What is portrayed as the debate between religion and science feels increasingly like watching the very bitter dissolution of a doomed marriage. The relationship started out all roses and kisses, proceeded to doubts and regrets, then fights and silences, a mutually agreed separation, and finally to curses and maledictions: “I wish you were dead!”
In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss declared “the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.” Krauss’s essay was the latest eruption of a vituperative argument going on in the scientific community over “accommodationism.”
Accommodationists hold that even atheists should present science to the public as an intellectual activity compatible with religion. Critics of this position include those like University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne, who lashes out at the accommodationists because, as he wrote in an essay in The New Republic, “a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people’s religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims.”
On the accommodationist side, there are forlorn figures like science journalist Chris Mooney. In a new book, “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future” (Basic Books), Mooney chides popular blogger and University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers, an ebullient atheist, for publicly desecrating a Catholic communion wafer — an “incredibly destructive and unnecessary” act, Mooney complains, “exacerbating tension between the scientific community and many American Christians.”
Anti-accommodationists like bestselling atheist biologist Richard Dawkins, meanwhile, charge the accommodationists with hypocrisy. Says Dawkins in a recent documentary, “They are mostly atheists, but they are wanting to — desperately wanting to — be friendly to mainstream, sensible religious people. And the way you do that is to tell them that there’s no incompatibility between science and religion.” The debate seems to come down to whether religious people are potentially useful idiots, or simply idiots.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this. The origins of modern science, from about 1300 onward, were overwhelmingly religious. Isaac Newton regarded the universe “as a cryptogram set by the Almighty,” in John Maynard Keynes’s phrase. Scientists from Copernicus to Kepler, Boyle, Linnaeus, Faraday, Kelvin and Rutherford all sought to understand God through His creation. Because nature was the product of a mind acting freely, it made sense to them to try to understand that mind through its actions.
In his new book “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design” (HarperOne), my Discovery Institute colleague Stephen Meyer writes about his days as a Ph.D student at Cambridge University, contemplating the entrance to the great Cavendish Laboratory where Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA’s double helix. In 1871, Christian physicist James Clark Maxwell had instructed that the great door be ennobled by an inscription in Latin from the book of Psalms: “Great are the works of the Lord, sought out by all who take pleasure therein.”
On a crash course with this tradition, however, was the Enlightenment narrative, with its insistence that science is destined to push religion to the margins of intellectual life. A turning point came with the triumph of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, purposefully excluding God, over the evolutionary thinking of Darwin’s contemporaries, including such scientific allies as Charles Lyell, Asa Gray and Alfred Russel Wallace, who saw a role for divine creativity in life’s history. In another new book, “The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin” (Regnery), Benjamin Wiker tells this story well. With Darwin’s victory, envisioning a universe without design or purpose, God seemed on the way to being banished from scientific thought.
Over the ensuing century and a half, tension built as the logical consequences for religion became harder to deny. Yet a détente was generally upheld. In 1999, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould summed up its terms as a kind of truce under the acronym NOMA, or “Non-overlapping magisteria.”
In this view, science and religion occupy totally separate realms of inquiry. Science is about facts, about reality, while religion is about values. Religion should be respected if it makes no claim to describe anything real and agrees not to challenge any idea accepted by most scientists.
Yet even the terms of NOMA are now being withdrawn. Today in academia, a believer like Evangelical Christian genome scientist Francis Collins, or like Catholic biologist Kenneth Miller at Brown University, can count on being ridiculed by the anti-accommodationists. In academia, where reputation is everything, you would not want to be an ambitious young scientist in their mold.
This is despite the fact that both men strenuously deny that there can be any empirical evidence of God’s creativity in nature. Still faithful to NOMA, they affirm that the history of life could have produced intelligent creatures very different from human beings for God to enter into a relationship with. Perhaps “a big-brained dinosaur, or… a mollusk with exceptional mental capabilities,” as Miller has speculated, surrendering the basic Judeo-Christian belief that the human face and body mysteriously reflect the image of a non-corporeal God.
That may sound as if we’ve come to a final parting of the ways between science and religion. However, it all depends on what you have in mind when you speak of “science.”
