Reflectorites
Check out Robert Wright's critique of Steve Gould as "The Accidental
Creationist" in December 13, 1999's New Yorker at:
http://www.nonzero.org/newyorker.htm My favorite quote:
My favourite quote is:
"Over the past three decades, in essays, books, and technical papers, Gould
has advanced a distinctive view of evolution. He stresses its flukier aspects-
freak environmental catastrophes and the like- and downplays natural
selection's power to design complex life forms. In fact, if you really pay
attention to what he is saying, and accept it, you might start to wonder
how evolution could have created anything as intricate as a human being."
Indeed. You *might* start to wonder! :-)
Mind you, this quote comes a close second:
"Consider the bombardier beetle. In one compartment, the beetle carries a
harmless chemical mix. In another compartment resides a catalyst. The
beetle adds the catalyst to the mix to create a scalding substance that he
can then spray, through a pliable rear-end nozzle, on tormentors. (This
basic idea-making chemicals safe to transport but deadly when deployed-
would, long after natural selection invented it, be reinvented by human
beings, in the form of binary chemical weapons.) Clearly, a beetle equipped
with two munitions tanks and a spray nozzle is more complex than a beetle
lacking such accoutrements. And this isn't just any old kind of biological
complexity. The beetle's arsenal involves behavioral complexity: aiming and
squirting a toxic nozzle. Aiming and squirting-like any impressive behavior-
involves information processing, a command-and-control system. In some
small measure, then, evolution's promotion of the beetle to bombardier
rank involved a growth in intelligence."
This shows the fundamental contradiction of the Darwinist `blind
watchmaker' theory. It's adherents cannot avoid noticing the "intelligence" in
living things, but they posit an *un*-intelligent source for it.
If Darwinism followed it's rule of prefixing "apparent" before "intelligence", as
it does with "design", it would presumably have to admit that *human*
"intelligence" is only "apparent" "intelligence"?
In that case, this Webster's online dictionary entry seems apt:
"reductio ad absurdum" "1 : disproof of a proposition by showing an
absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion"
(http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary)
Steve
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"The criticism of the Darwinian theory given in this book arises
straightforwardly from my belief that the theory is wrong, and that
continued adherence to it is an impediment to discovering the correct
evolutionary theory." (Hoyle F., "Mathematics of Evolution", [1987],
Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp.xv)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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