Category Religion

ID at Cornell

Allen MacNeill, at
Cornell,
will be teaching a course this summer entitled
Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?.

Telic Thoughts has picked up on it, and MacNeill has chimed in in the comments. Go read them.

Judging by the course description and reading list (which includes books by Behe and Dembski), and MacNeill’s comments, it appears that this may be the fair “teach both sides” course that creationists have been demanding for some time. I also suspect that the outcome may not be one that they like, but I guess we’ll see.

Kent Hovind’s Theme Park Shut Down

The Pensacola News Journal is
reporting
that a judge has issued a Writ of Smackdown on
Kent Hovind,
my favorite wacky creationist.

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Assorted Snippets From Dembski and Pals

So I was poking around at
Chez Dembski,
mainly to see whether he had anything to say about
a recent BC strip, and found a few amusing and/or stupid items:

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War on Everything

Remember the “War on Christmas” that John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly wag-the-dogged up out of nothing, using a mixture of three parts persecution complex, two parts paranoia, and one part batshit insanity?

And have you noticed the
War on Easter
that they’re now brewing up out of that same cauldron?
(In case you missed it, it was
started last year
by Sean Hannity.)

Clearly, this is a movement, in the “come in, sing a verse from Alice’s Restaurant, and walk out” sense of the term. So I hope you’ll all join me in declaring war on
Shrove Tuesday.
Write angry letters to politicians and media people! Boycott retailers! Death to the… um… shroves, I guess. Or something.

It’s Getting Hard to Tell the Creationists and the Onion Apart

Remember this article from The Onion?:

DESPERATE VEGETARIANS DECLARE COWS PLANTS

LAS VEGAS — At its annual national conference Saturday, the American Association of Vegans and Vegetarians released results of a detailed in-house study determining that the common beef cow is actually a plant, 100 percent fit for vegetarian consumption.

“Contrary to what was previously thought, the cow is not a higher form of animal life, capable of thinking and feeling pain,” announced AAVV spokeswoman Denise Chalmers to the large crowd. “Rather, we have found it to be a harmless, non-sentient form of plant life, utterly incapable of experiencing the slightest pain or simplest thought.”

Chalmers then passed around a large tray of dripping red meat, which the vegetarians in attendance ravenously devoured, feverishly licking the bloody juice from their fingers.

Compare that to this bit of masturbiblation (also this one), which shows that squid aren’t alive. I can only assume that future episodes will prove that up is down, black is white, and that the Babel Fish is definitive proof of the nonexistence of God.

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ID vs. Methodological Naturalism

Andrew Rowell at ID In the UK
writes:

The basic articles of faith for a methodological naturalist go
something like this:

We have found excellent naturalistic explanations for many
phenomenon [sic] in nature.

Therefore

we believe every phenomenon in nature will have a naturalistic
explanation.

Therefore

we make it a strict rule that science is exclusively the study of
possible naturalistic explanations for what can be observed in the
universe.

Rowell has it exactly backward. Scientists don’t pledge a blood oath
to preserve the purity of science’s precious bodily naturalism.
Rather, if you’re trying to figure out how the world works,
methodological naturalism works, and nothing else even comes close.

Not heated argument.

Not listening to the most senior researcher present.

Not quoting Aristotle.

Not divine inspiration.

When scientists investigate natural phenomena, they look for natural
explanations because that’s the only method we as a species have come
up with that works worth a damn.

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Advice for Christian Parents

John Wilkins has
a good piece:

Don’t try to make everything a religious matter. There’s nothing religious about plumbing, for example. Likewise, science, sports, and dress sense. People can in fact like Korn and still be Christian (although I do not think they can like Korn and still have taste). There is no “Christian” or “Satanic” music, only music that is turned to a purpose.

But go read the whole thing.

I note that he specifically addresses Christian parents. Presumably that means it’s still okay to indoctrinate children into
FSMism.

The Definitive ID FAQ

Best. Intelligent Design FAQ. Ever.

(Thanks to John “Bruce” Wilkins for the link.)

Not God, Just Someone With the Same Skill Set

There are at least two postings at Uncommon Descent (here and here), that argue that fine-tuning of cosmological constants is evidence of a Designer. Evidently the ID party line is that the Designer isn’t necessarily God, but is someone who can change the speed of light, the charge of the electron, and the fine structure constant throughout the universe.

But last year, after Bill Dembski appeared on The Daily Show’s Evolution, Schmevolution, he wrote:

Stewart & Co. had some lines that were not only funny but also memorable. The one that sticks out poked fun at ID: “We’re not saying that the designer is God, just someone with the same skill-set.”
[…]
Although the line is funny, it is not accurate.

So please tell us, Bill: how is Stewart’s line inaccurate?

ID Hysterics

Over at Uncommon Descent, Bill Dembski quotes an unnamed colleague as saying:

However, let us not lose sight of the fact that a scientific theory that requires a judge to enforce its teaching cannot be said to be in good INTELLECTUAL health.

Oh, dear. That blew out my industrial-capacity, lead-shielded, firewalled, unplugged irony-meter. Damn. Those things ain’t cheap, you know?

ID Creationists love to compare ID to the Big Bang and to plate tectonics. Now, which of the three made their way into the classroom after the scientific community concluded that they were good ideas, and which one is being pushed through school boards and the courts? Which one “cannot be said to be in good INTELLECTUAL health”?

By proclaiming it illegal to “disparage or denigrate” neo-Darwinism, Judge Jones adopted the principle of the Inquisition, and in so doing rendered both himself and that state-enforced theory ridiculous.

Ooh, the Inquisition! What a deft way to sidestep Godwin’s Law. But let’s reread what Judge Jones actually wrote in his decision:

we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants […] from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.

(emphasis mine) For the reading-comprehension-impaired, this means that Judge Jones didn’t forbid dissing evolution, but rather forbade requiring teachers to do so. Got that? Good.

Taking a longer view, I think Dover will come eventually to be be seen as a moral victory, in the same way that Galileo’s condemnation is now viewed as a moral victory.

Ah, yes. The “they laughed at Galileo” argument. Unfortunately, as Robert Park put it, “to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right.”

Hey, ID guys, feel free to begin demonstrating that you’re right any time you like.