06.18.06
Posted in Evolution at 4:56 pm by nemo
Conservatives against ID takes on David Stove and Coulter. Putting these two in the same category is unfair and a sign we are going to get methodological verbiage without much content.
I think that, whatever its imperfections, Stove’s book (which I actually dislike in some respects for its conservative take on a few issues) is entirely apt in its incipient rage at the brazenness of Darwinian theory applied to altruism. He rips into the whole game with hilarious contempt.
All this blah blah from Darwinists about how they are doing science, are the arbiters to science, how they sould legislate our world views, etc, etc, is torn to pieces by Stove for the sheer pretense.
It was a perfect example of a violation of both the first and second rules of debate. Deliberate mischaracterization, followed by refutation of that mischaracterization. Meaningless. It would be the equivalent of taping a cartoon of Osama Bin Laden up against the backstop at the firing range, shooting it full of holes, and then declaring that Osama himself was dead. While I’ve done the former two, I have never done, nor seen anyone do, the latter. It was particularly interesting that this came from a supposed philosopher. Having a couple of philosophy classes under my belt, not to mention dabbling in it on occasion, I’m pretty sure such logical fallacies are verboten in a field that was originally the avocation of mathematicians.
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06.16.06
Posted in Evolution at 7:03 pm by nemo
Dennett at STN
According to Dennett, religion is a meme that benefits humanity through the process of natural selection.
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Dennett’s idea of memes is completely off. Applied to religion the results are silly. Religion has nothing to do with natural selection. Religions ‘evolve’ in their own fashion, as a look at the Axial Age makes clear.
Of course, the Axial Age, and the attempts to grapple with its significance, is off limits to Darwinian consciousness, which has been put to sleep, witness the unending and repetitious stupidy of these ‘brights’.
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06.15.06
Posted in Evolution at 6:17 pm by nemo
Will ID really prevail?
Maybe Ann Coulter will prevail too. The middle class will lose their place in society, the fundamentalists will pray for the poor, and someone will try to start a movement based on a book called ‘ID on Trial’, but it won’t get published in the theocracy.
Intelligent design will open doors to scientific exploration which Darwinism is too blind to perceive. The ID perspective allows us to find designed architectures within biology which are almost invisible to natural selection. Thus, the ID perspective is a far better framework for scientific investigation than the Darwinian perspective. What do I mean, and how will I justify my claim?
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06.12.06
Posted in Evolution at 9:18 pm by nemo
Armstrong’s tiresome attempt to sausage up the Axial Age diversity into some common denominator, the ‘Axial ethos’, should be put to the test. I doubt if, put to the test, anyone would much care for some of the Axial ‘breakthroughs’: vegetarianism.
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06.11.06
Posted in 1848+, Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 7:56 pm by nemo
Selection below my comments
From
Science for the People
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Posted in Evolution, Philosophy, Science & Religion at 7:40 pm by nemo
PT has a lot of good material on Laudan and the demarcation problem. Laudan’s well-known essay, “Demise of the Demarcation Problem”, in Michael Ruse’s But Is It Science?. Read the rest of this entry »
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06.09.06
Posted in Science & Religion at 6:24 pm by nemo
Judging religion is a bungled job on the part of most scientists. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is so pitifully ignorant of what religion is that it discredits the stance of scientists in general. Religions deserve challenge, but to attack them on the basis of Darwinism backfires completely, and makes biologists look silly
I see no way to draw up a balance sheet, to weigh the good done by religion against the evil and decide which is greater by some impartial process. My own prejudice, looking at religion from the inside, leads me to conclude that the good vastly outweighs the evil. In many places in the United States, with widening gaps between rich and poor, churches and synagogues are almost the only institutions that bind people together into communities. In church or in synagogue, people from different walks of life work together in youth groups or adult education groups, making music or teaching children, collecting money for charitable causes, and taking care of each other when sickness or disaster strikes. Without religion, the life of the country would be greatly impoverished. I know nothing at first hand about Islam, but by all accounts the mosques in Islamic countries, and to some extent in America too, play a similar role in holding communities together and taking care of widows and orphans.
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