linguistics without explaining the origin of language? Or physics without explaining the origin of physics? Sure.