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Friday, July 14, 2006

Conservatives Debate Intelligent Design

Posted by on July 14 at 12:46 PM

There’s an interesting debate between National Review writers George Gilder and John Derbyshire this week (that first link is to the Discovery Institute; NR has it behind their subscription wall). The article by Gilder, who’s an ID proponent, is fascinating because it describes the allure of the ID worldview.

Like all the other crackpots, Gilder claims that science needs ID to progress. But he fell in love with ID not because he’s a scientist facing an insurmountable metaphysical wall, but because he, a conservative pundit, is uncomfortable with the thoroughly debunked notions of social Darwinism. He also disapproves of pop sociology comparing animal behavior with human behavior. When he points out that animal behavior can be cited to support any rainbow of human behavior—sexism, matrilineal descent, machismo, homosexuality—you can almost sense his horror of being associated with any base animal. Of course, he has a point: You can’t prove that human society should be a certain way just because you observe that another species is that way.

But instead of serving as a general warning about the uses of analogy in an explanatory system, Gilder immediately seizes on the metaphor of computer technology. It's a comforting notion. He wants to believe in a world satisfactorily guided and controlled by human knowledge (witness this astounding jujitsu: "I preferred Michael Novak's vision of capitalism as the "mind-centered" system [...] supply-side economics sprang from this system [...] Ultimately capitalism can transcend war by creating rather than capturing wealth"). He wants to believe, moreover, in a higher power that programs the programmers. How nice. Now DNA is just an elegant program, and we can complacently accept ourselves as direct manifestations of the will of God.

John Derbyshire, meanwhile, should have probably written a rebuttal which pointed out that metaphysical yearnings do not constitute an argument, either rational or empirical. Instead, he focuses on the material problems with Gilder's fancies. I do, however, like this metaphor:

I write the following with some reluctance. It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn't actually any fun. Creationists just chase you round in circles. It's boring.

And the rest of it is a welcome shot of common sense. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy.)


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A piece on craigslist 'best of' sums my feelings up best:

Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

Conservatives debating ID?

"Tastes great!"

"Less filling!"

Two rejoinders: 1) Generally secular folks appeal to nature as a rebuttal of natural-law arguments that they find on the right. It's not that analogies with nature carry any weight, it's that right-wingers tend to think they do. They believe they can read divine intention by gazing at nature's order. So to rebut them it's fair game to say, ok, what about these natural facts. 2) Social Darwinism is not dead. It's just evolved. Wilson and Dawkins are social darwinists of sort. The problem was never the notion of social Darwinism. The problem is that any scientific theory can be taken out of it's context and deployed as an ideology. So Darwinism became an indeology in support of racism, e.g.

I can prove Intelligent Design exists.

See, I'm going to make it up out of whole cloth and write it on a paper napkin, and then do tons of press releases that the gullible media will believe because nobody does investigative reporting. That plus the strange media obsession with "balance" (I'd like to see an article on gravity with pro and con views on whether or not it exists, that's a laugh), means everyone will act like my hairbrained idea gets major traction.

Bonus: I'll do it in Seattle, where most of the media regurgitate stupid ideas and declare them "thoughtful".

Religious conservatives get bent out of shape by evolutionary research because they can't get past their understanding of original sin. For them, an explanation of what we were implies a limit on what we can become. They're defeatists when it comes to the human condition. Which is both sad and stupid, as the last 200 years pretty clearly shows we can overcome our origins when we want to.

From a Wired article on Gilder: "He'd devoted a whole chapter of Wealth and Poverty to the semiconductor industry (though he now confesses that his views were based almost solely on an article he had read in Time)."

On the whole, Gilder seems to be for things that justify his prejudices, and against things that oppose them. Delightfully, he says elsewhere that being a lifelong conservative Christian has no relation to his affinity for ID.

In Hebrew Kabbalah, GOD is represented by Ain Soph, which means endless and boundless life. He is absolute unity. There is nothing without Him and He is in everything. The universal order suggests that the world is not a child of chance but of intelligent design, therefore Ayn Soph is viewed as the indirect creator of the world.


Both the Jews and Christians believe in this intelligent design bullshit. Wipe your ass with the Torah, while viewing Piss-Christ. Religious people are all stupid.

Intelligent Design? Who the fuck knows. I gots my religion from watching the Matrix 27 times. The Oracle is my heroine (the original one... not the last one!?!). Neo is hot as well.

oh, and by the way, there are finches on the Galapagos Islands that have literally evolved different beaks in response to a change in predation over the last twenty years (read science news).

ID is just God's way of declaring born-agains morons.

Every Jehovah's Witness member will grow old and die just like everyone else.

There is no Armageddon that will annihilate 6.5 billion people,and install Watchtower leaders as world rulers.

That's all you need to know.Best regards,Danny Haszard"

It would warm my heart if the stranger responded to this seattle produced crap with a thoughtful article by or about a real seattle-based genome scientist. UW has one the worlds premiere programs, with a few nobel prize winners. Surely one of them would be interesting to read about.

Fight rewarmed creationism with real science!

They've definitely got designs, all right - read 'Trojan horse' - it's the newspeak definition of 'intelligence' that's the problem.

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