MikeBGene:
>As for the word quarantine, I don't see how its context makes it any less
>offensive. Besides, you seem to be missing the context of Dembski's use
>of Dennett's views. He is not interested in making Dennett the object of his
>analysis. He is focusing on the way many people have perverted the tentative
>nature of science into dogmatism and Dennett does indeed seem to be guilty
>here.
Once I read the paragraphs I realized that "quarantine" was probably an
ill-chosen word. However, Dennett is essentially correct. Science is an
attempt, however flawed, to examine reality as objectively as possible.
Although a lot of science is tentative and subject to change as new
information is discovered, a lot of it is not. The attempts of conservative
Christians to conceal reality from themselves and their children doesn't do
them, their children or their religion any good.
Natural selection happens. Whether it's random or directed by the gods is
up for grabs and a matter of faith. The same is true of mutations. They
happen. Sometimes they are beneficial and get selected for. Whether
mutations are random or directed by the gods is up for grabs, but you can't
deny that it happens any more than you can deny that natural selection
happens. Life has a long history and species of plants and animals change
through time. The evidence for that happening is so enormous that it can't
be ignored. Whether or not history was guided by the gods in order to
culminate in our wonderful selves is up for grabs, science can't address
that.
The downfall of biblical literalists is that they are trying to address
questions that they can't address. Johnson is making a smiliar mistake in
trying to make science address questions it can't address. I've heard his
common question about "what single piece of evidence for evolution was so
compelling that it convinced you?" has reciprical question. "What would
science look like with it's naturalistic assumptions removed?"
BTW I was kind of stumped by Johnson's question for a very long time until
I finally realized that no scientist, or anybody who thinks like a
scientist would *ever* be convinced by a single bit of evidence. It's
thousands of bits of evidence taken together that are convincing. So the
peppered moth or "The Beak of the Finch" are worthless without all the rest
of the other evidence from biology, paleontology, geology, physics and
chemistry backing it all up.
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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