Intelligent Design - the Creationists' Latest Wheeze

[Malignd]

Karen Hudes:

<<<Evolution makes perfect sense. It is the recurring
process of tension and resolution (or movement toward
resolution of tension between organisms and the
limitations/obstacles of their environment)>

JPorter:

<<Yes, but the devil is in the details, which most
popularized versions of Darwinism overlook, even if
they reference more nuanced versions.  Just because
Intelligent Design is an example of "Scurvhamism" that
doesn't automatically mean that popularized versions
of Darwinism are any more entitled to be enshrined as
correct.>>
  
What does popularization have to do with anything? 
And who do you imagine “enshrines” popularizations of
science?  And who (other than you) is saying Darwinism
is “automatically entitled” to be correct?  This is
all strawman argument.  You’re saying nothing.
 
<<Yet the zeal of the anti-ID crowd rivals that of the
evangelicals.>>

This is wholly unprovable, is the same false parallel
that Rob Jackson (and others) used, and is likely
false.  People are correctly upset by intelligent
design being taught as science because it is
non-science, because it is a criticism of evolutionary
biology that has, finally, nothing to do with biology.
 It is an argument based on faulty logic that works
from false premises and fails even on the premises
from which it does work.

<<If you "believe" in evolution, than you must still
explain religion in it's many forms, and any other
form of culture, including science.>>

This also is false and intentionally confuses terms. 
One doesn’t “believe” in evolution in any way similar
to the way one might believe in religion.  One
acknowledges the strength of the theory to address the
question of speciation, which it does and has been
doing for a century and a half.  This entails no
obligation to explain religion.

<<Furthermore, you must assume that consciousness
preceded religion, or, you are left with the
possibility that religion caused, or helped to cause,
the further evolution of consciousness.>>

Of course consciousness preceded religion.  Religion
(separate from whatever one cares to believe about
“God”) is wholly man-made.

<<Besides arguments over the origin of life, there is
the argument over "knowing", i.e., when did religion,
belief, faith, etc. originate with respect to
consciousness? Was there ever a time when
consciousness was purely secular?>>

Yes.

<<And quite apart from whether or not God exists,
there exists the possibility that believing- and those
parts of the brain involved in belief- may have played
a causative role in the further evolution of the
mental apparatus.>>

And, if so, the same can be said for thinking about
anything that contributes to complexity of ideation.

<<Did faith gave rise to reason, or reason to faith?
>From a physical, biological point of view it's
difficult to say.>>

I’d say it is indeed difficult to say from a
biological point of view.  It would also be difficult
to say how many seats in Wrigley Field from a
biological point of view.

<<Both seem pretty much rooted in determinism, which
is on real shakey ground since the emergence of
quantum mechanics. Pragmatism may offer a way out, but
we still have to agree on what's valuable, not to
mention pleasurable.>>

Or not.




		
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