It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually.
Here's why:
1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well. The most vocal non-scientist proponents of ID are those delightfully fertile Catholics, Evangelicals, and similarly right-leaning middle-class college-educated folk -- the kind whose children will inherit the country. Eventually, the social right will have the sheer manpower to teach ID wherever they please.
Despite what angry ID opponents may tell you, the advent of ID won't hurt American productivity a bit. Belief in ID does nothing to make believers less capable in science or engineering. No geek in the world will find his computer mojo diminished because of his opinions on irreducible complexity. To the contrary: ID might make biology and the natural sciences more appealing to believers who might otherwise find science to be too far removed from God's presence. As ID appeals to the conservative mindset without hurting anyone's skills, why wouldn't the social right embrace it?
To be sure, believers don't need ID to accept modern science. The Catholic Church, for example, made peace with traditional Darwinist theory long ago. Many scientists see no contradiction between Darwinism and their own religious beliefs. Rightly understood, Darwinist theory doesn't diminish God's glory any more than any other set of rules governing the world. An omnipotent God can act through scientific media as well as miraculous interventions.
But if ID is correct, then the intelligent designer of life must have lavished astonishing care and attention upon the human race to give it unique dignity and value -- as well as handicaps and temptations that only virtue can overcome. The God of Moses and Jesus didn't leave fingerprints at this scene, but it's His MO all the way. And as believers are detectives of the Almighty's presence, they're naturally more inclined to follow the clues revealing that familiar pattern.
2) ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.
"Ewww…intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads."
There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90% of the responses to the ID position. Vitriol, condescension, and endless accusations of bad faith all characterize far too much of the standard pro-Darwinian response to criticism. A reasonable observer might note that many ID advocates appear exceptionally well-educated, reasonable, and articulate; they might also note that ID advocates have pointed out many problems with the Darwinist catechism that even pro-Darwin scientists have been known to concede, when they think the Jesus-kissing crowd isn't listening. And yet, even in the face of a sober, thoughtful ID position, the pro-Darwin crowd insists on the same phooey-to-the-boobgeois shtick that was tiresome in Mencken's day. This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults. Pride goeth before a fall.
3) ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.
So you've discovered the missing link? Proven that viruses distribute super-complex DNA proteins? Shown that fractals can produce evolution-friendly three-dimensional shapes? It doesn't matter. To the ID mind, you're just pushing the question further down the road. How was the missing link designed? What is the origin of the viruses? Who designed the fractals? ID has already made its peace with natural selection and the irrefutable aspects of Darwinism. By contrast, Darwinism cannot accept even the slightest possibility that it has failed to explain any significant dimension of evolution. It must dogmatically insist that it will resolve all of its ambiguities and shortcomings -- even the ones that have lingered since the beginning of Darwinism. The entire edifice of Darwinian theory comes crashing down with even a single credible demonstration of design in any living thing. Can science really plug a finger into every hole in the Darwinian dyke for the next fifty years?
4) ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.
ID is a proposition about information. It contends that the processes of life are so specific and carefully ordered that they must reflect deliberate action. Put simply: a complex message implies an even more complex sender. Separating ordered but random data from relevant, purposeful data -- that is, separating noise from messages -- is one of the key undertakings of the 21st century. In nearly every field, from statistics to quantum physics to cryptology to computer science, the smartest people on the planet are struggling to understand and apply the unfathomable power of information that modern technology has bequeathed to them. We have only scratched the surface of the problem-solving power that the Internet and cheap computing power open to us. As superior intellects strive to understand the metaphysics of information, they will find the information-oriented arguments of ID increasingly sensible and appealing. ID will fit nicely into the emerging worldview of tomorrow's intellectual elite.
This emerging worldview will take a more expansive view of science than does the current elite. Consider the "meme" meme. We all know what a meme is: a thought pattern that spreads from person to person and group to group like a viral infection spreading through a population. Yet memes cannot be bisected, or examined under a microscope, or "falsified" via the scientific method. Even so, we can make statements about memes with varying degrees of objective truthfulness. Is it possible to speak of a "science" of concepts? Right now, the scientific establishment says no. This unhelpful understanding of science will soon be discarded in favor of something more useful in the information age.
5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.
The human mind seeks order in everything. The entire body of knowledge available to mankind reflects our incorrigible desire to analyze, systemize, hypothesize, and theorize. It may well be that our brains are physically configured in such a way that we can't help but find order and design in the world. Don't look so surprised, evolutionists -- a brain attuned to order and design is a brain more likely to survive. The ability to detect design is essentially the ability to detect patterns, and the ability to detect patterns is the key to most applications of human intelligence. Hammers tend to find nails, screwdrivers tend to find screws, and the human mind tends to find design. Of course, the propensity to see designs doesn't mean that the designs aren't actually there. But the quintessential human perception is one of design -- and, to the extent that perceptions define reality, a theory built on the perception of design has a huge advantage over its competitors.