Must religion indeed accommodate any scientific idea — even if the idea is wrong, even if it’s bad science, ideologically motivated in its origins, intended to explain nature specifically with the view of keeping God out? If that’s what science requires, then of course there can be no reconciliation.
But remember — alongside the secular Enlightenment view of science, there runs a parallel tradition, seeking to explain nature without preconceptions, secular or otherwise. That way of thinking still exists among individual scientists, though it is in need of a good revival. With that tradition — older, grander, more open-minded, even more enlightened, you could say — there is no need for a truce with faith, no need for a separation, no need for a divorce.
David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, writes the Kingdom of Priests blog at Beliefnet.
Not unusually, Klinghoffer himself portrays theistic evolutionists as "useful idiots," while trying to blame others for doing so.
Does he really suppose that Ken Miller and Francis Collins adopted "bad science, ideologically motivated in its origins, intended to explain nature specifically with the view of keeping God out?" Since he can't and doesn't deal with the reasons Collins and Miller actually give for accepting evolution, this ad hominem attack appears to be the best he can do.
And again, as per his usual, Klinghoffer fails to distinguish between the science (which theists accepted) and the real or imagined purposes of Darwin himself. The latter do not matter in actual science, while the many lines of convergent data fulfilling the predictions of evolutionary theory means that anyone not believing that G-d would intentionally deceive us would necessarily accept what is written in the rocks and genomes.
What is more, it wasn't the atheists who first decided to drive a wedge between science and religion, no matter what Klinghoffer implies. Here's Phillip Johnson from 1994:
What theistic evolutionists have failed above all to comprehend is that the conflict is not over “facts” but over ways of thinking. The problem is not just with any specific doctrine of Darwinian science, but with the naturalistic rules of thought that Darwinian scientists employ to derive those doctrines. If scientists had actually observed natural selection creating new organs, or had seen a step-by-step process of fundamental change consistently recorded in the fossil record, such observations could readily be interpreted as evidence of God’s use of secondary causes to create. But Darwinian scientists have not observed anything like that. What they have done is to assume as a matter of first principle that purposeless material processes can do all the work of biological creation because, according to their philosophy, nothing else was available. They have defined their task as finding the most plausible -- or least implausible -- description of how biological creation could occur in the absence of a creator. The specific answers they derive may or may not be reconcilable with theism, but the manner of thinking is profoundly atheistic. To accept the answers as indubitably true is inevitably to accept the thinking that generated those answers. That is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position is not “theistic evolution,” but rather theistic naturalism. Under either name, it is a disastrous error. Shouting `Heresy' in the Temple of Darwin Christianity Today October 24, 1994 p.26
It is misleading for Klinghoffer to suggest that the rather few anti-accommodationist atheists are responsible for the breakdown, when his colleagues at the DI have for years been stating what Myers, Dawkins, and Coyne are now claiming. The British Dawkins may have preceded Johnson, but he had a limited impact here until Klinghoffer and the others at the DI pushed their message that scientific epistemology (what Johnson is truly opposed to) is unacceptable to religious persons.
Glen Davidson http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Not unusually, Klinghoffer himself portrays theistic evolutionists as "useful idiots," while trying to blame others for doing so.
Does he really suppose that Ken Miller and Francis Collins adopted "bad science, ideologically motivated in its origins, intended to explain nature specifically with the view of keeping God out?" Since he can't and doesn't deal with the reasons Collins and Miller actually give for accepting evolution, this ad hominem attack appears to be the best he can do.
And again, as per his usual, Klinghoffer fails to distinguish between the science (which theists accepted) and the real or imagined purposes of Darwin himself. The latter do not matter in actual science, while the many lines of convergent data fulfilling the predictions of evolutionary theory means that anyone not believing that G-d would intentionally deceive us would necessarily accept what is written in the rocks and genomes.
