09.27.11
ID is not science…
Intelligent Design Creationism is not Science By JAMES WILLIAMS – JAMESDWILLIAMS.WORDPRESS.COM
Added: Monday, 26 September 2011 at 12:32 PM
I’m just back from the BBC studio in Brighton having done 9 regional interviews/debates on the issue of teaching intelligent design creationism as science in schools.
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643253-intelligent-design-creationism-is-not-science
09.15.11
Design arguments vs Darwin critiques
One of the strange things about the ID group is the way they think they represent design arguments. If anything, the ancient design argument, visible in Socrates, has been spoiled by these people. I am baffled that a group would try to enforce an orthodoxy of rightwing politics among Darwin critics. Laughable. But that is what they have wrought, and the result is strangely an ace in the hole for the Darwin paradigm. All they have to do is to point to the rightwing kooks who propose design arguments. I know from experience here that as a result even mentioning the design argument can provoke insane wrath from mainstream Darwinists..
Since I don’t really believe in the ‘design’ argument, there isn’t a problem therefore. But the fact is that ‘design’ arguments won’t go away, however much the Bible Belt might discredit them. More on that later, but I think that the turning point came with Philip Johnson, and then Behe. Michael Denton in his book on Darwinism never allowed the design argument to enter the critique. His later book on ‘fine-tuning’ was reasonable enough, and a disciplined version of that argument. A far cry from the garbled design mania that came into existence after Philip Johnson (who also disciplined his first book to not peddle design).
I think that a new and different type of design argument can be explored, but that is no longer an option given the chaos created by the Discovery gang, and the Bible Belt.
Let me say it clearly: the Old Testament is NOT evidence of theistic design in history. Until that is clear, the real design argument will be constantly muddled by Christians and Jews.
09.03.11
Leading bishop hits out at Dawkins
Leading bishop hits out at Dawkins for reducing ‘faith into ignorance’
By RUTH GLEDHILL, RELIGION CORRESPONDENT – THE TIMES
Added: Saturday, 03 September 2011 at 8:03 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/642926-leading-bishop-hits-out-at-dawkins-for-reducing-faith-into-ignorance
A leading Church of England bishop has condemned the atheist Richard Dawkins for reducing “faith into ignorance” in his latest book.
The criticism by Bishop of Swindon, Dr Lee Rayfield, who is regarded as a rising star heading for one of the top five posts in the established church, is significant because the bishop is a leading scientist who worked at the top level of medical academia until his ordination in in 1993.
In his new book, The Magic of Reality, Richard Dawkins avoids the ranting tone that did so much to offend faith communities in his atheist polemic The God Delusion.
But his dismissal of some of the miracles held as sacrosanct by many believers as no better than fairy tales will nevertheless anger many religious leaders. His criticisms include a swipe at the beliefs of Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity.
Dr Rayfield, a former lecturer in immunology at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals in London, told The Times: “Richard Dawkins has such a gift for making science interesting and enjoyable which shines through in extracts from The Magic of Reality.
“It is such a shame that the sense of awe, wonder, and indeed mystery, that he opens up so jars with his dismissal of any who do not regard evolution as a complete explanation of existence. Professor Dawkins invariably collapses myth into falsehood and faith into ignorance. For many of us, including large numbers of scientists, the magic of reality not only inspires wonder but worship.”
In his comments in the book, particularly in the last chapter on miracles, Professor Dawkins makes his contempt clear. Referring to Christianity as merely one among hundreds of religions around the world, he says: “To take just one example, there is a legend that, about 2,000 years ago, a wandering Jewish preacher called Jesus was at a wedding where they ran out of wine. So he called for some water and used miraculous powers to turn it into wine – very good wine, as the story goes on to tell us.”
In a reference also to a journey believed by Muslims to have been taken by the Prophet Mohammed, he continues: “People who would laugh at the idea that a pumpkin could turn into a coach, and who know perfectly well that silk handkerchiefs don’t really turn into rabbits, are quite happy to believe that a prophet turned water into wine, or as devotees of another religion would have it, flew to heaven on a winged horse.”
If the Cana miracle were true, he says, it would violate some of the deepest scientific principles known. “Molecules of pure water would have to have been transformed into a complex mixture of molecules, including alcohol, tannins, sugars of various kinds and lots of others.”
He adopts a similar tone towards the 1917 miracle of Fatima, recognised as legitimate by the Vatican in 1930, when a 10-year-old girl in Portugal and her two cousins claimed to have seen a vision on a hill.
