Some Good News From ID-Land
Bill Dembski
reports:
Judge Jones gets multiple honorary degrees, Ben Stein has his withdrawn
That’s referring to the fact that Ben Stein, the game show host who
recently narrated a movie blaming the Holocaust on evolution, was
invited to be a commencement speaker at the University of Vermont, but
when it was brought to the president’s attention what an anti-science
twatcicle Stein is,
“Stein withdrew from the ceremony“.
(The word “withdrew” makes it sound as though it was Stein’s idea. I
imagine this withdrawal is about as voluntary as when a cabinet
secretary or Wall Street CEO is caught snorting blow off the ass of an
underage Thai hooker while dressed in latex and leather, and promptly
offers his resignation.)
Next, Barry Arrington proposes a
draft
for an FAQ question on ID:
1] ID is “not science”
Leaving aside the fact that that’s not a question, Arrington’s answer
is a marvel of empty fluff with a superficial semblance of substance
that rivals that of Twinkies. It basically boils down to “ID is too
science! Is too, is too!”, but he uses a page of text to say it.
He starts with an
argument from authority
(William Dembski says it, so it must be true), and ends with a list of
features that scientific research has that ID doesn’t.
And in the middle, he whines about how unfair it is that the mean ol’
scientific establishment has excluded supernatural explanations a
priori.
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: the mean ol’ scientific
establishment did not reject
non-materialistic/non-naturalistic/supernatural/magic explanations a
priori. It rejected them a posteriori. For centuries now,
natural explanations have been pitted against supernatural ones in
explaining various phenomena, from rainfall to the formation of
fossils to embryonic development. And natural explanations have always
won out, in the sense of being more in line with observable reality
and making useful predictions about future observations.
Of the thousands of times they’ve been tried, supernatural
explanations have never worked. From there, it’s a small step to the
conclusion that supernatural explanations don’t work.
And that is why scientists reject explanations that involve magic. Not
because of a hard-headed pre-commitment to naturalism, but simply
because magic never works.