Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote | Now, again, I dropped by to commiserate a little because of the banning business at UD, which I think I have made pretty clear I dislike. I got jumped by Lenny with "Aha! Here's a creationist - so explain to me creationist, why they wrote what they did in the wedge document. I'll explain Lenny, when you personally account for the eugenics movement as it abuse Darwin's theory in the 1930s - 1950s in this country and Europe, OK?
I am going to make individual assignments to the people here.
1. Let me know why you disagree with Mike Gene's essay on the flagellum, and give some good arguments about how its assembly process evolved.
2. I want thoughtful critiques of separate chapters of Denton's book, Evolution in crisis.
3. Where did Berlinski go wrong in his assessment of the Nilsson-Pelger paper?
4. A full critique of Dembski's response to The Flagellum Unspun.
And I expect it all back by this evening, or I'll start questioning your motives, your character, and your sanity. |
Now THIS I like!
Ok then, I'll kick off with the easy one:
Eugenics. This falls foul of the "Is/Ought" fallacy (at least). Just because it is possible to envisage a scenario in which we could "improve" the human genome by weeding out "undesirables" doesn't we should do so. One should note the words "improve" and "undesirable" are in the case of eugenics carefully undefined, or at least defined in such a way to be consonant with preexisting prejudices. Even if they are rigourously defined then this still doesn't work. I can envisage a sceanrio in which pushing people out of windows is a good thing, this doesn't mean I should do so, nor does it reflect on the accuracy of gravitational physics at the time I have the idea!. Something being real does not equate to it being moral or a fortiori supportive of a moral action.
Ok so now what's left? Mike Gene, Dembski, Denton, and Berlinski. In one sentence: all arguments from personal incredulity wrapped up in the trappings of actual work. All logically fallacious, standard, creationist boilerplate in nice new shiny packages and as such ignorable. If you want the more detailed critique, you'll have to wait beyond this evening. Question my everything to your heart's content, after all I'm not the one who thinks that handwaving by self-confessedly biased individuals promoting a religious agenda (for the most part) constitutes a) positive evidence for anything, or b) a decent reason to abandon all science and replace it with the religious book of choice. Sorry if YOU don't like that.
Oh and btw, nobody has asked you to defend all of IDC at all times anywhere, well maybe Lenny has! What most people have asked you for is YOUR understanding of ID inorder to have a conversation. I know that being asked questions is horribly hostile to the near terminally insecure but if you could try to realise that the "hostility" you "experience" (for I question the validity of both those terms) is due precisely to frustration at your evasiveness, vacuity, and general assumption that the whole world is against you, I for one would be overwhelmingly grateful.
Louis
P.S. Oh and btw give me just one good reason that anyone should take the comments of Dembski et all seriously when the entirety of working scientists in the relevant fields of science to those comments don't take them at all seriosuly and have openly refuted them? Could it be that a) the evidence is not evenly distrubuted, and b) the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the IDCists, not the other way around?
Louis
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Bye.
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