The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end. Rightly or wrongly, the future belongs to ID. There's nothing irreducibly complex about it.
Your right about the "pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers." But your understanding of the term science seems at bit out.
Science has always been about the best guess or best theory at a given point in time. Time will possible never find an answer to the beginning of everything, But if we are born of ID, then religion would have to be a God awful blight on our report card.
I must respectfully disagree with my TCS colleague Douglas Kern as he argues for " Why Intelligent Design is Going to Win." Kern lays out a five-point thesis in which he predicts ID's imminent victory. But his points fail to make the case. Allow me to take each in turn.
Point One says:
ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.
He goes on to argue that since religious types breed more babies, they'll pass along the ID memes with their red-state genes. But this misunderstands both memetics and human beings. I will grant that ID may be here to stay. But just because more people believe it don't make it so. (Read: fallacy ad populum) An ID meme won't mean the death of Darwinism anymore than the 95 theses killed Catholicism. Both of the latter have co-existed for 500 years -- occasional bloody wars notwithstanding. Likewise, religious folks will probably still cling to some variant of ID, and non-religious folks will still not be prepared to insert giant articles of faith where inquiry has presented a puzzle. And while Kern wants to believe that design would give us "unique dignity and value" as human beings, well, much like a night of bliss with Salma Hayek -- wanting it don't make it so.
Point Two:
ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.
I agree that there is more than a little priggery among Darwinists. But even an intelligent man like Douglas Kern must admit the sheer number of troglodytic bible-thumpers in the Creationist ranks -- a number that does little to quell Darwinist condescension. In any case, to say that Darwinists are condescending is not to argue against their position. Kern of all people should know that he cannot criticize Darwinists for employing ad hominem arguments only to turn around and commit the very same fallacy.
Point Three:
ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.
Of course ID can be reconciled with any advance in biology. Faith can be reconciled with anything. It's the ultimate loophole. Imagine a contract that said "Party A reserves the right to void the contract at any time." What would be the point of the contract for Party B? Similarly, ID says basically "if you can't explain something, dress up the good ole Cosmological Argument from philosophy 101 and stick it in where necessary." This is known as the "God of the Gaps" fallacy, which says if you can't explain it, it's God. Again, faith in God is not an explanatory premise, but simply faith. Of course, we can go back and have the theism vs. atheism debate, but that won't get you in the papers.
Kern goes on to ask:
So you've discovered the missing link? Proven that viruses distribute super-complex DNA proteins? Shown that fractals can produce evolution-friendly three-dimensional shapes? It doesn't matter. To the ID mind, you're just pushing the question further down the road. How was the missing link designed? What is the origin of the viruses? Who designed the fractals?
First, I'm surprised that someone who knows about fractals isn't familiar with complexity theory. Specifically the phenomenon of "autocatalysis" answers Kern's ultimate question. Once the basic elements of the universe had laws of behavior and orientation (the latter known as chirality), the complex constituents for life emerged on their own. I recommend anyone not familiar with the concept of self-organization to read Stuart Kaufmann or download this multi-agent game from MIT, as once you've gotten your head around self-organizing systems, the very idea of "evidence of design" becomes more than suspicious. Of course, Kern might retort: someone had to establish the laws of nature.
That's why Kern's argument in point Three is also one of infinite regress. For example, to answer "who designed the fractal?," I could say "Mandelbrot." Kern could say "who designed Mandelbrot?" I'd say "he evolved from a primate" … and so on until we're back to the singularity. Who designed the singularity? Enter the God of the Gaps. But the disappointing truth is we don't need the God of the Gaps. And if we don't need it, let's just slice it -- Ockham-style -- from our ontology. In other words, we can't let Kern get away with the same "Why Daddy?" game that children want to play ad nauseum. Eventually Daddy has to say "just because, sweetheart, just because."
Point Four:
ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.
Moreover, argues Kern, "ID is a proposition about information. It contends that the processes of life are so specific and carefully ordered that they must reflect deliberate action." I should mention how much Kern sounds like a Keynesian bureaucrat talking about the economy. We simply have to control the market, for if we don't, it will be chaotic. Ironic how many Intelligent Designers are walking around Capitol Hill right now, adding to the Federal Register, trying to control the price of gas, tweaking the rheostats as if the economy were a machine… I'm frankly surprised that anyone who writes for this publication would give these people ammunition. But I digress.
Kern continues: "Put simply: a complex message implies an even more complex sender." That's right. But such is only true because it is a thinly disguised tautology. In other words, there ain't no such thing as a message without a sender. It would be like saying "being a bachelor implies a condition of being male and unmarried." Uh huh. But tautologies aren't arguments. Especially since the blind watchmaker allows you to have life without a designer.
