Kurt Vonnegut on Darwinism and Intelligent Design

[Petr]

Somewhat old post re-posted.

Anyways, Vonnegut seems to have been someone who actually in some sense deserved that usually only self-congratulatory title "freethinker", not being just a knee-jerked secularist.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/01/kurt_vonnegut_on_darwinism_and.html


Kurt Vonnegut on Darwinism and Intelligent Design


A recent NPR Morning Edition segment, "Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society," took a surprising turn late in the interview. Vonnegut is, of course, a renowned postmodern novelist and self-described secular humanist, not somebody who fits easily into Barbara Forrest's conspiracy-haunted world wherein all Darwin skeptics are Bible-thumping fundamentalists. The conversation turns to Darwinism and design a little over four minutes into the interview:

Mr. VONNEGUT: Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It’s the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.

INSKEEP: How are the scientists behaving tribally?

Mr. VONNEGUT: They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. But look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such machines.

INSKEEP: Does that mean you would favor teaching intelligent design in the classroom?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Look, if it’s what we’re thinking about all the time; if I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it’d be on my mind all the time as to how the hell we really got this way. It’s a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can’t think this? Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion. Also, I think that, you know, it’s tribal behavior. I don’t think that Pat Robertson, for instance, doubts that we evolved. He is simply representing a tribe.

Finally, if you

INSKEEP: There are tribes on both sides here in your view?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Yes.

INSKEEP: May I ask what tribes, if any, you have belonged to over the years?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, it’s an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They’re called Humanists now: people who aren’t so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.

INSKEEP: Who are denounced by some religious people as secular humanists?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, that’s exactly what I am. The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don’t have a congregation. We don’t meet, so it’s a very flimsy tribe, but there’s a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly wonderful is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

There are many others like Vonnegut, people like Princeton-trained mathematician, agnostic, and award-winning science writer David Berlinski, geneticist Michael Denton, and leading British philosopher and former atheist Antony Flew. These and the more than 400 Ph.D. scientists on our dissent-from-Darwin list--those skeptics of the theory brave and tenured enough to speak out--are trying to tell us something: modern evolutionary theory is in crisis, and no amount of motive mongering about people's religious motivations will change that; no amount of denials from sincere evolutionists who have invested their careers in the theory will change that; and no amount of bullying designed to silence the controversy will change that. It's time for all of the Kurt Vonneguts and Antony Flews and Michael Dentons to calmly but clearly call a stop to the pretense that there is no scientific controversy.

And it's time for all of the academics and intellectuals and journalists who have largely trusted the Darwinists on blind faith to revisit the issue, thoroughly considering the arguments made by scientists like Michael Denton and Jonathan Wells. It simply doesn't work to entrust the process to the priesthood of Darwinists. Although most of them are both bright and sincere, they have a deep and long-vested interest in believing in their theory, and in shielding it from attack.

Some haven't attempted because they assume the debate is over their head. But the arguments that ultimately unravel the Darwinian synthesis aren't terribly difficult to grasp. Anyone who remembers the rudiments of logic they learned in freshman composition can follow the essentials of the argument. Below are three articles to get started:

Fact Sheet: Microevolution vs. Macroevolution

Fact Sheet: The Cambrian Explosion

The Survival of the Fakest

Finally, if you have a Ph.D. in engineering, mathematics, computer science, biology, chemistry, or one of the other natural sciences, and you agree with the following statement, "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged,” then please contact us here.


Posted by Jonathan Witt on January 25, 2006 4:46 PM |

[Insidium]

But look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such machines.

Begging the question...

Look, if it’s what we’re thinking about all the time; if I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it’d be on my mind all the time as to how the hell we really got this way. It’s a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can’t think this?

Well, proposing that a miracle occured sure as hell will not bring us a single step closer to understading how the hell we really got this way. Looking at evolution, on the other hand, will. Intelligent design is the equivalent of saying "we do not know how it occured naturally, therefore we will stop trying." Petr, what sort of experiments would ID scientists perform?

These and the more than 400 Ph.D. scientists on our dissent-from-Darwin list--those skeptics of the theory brave and tenured enough to speak out--are trying to tell us something

How many of them have degrees in biology?

Also, have you heard of Project Steve? Here's a link I'm sure you'll enjoy: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/

The list of Steves is far more prestigious than any list of living scientists the creationists have ever produced. It includes Nobel Prize winners, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and influential authors such as Stephen Hawking. It is telling that creationist lists tend to be lean on practicing research biologists. In contrast, about two-thirds of the scientists on NCSE's list are biologists, who are the most qualified to evaluate whether the evidence favors evolution. Another point is that the NCSE's list includes the information on where the Steves got their degrees and their current position. By not doing so, the creationist lists do not make it obvious how many of the people listed are not practicing scientists.