Professor Dawkins writes: “The children said the hill had been visited by a woman called the “Virgin Mary” who, though long dead, had become a kind of goddess of the local religion. According to Lucia, the ghostly Mary spoke to her and told her and the other children that she would keep returning on the 13th of each month until October 13th, when she would perform a miracle to prove she was who she said she was.”
If subsequent events involving the sun had occurred as claimed, writes Dawkins, “Either the earth would have been kicked out of its orbit and would now be a lifeless, cold rock hurtling through the dark void, or we’d have careered into the sun and been fried.”
He metes out similar treatment towards biblical stories such as the creation, Noah’s Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah and the Tower of Babel. The story of the walls of Jericho is dismissed as one of countless “earthquake myths”, such as the belief by some Siberian tribes that the earth sits on a sledge, pulled by a god called Tull, who causes an earthquake whenever he scratches his fleas, or by some West African tribes that they live on a giant’s head who causes an earthquake whenever he sneezes.
In an interview with The Times tomorrow, Professor Dawkins says he is in favour of teaching children about religion but he says it is “wicked” to identify children with the religion of their parents. He praises Anglican schools as “less likely to indoctrinate than any other”.
08.30.11
Handing Coulter debating points
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/someone_has_taken_the_coulter.php?utm_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link
It is disastrous for naive Darwinists (and liberals) to hand Coulter an easy debate over Darwinian evolution. And it is equally disastrous to suggest that Darwinism is a liberal idea, when in fact it is a conservative social darwinist mess, one that conservative ID-ists are thrilled to land on the heads of confused liberals.
Someone has taken the Coulter Challenge!
Category: Creationism • Evolution
Posted on: August 29, 2011 12:21 PM, by PZ MyersIt only took five years. Remember, my Coulter Challenge was for someone to take any of Coulter’s paragraphs about evolution from her book Godless, and cogently defend its accuracy. It’s been surprising how few takers there have been: lots of wingnuts have praised the book and said it is wonderful, but no one has been willing to get specific and actually support any of its direct claims. Until now.
It takes that special combination of arrogance and ignorance to think anything Coulter said is defensible, so I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that our brave foolhardy contestant is Michael Egnor.
After professing his deep and entirely uncritical love of Ann Coulter and everything she has ever said, Egnor chooses the very first paragraph of the first chapter on evolution. He might as well, he thinks she’s “right about everything”.
Liberals’ creation myth is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It’s a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record–and that’s after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn’t still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.
08.29.11
$110,000 to Settle Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit
California Science Center Pays $110,000 to Settle Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit
08.24.11
Intelligent design has no place in Texas classrooms
Intelligent design has no place in Texas classrooms
ID may have no place, but Darwinism has no place either.
08.23.11
Rick Perry’s true ID
Rick Perry’s true ID: creationism in the classroom
Republican candidate Rick Perry believes creationism should be taught in schools. That breaches both science and constitution
07.24.11
Tortured logic of darwinists and ID-ists
The tortured attempts to avoid intelligent design continue
Tortured logic, but interesting (???)
Back to intelligent design for a bit. In my article “Intelligent Design, Unknown Intelligence, and a Ouija Board” I critiqued several of Joseph H. Axell’s claims culminating in his assertion that you cannot invoke intelligence as an explanation unless you have an account of the intelligence. Axell posted a long response on July 10. Other commitments have kept me from responding until now.
The first topic up for discussion was the claim that ID is illegitimate because you might occasionally attribute design falsely to something that wasn’t designed. As far as red herrings go, this one is as smelly as they come. Let’s say that you have an alarm system in your house. Over the course of a year it goes off three times. Two times it was a false alarm (literally!), but the third time there was an actual intruder. Based on that experience would you rather have the alarm or would you choose to remove it? Of course you’d keep it. Perhaps you might look for a better, more effective alarm, but you wouldn’t choose to have no alarm at all.
ID is like an alarm on the house. It gets set off by things like cosmic fine-tuning and DNA. Are these in fact cases of design? Is there in fact an intruder in the house? Perhaps that remains to be seen. But even if there were two false alarms earlier this year, are you really going to go back to bed without checking downstairs?
Next, Axell turns to Shostak, representative of the SETI program, who attempts to distance SETI from ID. According to Axell, Shostak claims that SETI is not looking for intelligence: “rather, they are looking for what Shostak terms “artificiality”.”
Really? Then why don’t they call their program the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Artificiality? (chuckle) Of course the term “artificiality” is, in this context, merely code for “intelligence”. The term “artificial” comes from “artifice” meaning made by humans. In other words, non-natural, a product of intelligence. Sadly, Shostak’s claim that SETI isn’t set up to detect intelligence is a pathetic and disingenuous attempt at obfuscation.