To be fair, there are variations of the "fine-tuning" argument for design that have some merit. But Kern does not really give a good account of them in his article.
Point Five:
ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.
On Kern's final point, I can only agree. Man will find design in life. Man will also find that the Necker Cube is facing upward. Man will find a smile in the grimace of a pretty girl. Man will find free money on his credit card. But just because man will find it doesn't mean it's there.
In conclusion, Kern's five-point thesis on the inevitable triumph of ID does not hold up under scrutiny. That is not to say that ID is likely to lose popularity. Nor is it to argue that ID doesn't deserve a hearing. It's merely to say that Darwinism is and will be the dominant paradigm for explaining life's origins. I imagine that variations of Creationism will be around as long as there are people who believe in God. My prediction, therefore, is that ID will linger, perhaps fade a little, and then return again in another form. I guess you could say Creationism is evolving. And it's going to have to if it is to compete against a superior competitor in such threatening intellectual terrain.
Max Borders is a writer in the Washington, DC area who has also argued that we have no free will.
Douglas Kern has written a peculiar essay on what he asserts is the inevitable success of Intelligent Design in the schools and in society generally. It is difficult to determine just what his personal attitude toward this development is; he seems a neutral observer in one paragraph, a partisan in another. His message is that we all ought just to close our eyes and think of England. He writes many things that are simply wrong, but a bullet-pointed list of corrections would serve little purpose. Instead, I should like to try to reestablish some truths that ought to govern the debate over ID but that have regularly been ignored or obscured or falsified.
Let's think for a moment about how we know things, and by "things" I mean practically or arguably true statements about how the world is made and how it works. There are three ways in which we come into possession of such knowledge: by investigation, by revelation, or by invention. (I omit being told by another, which ultimately traces back to one of the three.)
Investigation is the means by which infants learn that things tossed up fall down, by which teenagers discover lots of things we wish they hadn't, and by which careful observers and experimenters learn that matter is composed of atoms; atoms of electrons, protons, and usually neutrons; protons and neutrons of quarks of various sorts; and so on.
Revelation occurs when knowledge is imparted directly to an individual by some supernatural power. History records many claims of such occurrences. The fact that revelation happens to individuals, not to groups or to the whole world at once, is unexplained and unfortunate. Those individuals are often then charged with distributing the knowledge thus received, and they are left to deal as best they may with others' suspicions about its source.
Invention is the method whereby we assert that thunder is produced by an angry god, or by celestial bowling balls, or by clouds bumping together. Invention may yield anything from transparently silly just-so stories to timeless poetry. In any case, it seldom yields anything in the way of useful results.
The investigational method that has come to be known as science is by far the most successful method ever devised for yielding, in the first place, practical results, in the sense of control over matter and energy for human purposes, and, in the second, consistent descriptions of what is going on in nature.
Science begins with the foundational assumption that all material phenomena have material explanations. Science does not assert this to be true, though some individual scientists may do so. This point is worth making more pointedly: There is no necessary association between science and atheism, for science takes no position on matters supernatural. (It is a pity that one source of the confusion of the two is a prominent evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, an acerbic atheist whose chair at Oxford is dedicated to, of all things, the "public understanding of science." You're not helping here, Dick.) A commitment to materialism is simply the necessary axiom upon which to build a structure of demonstrable knowledge about the natural world. What this means is that when a scientist's first attempt to explain the origin of thunder fails, he does not shrug and declare "OK, it's Thor." Instead, he looks for another material explanation. He keeps this up until he finds one that is consistent with what is already known and has predictive power that encompasses other phenomena. His tested and verified hypothesis then becomes part of the body of scientific knowledge, but -- and this is an absolutely vital point -- it remains, as all human knowledge must, provisional. The best grounded and most rigorously tested of our theories remain provisional, open to challenge on account of new observations or failures to predict. A theory thus challenged may be discarded or it may only need to be modified, but it is the essence of the method that it respond to the challenge.
It is possible that there are things in the natural world that are beyond the ability of the human mind, using the scientific method, to explain, but there is as yet no evidence of these, and there are very few, if any, scientists who are ready to give up the chase. The accelerating accumulation of scientific knowledge over the centuries argues that they are right to be optimistic.
The theory of evolution, or Darwinism for those who prefer their ideas personalized, is a product of the scientific method: observation, hypothesis, experiment, confirmation. Evolutionary biology in the 21st century is a vast body of knowledge that would astound its eponym, whose crucial insights into variation and selection have held up through the discovery of genes and DNA and mutation and all the rest. But it is not equivalent to science. If the theory were to fall, it would not mean the end of science. It would mean that science had found a yet more fruitful theory, one that explains even more and makes testable predictions that Darwin's theory, as modified by the work of thousands of scientists who came after, could not.
