Civil Discourse Not Tolerated by Darwinist
| November 4, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution |
Jason Rosenhouse has written a blog about Michael Ruse and William Dembski. His complaint against Ruse, among other things, is that Ruse is too cordial, too civil with ID supporters, Dembski especially.
And while I may dislike and disagree with Ruse’s thinking, it is his actions over the last several years that I loathe and detest. I hate the way he has been doing everything in his power to prop up the ID folks. I hate that he persuaded a presitgious university press to publish a book co-edited by William Dembski, which featured four essays defending “Darwinism” that seemed tailor made to make evolution look bad. I hate that he contributes essays to anthologies designed to celebrate ID promoters and that he tells debate audiences that Dembski has made valuable contributions to science. Go here for relevant links and further details.
Rosenhouse hates quite a lot. What Rosenhouse also finds intolerable is that Ruse would even entertain the idea that an atheist Darwinist like Ruse gives any credence whatsoever to the proposition that religion is not the world’s greatest evil:
Michael Ruse has a very bad op-ed in The Guardian. Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers have already laid into him (here and here respectively), but why should they have all the fun? Ruse writes:
If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn’t think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists. But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the “new atheists”, loathe and detest my thinking.
Amateur hour.
If the new atheists (folks like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) are making the party line, Rosenhouse is just towing it like a pack mule. But be forewarned, all you young lurkers, because Rosenhouse can’t tolerate nine year old’s either:
A while back I was a counselor at a summer camp, keeping an eye on a group of rowdy nine year olds. One of the kids was taunted relentlessly by the others for his incessant whining. He did not help his cause by answering such taunts with, “I don’t whine!” said in a pathetically whiny tone of voice.
If you have to tell people you are not whining, you’re whining.
Rosenhouse would, not doubt, maintain that he himself is not whining.
Ruse writes:
Second, unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery.
Indeed, it is an uneducated question that Ruse is right to point out. It is based on the assumption that everything, even supernatural things, need a first cause. Natural things do need a first cause, but I don’t see how we could logically apply natural rules to supernatural things. Yet Dawkins is so steeped in materialism, that I presume he smuggles in material necessities, such as the necessary first cause argument, even when thinking about the immaterial and supernatural. I appreciate that Ruse is trying to understand the argument, while the new atheists and Rosenhouse don’t seem to be, or maybe they are just too dense to understand, or too lost to care, or both.
The rest of his blog is much of the same kind of argument. I would say it’s childish, but that would be an offense to children, for children, in their innocence, have more of a sense of fairness and respect for their fellows than Rosenhouse has. Praise for Michael Ruse for having intellectual integrity instead of a rabid dog in the fight. The response that Rosenhouse has is, I suspect, the result of a poor education.
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
~C.S. Lewis
Although, I have to admit, Rosenhouse is not even clever.
103 Responses to Civil Discourse Not Tolerated by Darwinist
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#98
StephenB
It is part of the hypothesis. But only part. Without the additional detail i.e. a specific method of providing unguided evolution it would be unfalsifiable because it could include any unguided method – including those yet to be imagined. With the additional detail it becomes falsifiable. That’s why no biologist would propose unguided evolution as a hypothesis without the additional detail.
I did not attempt to move the goalposts. I am sorry if it comes across that way.
Mark
—Mark: “It is part of the hypothesis. But only part. Without the additional detail i.e. a specific method of providing unguided evolution it would be unfalsifiable because it could include any unguided method – including those yet to be imagined. With the additional detail it becomes falsifiable. That’s why no biologist would propose unguided evolution as a hypothesis without the additional detail.”
But it shouldn’t be in the hypothesis at all, and the fact that it is, in whatever form, or with whatever justification, completely invalidates it as a scientific formulation.
Let me show you in dialogical form how this works and why Darwinists must characterized evolution as an unguided process:
D = [Darwinist]
ID = [ID proponent].
D: Do you believe in evolution or are you one of those religious fanatics who think that God created the universe?
ID: I simply follow where the evidence leads, and the evidence points to design.
D: So, just as I suspected. You are an evolution denier.
ID: No, not really. I accept evolution as a distinct possibility.
D: But, as an ID advocate, you don’t really accept evolution because you deny common descent.
ID: No, not really. While some of us are skeptical about that point, the ID paradigm itself allows for common descent or macro evolution, whichever way you want to put it.
D: Ah, but do you accept undirected, macro evolution? Simply acknowledging the possibility of macro-evolution, or even accepting it as a fact, will not exempt you from the charge of “creationism.” You must accept undirected, macro evolution or else you are simply allowing your religion to leak into your methods. Either you accept undirected macro evolution [metaphysics posing as science] or you are not a scientist. In keeping with that point, I hereby declare by fiat that science must study nature as if nature is all there is [methodological naturalism, the epistemological guard that protects the metaphysics].
As a simple institutional strategy for survival, the Darwinist must include the element of “unguidedness” as part of his hypothesis? If he doesn’t, he has nothing more to say once ID confirms that it is not anti-evolution in principle. Thus, Darwinists are “all in” for undirected evolution and depend on this metaphysical intrusion on science as a defense against all evidence to the contrary.
Hence, a statement [around the year 2000] From the Kansas Board of Education
“Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.”
See how that works? To protect their psuedo science, Darwinists must establish non-scientific definitions and rules, and enforce them through the use of power. It’s as simple as that.
#100
StephenB
I was only concerned with the request of Timeaus to show how “Darwinian evolution” might be falsified. We seem to have drifted off the subject a bit.
—Mark Frank: “I was only concerned with the request of Timeaus to show how “Darwinian evolution” might be falsified. We seem to have drifted off the subject a bit.”
I thought that Upright Biped, confirming Timmeaus, had made the point sufficiently clear, holding that Darwinian evolution cannot be falsified since it posits an “unguided” process.
As a response, you began by saying that “undirected evolution” is not, in fact, a part of the Darwinist hypothesis, and that no self respecting scientist would characterize it that way. When I throughly refuted both points, you continued on as sleek as ever by saying that, well, it is “only a part” of the hypothesis, as if that constituted a new argument. When I explained that being only a part of the hypothesis is enough to make it unscientific, you responded again by saying that we are drifting.
My point @ 100 was to explain WHY Darwinists must insist that evolution is an unguided process, because I thought the additional information would edify everyone concerned, including yourself. If, on the other hand, you do not care about the reasons that Darwinists posit unguided, undirected, unplanned evolution, then I trust we can simply agree that they do, and as a result, render their hypothesis unfalsifiable—unless, of course, you want to start all over again by denying the point anew and reducing me to presenting another round of examples.
#102
StephenB
You are becoming abrasive again: “When I throughly refuted both points, you continued on as sleek as ever” (Ironic given the original title of the post). I am stopping our dialogue.
Allen_MacNeill,
No no no. These changes have been on comments that you’ve tried to submit, that I haven’t allowed, and then the comment shows up again, only this time cleaned up. You will not accuse me of lying about this, otherwise I will know for certain that you’re not interested in true and honest dialogue. Allen, to copy the words here would negate the reason I had to not allow it. I won’t showcase your incivility and insults here, that’s why I didn’t allow your comment in the first place, so surely you don’t expect me to give those insults their own place here. Come on Allen, you know better than this. I allow every comment of yours that is not an attack or an insult. Don’t misrepresent me, Allen.