What is more, it wasn't the atheists who first decided to drive a wedge between science and religion, no matter what Klinghoffer implies. Here's Phillip Johnson from 1994:
What theistic evolutionists have failed above all to comprehend is that the conflict is not over “facts” but over ways of thinking. The problem is not just with any specific doctrine of Darwinian science, but with the naturalistic rules of thought that Darwinian scientists employ to derive those doctrines. If scientists had actually observed natural selection creating new organs, or had seen a step-by-step process of fundamental change consistently recorded in the fossil record, such observations could readily be interpreted as evidence of God’s use of secondary causes to create. But Darwinian scientists have not observed anything like that. What they have done is to assume as a matter of first principle that purposeless material processes can do all the work of biological creation because, according to their philosophy, nothing else was available. They have defined their task as finding the most plausible -- or least implausible -- description of how biological creation could occur in the absence of a creator. The specific answers they derive may or may not be reconcilable with theism, but the manner of thinking is profoundly atheistic. To accept the answers as indubitably true is inevitably to accept the thinking that generated those answers. That is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position is not “theistic evolution,” but rather theistic naturalism. Under either name, it is a disastrous error. Shouting `Heresy' in the Temple of Darwin Christianity Today October 24, 1994 p.26
It is misleading for Klinghoffer to suggest that the rather few anti-accommodationist atheists are responsible for the breakdown, when his colleagues at the DI have for years been stating what Myers, Dawkins, and Coyne are now claiming. The British Dawkins may have preceded Johnson, but he had a limited impact here until Klinghoffer and the others at the DI pushed their message that scientific epistemology (what Johnson is truly opposed to) is unacceptable to religious persons.
Glen Davidson http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
"But remember — alongside the secular Enlightenment view of science, there runs a parallel tradition, seeking to explain nature without preconceptions, secular or otherwise."
It isn't a parallel tradition, all real scientists have simply followed rules of thinking in science. Viz. Newton:
"In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phænomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phænomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
"This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses."
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newton-princ.html
And so why would we inductively suppose that languages evolved (albeit by very different mechanisms than in biological evolution) from the patterns of similarities and differences among them, and that life evolved due to patterns of similarities and differences among organisms, and yet to suppose that such inductive thinking stops at some theologically-defined point where the theist no longer is willing to accept such inductive reasoning?
Newton utilized known rules of thinking. He did not himself apply these to life, it is true, but Darwin did (he was clearly in the Newtonian tradition of science), and he didn't insist upon some arbitrary cutoff point between the IDists' fuzzy conceptions regarding "macroevolution" and "microevolution." Either one follows the same inductive principles and conclusions, or one is simply not thinking properly.
Evolution simply follows the same rules as does the rest of science. One of the most bizarre aspects of ID is that it mercilessly condemns scientists for being consistent, rather than inconsistent in the way that IDists pretend to do science.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa378
Actual science has no more need of God in its workings than it has for the Easter Bunny or the tooth fairy. Gods and discussions of gods are as relevant and needed in the sciences as the proverbial fish's need for a bicycle. Catering to the emotional needs of the gullible and scientifically illiterate offends scientists, who find themselves depending on grant money and tax money from opponents of science.
Yet these opponents of science benefit from the largesse of the sciences in the provision of better medicines, longer lifespans, healthier foods, taller buildings, faster airplanes and all the other technological tools and toys our science-based technological civilization has produced. People who understand the source of the advantages of science are only too happy to provide science with more money for more of the benefits of science.
Bur the proponents of creationism (including intelligent design creationism) have the nerve to utilize all the benefits of science in their everyday lives, while carping against science and trying to sabotage it. If the dupes and minions of the Dishonesty Institute were intellectually honest (which they of course are not) they would be lighting their homes and offices with torches and writing their lies about Charles Darwin with feather quills on parchment - not using computers and electricity.
It is no accident that Meyer's latest book is published by HarperOne, a religious book publisher. More than a few of the Dishonesty Institute's Fellows' anti-science / pro-creationism books are published by religious publishers. Fortunately this minority of Dark Age advocates are easily outnumbered by citizens who understand the need for the continuation of science, rather than its destruction.
The realization of the fact that they are losing drives them to desperation and lies, as Judge Jones noted in his 2005 Dover decision: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the Intelligent Design Policy."
