Heya Rich,
Who here is advocating we 'act as bad as the atheists'? Really, what ID
actions am I defending or promoting at all here? What I'm doing is pointing
out how ridiculous it is to try and link ID to Bill Maher. Again, we're
talking a guy who *just* received the Richard Dawkins award from a major
atheist/"pro-science" organization - an award celebrating the defense and
promotion of science, in part - in recognition of his persistent commitment
to the cause of bashing the religious. Why not blame ID for the Hwang
Woo-Suk research fraud case while you're at it? Clearly by suggesting
teleology can be scientifically identified, the Discovery Institute set the
stage for that incident.
Look, I can respect thinking that ID has made some big mistakes. I think
Dover was a disaster - in fact, I think ID should have never focused on
getting ID in so much as getting claims of 'unguided', 'impersonal' and
'truly random' -out-. I can understand in some ways their willingness to
associate with YECs, but I also am not naive enough to think that doesn't
result in some warranted criticism. I can see why some people, even
Christians or theists, would be very critical of some ID efforts. But come
on - they are not gremlins or bogeymen. People were passing off fraudulent
embryo drawings, squelching or ignoring research they did not like, and
criticizing mainstream medicine, etc, far before ID came on the scene. If
Maher were anyone else, his link to ID would be tremendously fragile at
best. But when he's a good little footsoldier in some shrill ideological
group that routinely attacks and savages not just religious people in
general, but ID in particular? I think you can see why this just doesn't
work, and the fact that it doesn't work won't mean that you don't or can't
have valid criticisms of ID otherwise.
But yes, I agree with you about Dawkins, and about the New Atheists. And I
agree that it's important that Christians have some self-criticism. But you
know what? There are legitimate criticisms to be made outside of our faith
as well, particularly on the subject of science. We should not pretend that
science is abused and manipulated only, or even mostly, by religious people
or fellow Christians. Yes, YEC is an acute issue for Christianity - and
while it never happened to me, I'm sure many have had personal, negative
experiences with it, and therefore find ID (due to their casual association
with YECs, etc) a problem. But may I humbly suggest that in the zeal to
confront a real problem within our shared faith, we sometimes forget that
ours is not the only faith, belief, or philosophy in the world, or the only
one that has quite a lot to answer for. In short, it's legitimate for us to
recognize that there are atheist, secular, political, etc abuses of science.
In fact, for all the common claims of "scientism", maybe we should wonder if
that's really accurate - I humbly suggest that much of the yelling about the
importance of science, etc, on the part of atheists really ends up as being
so much fluff and lip-service, or at least very, very confused.
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Schwarzwald <schwarzwald@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> So what do you think, Rich? Is the AAI - and Dawkins - harming science and
>> science education here?
>
>
> Yes it is and it was the good Presbyterian Doctor that was defending
> peer-reviewed science. Once you subscribe to the model that truth is
> whatever advances your ideology you get all sorts of silliness like this.
> Christians have a higher standard, however. Much of what I have said about
> ID could easily apply to the New Atheists. For example, how many
> peer-reviewed articles has Dawkins published? (From what I can tell none in
> the 21st Century or even after the 80s.) What research program does he have
> other than a bunch of speculations in popular literature? The reason why I
> don't raise these is the context is we are presumably Christians here. Are
> we to act as bad as the Atheists? Is that our new moral standard?
>
> Rich Blinne
> Member ASA
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Oct 16 02:58:05 2009
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