Thanks for the post Tara! Happy Holiday.
I would far prefer that we not have coal mines in the middle of the best places to live.
Got a source for the Shelley quote? Good post. Frank
Exquisite post - even in the courses I've taken in the history of science, I've never seen our hubris laid out so effectively.
Great post! Thank you!
What a wonderful essay!
Blogs by working scientists who can debunk the pseduoscientific propaganda of PR machines of the likes of the Discovery Institute are a wonderful innovation and are an important educational tool for the general public.
Now the debate is in full public view and accessible to anyone with a Web browser. Yes the ID crowd has their own blogs, but if the arguments are presented in the light of the day, I feel confident that science cannot lose.
Thank you Tara, and keep up the good work!
Hi Tara,
it's late at night here in England, and I have a long drive from Hastings to Devon tomorrow to see my family.
But i had to stop to make a comment to this post. Awesome is a word we don't use in the UK, but I think it applies in this case.
To hear sound words, and a truly erudite commentary from a working scientist - makes me feel humble.
So refreshing compared to the locker room of the 'Pandas Thumb' - inhabited by bores like myself, Dr Rev Lenny, Sal, and the 'Ghost of Paley'.
you were so right to leave your post until after the excitement died down.
I can't believe I'm you only fan - but if I am? can I be number 1?
Merry Xmas to you, you six year old, and you very lucky man..
Deano
Hastings
Eangland
Frank,
The Shelley quote comes from his essay, "A Refutation of Deism." I've not found the whole thing online anywhere, but it's very good reading if you can find it.
I like the quote from Shelley -- very lucid, well written, bringing up a point I hadn't thought of before, etc.
But I do have a question: what "portions" do you disagree with? Other than the somewhat old-fashioned verbiage, I don't notice anything objectionable.
Steve Beach
Nothing in those quotes...some portions later in the essay. (I'd quote them, but my hard copy is about 500 miles away at the moment).
Here's a url: http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/3...1/
frameset.html
Ain't the Internet wonderful?
Frank
I've seen that, but it's not the same one. How 'bout this--for anyone interested, when I get back to Iowa I'll scan it in as a .pdf and can email it out. Just drop me an email at aetiology@gmail.com and I'll send you the entire essay.
Smashing post - and thanks for the heads-up on the Baynton letter, too, which was one of the wittiest things I've read on ID in a while.
Happy new year
Tara and all,
Happy New Year!
Frank wrote,
>> Here's a url:
>> http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/3...1/ frameset.html
>> Ain't the Internet wonderful?
Tara replied,
-- I've seen that, but it's not the same one.
LPB:
Frank's url links to page 1 of the 15 pages that comprise Bibliomania's online text of Shelley's "Refutation of Deism."
The passages quoted by Tara are found at page 10 (1st full paragraph) and page 11 (4th full paragraph) in Bibliomania's online version:
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/3...0/
frameset.html
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/3...1/
frameset.html
The online text is scanned from a 1915 publication entitled "Shelley's Prose" edited and with a forward by the venerable Indian-born British socialist, vegetarian, intellectual & prolific writer Henry S. Salt.
http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/
books...selectedshelley
http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/
Bibliomania's text includes all footnote numbers from Mr. Salt's 1915 publication, but even though the numbers are hypertext, the links dead end -- a pity since Mr Salt's comments and annotations might be enlightening.
Besides "Refutation of Deism," Bibliomania has also put online the entire set of eight Shelley essays contained in Mr. Salt's 1915 collection:
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/3...1/
frameset.html
1. The Necessity of Atheism
2. A Letter to Lord Ellenborough
3. A Refutation of Deism
4. A Defence of Poetry
5. Essay on the Literature, the Arts, and the manners of the Athenians
6. On Life
7. On a Future State
8. Essay on Christianity
To me, the most intriguing part of Shelley's essay (see below) precedes immediately the first snippet quoted by Tara.
Query whether the avant-garde of 21st century ID proponents have self-consciously and intentionally conscripted the exact phrases & metaphors written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for his fictional foil Theosophus, so as to turn this vivid, poetic language against the very cause that Shelley, the great pre-Darwinian Darwinist, championed.
A delicious irony for ID'ers, n'est pas?
"La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid."
FROM EVERY DESIGN WE JUSTLY INFER A DESIGNER (snippet 1)
(from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Refutation of Deism.
Eusebes
Let me request you then to state, concisely, the grounds of your belief in the being of a God. In my reply I shall endeavour to controvert your reasoning, and shall hold myself acquitted by my zeal for the Christian religion, of the blasphemies which I must utter in the progress of my discourse.
Theosophus
I will readily state the grounds of my belief in the being of a God. You can only have remained ignorant of the obvious proofs of this important truth, from a superstitious reliance upon the evidence afforded by a revealed religion. The reasoning lies within an extremely narrow compass; quicquid enim nos vel meliores vel beatiores facturum est, aut in aperto, aut in proximo posuit natura.
From every design we justly infer a designer. If we examine the structure of a watch, we shall readily confess the existence of a watch-maker. No work of man could possibly have existed from all eternity. From the contemplation of any product of human art, we conclude that there was an artificer who arranged its several parts. In like manner, from the marks of design and contrivance exhibited in the Universe, we are necessitated to infer a designer, a contriver. If the parts of the Universe have been designed, contrived, and adapted, the existence of a God is manifest.
But design is sufficiently apparent. The wonderful adaptation of substances which act to those which are acted upon; of the eye to light, and of light to the eye; of the ear to sound, and of sound to the ear; of every object of sensation to the sense which it impresses prove that neither blind chance, nor undistinguishing necessity has brought them into being. The adaptation of certain animals to certain climates, the relation borne to each other by animals and vegetables, and by different tribes of animals; the relation, lastly, between man and the circumstances of his external situation are so many demonstrations of Deity
[snip]
If there is motion in the Universe, there is a God. The power of beginning motion is no less an attribute of mind than sensation or thought. Wherever motion exists it is evident that mind has operated. The phenomena of the Universe indicate the agency of powers which cannot belong to inert matter.
Every thing which begins to exist must have a cause: every combination, conspiring to an end, implies intelligence.
(continued)
(snippet - part 2 of 2)
Eusebes
Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. The matter in controversy is the existence of design in the Universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design, and adaptation before these circumstances are made apparent in the Universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which it behoves us to be watchful.
To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence is also an assumption of the matter in dispute.
Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? Simply because innumerable instances of machines having been contrived by human art are present to our mind, because we are acquainted with persons who could construct such machines; but if, having no previous knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidentally found a watch upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding that it was a thing of Nature, that it was a combination of matter with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account for the origin of its existence would be equally presumptuous and unsatisfactory.
[end snippitage]
Very nice post. Mark Twain also had a very nice (if somewhat sarcastic) rejoinder to the notion of design: it's as if the Eiffel tower were built for the sake of the coat of paint at the pinnacle.
The quote is here at the bottom.
You mention an eloquent essay that takes the position that macroevolution happened. I don't think eloquence can make up for the fact that there simply is no real evidence that macroevolution occurred.
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