BreakPoint You Can�t Have It Both Ways
You can also find summations of this issue here.
For the longest time, the Intelligent Design movement has been cast aside because they didn't have articles published in peer reviewed journals. Now that there is one, the back-peddling has begun.
5 comments:
Meyer's paper does what you say ID does not do; it fills in the gaps with magic. Therefore it's not ID. (By your logic.) And it's full of errors, so it doesn't even get the gaps right.
I think I hear some back-peddling…
*it fills in the gaps with magic*
I have appreciated the fact that you are obviously well-read and passionate about this issue, but you should be careful about setting up and blowing down straw men. The more often you use the term “magic” the more you support my very first point: you have reduced yourself to name-calling to fortify your case. You clearly have assumed certain things about the ID movement and have allowed those assumptions to color everything you see to an almost silly degree.
You graciously named Plato, Newton and others recently-do you discredit their accomplishments by labeling them “magic”? Or do you conveniently believe in the non-magical portions of their philosophy and science? As I wrote elsewhere, winning an argument by defining your opponents out of the area is no win at all. Some might suggest, for instance, that I define you out of consideration by simply labeling you, “an anonymous village atheist trying to score some points on the web,” but I haven’t. If I did, would you think I had won or lost?
*filled with errors*
That must be why it made it into a peer reviewed journal. I am aware that being in a peer reviewed journal does not perfection make, but “filled with errors” is doubtless an exaggeration.
*I apologize*
I also appreciate your desire to be analytical and appropriately dispassionate about this, and I hope I have not been too sardonic myself. If I have been, I too, am sorry. But I think your vocabulary gives you away. I am not so sure you would take a non-Darwinist (no matter how erudite or published) seriously simply because you have convinced yourself that they could not possibly be right before you have even tried to understand their case. Would you be able to state the case Intelligent Design theorists are making without resorting to loaded and insulting terms?
I think I see another fundamental problem. You are equating the theory of evolution with the data of science. If you are intellectually honest, you should be able to note the logical difference between data and an interpretation of that data (unless you are completely postmodern). There is information/data and then theories about that information. The very fact that many Darwinists have conflated the two is evidenced by their ad hominum way of defending their theory. ID is a theory which hopes to better explain the data than evolution-not a Vegas sideshow.
ID is a theory which hopes to better explain the data than evolution-not a Vegas sideshow.
And here you betray yourself Mr. Steiger. You won't tell me what the ID theory is; you admit that it (whatever it is) merely hopes to explain the data; all the "data" that you gave me in the other thread that it hoped to explain better turned out to be false strawman data; you call people bigots when they object to this fakery trying to impose itself as science.
"Filled with errors" is not an exaggeration, by the way.
I have appreciated the fact that you are obviously well-read
This is one of those times when I think you might be pulling my leg, Mr. Steiger.
and passionate about this issue, but you should be careful about setting up and blowing down straw men.
See this link to an article brought to my attention by the very kind Mr. Rusty Lopez recently penned by the very nice Jonathan Wells (who is a Moonie, by the way) for some fine examples of some good ID strawmanship.
The more often you use the term “magic” the more you support my very first point: you have reduced yourself to name-calling to fortify your case. You clearly have assumed certain things about the ID movement and have allowed those assumptions to color everything you see to an almost silly degree.
What assumptions have I clearly made about the nice lovely ID movement, and how best to clear them up so that I might be a kinder and gentler evolutionist?
I get the feeling that we could go around in circles for a very long time, so I am going to let you have the last say in this thread. Although I disagree with you on a couple of very fundamental issues, I hope our interchange will make me a better thinker and communicator.
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