Pat Hayes of Red State Rabble has composed a rather prolix essay in which he sings the praises of Barbara Forrest and her monumental role in exposing ID as repackaged Creationism. Naturally, Pim van Muers at Panda’s Thumb and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars are chiming in.
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Transcript of St. Edwards Speech MP3 of Seguin-Gazzette Question Stand by for a transcript of the Lamar speech (at the Texas Association of Scientists ceremony) which I’m given to understand makes the St. Edwards speech look rather tame. My take on the St. Edwards speech is it paints Pianka as an alarmist crackpot, and nothing else, confirming my first impression of him trying to be a poster boy for “Keep Austin Weird”. The guy rags on about microbes taking over and putting us in our place. Uh, like duh. Microbes have us for dinner in the end in any case. All Pianka is saying is that they should have us for lunch instead of dinner. The microbes appear to be Read More ›
The Gazette-Enterprise The very same day TAS declared its stance, Kathy Walt, press secretary for Gov. Rick Perry, expressed disdain over what Pianka calls his “doomsday talk.†Walt called the scientist’s viewpoints “abhorrent†and likened them to Hitler’s “hate-filled Third Reich.†While some have described Pianka’s words as hyperbole, the governor’s office’s distaste was plainspoken. “Professor Pianka’s gleeful embracing of the destruction of 90 percent of the earth’s population as a necessary and worthy event is abhorrent, as is his notion that human life holds no more value than that of a lizard, bison or rhinoceros,†Walt said.
The details of the lawsuit:
http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/Final_Complaint.pdf?docID=541 Read More ›
[From a colleague:] The problem is that methodological naturalism prevents us from detecting a “hate” crime, since “hate” is an immaterial property had by agents that can only be inferred from behavior, speech, etc. Other minds cannot be observed, just inferred by analogy, like the traditional argument from design. Because it is always possible that what appears to be “hate” may very well be the result of non-agent causes that merely manifest themselves in a way that appear to be agent caused, attributing “hate” to a cluster of cells we call a “human being” is just “hate-monger of the gaps.” It is an argument from ignorance because we have not yet discovered the non-agent causes that made the hate come Read More ›
[From a philosopher colleague:]
I am visiting Harvard, and I was reading the conservative student
paper here, and came across an interesting quote from from Richard
Wrangham, a biologist, on the gaps in science that Intelligent Design
theorists point to: “Given that everything we know about science
gives us confidence that these details either have already or will
shortly be provided, this is both an unhelpful and an improbable claim.”Nevermind the Intelligent Design context specifically. What I am
interested in is whether there can be a good reason for a naturalist
(and this guy may not be one, though his being a biologist, alas, makes
it more likely than not given the stats) to believe of an unsolved
scientific problem that a solution will eventually be found
(“shortly” or not). The argument seems to be an induction: We have
solved so many prior scientific problems that we have a reasonable
confidence that we will solve this one. Read More ›
We must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ‘sumbitch’. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive Read More ›
[From a colleague:] “Here’s a more complete summary of the Pope’s Wednesday audience. Note the clear emphasis on knowledge of God through reason prior to revelation: “Even before discovering the God who reveals himself in the history of a people, there is a cosmic revelation, open to all, offered to the whole of humanity by the Creator.” That view is both biblical and an important theme in the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato as synthesized by Thomas Aquinas. The Pope’s point becomes even clearer when he lays aside the prepared text and speaks extemporaneously to the assembled pilgrims — including Cardinal Schönborn, who was present.” Read More ›