Quick hit: DaveScot might want to think this one over July 31, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in Origins, Science, wingnuts.trackback
PZ linked to this great post explaining the history of DaveScot’s bizare banning policy at Uncommon Dissent. It includes this post explaining yet another ban (the bolds are in ds’s origional):
…So “It looks like it’s designed” is not a robust rationale. At least not for the scientific community.
Maybe it looks designed to you but not to me. I use an example of a digitally programmed protein factory (DNA and ribosome) and you offer me a rock with a couple of square crystals in it as a rejoinder? You’re out of here. Go waste someone else’s time and bandwidth. –ds
The great thing is he thinks he’s refuting an anti-ID argument by pointing out they don’t agree on what features indicate design. Maybe DNA looks designed to DaveScot. Maybe the Face on Mars looks designed to Dembski. Maybe IDist think prostate problems are a sign of the Intelligent Design of the human male’s urinary tract. Certainly Behe thinks marlaria is Intelligently Designed. I don’t agree with them on any of those, and I ain’t the only one.
So one needs to ask: if ID can be detected, why have they still failed to come up with a means of detecting, unequivocally and without bad math, what features indicate design?
Oh, that’s right: it’s because their real answer, the one they give when us evil rationalists are looking the other way, is that “a magic man done it.” Turns out it’s hard to make that into a real scientific theory, since it involves evoking the magic man whenever you claim there’s no scientific explanation for something.
Which is why these people hate actual science so much. As a commenter on PZ’s blog noted (sorry, I can’t find the original comment): “Not the gaps! That’s where God lives!”
Yeah, he may want to think that one over. Prostate Problems are not an intelligent design unless we go beyond the immediate body concerns and look at evolution. For example, if prostate problems point a finger at a bigger problem on a social level which could effect evolution… However, then we have an argument if the human body is really concerned with evolution? Probably only to the degree that it may prevent perepetuation of the species?