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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Debate Club
Coinciding with this week's Scopes II trial in PA, the Legal Affairs Debate Club takes up the issue of the legality of teaching intelligent design in public schools this week. Participants are Bekcwith and Laycock. Looks promising.
Posted by Hillel Levin on September 27, 2005 at 11:50 AM in Hillel Levin | Permalink
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Comments
Big bang cosmology and quantum mechanics are simple systems? Wow, that's news to me. I may have to print out that comment for the next time I meet a cute female physicist (or cosmologist, or astronomer, or mathematician) at a bar.
I find ridicule quite appealing. (You're lucky Leiter isn't reading this -- give it time, I'm sure -- or you'd really get some well-deserved ridicule.) I'm not going to try and defend Darwinian theory (I'm no biologist anyway) to you, not participate in this futile discussion beyond this one post, but let me just say that the notion that "patterns inherent in nature" = "intelligent design" is blatantly absurd. The presence of what humans perceive as a pattern does not imply that some intelligence put it there, not least because (a) patterns could easily arise by non-intelligent processes, consider fractals for example, and (b) humans, with perceptions constructed by their environment, are likely to conceptualize "patterns" with reference to sequences that they are accustomed to observing, and Dawkins is no exception to this.
That's it, I'm out.
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Sep 27, 2005 8:41:09 PM
Dear Mr. Gowder,
That particular red herring is known as the "appeal to ridicule" fallacy. The orbit of the earth as well as big bang cosmology as well as quantum mechanics are quite simple systems. A drop of pond water is many billions of time more complex.
This is a typical response of Darwinists. Ridicule, appeal to belief, begging the question, appeal to authority, guilt by association, misrepresenting premises (putting words in people's mouths), ad nauseum.
Anything but debating the question of a reasonable explanation for speciation.
It is particulary ironic that the sainted Richard Dawkins made an inadvertent argument for Intelligent Design in his book "Climbing Mount Impossible". In attempting to explain complex changes he posits a number of smaller intermediate steps. These intermediate forms are preserved until the next mutation in the sequence occurs. And how are these intermediate forms recognized? Why, there are patterns inherent in nature. That is indistinguishable from Intelligent Design.
Regards,
Roy
Posted by: Roy Lofquist | Sep 27, 2005 6:58:46 PM
Roy:
What, the Discovery Institute is denying that the earth revolves around the sun now? Lemme guess. "The Earth's orbit around the sun is irreducibly complex, so the sun revolves around the Earth?"
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Sep 27, 2005 2:31:19 PM
Dear Sirs,
The strident assault on "Intelligent Design" is not about religion or scientific method or any of the other red herrings bandied about. It is about anointing the current academic establishment as the arbiter of public debate. This trial is not Scopes II, it is Galileo Galilei II. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0858327.html Galileo and the Church.
For a FAQ on ID please see http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2348
Regards,
Roy
Posted by: Roy Lofquist | Sep 27, 2005 2:06:17 PM
Beckwith's contention is that the teaching of ID does not violate the Establishment clause. An opponent might make the following argument: the first part of the Lemon test requires that the law has a secular purpose. The "cultural history" of ID is that, while it's not a religious theory, it does have religous roots, and therefore it would fail the Lemon test. Alternately, is the "designer" a thinly veiled reference to God, and therefore a school board's inclusion of ID on curricula fails the Lemon test? Would these arguments pass muster?
How about this argument: The second part of the Lemon test requires that the law neither advances nor inhibits religion. Does teaching, in a science class, a theory that posits the existence of a "designer" advance theistic beliefs? Does it inhibit atheistic (or agnostic) beliefs? If the answer to either question is "yes," does ID fail the Lemon test? Again, does the answer to these questions turn on the claim that the "designer" is not God?
I hope the debaters take up these questions. (Are they taking questions in a forum or at an email address?)
(My two cents: Beckwith seems to be ahead in the first round. Laycock begins his post with "yes, but" but has not yet supported that claim. Hopefully he'll be able to in future posts...)
Posted by: He Screams | Sep 27, 2005 12:37:50 PM
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