Archive for the 'Intelligent Design' Category

The idiocy of “Intelligent Design” [As in a horror movie, this monster never seems to die]

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on September 8, 2008
in Intelligent Design
. 0 Comments

It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible, like Dissent over Descent, the latest book from Steve Fuller, are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism. I suppose putatively sincere extrusions of the post-modern sensibility might henceforth deserve to be known as “the Steve Fuller syndrome”. For this offering by the American-born sociologist is a classic case of the absurdity to which that sensibility leads.

Flagella Myths

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on August 20, 2008
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Christianity , Creationism, Intelligent Design, Religion and Science & Technology
. 0 Comments

by Mark Perakh

In 1996 a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University named Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box1, in which he presented his concept of “irreducible complexity” (IC). Behe and his Intelligent Design (ID) colleagues claim that IC is strong evidence of “design” of biological systems, and ever since his book IC has acquired the status of one of the main pillars of the Intelligent Design platform.
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Richard Dawkins slaps Christians into the primordial soup

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on August 8, 2008
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Christianity , Creationism, Dawkins, Intelligent Design and Kooks
. 0 Comments

Richard Dawkins is that rare specimen, a public intellectual, a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace. Unlike the French, who worship their public intellectuals, giving them pet names such as les intellos, and airing them regularly on serious television and in print, the British like to shove academics into a musty corner, or laugh at them. This was not always the case: the Victorians, with their public lectures and royal societies, gloried in debate and celebrated the thrills of fresh knowledge. The nearest we get to this now is celebrating the thrill of Germaine Greer walking out of Celebrity Big Brother.

God Still isn’t Science

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on July 25, 2008
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Christianity , Creationism, Intelligent Design, Islam & Islamification , Judaism, Religion and Science & Technology
. 0 Comments

Gimme that Old-Time Irreligion

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on May 14, 2008
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Books , Creationism and Intelligent Design
. 0 Comments

A book review by Norman Levitt.

The very first thing I did in drafting this review was to Google Chester Alan Arthur. I trust my readers will recall the name, if only after a bit of head-scratching, as that of one of the most obscure and unmemorable of American presidents, a run-of-the-mill New York politician who attained to the highest office in the land by virtue of the assassination of his almost equally obscure predecessor, James A. Garfield, who picked the party wheel-horse Arthur as his running mate for reasons now totally forgotten.
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It Matters What We Think About Evolution

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on January 25, 2008
in Christianity , Creationism, Evolution, GOP, Intelligent Design, Kooks and U.S. Politics
. 0 Comments

Religious believer = a psychologically primitive ignoramus.

…we cannot trust our future to anyone who believes that the world is only a few thousand years old and who interprets ancient, apocalyptic writings as revealing God’s perfect will.

Another reason why I’m not a supporter of libertarian kook Ron Paul

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on January 3, 2008
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Creationism, Evolution, GOP, Intelligent Design, Kooks and U.S. Politics
. 0 Comments

darwinfish.png

He doesn’t believe in evolution.

“Well, at first I thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter, and I think it’s a theory, a theory of evolution, and I don’t accept it, you know, as a theory, but I think [ it probably doesn't bother me. It's not the most important issue for me to make the difference in my life to understand the exact origin. I think ] the creator that I know created us, everyone of us, and created the universe, and the precise time and manner, I just don’t think we’re at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side. [So I just don't . . . if that were the only issue, quite frankly, I would think it's an interesting discussion, I think it's a theological discussion, and I think it's fine, and we can have our . . . if that were the issue of the day, I wouldn't be running for public office."]

Rediscovering Intelligent Design

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on July 19, 2007
in Evolution, Intelligent Design and Kooks
. 1 Comment

Here is a likely poorly-specified question for biologists, prompted by wanting to buy Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us and then reading a story about genetically modified mice. Weisman’s book asks how the world would change and what of us would survive if humans were all wiped out overnight or just disappeared by something (a virus, the Rapture). The premise is unlikely (something that kills people—all people—but leaves the rest of the world standing) but intriguing.

United States of Jesus

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on July 8, 2007
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Christianity , Creationism, Intelligent Design and Kooks
. 0 Comments

Inferior Design

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on July 2, 2007
in Atheism/Agnosticism, Books , Christianity , Creationism, Dawkins, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Kooks and Science & Technology
. 0 Comments

I had expected to be as irritated by Michael Behe’s second book as by his first. I had not expected to feel sorry for him. The first — “Darwin’s Black Box” (1996), which purported to make the scientific case for “intelligent design” — was enlivened by a spark of conviction, however misguided. The second is the book of a man who has given up. Trapped along a false path of his own rather unintelligent design, Behe has left himself no escape. Poster boy of creationists everywhere, he has cut himself adrift from the world of real science. And real science, in the shape of his own department of biological sciences at Lehigh University, has publicly disowned him, via a remarkable disclaimer on its Web site: “While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally and should not be regarded as scientific.” As the Chicago geneticist Jerry Coyne wrote recently, in a devastating review of Behe’s work in The New Republic, it would be hard to find a precedent.