06.18.06
CAID on David Stove
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.