[Kim Jong Tha Illest]

Leave it to Petr to euologize mr Vonnegut by way of transforming his body of work into yet another crystal deposit in the quotemine. I thought Christian fundie types had respect for the dead.

[Petr]

Also, have you heard of Project Steve? Here's a link I'm sure you'll enjoy: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/
The 400 figure is getting old, it's now more like 700.

Project Strawman Steve

There is another major element of nonsense surrounding Project Steve. Those who sign the Steve list don’t have to worry about their lives and careers being destroyed, as do those who sign the Dissent From Darwinism list. This renders Project Steve utterly meaningless at best, and totally hypocritical at worst.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/project-strawman-steve/


Indeed, whereas new ideas like ID are more popular among the younger generation of researchers, the youngsters are not yet safe enough and tenured to risk their careers by joining the revolution openly at this stage.

(Just like politicians like Jimmy Carter start to to blurt un-PC statements only after their active career is over and they have less to lose.)

There will be lots of Johnny-come-latelies once we start to get this thing really rolling.


Petr

[Insidium]

If the figure is getting old, why did you open this thread with it? Also, you did not answer my question: how many of these dissenters are practicing biologists? Because anyone outside the field of biology (be it engineering, chemistry, statistics, computer science, geology) has no authority on the subject. If you skirt from answering this, I will only assume that the majority possess no relevant knowledge to the question of evolution. Also, their dissent itself is irrelevant if they do not propose a better paradigm to replace evolution. Sadly, ID is not it.

I see that you have been posting lots of ID articles. Are you a supporter of ID now, or are you still a young earth creationist? If it is the latter, I have to ask why you post threads about a theory you do not even hold to. I suspect that the answer is that you are adolescently rebelling against evolution and will parrot on about ANY "theory" (I use the term very loosely here), regardless of its actual validity which opposes it. This sort of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" nonsense is best reserved for politics, not science.

[il ragno]

http://inverse.physics.berkeley.edu/archives/nelson.gif

HA! HA! .....your god has failed!

[Petr]

I see that you have been posting lots of ID articles. Are you a supporter of ID now, or are you still a young earth creationist? If it is the latter, I have to ask why you post threads about a theory you do not even hold to.
Like I'd have to answer for the purity of my doctrine to a smarmy non-entity like you.

But anyways, I consider ID to be a a step in the right direction, the acknowledgement of the obvious.

Let's break it down:

Pure orthodox evolutionism is a more or less irrational faith-position.

Intelligent Design is the moderate, reasonable middle.

Creationism is another faith-position.


The Intelligent Design is about the realm of Natural Revelation. It is the level where even fundamentalist Christians can co-operate with pagans and unbelievers. All it requires is common sense, recognizing the self-evident design in the creation.

Scriptural Revelation, on the other hand, is Christians-only territory. It requires specific faith in the Bible.

Christianity has a great and prestigious theological-philosophical tradition about the co-operation of these two sets of Revelation, and there is nothing adolescent or made-up about it.


Petr

[Insidium]

Ah, I see that you've failed to answer both of the relevant questions that I posed. I'll repeat them: how many of these scientists hold degrees in relevant fields, and how does this compare to the amount of scientists in relevant fields who do support evolution? Ignoring something like this is blatant intellectual dishonesty.

Second, what sort of research would ID scientists do? How would they go about testing or demonstrating their hypotheses? What would they research? Specifically, what could they research that the current evolutionary paradigm cannot?

[Angler]

ID is a cop-out. It's based on a very weak assumption: that because the evolution of certain biological structures is not yet conclusively understood, evolution must fail as an explanation of the origin of these structures. ID tells scientists: "Give up now, and attribute these things to a supernatural designer."

What if scientists had always done this? What if no one had ever bothered to do research on Tourette's Syndrome because it was "obvious" that someone who was compelled to blurt out profanity and even blasphemy just had to be possessed by an evil spirit? What if men had never bothered to think about what caused stormy weather and just decided to assume that it must be caused by God's wrath?

There are countless other examples of phenomena that were once thought inexplicable but for which purely naturalistic explanations were found. There has never been a case in which any phenomenon was proven to be supernatural in origin.

In spite of this obvious historical pattern, the proponents of ID want science to give up again and embrace the supernatural. But scientists won't do that. If they did, they'd no longer be scientists, but priests.