My fellow scientists have no special competence in matters of religion. Our functions as scientists are: to experiment, to measure, to advance testable theories, and to support or disprove these theories. We may do whatever the law permits when acting as citizens, but when acting as scientists, we should present only the results of our work and their basis.
What a humorous discussion! To label all creationists, as disputers of science to me is humorous. In fact I am a creationist, because of my studies in science. The complications of the Universe are far too advanced even for us to comprehend. The Universe is chaotic, but in an amazingly organized fashion. But before I get into that, I would like to state that Greed is more an enemy of science than any creationist. Most religions teach a code of ethics, or natural laws that guide us to make decisions that will benefit the whole of mankind. When these codes are ignored, scientific progress is stunted, people are milked. And the only progress that is made involves making money. Imagine if everyone was more concerned with humanity, dont you think more efficient means of transportation, waste managment, energy generation, healthcare, would be secured? But no, things are designed to fail, so companies can sell replacment parts, so new models can be released, so corporatons, can charge for energy consuption, etc...
A lot of people in the scientific community choose a path that doesnt involve god, because it is the path of least resistance. There is no modern tangent physical representation of a creator, (aside from creation) and that scares many, some feel that accepting the authority of a creator, would remove certain "freedoms" they enjoy. But think about this, in 97' Discover magazine reported that astronomers detected what they concluded were about a dozen planets orbiting distant stars. " so far the new planets are known only from the way their gravity perturbs the motion of the parent stars." Sooo for the astronomers the visible effects of gravity was enough for believing in the existence of these "invisible" planets. Many who believe in a creator, conclude they have a similar basis for belief in a creator they cannot see.
We all can agree that the universe is expanding, that has been scientifically proven, and Sir Bernard Lovell was quoted as saying," If at some point in the past, the Universe was once close to a singular state of infinitely small size and infinite density, we have to ask what was there before and what was outside the universe... we have to face the problem of a beginning." But the question remains, what force would be powerful enough or have enough dynamic energy to overcome the immense gravity of the entire universe?
Another thing we can agree on is the four fundimental forces of the universe. Gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force. Assuming your awareness of their definitions, you are also aware these four forces effect everything from the vast cosmos, to the infinite smallness of atomic structures.
As far as the electromagnetic force is concerned, if it was weaker, electrons would not be held around the nucleus of an atom, if it were any stronger electrons would be trapped in the nucleus of an atom, either possibility = No Life. Any difference in the electromagnetic force, would mean the alteration of light from the sun to the earth = no photosynthesis + alteration of water molecules = no life. The intensity of electromagnitism is 10 to the 40th times that of gravity, a slight alteration in intensity either greater or lesser would mean, lack of nuclear fusion = no solor activity on earth, or a sharply reduced lifespan of the sun = No Life.
The strong nuclear force also gives evidence of forthought, 2% weaker only hydrogen would exist, any stronger NO hydrogen would exist = No Life
Weak nuclear force, controls radioactive decay. It is weak enough so as not to incinerate our planet, but warm enough for LIFE.
Gravity is a given.
Here is a quote from British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, "The big problem IN biology, isnt so much the rather crude fact that a protien consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properties... If amino acids were linked random, there would be a vast number of arrangements that would be useless in serving the purposes of a living cell. when you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of perhaps 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link, it's easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more that the number of atoms in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. this is for one enzyme, and there are upwards of 2000 of them, mainly serving very DIFFERENT purposes. so how did the situation get to were it came to be?... Rather than accept small probability of life having arisen through the blind force of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a diliberate intellectual act."
The Truth is Science very much so agrees with creationism, it does not however agree with religion today for the most part. Along with my belief in god, is a feeling that he instilled free will in humans, the ability to discern for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, and that free will is as important to his porpose for us as gravity. Otherwise we would be driven by instinct, like the majority of all other organisms(mmm coincidence?). Therefore believe what you will. Just know that there are millions, who are both creationists, as well as scientists, or who welcome its advancement. ;)
David Klinghoffer lacks intellectual credibility.
An adult convert to Orthodox Judaism, he works these days as a polemicist for the right-wing Christian think-tank known as the Discovery Institute, whose agenda is anti-evolution and anti-science.
