Jonathan McLatchie writes to mention that University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran is hot on the trail again, this time in response to McLatchie’s vid (below) “Is ID a science?”
I agree that many ID proponents try to use the science way of knowing to prove that creator gods must have built some complex molecular structures inside modern cells. They try to use evidence and they try to use rational thinking to arrive at logical conclusions. That qualifies as science, in my opinion, even though ID proponents fail to make their case. They don’t have the evidence and their logic is faulty. It’s science but it’s bad science.
Lot’s of genuine scientists also publish bad science.
Unclear what Dr. Moran means by “genuine scientists” here, if he agrees that ID is science. Would like to know what else he calls “bad science.”
But, you know, he might be onto a different argument next month.
In a curious passage, he writes,
As long as ID supports outspoken leaders like Denyse O’Leary, Barry Arrington, Phillip Johnson, Casey Luskin, David Klinghoffer, Paul Neslon, John West, William Lane Craig, and others who are not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, then it can’t claim to be entirely scientific.1 It’s also a movement and that movement is called Intelligent Design Creationism and their ultimate goal is to replace true science with an approach based on the premise that gods exist. It wants faith to be recognized as a valid way of knowing and it wants to destroy materialism and all the “evils” associated with it.
Tip from an old news hack: When people talk in the impersonal third person about an agglomeration of individuals, they are spouting propaganda.
Such people might be correct or not, but correctness does not correlate at all with this type of self-expression.
For one thing, as soon as one changes it to “These people want,” one is responsible for ensuring that there is some factual basis for the assertion that they all want that.
But now, to address the point: Why would the scientists at, say, Biologic Institute and Evolutionary Information Lab, stop us writer types from exposing Darwin’s and other nonsense—and spend their time doing it themselves instead of working at the bench or laptop?
But let us say they agreed to do so. Would Dr. Moran like to rid the world of all the bimboes, bimbettes, twits and twerps, dumboes, stumboes, and yo-yos on Airhead TV who claim to “believe in” evolution (= half-remembered Darwinism from high school)?
He’d have a way bigger job than us. Perhaps that is why he shows no sign of getting around to it.
Then, from Dr. Moran, we hear in closing,
This is why a spokesman for ID appears on a Christian apolgetics podcast even though the Pastor who runs the show is not a scientist and probably doesn’t accept scientific results. He knows, just as you and I know, that ID is a front for creationism. It’s an attempt to dress up creationism in a lab coat and that’s why so many Christian fundamentalists support it even thought they don’t give a damn about science.
Huh? Didn’t Dr. Moran just say that he thought ID “qualifies as science, in my opinion,” though bad science …?
Oh, you know, it doesn’t pay to try to make sense of it. This is what retirement will be for. He can spend all his time writing this stuff, and he’ll have a big following too.
Incidentally, Dr. Moran now claims that Vincent Torley’s credibility has gone way up. Sorry, Larry, the ship has sailed. No one is looking for the mid-last century faithful to establish credibility in this area now. When I sensed change on the winds, I sure sniffed right*.
Some facts of possible interest: Paul Nelson is a philosopher whose specialty is evolutionary biology. That’s actually way more useful than evolutionary biologists who moonlight as amateur philosophers.
John West has a political science background and is a senior manager at Discovery Institute, and David Klinghoffer is an editor there (sometimes my editor at a different day job, my series at Evolution News & Views). Casey Luskin has Earth Science degrees but, as he is also a lawyer, works mainly as legal counsel at DI.
Barry Arrington is a lawyer in private practice who sometimes offer insights from his experiences in that capacity in his posts. He is the president of Uncommon Descent, Inc., a Colorado non-profit, where I usually work.
*I am, as noted above, an old news hack who got sick of the stinkpile of stale ideas around Darwinism and—more significantly—sensed change on the winds.
William Lane Craig is a Discovery Institute fellow. To hear Larry Krauss (Dawkins’ heir?) go on about him, I can see why he attracts the attention of Darwin’s faithful and their friends.
A list of Discovery Institute fellows. Barry Arrington and I are not on it.
What I like best about my job: It gets to be more fun every year.
Here’s the vid:
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