Comments on: Elective Affinities

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 14:34:38 +0000

I wrote: “And yet he exists.” It appears that he not only exists but that he is PI on a recently-awarded NSF-IGERT grant for 3 million USD in the areas of “biofluids, ecology and evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and physiology”.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 03:02:30 +0000

Advocates of Creationism and Intelligent Design claim that they do not have a religious agenda. It seems perversely ironic that they would be so transparently dishonest, ostensibly to advance their cause of intellectual honesty. BTW, Talk.Origins is also a good source on the subject, in addition to Panda’s Thumb. http://www.talkorigins.org/ http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_corpus-callosum_archive.html#108026101387157163

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 16:29:24 +0000

Dave Heasman wrote: "when these guys were called & asked if signing that statement meant that they favoured “Intelligent Design” they recoiled in horror. I recommend Nat Whilk asks his instructor directly." He has a link on his webpage to the webpage of Dembski's International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design. Do many recoilers from ID have such links? Abiola Lapite wrote: "You ignore another possibility: (3) senile." He's fiftysomething and a number of his 65 publications are recent. "Nobody with expertise in Mathematical Biology could possibly subscribe to such a nonsensical position." And yet he exists.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 11:16:03 +0000

” Any insight as to whether he’s (1) a liar or (2) an idiot, or both?” You ignore another possibility: (3) senile. Nobody with expertise in Mathematical Biology could possibly subscribe to such a nonsensical position.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 10:30:59 +0000

Nat Whilk claims ” One of my instructors in grad school is a mathematical biologist who has 65 publications indexed on MathSciNet and who holds a distinguished professorship at a school with a top 40 graduate program, but who attached his signature to the statement: “I am skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.” Any insight as to whether he’s (1) a liar or (2) an idiot, or both?” This is something covered either by Leiter himself or Carl Zimmer – when these guys were called & asked if signing that statement meant that they favoured “Intelligent Design” they recoiled in horror. I recommend Nat Whilk asks his instructor directly.

By: mc

mc — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 08:34:15 +0000

If Darwinists would simply drop their theory, and declare they don’t know, ID would be out of ammo in a week. Really? I thought that’d be exactly what the ID people want, actually. Why should a theory that actually does work be abandoned just becuase some charlatans think it offends their beliefs? The view that Darwinism is flawed to the core or entirely useless is exactly the view of creationists. They think in terms of dogmas and project that onto everything. So what if the theory of evolution is not perfect? Which theory is perfect? Does it have to be perfect to… what, stand up to religion? You’re right, the theism/atheism and religion/science dialectic is a mental trap. But arguing that scientific theories should be cast off only because of thick reactionaries who insist on setting up that trap is surely not the way to get out of it, is it. They’re best ignored. Trouble is, how can you ignore something that is getting a wider audience even in previously respected academic institutions? It’s not spooky. It’s just inacceptable.

By: John Landon

John Landon — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 02:03:02 +0000

I am always a little puzzled by the Darwin debate. How did it happen that the entire Science Establishment got entangled by Fundamentalists? They must be doing something wrong! I think I fault Johann Von Neuman. He used to whisper there was a problem here with Darwin’s theory. It was reprehensible to whisper. Intelligent Design? So what? What else is new? The world is getting a little tired of the Dawkins gang + groupies jumping out of their skin at the mere mention of this. The theism/atheism stranglehood is long since out of hand. The world needs to move on to something more intelligent on the subject of evolution. Neither side in the religion/science dialectic obsessing over divinity can focus on the real issues. As long as you think natural selection constitutes a theory the ID junk will spook you, Halloween 365 days in a row. Poor fellows, these Darwinists. If Darwinists would simply drop their theory, and declare they don’t know, ID would be out of ammo in a week.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:48:54 +0000

Amused, is what part of that passage correct? The facts about how much the US spends on the military and the nature of its arsenal are correct. The rest of it is either false or up for debate. The US “war machine” is not run by “religious zealots.” The US has not unleashed “reins [sic] of terror” remotely similar to those unleashed by Mao, Pol Pot, the Hutus, the myriad forces in the Congo, etc. I especially like the passage about Saddam having invaded merely one country. First of all, this is wrong—Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait. More important, the only reason Saddam didn’t invade more than Kuwait was because the U.S. stopped him. Somehow I doubt if Saddam had taken over Saudi Arabia Leiter would be calling him a third-rate power. In any case, these are questions about which reasonable people can and do disagree. But the idea that any intelligent person will necessarily accept this facile Chomskyian view of the world is both empirically false and theoretically absurd. Leiter thinks that you either agree with him or you’re a moron. I think that’s a bad way to write and a worse way to live.