Klinghoffer is also known for his anti-gay screeds. So firm is his absolutist orientation, that he speaks glowingly of the Protestant fundamentalists known as "Jews for Jesus" while gleefully disparaging Reform Judaism.
He wears his "orthodoxy" on his sleeve, yet his positions on the issues of the day reflect complete disregard- if not contempt- for the decisions of the gdolim.
In short, his reputation is one of intellectual dishonesty- as a perusal of reader threads on his beliefnet blog will confirm.
Remember "nature is physics", the words are interchangeable in greek and latin.
Remember science is a process, a method of inquiry and not a specific disipline unto itself. If Karl Popper is to be continually respected in the philosophy of science then scientific evidence is always a degree of probability and never an absolute fact. Results produced by scientific inquiry must always be falsifiable.
Scientists should be aware that they can never exceed this limiting factor and present all their findings as probabilities and not as absolutes. ...James E Gambrell
Remember "nature is physics", the words are interchangeable in greek and latin.
Remember science is a process, a method of inquiry and not a specific disipline unto itself. If Karl Popper is to be continually respected in the philosophy of science then scientific evidence is always a degree of probability and never an absolute fact. Results produced by scientific inquiry must always be falsifiable.
Scientists should be aware that they can never exceed this limiting factor and present all their findings as probabilities and not as absolutes. ...James E Gambrell
I read Dr. Meyer's entire book with care and interest in the arguments rather than his personal beliefs. If Dr. Meyer's conclusions and opinions are as easily disputed as implied by his detractors then it should be easy to cite page and paragraph where Dr. Meyer's facts and logic are in error. I found his arguments very persuasive based on the facts he presented and based on my reading of many other texts on the topic. He seems to have gone well out of his way to follow scientific protocol in developing and documenting his opinions. He was very careful not to engage in personal attack or sarcasm. For that he should be commended. I welcome honest rebuttals with facts rather than personal attacks. I have observed in life that mutation nearly always results in disability or death. All life forms resist mutation as a survival instinct. (It seems unreasonable to speculate that such mechanisms came to prevail through chance and natural selection) There are very many mechanisms in both plant and animals that powerfully resist and thwart mutation. I wonder how such conservatism of design became such a universal trait of life under a system is supposed to prosper through mutation. I believe that scientists would be better off searching for these anti-mutation mechanisms as a way of finding and curing diseases that lead to birth defects and death. I worry that many scientists themselves resist searching for anti-mutation mechanisms out of fear of the side effects on the verity of their belief in evolution. I hope that the argument over the origins of life evolves into a respectful mutual search for the truth. I commend Dr. Meyers for offering his argument for thoughtful and respectful consideration.
It's the scientists who are panicking, as physics breaks down into metaphysics, with talk of infinite alternative universes and Big Bangs that were causeless. Such hypotheses are barely testable.
Now, in biology, DNA analysis has inspired ID and revivified creationism; it has even convinced a few hardcore atheists such as Antony Flew that the emergence of life was no fluke. Philip Johnson has exposed the huge leaps of logic necessary to swallow Darwin's version of evolution.
Most of today's tubthumping atheists are second-rate scientists: natural sheeplike followers who learnt their materialist dogma yound (in the heyday of Marxism and cannot bear to unlearn it now. Hence their stridency, their resort to tired old gibes and shock tactics more appropriate to the 18th and 19th centuries than the 21st.
It's been a very long time since anyone put up a brand-new argument for godlessness, which is probably why it hasn't prevailed even among the intelligentsia as its Victorian prophets thought it would.
Even in the swinging Sixties sociologists such as Peter Berger were predicting that organised religion would have withered away virtually to nothing in the West by the turn of the century. Now they admit that their "secularization model" got it all wrong.
Two of the three big versions of secularism in politics, Nazism and Communism, have been routed. The third, global consumer capitalism with a liberal political tinge, is looking shaky as its exemplar, the USA, falls down.
All over the planet, from the resurgence of Orthodoxy in Russia to the ousting of Marx and Mao by Confucius in China, from the rise of fundamentalist Hinduism in India, to the extraordinary growth of protestant Christianity in Brazil and the Pacific Rim, the world's rising economic zones are being energised by religion. It is the mechanistic, materialistic view of life that is taking a back seat.