There has never been in human history a more powerful theory -- embraced and celebrated not just by scientists but by artists, poets, architects, philosophers -- than Newtonian mechanics. Yet it fell, early in the 20th century, because scientists observed phenomena that it could not explain and went on to devise a new theory that could. That theory is known to be incomplete, like evolutionary theory, and in both realms the search goes on for still more potent ideas.
It is legitimate to ask, then, why evolutionary biologists, and the rest of us as well, ought suddenly to abandon what has worked so well for so long, and brought us so far. Proponents of ID offer no answer to this question. They simply tell us that we've gone as far as we can, that some things are irreducibly this and impossibly that. "Show me," say my Missouri forebears, but they don't. The source of this private knowledge of theirs must then be either revelation, which they hasten to deny, or invention. It would appear that they're making it up.
The ID party pretend that a commitment to the scientific method is just another blind ideology. They pretend to be the victims of a scientific establishment that cannot brook contradiction. This merely shows either that they do not understand science, which lives by informed criticism, or that knowledge is not, in fact, what they are about.
After several readings I honestly could not decide whether the tone of Mr. Kern's article is the triumphalism of a partisan who believes that his side is justly winning or the enthusiasm of the late convert in the service of a new master. Perhaps it was neither of these. I do know that he confuses the product, a theory, with the method, science; that he confuses pattern with design; that he doesn't understand randomness; that he idly invokes a "metaphysics of information"; that he believes, on no evidence, in "memes"; and that he thinks that allowing appeals to the supernatural will have no ill effects on the practice of science and that adulterating their science classes will not cripple the education of our youth.
But let me clear about one thing. I am aware of no evidence that he is a poopy-head.
Robert McHenry is Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopćdia Britannica, and author of How to Know (Booklocker.com, 2004).
It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually.
The right-wingers are running amuck at the present. ID may be a powerful creation myth, and the right-wingers may be successful in supplanting myth over science as the primary belief system in the United States, but ID can never supplant evolutionary theory as a scientific explanation for the simple reason that it is not science.
1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.
If the right wingers remain in power, there will not be a United states in fifty to one hundred years. Life on earth as we know it will end due to environmental disasters caused by the most powerful nation on earth being lead by religious zealots who have no clue of their relationship with nature.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well. The most vocal non-scientist proponents of ID are those delightfully fertile Catholics, Evangelicals, and similarly right-leaning middle-class college-educated folk -- the kind whose children will inherit the country. Eventually, the social right will have the sheer manpower to teach ID wherever they please.
If this model prevails, the population will inevitably crash. But I think in the long run, more enlightened ideas will prevail as people see that only science that will protect them from pandemics and other disasters brought about by our poor stewardship of the earth, not Jesus.
Despite what angry ID opponents may tell you, the advent of ID won't hurt American productivity a bit. Belief in ID does nothing to make believers less capable in science or engineering. No geek in the world will find his computer mojo diminished because of his opinions on irreducible complexity. To the contrary: ID might make biology and the natural sciences more appealing to believers who might otherwise find science to be too far removed from God's presence. As ID appeals to the conservative mindset without hurting anyone's skills, why wouldn't the social right embrace it?
There is more to survival than maintaining productivity rates. Skills may not be affected, but judgement is clearly impared.
To be sure, believers don't need ID to accept modern science. The Catholic Church, for example, made peace with traditional Darwinist theory long ago. Many scientists see no contradiction between Darwinism and their own religious beliefs. Rightly understood, Darwinist theory doesn't diminish God's glory any more than any other set of rules governing the world. An omnipotent God can act through scientific media as well as miraculous interventions.
Of course the inverse is also true, believers of ID cannot accept modern science, and scientific thinkers cannot accept many tennants of the church.
But if ID is correct, then the intelligent designer of life must have lavished astonishing care and attention upon the human race to give it unique dignity and value -- as well as handicaps and temptations that only virtue can overcome. The God of Moses and Jesus didn't leave fingerprints at this scene, but it's His MO all the way. And as believers are detectives of the Almighty's presence, they're naturally more inclined to follow the clues revealing that familiar pattern.
"Ewww…intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads."
The real arguement against ID is evolutionary science. ID hasn't been able to disprove a shred of it. In fact all it can do is make it stronger.
There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90% of the responses to the ID position. Vitriol, condescension, and endless accusations of bad faith all characterize far too much of the standard pro-Darwinian response to criticism. A reasonable observer might note that many ID advocates appear exceptionally well-educated, reasonable, and articulate; they might also note that ID advocates have pointed out many problems with the Darwinist catechism that even pro-Darwin scientists have been known to concede, when they think the Jesus-kissing crowd isn't listening. And yet, even in the face of a sober, thoughtful ID position, the pro-Darwin crowd insists on the same phooey-to-the-boobgeois shtick that was tiresome in Mencken's day. This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults. Pride goeth before a fall.
This is simply attacking the proponents of science, because ID cannot stand up as an arguement.
