Thanks for that post - you aren't the first to engage with PT, as I'm sure you are aware - I got stuck in the mud there for a month or so - but that was a cool rejoinder.
Paul and/or Liz | Homepage | 02.08.05 - 3:45 am | #

Kansas is currently in the middle of an evolutionary brouhaha. I liked your thoughts on the topic and emailed an excerpt from your post to a local columnist at the Kansas City Star newspaper(http://www.kansascity.com/mld/ kansascity/news/columnists/mike_hendricks/ 10775311.htm) -- Bob
Kansas Bob | Homepage | 02.08.05 - 10:38 am | #

This is mostly in response to an earlier post, but I just discovered your blog today after seeing your comments on Panda's Thumb, so it seems relevant enough here. My understanding of Intelligent Design in the context of evolution is that it accepts natural explanations as sufficient most of the time and invokes the supernatural only for special cases where the natural processes are currently unknown. This is theologically fragile, because God diminishes as science extends its knowledge. Your concept of intelligent design appears to be more general. I agree that the questions "Why is there a universe at all?" and "How is it that life is even possible?" are interesting. I think it's unfair to state that "Evolutionists don't want to deal with this puzzle." Scientific fields have limited scope because people have limited minds and limited life spans; most of us can, at best, manage either breadth or depth, but not both. I am not sure how fair it is to judge a blog by its comments section. Some people on PT were addressing your arguments civily, others were flinging insults, and I agree that they are detrimental to the cause. I've seen the editors of PT step in, though I can imagine it's difficult to keep up with the volume without eliminating comments altogether.
al_art | 02.12.05 - 10:24 pm | #

I find your claim that biologists won't engage ID advocates in "meaningful debate" rather amusing, given that (in my experience, at least) ID advocates don't listen to the other side of "meaningful debates" anyway. The reason many biologists have a hard time dealing patiently with creationists is that some of them who have fought these battles are, quite simply, tired of repeating the very same basic biological principles and descriptions of the scientific method over and over and over again, only to have them ignored and to hear the same canards repeated over and over again. I've only been interested in this issue a relatively short time, and I'm already amazed at how frequent (and utterly resistant to reason) the "just a theory" canard is or the bogus claim that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics is. I can forgive some of these biologists if they've decided that they are tired of beating their heads against the wall and for concluding that further attempts at "meaningful debate" with ID advocates are pointless

Indeed, I think it's a canard on your part to even make the claim that biologists don't engage in "meaningful debate" with creationists. There are huge websites and blogs that do nothing but examine critically ID claims in a reasoned, sober manner, and many trees have been killed to publish answers to ID advocates.

Finally, your labeling of biologists as "evolutionary fundamentalists" is just plain laughable. The difference between science and fundamentalistm is that science does change its views to fit the evidence. It may take a long time (sometimes an embarrassingly long time), but science corrects its mistakes and refines its theories in the face of new evidence, because the scientific method provides the mechanism for it to do so. Your attempt to label scientists defending evolution as "fundamentalists" is nothing more than a transparent tu quoque logical fallacy.
Orac | Homepage | 02.23.05 - 3:10 pm | #

Suppose you believe in a certain ideology. It doesn't matter what it is. Government is evil, God is good, whatever. Next suppose that someone states that your fundamental belief is wrong. They offer no evidence and any questioning of how they determined your ideology was wrong gives no answers. This is what turns ordinary people into what you call "Fundabmentalists." It doesn't matter what the point of view is nor the ideology.

This fundamentalism usually occur when two sides look at a single problem from completely different view points. Scientists look at the massive amount of data that supports evolution. The data fits the theory, and thus it is accepted. This is the evolution/scientists point of view and how most scientist approach any scientific theory. ID is not and cannot be scientific. Its core is philosophical. Thus, it cannot be debated in any sort of scientific way. Thus, the proponents of ID attack the argument from a philisophical point of view and not scientific. Thus, when one side is speaking of oranges the other is speaking of apples. There is no knowing. You cannot prove one side is right or wrong. Thus, the storm continues.

You have your beliefs. If I think they are wrong, that doesn't make you dumb and it doesn't make me dumb. It is a disagreement. If you go to a place where most people have a difference of opinion than you do, they are not fundamentalist pushing their agenda, they are group with a common opinion that happens to be different than yours. The world is full of them.
Monty Zoom | Homepage | 02.23.05 - 4:05 pm | #

No, I have to disagree with you. Fundamentalism is the adherence to a doctrine regardless of what the evidence shows. It's usually characterized by a return and rigid adherence to "fundamental principles" (in the case of Christian fundamentalists, these principles often includes a belief in the literalness and inerrancy of The Bible). Fundamentalism is the antithesis of science.

Can scientists be dogmatic? Of course. Can they be stubborn and difficult to sway from a favored hypothesis? Of course. It's just human nature. However, science and the scientific method provide the antidote to those very human traits, as well as a mechanism by which the evidence can win out. It may take a long time, sometimes hundreds of years, and there may be a lot of missteps and blind alleys along the way, but the evidence eventually almost always wins out in science. This is how science advances.

Oddly enough, the fundamentalists pushing ID as "science" and trying to get it into the public school classroom seem to crave some sort of validation from the very secular society they denigrate. They try to achieve that validation by having their nonscience "accepted" as if it were science (or at least tolerated). At the very least, where they hold sway, fundamentalists seem to want to have ID taught to everyone's kids, not just theirs, as "science," even though it is clearly not science.
Orac | Homepage | 02.23.05 - 5:14 pm | #

Orac,

My experience on PT is that I must endure insults: I have been called stupid, a crack head, moron, idiot, a liar, a troll, and most recently a child abuser.

I stand by my post.
David Heddle | Homepage | 02.23.05 - 5:52 pm | #

'I have been called stupid, a crack head, moron, idiot, a liar, a troll, and most recently a child abuser. '

Your not a crackhead, stupid, or an idiot.

But you are a misguided scientist who I feel has gone of the tracks of rational thought for who knows why.

The insults you endure are unfortunate but likely the result of frustration, frustration that one as supposedly intelligent as yourself can be so lost.
DC | 02.26.05 - 12:36 am | #

PT are experts not only at abuse, but at ad hominem arguments in general. Which makes it so crazy that this is one of their issues with some of the creationist world. "Let him who is without sin ...." Stick with it!
Paul and/or Liz | Homepage | 03.02.05 - 8:54 am | #

You're a rabid Calvinist. And everyone knows that Calvinists are crackheads.
Josh S | Homepage | 03.21.05 - 11:06 pm | #

And you aren't toeing the line by engaging in thoughts that are currently taboo in the science industry. That makes you sadly, sadly misguided.

I also like how DC said that basically those insults are ok, because you're hopelessly lost, and that frustrates people.

Hmmm...so when fundamentalist Christians get angry at people who question the dogma, that's bad. But when fundamentalist atheists do so...that's ok.
Josh S | Homepage | 03.21.05 - 11:07 pm | #