And in Judaism too, Orthodoxy flourishes and is fecund while Reform and Liberal variants become sterile, both ideologically and literally.
Dawkins, Myers, Hitchens, Harris and the like feel the earth shifting under their feet. The faithful are on the march, and the thin-blooded skeptics can't understand why. Their knowledge of human nature is as deficient as their science is old hat.
David L. Nilsson:
Why did you not include in your list of the assaults on 'secular godlessness' being perpetrated by the armies of the devout, the example of Wahhabi Islam and that bastion of holiness, the Islamic Republic of Iran? Not to mention the faithful minions of al-Qaeda, whom presumably you are rooting for to win in Afghanistan- and London, Paris, Brussels, etc. ?
As to Judaism, what is flourishing in Orthodoxy- as reported in ther Forward and elsewhere - is pedophilia and child molestation: covered up, of course, by the "holy" people of that community.
Buddhism (not being theistic) requires three proofs of any valid religion.
Literal Proof- Basically having a historical basis that is orthodox / unadulterated by individual’s personal views.
Theoretical Proof - Based on facts that can be affirmed by observing this world.
Actual Proof - Without faith but simply by applying the principle & practice of this religion it must actually work. It must create value in every application, physical, material, spiritual, emotional, etc...
"If Dr. Meyer's conclusions and opinions are as easily disputed as implied by his detractors then it should be easy to cite page and paragraph where Dr. Meyer's facts and logic are in error."
It's trivially easy to show where he's mendacious and wrong. The biggest fraud of all is where he pretends that evolution is supposed to "mimic design," a completely dishonest (or stupid) portrayal of the vastly different results expected from evolution vs. design. The fact that it's a continual lie from the IDists changes nothing about its total falsity.
I discussed that and more a couple of weeks ago in the following(taken, and slightly modified, from blog.beliefnet.com/kingdomofpriests/2009/06/strip-clubs-v-darwinism.html):
If anyone wants to see how "very important" Meyer's rehash of old and useless "ID arguments" is, here's a preview:
http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061472787&WT.mc_id=REFLH1_PUB_SignatureintheCell_061809
Needless to say, it's underwhelming. It's a long dreary story of how he came up with his "new argument" (DNA's complex, so god did it) for ID, complete with the usual false claims about ID, and the false dichotomy that if evolution didn't do it, god did, never mind the lack of any indications for intelligent design. He doesn't even bring up actual evidence for "intelligent design," merely relying on the old anthropocentric fallacy of assuming that functionality is design, or at least that it "looks like" design. From p. 12:
"...Natural selection..., a purely undirected process that nevertheless mimicked the powers of a designing intelligence."
That is exactly the kind of nonsense that we're always getting from these clowns, mainly because they either are too ignorant to face the rather large differences between design, or they know better than to do so, and wish to simply conflate evolutionary effects with "design effects," the better to ignore the crucial evidence for evolution that design never has explained at all.
Evolution can't possibly mimic what design can do. It can't pick the best materials for a purpose, it can't come up with truly novel characteristics in organisms, it can't make the rational leaps that designers routinely effect, and so it can't produce a steam engine or a decent wheel. Evolution can't smelt metals, use fire, make rockets, or make vertebrate wings out of anything but terrestrial limbs.
Meyer has no interest in dealing with the real issues, in other words. Indeed, most of his polemic is aimed at the origin of life, and of the genetic code. Is the latter a largely unexplained matter in evolution? I believe it is, although there are hints in life of a time in which the code was not so rigidly followed, and in fact it may be that a number of evolutionary events needed a less rigid code. But then does Meyer explain how and why additional (apparently later evolved) amino acids, like pyrrolysine, co-opt a stop codon for coding?
No, apparently not. It's not interesting, he just wants to say that if events happening perhaps billions of years ago are not explained, then evolution falls apart. He needn't explain what evolutionary theory does, goddidit is all the "explanation" that is needed. Evidence for design isn't needed, because life "looks designed," something that even many ancients didn't believe--hence the magical and reproductive myths accounting for what was decidedly unmachinelike.