So you've discovered the missing link? Proven that viruses distribute super-complex DNA proteins? Shown that fractals can produce evolution-friendly three-dimensional shapes? It doesn't matter. To the ID mind, you're just pushing the question further down the road. How was the missing link designed? What is the origin of the viruses? Who designed the fractals? ID has already made its peace with natural selection and the irrefutable aspects of Darwinism. By contrast, Darwinism cannot accept even the slightest possibility that it has failed to explain any significant dimension of evolution. It must dogmatically insist that it will resolve all of its ambiguities and shortcomings -- even the ones that have lingered since the beginning of Darwinism. The entire edifice of Darwinian theory comes crashing down with even a single credible demonstration of design in any living thing. Can science really plug a finger into every hole in the Darwinian dyke for the next fifty years?
ID is a proposition about information. It contends that the processes of life are so specific and carefully ordered that they must reflect deliberate action. Put simply: a complex message implies an even more complex sender. Separating ordered but random data from relevant, purposeful data -- that is, separating noise from messages -- is one of the key undertakings of the 21st century. In nearly every field, from statistics to quantum physics to cryptology to computer science, the smartest people on the planet are struggling to understand and apply the unfathomable power of information that modern technology has bequeathed to them. We have only scratched the surface of the problem-solving power that the Internet and cheap computing power open to us. As superior intellects strive to understand the metaphysics of information, they will find the information-oriented arguments of ID increasingly sensible and appealing. ID will fit nicely into the emerging worldview of tomorrow's intellectual elite.
Again, more wishful thinking. ID is a propositing about reducing information into a bible story that keeps workers in their place and the establishment in power.
This emerging worldview will take a more expansive view of science than does the current elite. Consider the "meme" meme. We all know what a meme is: a thought pattern that spreads from person to person and group to group like a viral infection spreading through a population. Yet memes cannot be bisected, or examined under a microscope, or "falsified" via the scientific method. Even so, we can make statements about memes with varying degrees of objective truthfulness. Is it possible to speak of a "science" of concepts? Right now, the scientific establishment says no. This unhelpful understanding of science will soon be discarded in favor of something more useful in the information age.
5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.
The human mind seeks order in everything. The entire body of knowledge available to mankind reflects our incorrigible desire to analyze, systemize, hypothesize, and theorize. It may well be that our brains are physically configured in such a way that we can't help but find order and design in the world. Don't look so surprised, evolutionists -- a brain attuned to order and design is a brain more likely to survive. The ability to detect design is essentially the ability to detect patterns, and the ability to detect patterns is the key to most applications of human intelligence. Hammers tend to find nails, screwdrivers tend to find screws, and the human mind tends to find design. Of course, the propensity to see designs doesn't mean that the designs aren't actually there. But the quintessential human perception is one of design -- and, to the extent that perceptions define reality, a theory built on the perception of design has a huge advantage over its competitors.
The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end. Rightly or wrongly, the future belongs to ID. There's nothing irreducibly complex about it.
You can dress it up as much as you like, but ID is nothing more than Christian biblical fundamentalism wearing a scientist's white lab in a pathetic attempt to appear credible.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #5 on: 2005-10-27 00:17:17 »
Salamantis (aka Joe Dees) proves himself yet again to be an ideal neo-con vector. There is nothing new about Intelligent Design theory. It is one of the most hackneyed argments in the creationist's playbook. To lay it out here like it is some new shiney paradigm is to play right into the neocon ad campaign (something that Joe likes to do on cue). The only thing I have discerned out of ID, aren't new ideas, but rather the simple absence of some of the least credible arguments -- 6000 year old universe, and other crazy literalisms. So instead of saying "See how stupid we were", they put some new wrapping on it and claim it is something else. A few new words are coined and some new bad examples used for the same already-discredited arguments. I have yet to meet ANYBODY who was won over by the new advertising campaign. The people embracing it were already on the creationist bandwagon as far as I can tell and often admit on questioning that they still believe the crazy literalisms despite the instructions of their neocon/GOP masters. The only new thing is the political rise to power of neocons and their delusional belief that they can fundamentally change reality with expensive public relations campaigns and political spin. The party is already more than half over for the neocons anyway, and when its thankfully finished there will be nothing left of ID other than just another chapter in the history of creationist delusion. I'm frankly surprised that it gets as much discussion here as it has, though I suppose somebody has to tell the youngsters and remind those of short memory that the NeoCon job is really the same-old-con job.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #6 on: 2005-10-27 00:34:02 »
>> 2) ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.
"Ewww…intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads."
There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90% of the responses to the ID position.<<
LoL! He could of have saved us even more trouble by not bothering to give us a lengthy treatise on how old ideas are really new ideas. He could have shortened it considerably by just saying "Intelligent Design will win because I believe the neocons will stay in power for a hundred years". We can shorten it even further by simply saying "Might makes right". What a waste.