[Petr]

Ah, I see that you've failed to answer both of the relevant questions that I posed. I'll repeat them: how many of these scientists hold degrees in relevant fields, and how does this compare to the amount of scientists in relevant fields who do support evolution? Ignoring something like this is blatant intellectual dishonesty.
Petty haggling over statistics (just what one can expect from a shallow materialist). And the figures keep changing all the time.

Science is not done (or should not be done) by majority democracy anyways, but these figures are already enough to prove that "controversy exists."

Second, what sort of research would ID scientists do? How would they go about testing or demonstrating their hypotheses? What would they research? Specifically, what could they research that the current evolutionary paradigm cannot?
Let's rather say: what could evolutionists research that IDers could not?

And have some patience (ah, how naivë to expect any sporting spirit from might-is-right Darwinians). This will take some time, especially since we anti-materialists are under persecution.


Big ideas take time

In Ruse's terminology, evolution only gradually arose from pseudoscience, through popular science, before finally becoming a professional science in the 1930's. You could say that evolution evolved. Similarly, intelligent design has passed from being expressed in creationist pamphlets as a flimsy support for apologetics, to being expressed in popular science books. ID critcs often inquire as to why intelligent design still isn't doing any research, "10 years after Behe published Darwin's Black Box". However, they should remember the lesson taught to us by Darwin's followers: Big ideas take time.

http://telicthoughts.com/big-ideas-take-time/


The only thing that allows smug Darwinists like you to act so superior is that your people hold the political power right now, representing the establishment. Nothing else makes Darwinian narrative superior to its competitors.


Petr

[Schwarze Sonne]

The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.

If God were alive today, he would have to be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.


I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.

All from Kurt.


This is what Kurt wanted on his tombstone...

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

I think people have a hard time understanding Vonnegut's dry wit and verbal irony.

[Insidium]

Petty haggling over statistics (just what one can expect from a shallow materialist). And the figures keep changing all the time.

What do you know - a cop out!

Science is not done (or should not be done) by majority democracy anyways, but these figures are already enough to prove that "controversy exists."

Hey, you're the one who started naming figures for the number of people who dissent from Darwin. I merely matched your style of argumentation, and on this plain you have clearly lost.

Let's rather say: what could evolutionists research that IDers could not?

..? Everything they are doing now, perhaps? Are you implying that the ID paradigm is essentially the evolutionary paradigm? Of course, I did not expect you to be able to debate, merely spew more pre-fabricated creationist rhetoric. This is a very important question - if the ID paradigm has no new methods or directions of research, it is redundant at best.

And have some patience (ah, how naivë to expect any sporting spirit from might-is-right Darwinians). This will take some time, especially since we anti-materialists are under persecution.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/morgoth99/emo.jpg

The only thing that allows smug Darwinists like you to act so superior is that your people hold the political power right now, representing the establishment. Nothing else makes Darwinian narrative superior to its competitors.

Ask what George Dubya believes, eh?

Evolution is a grossly superior explanatory paradigm than ID. There is no competition.

[melanaigis]

modern evolutionary theory is in crisis, and no amount of motive mongering about people's religious motivations will change that; no amount of denials from sincere evolutionists who have invested their careers in the theory will change that; |

Preposterous. Baseless partisan rhetoric.

Any serious scientist is a model agnostic, an open-minded skeptic, and he will base his theories on the best evidence available. That means if/when better evidence comes along that has the potential to radically alter a specific theory or replace it, the true scientist will be open to that. In other words, offer physical evidence that God made Eve from Adam's rib, and the scientist will believe it.

There is sufficient evidence supporting evolution, yet "intelligent design" partisans, motivated solely by their belief in God and their religious political agenda, cannot prove anything with their theories.

[Petr]

Any serious scientist is a model agnostic, an open-minded skeptic, and he will base his theories on the best evidence available. That means if/when better evidence comes along that has the potential to radically alter a specific theory or replace it, the true scientist will be open to that. In other words, offer physical evidence that God made Eve from Adam's rib, and the scientist will believe it.
This is scientistic myth-making, portraying scientists as neutral, unprejudiced secular priesthood of wisdom.

Study some iconoclastic philosophers of science, like Kuhn and Feyerabend, to get rid of such naivëte.


Paul Feyerabend's manifesto against the religion of scientism

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18902&highlight=feyerabend

The End of Science? ("Skeptical Inquirer" on the philosophy of Feyerabend and Kuhn)

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=16347&highlight=feyerabend

And also:

"Big Science has become a twin of Big Labor: a liberal (12/02/2004), money-hungry, monolithic political force with dubious relations to its founding principles and constituency, and even more dubious credibility. Individual scientists, like individual laborers, often do honest work. The party bosses, though, do not always represent them or their best interests. Power breeds conformity. The rank and file do what they must to stay out of trouble."