He writes very misleading junk like this (p. 396--context complicates this, but I don't want to write it all out):
"...[Critics] do not [typically] dispute that DNA contains specified information, or that this type of information always comes from a mind..."
They likely would, if Meyer wasn't simply begging the question by assuming exactly what he needs to prove. And of course many do disagree with it strenuously and use evidence to do it, but he's not going to address those matters, just the "critics" he's blabbing to usually don't know enough to do more than to invoke authorities.
And from the same paragraph (p. 397):
"Nor do they even dispute my characterization of the historical scientific method or that I followed it in formulating my case for intelligent design as the best explanation for the evidence."
Again, of course, he's still writing about critics selected for their lack of addressing the issues minutely and in detail (in talks, not in writing where his egregious claptrap is well demonstrated to be nonsense). But of course he didn't in the slightest follow proper scientific procedure of carefully matching up identifiable cause with identifiable effect, he simply used the false dilemma of "if evolution hasn't explained it, god did it."
By the way, he often uses Dembski as a reliable source, when Dembski's pseudoscientific writings have been thoroughly and appropriately skewered. Most notably, because Dembski doesn't rely upon empirical data for his calculations, and he insists upon very specific targets in evolution. The fact that he calls what is simple, "complexity," obviously is meant to conflate our often simple creations with the very complex and undesign-like structures of life, and is an egregious misuse of language.
As far as I can tell, from the limited text and the index, Meyer does not come up with even the usual ridiculous claims of "falsifiability" of ID that Cornelius Hunter promised (if not with those denotations and connotations). Apparently the naive conflation of functionality and design that many have made is enough "evidence" of design for Meyer, and he doesn't need to do the science needed to actually shore up his claims.
Well, those were the most obvious inanities, fallacies, and unsound reasoning that I saw in the preview. It's the usual bit of nonsense coming from the DI people, barely different from the worthless propaganda that we've already seen.
Glen Davidson http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
"polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims"
Already done. Starting with the claim "We are a collossal accident."
The only need to water down religion arises from the conflict between Materialism & observable reality. Materialism is in fact a religion. No statues of fat blokes, no independent states in Italy, no incense, but no less a religion. Belief without proof.
Nobody was there to see the purported Big Bang, much material evidence speaks against it have ever been possible. So a Materialist accepts its existence on faith.
suskin Fri. Jul 10, 2009 "David L. Nilsson:
"Why did you not include in your list of the assaults on 'secular godlessness' being perpetrated by the armies of the devout, the example of Wahhabi Islam and that bastion of holiness, the Islamic Republic of Iran? Not to mention the faithful minions of al-Qaeda, whom presumably you are rooting for to win in Afghanistan- and London, Paris, Brussels, etc.?"
Because (a) Iran is not a belligerent country at all; (b) nor is Saudi Arabia, reluctant home of Wahabbism. The religiously minded guerilla minority movements in some Middle East states are paper tigers; they are flammed up to keep sheeplish voters in the West happy about being robbed blind through taxation-- to sustain the military industrial complex and the politicians who have lost all respect and can only rule through fear of what Mencken called imaginary hobgoblins.
Wahabbism and al-Qaeda (the latter is nebulous, largely an invention of western intelligence agencies) are political movemenets of anti-neo-colonialist resistance. If the West lived within its energy means and stopped scrabbling for cheap oil in the Middle East, no Muslim group would pose any problem to us. The handful of them in America do not threaten it seriously. Stop fiddling about in foreign parts, like the Founders said, and the Allah-believers will fight among themselves.
Simple, but how many globalist vested interests would that hurt?
If Europe chooses to let in floods of cheap-labor Muslims who form ghettoes and resent being fishes out of water, that's Europe's problem: once again, it is selfishness and laziness on the West's part that creates these political, social and economic tensions. The fact that they are given a religious gloss, to make the cause seem more romantic and gee up more supporters (no different from the pseudo-religious cant about "our freedoms" and "fundamental human rights" popular among neocon Jewish Zionist war-whoopers) is neither here nor there. Follow the money.
www.nkusa.org
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