« Last Edit: 2005-10-27 00:46:43 by Jake Sapiens »
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #7 on: 2005-10-27 01:18:48 »
>>I've said it before and I'll say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well. The most vocal non-scientist proponents of ID are those delightfully fertile Catholics, Evangelicals, and similarly right-leaning middle-class college-educated folk -- the kind whose children will inherit the country. Eventually, the social right will have the sheer manpower to teach ID wherever they please.<<
This has always been the case for creationists ever since the "Origin of Species" in 1859, and yet evolution persists. Obviously he seems to be missing the difference between genetics and memetics.
And again I point out that all of the "Intelligent Design" proponents I meet seem to be ignoring the neocon memos from on high that they cease believing in crazy biblical literalisms. I live in Texas, one of the "reddest" states in the union, and my creationist acquaintences don't seem to be discarding their faith in the literal truth of the Bible even as they mouth the words "intelligent design". As for the Catholics, they still don't believe me when I inform them that John Paul II accepted common decent and a billions of year old universe. Obviously the footsoldiers who are supposed to be winning for Intelligent Design aren't getting their orders correct, and persist in framing things the same old way instead of the shiny new way.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #8 on: 2005-10-27 01:53:30 »
>>Despite what angry ID opponents may tell you, the advent of ID won't hurt American productivity a bit. Belief in ID does nothing to make believers less capable in science or engineering. No geek in the world will find his computer mojo diminished because of his opinions on irreducible complexity. To the contrary: ID might make biology and the natural sciences more appealing to believers who might otherwise find science to be too far removed from God's presence. As ID appeals to the conservative mindset without hurting anyone's skills, why wouldn't the social right embrace it?<<
If you read Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" and share his belief in irreducible complexity, then you won't see the point in understanding actual complexity theory and research. And if you understand complexity theory and research (for example Stuart Kauffman's work outlined in "The Origins of Order") then you would realize that complexity is "irreducible" when Michael Behe doesn't understand it even as he numbs the reader's mind in voluminous biochemical jargon and details. So yes, collectively there can and probably will be real negative consequences for widely held irrational beliefs. If you put Michael Behe in charge of funding research in the US, he simply won't see the point and Americans lose out to other global competitors who will.
There can also be consequences in business and employment. IRL I find that I generally don't tell people when I think they are an idiot unless I deem it necessary, but I can and do make economic decisions based on that. I'm sure that happens on a global level as well, and most developed countries are much less religious than the US. So if you are looking for business or employment in another developed country, you might want to keep your beliefs in "Intelligent Design Theory" to yourself. Its one thing to have a few irrational beliefs, perhaps we all do to some degree or another, but its another thing to advertise how serious you are about them. Unless you are the pope, or a minister, or some other full-time religioso, I'm guessing talking about Intelligent Design Theory still translates into "creationist nut" in other developed countries where right wing wackos don't control the media and politics.
« Last Edit: 2005-10-27 03:02:25 by Jake Sapiens »
Dearest Jake: Let me make it perfectly clear (to paraphrase Nixon); I, fully agreeing with you, consider 'intelligent design' to be a pseudoscientific rehashing of the long-discredited bullshit doctrine (not theory) of creationism (remember, Jake, that I authored what is still considered by many to be the most popular logical refutation of the possibility of the existence of a deity that is extant on the CoV - I certainly would not be advocating a position of intellighent design when I cannot logically see how an intelligent designer can exist). I also consider ID's spread to be a social calamity that could eventually remove US students from the mid-to-upper echelon ranks of primary and secondary education. It would well behoove us to know what we are facing, so we can better counter it; in that spirit, I posted the articles - not because I agree with ID proponents on any claims to validity that they contend the doctrine holds, but because we need to understand exactly what kind of rough beast appears to be slouching down the pike so we can better prepare ourselves to stem and, hopefully, reverse its seemingly inexorable advance. Actually, what I am trying to do here (and what I have been endeavoring to do with the Islamofascist memeplex) is succinctly encapsulated in another post of mine, The Gator Fate, an excerpt of which was posted in Best of Virus (by someone other than myself). I will also reproduce it below. I still consider it surpassingly strange that neither this list nor the memetics list was willing to undertake such an analysis, but, after much thought, ascribed the reluctance of the memetics list to a justifiable fear which the British moderator might feel for his position and personal safety, and the reluctance here to an us-them complex among Bush, Republican (I am a registered Democrat), and/or United States haters on this list, leading them to, taking the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend parable to heart, look more kindly upon Islamofascists than they do fundy Xtians, regardless of the relative fundamentalist literalism, religious intolerance, fanatical zealotry and murder-for-faith coefficients presently obtaining between them, and be unwilling to subject both memesets to equally probing scrutiny. It almost appears to be some sort of a misshapen Frankensteinian fusing of sacred-cowism (a holy untopuchableness applied to anything, however heinous, that opposes that which they despise) and Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy.
