PennyBright
Posts: 78
Joined: May 2006
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| Quote (stevestory @ June 19 2007,15:10) | | Quote (Arden Chatfield @ June 19 2007,15:10) | | Something tells me that for every credulous Christianist who looks at Bill's site and says to himself "Golly! I want to support this man, because he's a good Christian!" there are about twenty others who take a good long look and say "ID can't do better than THIS? Shit, these guys are a bunch of losers!" |
I wonder what the percentage of this is. People familiar with science from the inside can see that ID is BS in about 2 seconds. I wonder how it looks from the outside. How many people are fooled. |
From the outside, I'm afraid it looks fairly convincing. I have no background in the sciences, and am largely self educated - an education thus focused on my interests and quite deficient in all other respects, such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, and so forth.
It quite un-nerves me at times to look at sources like UD and Behe's writings, and to realize that I cannot tell if this is valid science or not. It certainly sounds valid - the authoritative tone I recall from school science texts mixed with doses of jargon, diagrams and maths which I don't really understand.
In short, it sounds like what I recall the 'real science' I was taught in school being like. I can only imagine how many people - already biased in favour of a creationist solution by their faiths - are perfectly willing to accept such sources as 'real science' from precisely such memories. And I am quite certain that writers on ID are perfectly aware of how to write to this effect.
In all honesty, when I first came to this debate (through the EvC chatroom on MSN, years ago) the only real reason I advocated for evolution rather then creationism is that my grandfather once went on at voluble length to me about how bad creation-science was. I trusted and respected my grandfather, and what dilettantish interest I have in the sciences is due directly to his influence.
I think probably there are many other intelligent yet poorly educated people out there who have come down on the side of creationism in its various forms for precisely that reason -- that a person whom they hold to be trustworthy and respectable told them it was the right thing. And who - like myself -- largely limit themselves to communities and studies that support their pre-existing beliefs because they see no need to try to really understand that nonsense they know is wrong.
If you would care to take a moment to turn down the irony meters....
I often look at the helpless sincerity of people such as FtK, and find my self thinking "There but for the grace of God, go I."
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Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. - Shakespeare (reputedly)
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