Axell next claims that “leading ID concepts of “explanatory filter” and “irreducible complexity” are of negligible scientific worth”. I think this is false. But it is also completely irrelevant (as I already pointed out) to the question of whether intelligence is, in principle, a legitimate type of causal explanation for natural systems, processes and events.
Next, after some grumbling about Steve Meyer Axell returns to the big issue:
“Do the ID proponents need to provide a detailed account of the properties of the putative intelligence and its engagement with the natural world? Of course they do: otherwise their conjecture simply amounts to “an unidentified X with intelligence but of unknown other properties and unknown abilities did it at unknown time and in an unknown manner”. How very scientific!”
But wait. I demonstrated that Axell’s claim that an account of the nature of an intelligence was required before the presence of an intelligence could be inferred was false with my delightful Ouija board thought experiment. If Axell’s claim is to be believed then he could not believe the paranormal occurrences in the room where the Ouija board was being used were being produced by intelligence. But surely that is absurd.
Let’s consider Axell’s response:
“I confess to being at a loss in trying to understand what the Ouija board scenario is supposed to demonstrate (though I am gratified by your acknowledgement of my intransigence in the face of the apparent supernatural). If your point is that the “Ouija” phenomena are actually due to some supernatural intelligence, then your little tale fails completely as a thought experiment, for it simply begs the question against the methodological naturalist.”
Axell asserts that I “beg the question” against methodological naturalism. On the contrary, if anything this thought experiment would reveal methodological naturalism as being deeply flawed. Consider another analogy. Let’s say I am a methodological a-pachydermist meaning that I believe no pachyderms exist and thus I seek to explain all phenomena in the wild with reference to the effects of animals other than pachyderms. You then argue as follows:
What if you were in the jungle and you suddenly came across an elephant standing in the river. You wouldn’t be able to conclude that that elephant was there and that’s absurd.
An objective observer would certainly think you had a point. So imagine if I then responded:
You’re simply begging the question because I don’t accept the existence of elephants or any other pachyderms.
No, that’s not actually begging the question. Rather, it is demonstrating that the rejection of pachyderm explanations is an indefensible dogma. And likewise if you are constrained from inferring intelligence in the Ouija board case then you are likewise constrained by a dogma.
Of course there is another problem here. Axell categorically dismisses the intelligence in the Ouija board case because it is “supernatural”. But he doesn’t know that. Assuming that the “natural/supernatural” distinction which undergirds methodological naturalism is even meaningful (and that’s a big if), it still might be the case that malevolent spiritual entities exist but conform to the natural. For example they might be a special form of energy on which consciousness supervenes which are subject to the laws of thermodynamics. So Axell’s refusal to conclude intelligence in this case because he lacks an account is shown again to be a dogma.
Finally, let’s get away from Ouija boards for a minute. Imagine that Axell is an astronaut and is sent by NASA to explore Mars. He lands on Mars and finds the wreckage of what appears to be a giant space ship. Axell would have to radio back to NASA: “There’s something weird here. It looks like a giant space ship. But I cannot conclude that it was created by an intelligence because I lack an account of that intelligence.”
www.randalrauser.com
07.19.11
Science a religion?
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/dawkins-why-science-isnt-a-religion/
Is Science a Religion?
by Richard Dawkins
Published in the Humanist, January/February 1997
Accusing science of being a religion is often a gesture of impatience at the point that scientific perspectives take on a kind of dogmatic faith-like bias. We have indulged in this slap in the face here, a number of times. If you wish to quibble your way out of this charge in defense of science, it is not particularly hard. As categories, science and religion are conceptually and historically distinct, quite obviously. But I think that what is really being laid against science is the psychology of conditioned belief, and the overly propagandized promotion of scientism, darwinism, economic theory (as science??), and the success here in paralyzing real thought in the resulting ‘true believers’. Confusion is thus arising between ‘religion’ as a conceptual category (pretty hard to define!) and science in a kind of decay, just like much religion.
Frankly, what is the use of such fanaticism from science defenders if those with this mindset can’t even detect pseudo-science in areas such as Darwinism?
In general, the new atheist attacks on religion are so ignorant as to be genuinely disillusioning about the science cult behind them. Science has to be something more than knee-jerk attacks on the abstraction ‘religion’, and it must be fair about its history, its real history, and its deeper legacy visible in the religions such as Buddhism.
07.17.11
Science Daily: Predisposed to believe
http://trinitybook.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/predisposed-to-believe-in-god/
Darwinism empirical??