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=15831&highlight=kasser


Petr

[Petr]

..? Everything they are doing now, perhaps? Are you implying that the ID paradigm is essentially the evolutionary paradigm?
I am saying that we could cut out Darwinism and keep on doing science just fine, if we only wanted. All that would be lost would be materialist speculations that secularism needs to justify its existence.

Is evolution really essential for biology?

"Italian paleontologist and structuralist Prof. Roberto Fondi of the University of Siena argues that Darwinism was a dead end, so it would be much more fruitful to return to the pre-Darwinian morphology of Aristotle, Linnaeus, Cuvier and Goethe.1"

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5075

Evolutionists are bringing nothing inexpendable to the party, and the only reason Darwinism looks like indispensable is that it is a vital part of modernist secularist narrative that governs our lives, the all-encompassing mythology of our times.

Just like in the Middle Ages questioning the Church was not a mere theological matter, but threatened the legitimacy of the entire social system, so questioning materialist evolution today is not a mere scientific issue on either side, but carries tremendous cultural baggage with it. Sheer social prejudice prevents most scientists from even starting to see just how naked the emperor of spontaneous evolution can be.


Petr

[Angler]

Science and scientists are not perfect, but the scientific method works when applied over time. I find it astonishing that religious fundies refuse to admit this, even as they type away on computers whose workings are far more complex than most people realize (e.g., quantum mechanics is necessary to fully understand the working of even a single transistor).

The scientific method is based on certain assumptions, but those assumptions have been validated by real-word results.

When I was first learning quantum mechanics, I was a bit perplexed by the highly abstract and somewhat bizarre mathematical formalism, which makes use of mathematical operators to represent physical quantities like momentum, position, energy, etc. To my knowledge, there's still no way to prove the correctness of that formalism from more basic principles. The proof of the quantum mechanical formalism lies in the simple fact that it delivers the goods by making consistently correct predictions of real-world events. That's all the justification needed to rely on it.

Religion is also based on assumptions such as the existence of a God, certain characteristics of God, etc. Specific religions such as Christianity often make further assumptions, e.g., God created man and woman in their current form without using evolution. When and how have these assumptions ever been validated? Stories in books are the best "evidence" religion has to offer.

The Bible does offer opportunities to test its claims. For example, Jesus said that any time a group of people were to pray for something in his name, it would be granted to them by God. To test this, let an amputee and his family earnestly pray in Jesus' name for his limb to be restored. Simple, direct, and to the point. (Oh, but I forgot: "You shall not put the Lord thy God to the test." In other words, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...)

[melanaigis]

This is scientistic myth-making, portraying scientists as neutral, unprejudiced secular priesthood of wisdom.

Study some iconoclastic philosophers of science, like Kuhn and Feyerabend, to get rid of such naivëte.


Paul Feyerabend's manifesto against the religion of scientism

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18902&highlight=feyerabend

The End of Science? ("Skeptical Inquirer" on the philosophy of Feyerabend and Kuhn)

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=16347&highlight=feyerabend

And also:

"Big Science has become a twin of Big Labor: a liberal (12/02/2004), money-hungry, monolithic political force with dubious relations to its founding principles and constituency, and even more dubious credibility. Individual scientists, like individual laborers, often do honest work. The party bosses, though, do not always represent them or their best interests. Power breeds conformity. The rank and file do what they must to stay out of trouble."

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=15831&highlight=kasser


Petr


I am familiar with Kuhn and read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions years ago. Great work.

Quote from Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger Vol. I:

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

Kuhn was an admirer of Bohr.

Dogma and politics are problematic when they enter the realm of science, because they impede innovation, progress and knowledge. I will not dispute that.

There have been literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of studies and papers over the past century and a half that comprise the current human database of evolutionary theory, with biologists, geneticists, anthropologists, paleontologists, etc., etc. contributing to this vast body of knowledge. Even if dogma has set in, even if some scientists are motivated by political reasons, even if some of them will be too stubborn to move with a paradigm shift, there is no denying that this gathered data exists, and it is enough to keep a broad and very general consensus together.

I have not seen anything that suggests, for example, that any of the intelligent design researchers have taken the Bohr/Kuhn approach, or are interested in discovering the truth based on evidence. They problem is they come at it ass-backwards: they are already entrenched in religious dogma before they begin their inquiries, and they do not take an open approach to examining the evidence. Instead, they attempt to find arguments that fit in with their reality tunnels. Scientists begin with free inquiry that may lead to entrenched dogma if they believe their evidence.