By: amused

amused — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:16:38 +0000

Mr. Carr, thanks. Here’s what Leiter wrote: “[Thomas Friedman] remarks in passing: “Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam’s tyranny.” They not only believe it, they’re actually justified in believing it; indeed, the only thing to marvel at here is that anyone with an 8th-grade education doesn’t believe it. After all, the Europeans, not being as thoroughly cowed and indoctrinated, may have noticed that the US outspent Iraq on warfare preparations by a ratio of 400 to 1; indeed, that the US outspends the next ten biggest spenders on warfare preparations; that the US has nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, while Iraq does not; that the US has invaded or overthrown governments in more than a dozen countries, unleashing ruthless reins of terror unparalleled outside Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s, while Iraq, as a third-rate power, had merely invaded one country, and had unleashed terror only against its own population (with essential help and support from the US); that the US war machine is now run by religious zealots, while Iraq was a secular state, and so on.” Isn’t that correct?

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:45:01 +0000

The explanatory power of ID is vastly expanded when the notion that “the devil is in the details” is taken seriously. If you do that, what’s vastly expanded is ID’s lack of observable implications, not its ‘explanatory power’. Any time I come across a piece of countervailing evidence for ID, I ascribe it to the ‘devil in the details’—damn you, Mr Devil, destroyin my nice design! Being irrefutable in principle is not the same as having great explanatory power.

By: Greg Hunter

Greg Hunter — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:21:06 +0000

Bad Jim – My interpretation of the Bible is that the Devil is the Prodigal Son that God is trying to bring back in the fold. One of the fallacies of most fundamentalists is that they believe interpretations that were made along time ago and that these interpretations/commentaries have become fact. I would say that Jesus is God’s only “begotten” son, which leaves room for many others, including the Devil. The Devil (or God’s first Son) enters the bible as the Old Serpent and seduces Eve into eating the Apple (Ha!, Wrong). She actually had sex with the Devil and Eve’s First Born Son is Cain. This evil seed can be traced to the Fathers of Tony Blair, George Bush, John Kerry and Bill Clinton. Let me tell you I am a laugh a minute at Church. Walk in Love, Greg Hunter Offspring of Cain and Seth

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:56:19 +0000

Russell L. Carter wrote: To support ID is to either: (1) intentionally deceive, or (2) reveal a rather impressive level of stupidity. One of my instructors in grad school is a mathematical biologist who has 65 publications indexed on MathSciNet and who holds a distinguished professorship at a school with a top 40 graduate program, but who attached his signature to the statement: “I am skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.” Any insight as to whether he’s (1) a liar or (2) an idiot, or both?

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:34:25 +0000

amused, all the quotes were from Leiter’s blog. Here’s the link to the post which has the 8th-grade quote and the “modestly rational” one: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000426.html. Russell, you’re right, I haven’t paid much attention to the frontlines of the ID war. I believe you that other anti-IDers favor a hyper-aggressive style. My point was just that Leiter uses that style always, whether he’s fighting IDers or not.

By: mc

mc — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:05:10 +0000

Greg, I don’t understand how granting these ID supporters the respect they deserve, ie. none, equals “bashing religion”. If anything, seems to me that creationism and all such literal, obtuse readings of biblical texts are also very anti-religious. If fundamentalists don’t get that, well, too bad, but they don’t get to define what religion is for everybody, do they?

By: raj

raj — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:38:31 +0000

>>So does Harvard Law School have a quota system for thick people, or what? When I was applying to law schools in the early 1970s, HLS’s application stated that students in engineering (and I was one) need not apply. I would not doubt that they have since expanded that to students in the various (real) sciences (in which I include physics—I was also educated in physics—chemistry and biology).