From: Sarah Berel-Harrop (sec@hal-pc.org)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 14:53:32 EDT
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:23:10 +0100
"Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
wrote:
>I see little hope for ID until they stop talking about
>design in vacuo and
>start recognising that the earth is billions of years
>old. They do this to
>keep in with YECs and undermine what good ideas they may
>have had in the
>beginning.
There are OEC Id'ers. Stephen Meyers, author of
"Return of the God Hypothesis" available online,
and probably Behe as well, who purports to accept
common descent. Chuck Colson has picked up the
refrain. The basic idea is that in the context
of the Big Bang, God is an inference to the best
fit, the other (naturalistic explanations) lack
coherence.
>
>I think the polarisation of Dakins and Dennett with yEC
>and Id has throttled
>much scientiifc discussion.
One of my favorite comments about Dawkins, "Many
intelligent
people who know nothing about evolution like Dawkins"
(posted
by a molecular biologist, a regular, on Talk.Origins).
This
sentiment was also expressed by Richard Lewontin in his
review of Carl Sagan's Demon-haunted world in the NYT
Review
of Books. Something like, "I hope that [scientists
outside
the field of evolutionary biology] don't get their
information
about evolution from Richard Dawkins and EO Wilson."
Phillip
Johnson has used this specific quote in his articles, so
he
has to be aware of the criticism.
It is curious then why ID'ers spend so much time
criticizing the
popular works of Richard Dawkins and so little time
discussing
the nuts and bolts of evolutionary biology, as seen in say
textbooks and journals. At the least they should consider
"why" some folks feel this way about Dawkins.
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