So, go curse a few US servicepeople for freeing 50 million people at the cost of 2000+ of their brethren's lives, if that'll make you feel better and more self-righteously virtuous, but don't allow your malignant anti-Iraqi-liberation bile, and your overweening desire to demonize anyone who is not an ideological clone of yours on the subject, to overgeneralize itself into the primitive assumption that ifn yer fer it, I'm agin' it - or verse-vice-a. That's just not the sapient way.
BTW: here are the posts to which I referred. First the existence-of-deity-logical-refutation post:
"The classical attributes of a deity are singularity ("there can only be one") omnicience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence ('(S)He's everywhere!"), omnibeneficence (all-good), and omnisoothience (all-true). One can immediately see that the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence cannot simultaneously inhere in a single universe. If a deity were omniscient (knew everything), then it would know the future and thus be powerless to change it, but if it were omnipotent (all-powerful), then it could change the future, and therefore could not know it for certain. It's like the simultaneous impossibility of an irresistable force and an immoveable object; if one of these two deific properties exists (and they are considered to be the most important two),then the other logically cannot. Furthermore, If deity were everywhere, it could perceive nothing, for perception requires a point of view, that is, a spatiotemporal perspective other than that of the perceived object from which to perceive that object. Deity being omnipresent (everywhere), there is nowhere that deity would not be, thus nothing it could perceive. It gets even worse. Deity must be perfect; in fact, perfection is what is broken down into all those 'omni' subcategories. thus, a perfect deity could not even think. Thought is dynamic, that is, to think, one's thought must move between conceptions. Now, thought could conceiveably move in three directions; from perfect to imperfect, from imperfect to perfect, and from imperfect to imperfect (from perfect to perfect is not an alternative, perfection being singular and movement requiring distinguishable prior and posterior). But all of the three possible alternatives contain either prior or posterior imperfection or both, which are not allowably entertained in the mind of a perfect deity.
There's much, much more that I could add, but this should more than suffice to demonstrate that asserting the existence of a deity possessing the attributes that most consider essential to it deserving the deific appelation mires one in a miasmic quagmire of irretrieveable contradiction, once one journeys beyond emotion-driven faith and uses one's noggin to divine (Luvzda pun!) the nonsensical and absurd consequences necessarily entailed."
[Joe] Remember it, Jake? As far as I am concerned, it still applies. I have yet to see a refutation of it. And now, an excerpt of The Gator Fate (which, for the newbies here, was actually written to a person who signed onto the list and tried to proselytize all and sundry into some sort of cultic UFO garbage, but which, at the time, became something of a CoV manifesto; practically everyone here seemed to agree that it should serve as a model for the dispassionate penetration we should universally apply to ALL belief systems, without fear or favor):
"Your professed beliefs will be poked and probed, and our various responses duly noted, collated and ompiled; in short, you will become a specimen.
We collect belief systems here, as objects of academic interest. The relatively strange and rare, due to their novelty, hold a special interest for us.
Your deepest, most closely held and most dearly cherished beliefs and faiths will be exposed to the klieg lights of logic and scientific knowledge (and we stay current on both fronts), and you will be categorized and pinned to a wall seven ways from sunday like some unusual insect that had the terminal misfortune to stray before the gaze of an avid lepidopterist.
The experience will ossify and ultimately fossilize you, because we will keep meticulous track of everything you and your website say, and will be perpetually vigilant for logical contradictions, empirical absurdities and factual errors. You will become an object here; an object of a superficially provocative (for the sake of interesting responses), but essentially detached, dispassionate, comprehensive and thorough group study, which will spare your sensibilities and feelings not one whit.
You will meet sympathetic, antipathetic, and inscrutable interlocuters, all of which are specifically self-tailored to provoke the fullest range of responses of which you are capable, for the purpose of plumbing your belief-structure to the point that it becomes completely transparent to us, and can be pigeonholed and placed.
Then when the apple of your faith is cored, when you have nothing new or different or interesting to say about what you believe, nothing we have not heard in some form before, you will be marginalized and discarded, will receive no responses to your entreaties, and will eventually wither and drop away."
[Joe] I direly miss the days when we all could collaboratively do that here, in comity and cooperation, without regard to which memeplexes we chose to be the objects of our scrutiny.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #10 on: 2005-10-27 04:33:48 »
[Blunderov] It seems debatable that humouring ID in the interests of promoting scientific enquiry amongst the superstitious would be a harmless concession. IMO it would be downright contradictory and its fruit would be a generation of soothsayers-with-calculators.
ID is the old cosmological argument newly come to town as a sharp-dressed man. If ANY 'irreducibly complex' system must have been designed, then so too must the cosmos. Whatever its merits or lack thereof, this ancient argument has nothing to do with science. It is a philosophical question.