Unlike science, theology starts with conclusions…
It is hard to read any further in this post. Science deals in evidence in its real sciences, like physics, but the limbo cases like Darwinism are ideologies dressed up in phony natural selection claims that are not truly empirical.
This arrogant hypocrisy of science gets to be tiresome. Even at its worst religion doesn’t produce ideological metaphysics base enough to generate social darwinism, etc, etc…
I used to be a religion critic, but now I think we are better off being science critics! Religion is waning on its own, the substitute is going to be dreadful.
07.15.11
Conference: Scientific Refutation Of Darwinism
Conference: Scientific Refutation Of Darwinism At UofA
Friday, 15 July 2011, 5:38 pm
Press Release: Adnan Oktar
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1107/S00066/conference-scientific-refutation-of-darwinism-at-uofa.htm
Conferences Loom on Scientific Refutation of Darwinism To Take Place At University Of Auckland
Read the rest of this entry »
07.06.11
Has science finally refuted creationism?
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/07/turnabout-is-fa.html
Attacking creationists is suspicious easy, suspiciously paradigm-consolidating, and suspiciously indicative of rival mentalities, Christian and scientific fundamentalism.
06.28.11
Evolution and ethics, science and religion fail…
Evolution And Ethics
The question of the evolution of ethics (as Huxley sensed late in life) is the Achilles heel of Darwinism.
But, ironically, it is also a problem for proponents of ID, who are saddled with the Old Testaments of Moses (etc) which leave us absolutely puzzled as to the how ethics could have appeared at all. We don’t even understrand our basic ethical behavior, and can’t resolve its contradictions, although Kant made a good start.
06.27.11
‘Belief’ in evolution?
‘Belief’ in evolution? It may be the wrong word
When the contestants in the Miss USA pageant last week were asked whether evolution should be taught in schools, many volunteered that they either “believed” or “didn’t believe” in the concept.
“I don’t believe in evolution,” said Miss Alabama. “They should teach both sides since some people believe in evolution and some people believe in creation,” said Miss Arizona. “It’s something people believe in,” said Miss Florida. “I believe in evolution . . . and I like to believe in, like, the big bang theory,” said Miss California, who won the crown.
Some scientists were not impressed, saying the use of the word belief as applied to evolution confused science with faith and discounted evolution’s central role in biology.
06.26.11
Islam, evolution, and science acceptance
Does Islam Stand Against Science?
You can’t have it both ways: if you want to promote science, then critiques of Darwinism are on the table, and might help to clarify the confusion many Moslems are stuck with.
06.23.11
Collins and Dawkins
Francis Collins: Atheist Richard Dawkins Admits Universe’s Fine-Tuning Difficult to Explain:
http://www.christianpost.com/news/francis-collins-atheist-richard-dawkins-admits-universes-fine-tuning-difficult-to-explain-51416/
This discussion is spoiled by religious advocates who try and make ‘fine-tuning’ some kind of argument for the existence of god, thence for all of their other beliefs here.
But fine-tuning is an argument about nature, and says nothing about anything beyond that. I think that the evidence of physics here should be taken as neutral, and as a solution to the confusions of Darwinism (where simillar theistic attempts to force the theory are at work).
“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability,” said the world renowned scientist.
“That forces a conclusion. If you are an atheist, either it is just a lucky break and the odds are so remote, or you have to go to this multiverse hypothesis, which says that there must be almost an infinite number of parallel universes that have different values of those constants,” explained Collins to Christian scholars of various disciplines in the audience. “And of course we are here and so we must have won the lottery, we must be in the one where everything worked.”
06.22.11
Francis Collins: Atheist Richard Dawkins Admits Universe’s Fine-Tuning Difficult to Explain
Francis Collins: Atheist Richard Dawkins Admits Universe’s Fine-Tuning Difficult to Explain
Outspoken evangelical geneticist Francis Collins revealed that combative atheist Richard Dawkins admitted to him during a conversation that the most troubling argument for nonbelievers to counter is the fine-tuning of the universe.
Read the rest of this entry »
06.20.11
The new anti-’new atheists’
‘The Age of Doubt’ Is a Call for Others to Examine This Material
06.16.11
Religion, world history, and macroevolution
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap3_1.htm: Descent of Man Revisited: Chapter 3, then Chapter 4:
The study of buddhism makes no sense in isolation: we need to see it in the context of the eonic effect, or else the Axial Age alone. It appears in exact concert with cryalllizing monotheism in the Middle East. The later is far more confused historically and we are beset with an Old Testament corpus that is almost more confusing than the archaeological record which is beginning to show the real meaning of the Bible’s account.