None of the intelligent design researchers have proven the existence of God, nor have they disproven evolution. While it is extemely healthy and vital to question any and all scientific theory, and to call anybody on their dogmatic attachments to specific theories, alternate theories must be proven plausible, the theorists must use scientific rigor and methodology to prove or disprove any theories, the theorists must start from a place of genuine inquiry and be prepared to abandon their own dogmas.

[Petr]

While it is extemely healthy and vital to question any and all scientific theory, and to call anybody on their dogmatic attachments to specific theories, alternate theories must be proven plausible, the theorists must use scientific rigor and methodology to prove or disprove any theories, the theorists must start from a place of genuine inquiry and be prepared to abandon their own dogmas.
Sounds like pious platitudes. We know that in real world things work out in a rather more messier way. From David Southwell's Secrets & Lies: Exposing the World of Cover-ups and Deception:

http://www.intelligentdesign.fi/2007/02/12/valitettavaa-vainoa/#more-122


“The quickest way to commit professional suicide in today’s scientific world is to challenge any aspect of Darwinism. The theory is so entrenched as the bedrock of all biological and zoological science that anyone who examines it is attacked with a frightening degree of professional hostility” He adds that he believes evolution is true but that “elements of Darwinian’s theory of mutation combining with natural selection appear to be flawed”

He then gives several examples of suppression. One is as follows:

An example of the suppression of any scientists who questions any aspect of Darwinian theory is that of British biologist Warwick Collins. In 1976 he wrote a paper on sexual selection as an anomaly in Darwinian theory. As he was about to speak at an international conference to explain his paper, renowned geneticist Professor Maynard Smith stood up and attacked Collins in front of the audience. He told him that he would use his influence to block publication of any further papers he wrote. Smith seems to have been true to his word as Collins continues to have his papers rejected for publication for no reason” (Page 89).



And are materialists ready to seriously doubt their own presuppositions? Darwinism in its present paradigm may be de jure falsifiable, but it happens to be de facto infalsifiable, as all its competitors have been a priori disqualified! Nice sophistic trick.


Michael Ruse muttered to me darkly several years ago that Dawkins seems not to understand that this argument makes evolution by natural selection true by necessity -- hardly a happy position for any putatively empirical theory to be in.

... Turns out however that for Dawkins evidence isn't finally decisive. Indeed evidence does not count at all, in the end. Only those explanations that begin with primal physical simplicity, such as natural selection, can possibly serve as real theories. Design loses, no matter what.

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=15942&highlight=nagel


Petr

[Petr]

I can actually see a parallel in the way the "free inquiry" science is idealistically, in the abstract sense, supposed to work, and how it actually works, to the way that libertarian free-market enthusiasts argue how things would be perfect, as if by arranged by "invisible hand", if the economic forces were just allowed to be totally free from outside oppression.

None other FadeTheButcher explained how naivë such a view is:

I would say it is highly relevant (like knowing the other guy is cheating when you are playing cards). The so-called "free market" is constantly being rigged by those who have the money and the power to manipulate it to their advantage, above all, by the very same corporations who are always belching out neoliberal propaganda while maintaining an army of lobbyists on K street. Where was the "free market" when the federal government spent billions of taxpayer dollars bailing out Citibank for investing in Brazilian junk bonds?
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23196&page=2&highlight=heraclitus

Like such corporations, the highly-ideological scientific school of Darwinism (well-established and tenured) is able to terrorize any upstart entrepreneurs who would offer theories that would upset their rule.

All the while extolling the virtues of "free inquiry" in public.


Petr

[Insidium]

I am saying that we could cut out Darwinism and keep on doing science just fine, if we only wanted. All that would be lost would be materialist speculations that secularism needs to justify its existence.

What do you mean by that, exactly? How would we explain the diversity of species, then? And why would we "cut out" a perfectly legitimate scientific theory?

Put some thought into these questions, Petr. Your usual soundbites and rhetoric do not make for a very satisfying explanation. How do you explain the fact that human chromosome 2 appears exactly like two chimp chromosomes that were fused at the ends?

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom_2.gif

We know for a fact that natural selection acts on populations, so what reason do we have to insist that it works only below the level of species? How do we explain observed speciation events? (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html)

I'm not interested in your complaints about how your ID friends are being discriminated against; I want to see how your paradigm explains the observed data. What mechanistic explanation do you propose?

Also, please stop posting links to threads in which your ass has been handed to you. You are guilty of the same thing you recently accused Thinker of in that economics thread.