(Interesting though is the tell-tale tang of relativism that hangs in the air like cordite.)
Will ID win though? Very likely. Horoscopes are still published in most newspapers.
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #11 on: 2005-10-27 11:59:23 »
Salamantis, at first glance, I too thought your post was in support of ID. After further reading, I concluded otherwise.
As far as ID winning, it has already won. It's proponents are in control of the White House and both houses of congress. However, their reign will come to an end. Not in 50 or a 100 years, but in the next 10 or sooner. You can see chinks in their armor growing daily. Their once unified message is fragmenting. Their arguements cannot stand up to the light of day. And the main reason they will fail to prevail against science is us. All the enlightened who understand the reality of evolution will continue to spread our message. Our message is grounded in reality while theres is based on fantasy. Not knowing the difference between truth and fiction, they are confused about right and wrong. They will continue to be indicted for criminal behavior because they are incapable of rational decisions. They have built a modern tower of babel which is incapable of supporting the weight of its own dogma.
I still consider it surpassingly strange that neither this list nor the memetics list was willing to undertake such an analysis, but, after much thought, ascribed the reluctance of the memetics list to a justifiable fear which the British moderator might feel for his position and personal safety, and the reluctance here to an us-them complex among Bush, Republican (I am a registered Democrat), and/or United States haters on this list, leading them to, taking the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend parable to heart, look more kindly upon Islamofascists than they do fundy Xtians, regardless of the relative fundamentalist literalism, religious intolerance, fanatical zealotry and murder-for-faith coefficients presently obtaining between them, and be unwilling to subject both memesets to equally probing scrutiny.
Salamantis Joe implies that "Islamofascism" has received a sympathetic treatment on this list but I don't recall anything of the sort. Can anyone point to anything in the archives to support this accusation?
Re:Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
« Reply #13 on: 2005-10-31 14:13:39 »
Just another of Joe's many paranoid accusations. Just for the record, since Joe often sees me as part of his nebulous enemy "them" I view the Bush administration as part of the problem along with Islamofascist terrorists. Indeed each relies on the other for their power, however the Islamofascists seem to currently have the better side of the equation. By any objective measure of successful incidents of terror worldwide we are getting our asses kicked. I'm sure anecdotal evidence will seem great, well framed, and persuasive, but that bottom line number is the most objective and hence the begining point of all conversations for reasonable people. Hugs and kisses -Jake
« Last Edit: 2005-10-31 18:00:45 by Jake Sapiens »
I can point to what's NOT on the list - any collaborational attempt to analyze this phenomenon, even though the analysis of fallacious memeplexes is one of the main things we're supposed to be doing here. Any casual perusal of the list will reveal voluminous writings concerning Christianity, comprised in equal part of refutational analysis and derogational, ridiculing invective (not that there's anything wrong with that...). However, except for my contributions, and a few by brave souls such as Jonathan Davis and the now-missing Bill Roh, nothing equivalent exists concerning Islamofascism (and the word does not deserve Lucifer's scare quotes, as the ideology is indeed bent upon world conquest, insists upon controlling every aspect of its members' lives, and is committed to killing, converting or enslaving all nonmembers - horses' mouth references upon request). In fact, those who have attempted to prompt such an analysis, myself chief among them, have been brutally and shamelessly attacked (I say shamelessly, because many of these attacks have been personal, and had nothing to do with the issue in contention) by many on this list. This goes beyond simply a simple dereliction of an avowed major list purpose; it is, in fact, an actual abandonment, rejection and repudiation of it.
The question is returned: if there is no VALID reason why such an analysis should not be undertaken by this list (and I cannot conceive of one - can anyone here?), and a solid and substantial list-purpose reason why it should indeed be undertaken, then why has it not happened here in the last four years, despite all my urging? I have to conclude that it is due to the anti-US - and specifically, anti-Bush - stance of a solid majority of the list members. To refuse to analyse a malevolent memetic phenomenon when that is an avowed list purpose is to engage in a sacred-cowist sympathy via omission, probably due to the antipathy that many here harbor against what many here probably consider to be theirs and islamofascism's common enemy - the US in general and the Bush presidency (whose domestic social polices I also abhor, but I, unlike many here, refuse to overgeneralize this abhorrence into antipathy for everything attempted or achieved by the current US administration since and in response to 9/11 ) in particular. If Islamofascism is anti-US and anti-Bush, and they are, too, they simply refrain from engaging in any analysis or critique of their default ideological ally, and instead attack those few who dare attempt to analyze and criticize that 'ally by default'.
The only possible way to counterfactually refute me on this is for this list to actually engage in such a collaborational memetic analysis and critique of the Al Qaedan Wahhab-Qutb memeplex- and I personally think it'll be a cold day in Hades before that happens.
Go ahead. Make my day. Prove me wrong. Officially initiate such a study.
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