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Friday, December 16, 2011

Key Figures in Intelligent Design Creationism

 
Here's a recording of interviews with three prominent Intelligent Design Creationists ....

Guillermo Gonzalez is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture (Discovery Institute).
Douglas Axe, director of The Biologic Institute, which is largely funded by the Discovery Institute.
David Berlinski is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture (Discovery Institute).

This is the best they have to offer. It gives you a very good idea of what Intelligent Design Creationism is all about. It's about nothing ... there's not a single mention of what IDC stands for and not a single bit of evidence for the existence of a designer. All you hear is whining about real science (evolution) and conspiracies.

Here's a quotation from Berlinski.
Nobody else is doing what the Discovery Institute has been able to do, and that is really put an entire scientific establishment on the defensive, forced for the first time to respond to some very significant criticism...




17 comments :

Glen Davidson said...

Nobody else is doing what the Discovery Institute has been able to do, and that is really put an entire scientific establishment on the defensive, forced for the first time to respond to some very significant criticism...

Wow, the IDiots made the science establishment respond to some--well let's be honest here--ancient tripe. And Phillip Johnson says:

The way the Darwinists responded convinced me that, for them, the all-important thing is to maintain a position of cultural power, rather than to seek a possibly unwelcome truth by employing truly scientific methods with intellectual honesty.

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-06-015-c#ixzz1gjAuevX0

Oh, so they don't agree. What a shock, Johnson won't acknowledge that his lies have been answered.

And what Berlinski fails to note is that indeed the creationist tripe has been answered, but the creationists/IDiots keep saying the same things without acknowledging the responses made, let alone addressing the issues that they've carefully avoided--like, why would the "designer" be as derivative as evolution must be, unlike known designers?

Glen Davidson

Nullifidian said...

The logic of the internet troll—people are responding to me, therefore that is a very significant concession.

And I'd like to remind Berlinski of such books as:

Scientists Confront Creationism by Laurie R. Godfrey (ed.)
Science and Creationism by Ashley Montagu (ed.)
Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution by Douglas Futuyma
The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldredge

And so on.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Could you please set it up so the audio does not start playing automatically when I arrive at the top blog page? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Slightly off-topic, but: could you please not embed an auto-playing piece of audio above the fold in a piece which gets syndicated to places like Planet Atheism? It means that anyone who loads the syndication page starts to hear your audio when the accompanying text may not even be within several pages of what they're seeing.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

The Discovery Institute is extremely important to Berlinski ... because who else would be foolish enough to pay him? Certainly not most universities.

The whole truth said...

The quote above from Phillip Johnson is pretty funny, and especially this part:

"...rather than to seek a possibly unwelcome truth by employing truly scientific methods with intellectual honesty."

To state the obvious: "truly scientific methods with intellectual honesty" to IDiots boils down to praying to an imaginary god, preaching, proselytizing, lying, quote mining, bashing Darwin, "Darwinists", "evolutionary materialists", science, evolution, the ToE, etc., evading questions, ignoring evidence, endlessly repeating the same old asinine rhetoric, hiding behind walls of blocking and banning, doing nothing scientific whatsoever, and just making shit up.

SLC said...

Mr. Berlinski is a devious person who has allowed people to erroneously believe that he is a mathematician when, in fact, his PhD is in philosophy. In addition, it is my information that he has never published a paper in a peer reviewed mathematics journal.

I had the great pleasure of outing him on Jason Rosenhouse's blog when Prof. Rosenhouse identified him as a mathematician.

Anonymous said...

Shallit, you'd couldn't hold a candle to Berlinski, and the being in the poorest of all positions to be in - you know it.

steve oberski said...

@Anonymous you'd couldn't hold a candle to Berlinski

That's a cheery thought but don't tempt me.

Nullifidian said...

Shallit, you'd couldn't hold a candle to Berlinski, and the being in the poorest of all positions to be in - you know it.

Right, just think of all those things Berlinski has that you don't, Dr. Shallit, like an academic job and a publication record in mathematics (rather than publishing incoherent tripe about mathematics). Wait, I've gotten confused. Those are all things Berlinski doesn't have.

Though I can admit that I don't see Dr. Shallit equaling Berlinski's skill in pompous prose and arrogant affectations.

Honestly, the only time holding a candle to Berlinski should ever be anyone's goal is when Berlinski has just been doused in kerosene.

lee_merrill said...

> ... not a single bit of evidence for the existence of a designer.

There is a positive case for a designer, only it's not (as you might expect) a scientific one, it's rather historical and forensic. As would be the case for a human designer, you won't be getting out test tubes and checking your thermometer.

So that would be the area of apologetics, not IDC.

Anonymous said...

Burn the Jew, Null? Nice.

steve oberski said...

Anonymous's anti-semitic fantasies are in perfect accord with the positions of the christian and muslim religions.

Creationism, AGW denialism and holocaust denialism; the trifecta of the rationally impaired.

Nullifidian said...

Oh, Anonymous, but I thought that Berlinski was an agnostic, so wouldn't that make it a case of burning the heretic? I dare say that's something you're familiar with... along with the tactic of trolling by being deliberately obtuse and casting aspersions that you can't possibly back up.

steve oberski said...

@lee_merrill

History and forensics employ the scientific method.

When they cease to do so then they just become an exercise in making stuff up.

You know, like religion.

Anonymous said...

@steve oberski
The big problem with ID is not that they are just making stuff up, and don't present evidence for their position.

The big problem is that they have no positive, substantive position.

They don't even make an attempt at telling us what happened and when. Not anything about "who, when, how, why". Why such-and-such and not something else. What was the motive, opportunity, and means.

All they have is "somewhere, somehow, something must be wrong with evolution."

TomS

Anonymous said...

If Berlinski wrote books trying to be a math popularizer, he's going about it in the wrong way, just like those legions of philosophy students who take one "History of Science" course and feel they can discourse about science without once ever having picked up a test-tube or a calculator with those funny Greek letters on it. Writing about math with fanciful allegories does not really inform about it. To be preferred are actual practicing scientists or mathematicians who can write in an approachable way.