We are confronted with the stupefying mechanics of the end point, when the Israelites go into exile, thus neatly universalizing their parochial corpus (which always remains thus), and are influenced by the Persian tradition. The sequence of events here is almost spooky in its coincidences, which are obvious not coincidence. Small wonder the Israelites thought at higher power was acting in history. Now we can see the further stupefying ‘coincidence’ (falling together) that buddhism crytallizes in exact concert, again in spooky exactness.
The sense of a ‘higher power’ acting in history is overwhelming and we must remember that the term ‘god’ is later and shows the idea entering into the stage of vulgar theism, the ruination of the lost original, in the legacy of the Canaanites becoming Israelites/Judeans.
One way to understand the swift progression of innovations is to study the history of the Greek Archaic, in exact parallel, a history of analogous proportions, but told plain, without the realization of the Israelites of some higher action, an idea which confused their simple insight into history.
The larger picture is even more clear if we see the Axial period in its sequential place in the macroevolutionary logic of civilization as a whole.
06.12.11
Birmingham conference
Birmingham conference opens a debate among believers in evolution, creation and intelligent design
06.10.11
Secular buddhism and bad science
The issue of secular buddhism is important because it shows how the influence of bad science is becoming more and more dominant.
You would think that people in a tradition as potent as that of buddhism could stand up to scientism and preserve the basics of their subject. But the onset of ‘secular buddhism’ shows how intelligent people are the biggest suckers for bad science, while the ‘dumpkopf” sectors of the religious right and the Bible Belt are able to distance themselves from science (with disastrous results).
It should be intelligent buddhists who can both embrace and stand back from science/scientism, and lead the way toward what should really be the ‘secular buddhism’: a form of religion for the modern age. There is a need to study modernity in a new way to see that it is not monofocussed on science. Only with the rise of technocratic domination has that happened. The onset of Newton’s philosophy was a great triumph, but its ambition to hegemony was challenged almost at once. Kant, Rousseau, the Romantics, a host of others. But somehow the dumbest forms of positivism came to dominate.
My interest in science is fundamental, but the fact remains that ‘science jocks’ rival religious true believers in their newly invented brand of stupidity.
The issue here is that science has its limits, so far. Somehow the idea became dominant (a sign of poor science intelligence) that the triumph of physics was an excuse to imitate Newtonion mechanics in all fields, the dumbest example being the natural selection theme of the Darwinists. There is no such science, as the field of evolution shows its resistance to reductionist hopes. It is not anti-science to warn that science in this mode can never address the whole of reality.
In general science can’t address reality because it can’t address values. That doesn’t matter with physics, but the suspicion lingers that as we ascend toward biology, culture, and mind science as we know it begins to fade out.
But the current crop of science obsessives, the products of truly dreadful specialized education, has been so dumbed down even as they master complex subjects requiring high intelligence that the lessons of science in the early modern have been lost.
It is baffling that buddhists should also catch this disease. It is a sign that the ‘parinirvana’ of Gautama is probably now the case: there is no more feedback to the organizations in his wake.
A new buddhism for a new age of secularism is an idea with great potential, but it is important to see that ‘buddhism’ has been reborn several times, under different names, e.g. the primordial jainism (=buddhism) of the age periods going back to the Neolithic. It might help to consider the common denominator in all these phases. That would remind secular buddhists that they are just going off the wall with a degenerate brand of a great tradition.
Dawkins’ narrowed vision
Kevin Myers: Myth of Dawkins as an intolerant, atheist crusader is just that — mythRichard Dawkins – portrayed as an austere, proselytising dogmatist despite being nothing of the sort
Thursday June 09 2011
RICHARD Dawkins is thricefold famous: once for his espousal of the gene as being the primary unit of life, rather than the plant or animal that is carrying it.
Whether on not Dawkins is a bigot, the fact remains that his insight into science, religion, and evolution is crippled by a strangely narrow view, mixed with a Mr. Charmer style that is good at piedpiper salesmanship to immature scientific/adolescent minds.
His espousal of the gene as fundamental is also misguided: the result makes evolution incomprehensible.
06.07.11
Link to Xtianity Today article
http://christianitytoday.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/vchto11/i6/p29
“The Search for the Historical Adam”
http://www.biologos.org/blog/biologos-and-the-june-2011-christianity-today-cover-story/
This kind of thinking shows the pathetic plight of Xtian confusion. And yet the question could be perfectly natural, and perfectly simple: the ‘historical’ adam is simply the first appearance of the homo sapiens sapiens type in the transition to modern man.
But the absurd effort to buttress the Bible’s Genesis account is tiresome and doomed.