tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post3409077966426642462..comments2024-02-28T02:22:20.886-08:00Comments on homunculus: What a shoddy piece of work is manPhilip Ballhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09986655706443117158noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-67903448860184488402010-05-09T13:32:53.479-07:002010-05-09T13:32:53.479-07:00Thank you Peter. I guess ID enthusiasts feel that ...Thank you Peter. I guess ID enthusiasts feel that beauty is subjective but 'irreducible complexity' is something quantifiable. Trouble is, they don't seem yet to have made 'irreducible complexity' anything more concrete than a head-scratching response of 'well, I can't see how that got made gradually' - a confession of all too human bafflement. It seems inevitably to become a God of the Gaps argument. It would be very nice to think that one could put forward a case that would give them pause, but in general it seems that the ideology runs too deep. All the same, I do feel it is more productive to try to admit how little we do understand about some things, and not to try battering down their ramparts with scientism.<br />Jim: isn't 'Marxist-feminist politics' all a bit 80s?Philip Ballhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09986655706443117158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-64446457402566516852010-05-06T11:38:44.956-07:002010-05-06T11:38:44.956-07:00Isn't it odd, that as religion was quietly shu...Isn't it odd, that as religion was quietly shuffling off into the sunset in the last century, concomitantly with the upward surge of science and technology, there was in the last few decades a 'need' for New Atheism.<br /><br />I'm beginning to wonder whether ID is an agent provocateur; politically designed for the sole purpose of leading the last vestiges of religion to a final and inglorious end.<br /><br />The benefits being to those who would rule us all, and suffer no gods before them. Similarly the family is being dismantled, and anything that relates to 'old' culture is being reclassified as suspect Fascism/Patriarchy/Taliban etc.<br /><br />In Britain, the real threat to school science is most definitely not the church, but Marxist-Feminist politics. Yet I don't see any of the New Atheists addressing this issue; indeed Richard Dawkins was even introduced by Polly Toynbee (treasurer to the Fabian society), prior to one of his lectures. And he often cites feminism as an exemplum of social awareness.<br /><br />The soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov (check his YouTube lectures), explained the methods of soviet subversion in the west as including the need to undermine the prevailing culture prior to subjugation or 'normalization'. The techniques included introducing new competing ideologies, which serve no other purpose other than distraction from stabilizing old cultures. Once chaos is achieved the 'new' culture comes storming in to 'save' the people from their mess.<br /><br />Ask yourselves: who actually benefits from ID, and ask: why is it being propounded by a slick lawyer?JimmyGirohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01548795180321590463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-82666872581264883002010-05-05T13:48:24.421-07:002010-05-05T13:48:24.421-07:00Elegantly summarized. For your information, the l...Elegantly summarized. For your information, the link to the Avise paper appears to be broken.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13892068150918190400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26741618.post-44850494256263379062010-05-05T11:49:46.154-07:002010-05-05T11:49:46.154-07:00I like this article all the more for the fact that...I like this article all the more for the fact that it doesn't make me embarrassed to be a Scientist. Sometimes there's only a small, telling slip, but too often the argument for evolution is put too strongly, with hubris all too close to the surface. Even if there is no God, it is ill to take the mantle of a God. Here, I think you've avoided any slips that my (I believe fairly sensitive) hubris-radar can detect. You've even avoided Science's God, truth. Wonderful!<br /><br />If you can write more like this, I would not give up hope that you might help there be some movement. The point about ID that I always think is not considered enough is that it is --slightly-- more evidence-based than creationism. It is a slow process to accommodate evidence when an underlying prejudice also has to be accommodated, but glaciers do move. [Science, parenthetically, is not without at least some prejudices that slow things down, and there are certainly "introns" in textbooks that have to be elaborated upon or redacted by lecturers.] Transfer of knowledge and wisdom is not a smooth process.<br /><br />ID has a significant prejudice, but ID researchers seem to be trying to construct a convincing argument not just for true believers. To a scientist, complexity is just complexity, whereas for ID it is <i>evidence</i> of God's hand. That ID takes complexity as its sign --instead of beauty-- perhaps shows a slow Scientific bent towards something measurable instead of a value judgment.<br /><br />I feel that an argument from my feelings for the beauty of some things, and of some mathematics, the <i>old</i> argument as I think of it, comes closer to the spirit than vague arguments in terms of complexity. "It's too complex" doesn't cut it the way that <i>WOW</i> does. What do ID researchers think taking emotion out of the argument does? I go to Church and to Physics for the high of an open conversation, which in different kinds I gladly find in both places, not for cold arguments.<br /><br />I thought I had something to say, but I suppose it just turned into almost random thoughts, which as usual are slightly strange even to me.Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08654675777726560464noreply@blogger.com