Re: ID Kidding Whom?


Glend wrote:
> Ron O wrote:
> > catshark wrote:
> > > The article has been mentioned in another thread, but this bit is worth a
> > > new thread:
> > >
> > > There is a very interesting revelation in the article by Laurie Goodstein
> > > in the New York Times today: "Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its
> > > Maker".
> > >
> > > <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04good.html>
> > >
> > > Requires free registration or get a password here:
> > > <http://www.bugmenot.com/>
> > >
> > > The following from the article is what has the most interest:
> > >
> > > The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects
> > > seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after
> > > providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate
> > > intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals
> > > for actual research.
> > >
> > > "They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice
> > > president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he
> > > was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials
> > > were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
> > >
> > > "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness,
> > > the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our
> > > world of scientific review," he said.
> > >
> > > Here was a clear opportunity for the ID proponents to get support from an
> > > organization sympathetic to their aims for real scientific research to be
> > > done in "design theory" and to have a forum for their results that
> > > mainstream scientists, even those dirty "Darwinists", could neither rig
> > > against them nor ignore. And yet, when the opportunity came, they failed to
> > > respond.
> > >
> > > If there was _any_ doubt before about the lack of scientific merit in ID or
> > > as to the full knowledge by the major ID proponents of that vacuity, this
> > > ends anything but the pretense.
> > >
> > > --
> > > ---------------
> > > J. Pieret
> > > ---------------
> > >
> > > The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on
> > > our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results.
> > >
> > > - Michael J. Behe -
> >
> > The ID proponents take fellowship money from the Discovery Institute.
> > The difference is that the Templeton foundation probably has some
> > accountability. The Discovery Institute doesn't seem to have any. Can
> > you just see the Templeton foundation funding a guy like Berlinski for
> > years to the tune of probably over a quarter of a million dollars and
> > have him come out during the Dover fiasco and claim that he never
> > bought into the ID junk?
>
> Actually, that isn't anything new. Berlinski quite explicitly denied
> ID's "scientific value" in 2002 in a Commentary article. Both ID and
> evolution were called useless by him, though he obviously knows very
> little about evolution.
>
> Berlinski is of "value" to the DI because he propagandizes against
> evolution. This shows up ID for what it really is, mere denial of
> evolution. They don't really care much about ID, except as a weapon,
> since they'll continue to fund the anti-ID Berlinski just so long as he
> remains against science.
>
> I made this point earlier in this group:
>
> "Yes, it reminds me of Berlinski complaining that evolutionary theory
> doesn't produce predictions to 13 decimal points, shortly after
> replying to my letter in [b]Commentary[/b] (Feb., 2005) that "...if the
>
> mind and the brain prove in the end to be hopelessly distinct, then
> plainly thermodynamic considerations will play less of a role than he
> [Glen] conjectures. A physical theory applies, after all, to physical
> objects."
>
>
> So if we stick with physics, we're wrong, and if it isn't high
> precision physics (and neither the thermodynamics of mind or of
> evolution produces precise predictions in most cases--nevertheless
> thermodynamics is rock-solid) we're also wrong. Evolution is incorrect
>
> to him for not being the "proper physics" in his view, and other ideas
> are wrong for adhering to physics. It sounds like a joke.
>
>
> Of course the notion that physical theory applies to physical objects
> is woefully incomplete, since objects are neither necessary nor
> particularly relevant in physics.
>
>
> Anyhow, it seems impossible to tell where Berlinski's joking begins and
>
> where his incorrect views of science end. Kind of like Dembski trying
> to parody himself on April 1, it's tough to parody anything so devoid
> of meaning."

The last thing that I saw from Berlinski was the April fools day
commentary in the Daily Cal. You couldn't tell if it was a parody of a
creationist or not. He claims that it was serious. The day of
publication caused confusion.

Anyone with half a brain knows why the Discovery Institute keeps
Berlinski around. He is the only one of the fellows that I know of
that claims to be an agnostic. The claim is Jewish agnostic, so I
don't know of there is some weird definition of agnostic. The
organization claims to be about science, but they are full of religious
weirdos like Wells and Dembski.

SNIP:

>
> Dembski's attitude isn't likely to improve any time soon, and may even
> get worse due to his increased isolation and desperation. Behe seems
> to be more the oblivious type, somehow too blank to grasp his failure
> to address science in DBB. It's weird that he's so specialized that he
> has been at least competent at biochemistry, while lacking the least
> bit of sense with regard to evolution. Nevertheless, he's not the only
> scientist to be competent in his particular field, without having much
> capacity outside of his narrow expertise--he's just one of the most
> spectacularly wrong scientist who has come to be in the public eye.

If you practice science you know that a lot of it is cook book. You do
the same experiment, just different conditions or substrates and you
get out your data and you analyze it in the expected fashion. I
haven't read any of Behe's papers, but I doubt that there is anything
of interest in terms of methodology in them. I have never heard of him
in the field. One of the biggest kicks I've gotten from my science
career was when I saw other scientists using a technique I developed
for measuring the size of tRNAs. True it is a small field of little
interest to most scientist, but I got an Embo paper out of it and at
least one of the people using the technique published their study in
Cell. He can't seem to reason his way out of a paper bag, so the
discussion is likely cookbook too. There are a set number of
conclusions from results. You don't have to be a wizard and peer
reviewers will tell you if you stray too far off the beaten path.
Heck, we even tell the authors what their results mean sometimes.

Ron Okimoto

SNIP:

.

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