Comments on: All Things Bright and Easterbrook

By: Morat

Morat — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:21:33 +0000

Intelligent Design is nothing more than an attempt to cloak religion in the (hard-earned!)credibility of science. Science, of course, earned it’s credibility through strict methods and a long-standing history of “beating the crap out of everyone else’s work”. Intelligent Design avoids both the process and the safeguards of science, but continue to try in cloak themselves in the mantle of credibility that those processes grant.

By: Cosma

Cosma — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:06:36 +0000

Chun: > It’s a shame that no one has written a science fiction > novel set after the near-destruction of humanity by an > asteroid (or similar) in which a sect very similar to the > CRs have consolidated power. Actually, this theme has to qualify as at least not-uncommon in postapocalyptic SF. Even if A Canticle for Leibowitz doesn't fit Chun's bill, there's Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow, for starters. At a drastically lower level, there was a series (trilogy?) of such novels which I read in the mid-1980s, basically swords-and-sorcery affairs with many Hideous Mutants as well as Repressive Theocrats. Even though it was the golden age of science fiction (i.e., I was 12 or 13), I remember thinking the idea hackneyed. (Can't remember the author or titles.) And sitting in my to-be-read pile is Sheri Tepper's The Visitor --- where the disaster, come to think of it, was a meteor, which leads me to ask Chun to pull the other one.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:32:03 +0000

I know this sounds callow, but what if the Christian Reconstructionists are right? It’s a shame that no one has written a science fiction novel set after the near-destruction of humanity by an asteroid (or similar) in which a sect very similar to the CRs have consolidated power. The absence of this idea speaks volumes about the sociology of sf production, I feel.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:25:04 +0000

I agree with K. Ellis that ID is more likely to go the way of the dildo (sex-toy production continues to skyrocket—where’s the sociologists?)than the dodo.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:45:39 +0000

“People who truly believe in theories such as ID, and operate on those beliefs, will fail to be competitive in the relevant sciences.” Yes, except that ID doesn’t live in that ecology. It lives outside the ecology of the relevant sciences. It’s just a more polite version of creationism, and creationism hasn’t been “selected against”. Sadly, it’s still very much with us. I expect that ID will be very succesful in popular culture. It’s what most people believe, anyway. Creationism with its seven day creation, young Earth, flood geology is just too manifestly stupid for most people. However, most people are also theists, most people think that there’s a “purpose” to the universe and human existence, most people think that the universe was “designed” in some sense. Taking these widely and deeply held intuitive beliefs and applying a patina of science to them to make them intellectually palatable, why, that’s the essence of modernity, isn’t it? Don’t expect ID to go away soon. It won’t really make inroads into science departments, but that’s not the point.

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:29:02 +0000

Eventually, evolution will win out in this debate because of, well, a form of evolution. People who truly believe in theories such as ID, and operate on those beliefs, will fail to be competitive in the relevant sciences. Those who believe in the theory of evolution, and operate on that belief, will be more successful. Alas for those who believe in ID. They go the way of the dodo.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:25:07 +0000

Well, first of all it seems to me to be tautological. The conclusion is a restatement of the materialist assumption. Secondly, why would a creationist accept that materialist assumption? Thirdly, a large number of evolutionists, past and present, are dualists—even they are not bound by that materialist assumption. Fourthly, even if one accepts this staunch materialist, anti-dualist assumption, it is not necessarily the case that there’s nothing extrinsic to the human mind that normalizes human aesthetic sensibilities. There may be. My first thought was to point out that the same argument can be, and has been, used against the human faculty of reason as a guide to “truth”. I doubt that sidereal, so confidently discussing human nature from a positivist point of view, is likely to want to let go of reason as a reliable guide to the nature of the universe. So he’d/she’d need to prove that aesthetics is completely independent of reason. And while that’s arguable, it’s certainly not incontestable. Had sidereal phrased his point differently, I would have no quarrel with it. He could have said: “There’s no guarantee that the sensibilities and intuitions that guide a human belief in the necessity of a creator are infallible—a variety of valid and persusive arguments can be made that they are quite fallible and are, for example, completely contingent.” But that’s not what he said. As it happens, I think he’s largely correct. But he isn’t necessarily correct, and his argument is shoddy from beginning to end. Since I’m something of a defender of evolutionary psychology, I find this sort of thing irksome. “With friends like these…” and all that.

By: a different chris

a different chris — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:07:39 +0000

>I am so overwhelmed by its flaws, I don’t know where to begin Um, actually I wish you would because I thought sidereal was just saying that “if a human had a housefly’s physiology, we’d be as enamored of a pile of poop as we are now of, say, a field of corn.” Doesn’t sound outrageous to me, but maybe my head is still spinning from finding myself in 100% agreement with Abiola, of all people.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:21:37 +0000

“The intuitions and aesthetic appreciations of the human mind are in no way free from the environment they evolved in, and are therefore hopelessly biased.” Please take a moment to consider this, and perhaps you’ll realize that it is, in isolation, a very stupid argument. I am so overwhelmed by its flaws, I don’t know where to begin. So I won’t.

By: sidereal

sidereal — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:52:36 +0000

Glenn, you can go a step beyond pointing out that ‘it’s beautiful therefore it’s supernatural’ is bunk. You have to acknowledge that our own conceptions of beauty are evolved and conditioned by our environment (and any ID proponent who wants to honestly divorce themself from the Ghost in The Machine theory is forced to agree). Obviously things we like are beautiful because we’ve evolved to favor those conditions, because things we like generally lead to reproductive success. The intuitions and aesthetic appreciations of the human mind are in no way free from the environment they evolved in, and are therefore hopelessly biased.

By: David

David — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:43:13 +0000

FYI: a book on Darwinism and Design by Michael Ruse. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/RUSDAR.html

By: Michael Drake

Michael Drake — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:05:13 +0000

Brad Delong observed above: “It seems to me that the First Cause must be something extremely dumb and simple….” Which is exactly as a literal reading of the Bible will attest. ;-)

By: Michael Drake

Michael Drake — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:05:05 +0000

Brad Delong observed above: “It seems to me that the First Cause must be something extremely dumb and simple….” Which is exactly as a literal reading of the Bible will attest.

By: mattH

mattH — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:26:05 +0000

An important note about why the ID groups use seemingly contradictory justifications, like arguing that design is an undeniable fact and then contradicting it by saying that we have still developed from antiquity, it’s because they are working backwards from a conclusion, not going where the data leads them. As with all “scientific” creationism, it’s the results that are paramount, and the theory must be structured in such a way that the facts produce the desired results, no matter how torturous and contradictory the theory. If we really want to stop “creation science” arguments from having any chance of succeeding, we probably are going to have to do a better job of explaining what science is. Most of the people deciding what goes into text books and what is taught in classes in the U.S. are relying on their often less than accurate explanations they recieved in high school. I think it might be the biggest mistake that we make in our education system as a whole.

By: rik

rik — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:14:40 +0000

Easterbrook: “intelligent-design theory acknowledges that the universe is immensely old and that all living things are descended from earlier forms” This is the key point to bring up if you are ever unlucky enough to argue with a proponent of ID. They want to claim that ID is an “alternative” to evolutionary theory, but if you press them on the details, they will admit that the basic claims of evolutionary theory are actually correct (outside of the scientifically obscure area of the origin of life itself). So actually their “alterative” turns out to be an endorsement of all of the relevant parts of the theory of natural biological evolution.