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Oct. 18th, 2005 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herveusThe appearance of design is aspects of biology is overwhelming. Intelligent design is based on observed, empirical, physical evidence from nature." - Michael J. Behe, professor of biochemistry, Lehigh University, testifying in support of the Dover, Pa. school board.
Right.
That still doesn't make it science. From scientific perspective, "intelligent design" is just a handwave to gloss over things that can't yet be explained. It's a way to avoid the hard/critical thinking. Where are the testable and falsifiable predictions?
Behe claims that the bacterial flagellum is "irreducably complex" -- that it could not have evolved because it needed all of its parts to work. OK. If that's true, then how did this "intelligent designer" come up with the idea? Where did that designer come from?
It's turtles all the way down, folks.
I guess Behe is too lazy to contemplate various evolutionary false starts and dead ends that don't exist anymore.
He also says "If Darwinian theory is so fruitless at explaining the very foundation of life...one can reasonably wonder if there is some other explanation." Maybe. On the other hand, one can at least as reasonably wonder at the marvel of it, thank <fitd(s)> for the inspiration, and continue to ponder and hypothesize and test instead of throwing up one's hands and giving up.
"God is who. Evolution is how." I don't see why this has to be a disjunctive OR, nor why faith must be taught in the science classroom. Don't play stupid word games with "theory" when you know damn well that the term as applied in science does not mean that there is particular doubt, but rather that the question has survived attempts to disprove it.
Yes, Toto, I'm afraid of Kansas.
Right.
That still doesn't make it science. From scientific perspective, "intelligent design" is just a handwave to gloss over things that can't yet be explained. It's a way to avoid the hard/critical thinking. Where are the testable and falsifiable predictions?
Behe claims that the bacterial flagellum is "irreducably complex" -- that it could not have evolved because it needed all of its parts to work. OK. If that's true, then how did this "intelligent designer" come up with the idea? Where did that designer come from?
It's turtles all the way down, folks.
I guess Behe is too lazy to contemplate various evolutionary false starts and dead ends that don't exist anymore.
He also says "If Darwinian theory is so fruitless at explaining the very foundation of life...one can reasonably wonder if there is some other explanation." Maybe. On the other hand, one can at least as reasonably wonder at the marvel of it, thank <fitd(s)> for the inspiration, and continue to ponder and hypothesize and test instead of throwing up one's hands and giving up.
"God is who. Evolution is how." I don't see why this has to be a disjunctive OR, nor why faith must be taught in the science classroom. Don't play stupid word games with "theory" when you know damn well that the term as applied in science does not mean that there is particular doubt, but rather that the question has survived attempts to disprove it.
Yes, Toto, I'm afraid of Kansas.
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Date: 2005-10-18 02:13 pm (UTC)While there may be places that Inteligent Design is an apropriate idea for discussion, I can't see hoe a biology classroom is one of them. establish a class on "Differences in Life-Origin Theories" or something like that. Bio's confusing enough has is with casting the entire bedrock of it into doubt without much of a reason to do so.