Subject:
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Re: In the interest of full disclosure...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 9 Feb 2001 06:59:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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189 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> My views about creationism should at this point be fairly well established,
> but I came across this piece in the local paper today.
>
> http://www.postgazette.com/magazine/20010208behe6.asp
>
> The Pittsburgh Post Gazette isn't exactly a rigorous scientific journal, so
> the inclusion of this article shouldn't be taken to equal legitimacy. In
> addition, Dr. Michael Behe's theory of intelligent design does nothing to
> explain where the intelligent designer came from, and he also seems
> uninterested in the theory of punctuated equilibrium, among others, since
> his comments come across as a refutation of basic Darwinian evolution rather
> than current theory.
Maybe Chris Tracey (or someone else) can explain this a bit better, but I think
it's important to point out the main flaw in "intelligent design". To take
Behe's mousetrap analogy: it's true that half a mousetrap isn't much of a
mousetrap. But there's plenty of other useful things you can do with a piece of
board, or a spring, or a sliver of metal. And if you juggle them around for long
enough, picking those arrangements that do something vaguely interesting, you
could well end up with a mouse trap.
He also disregards the possibility of biological scaffolding. If you look at a
cake, it can be hard to imagine how it came to be made out of flour, eggs, milk
etc. Maybe it just appeared? But when you see the finished cake, you don't see
the stove, spoons, and bowls that were needed to make it. They're superfluous to
the cake, once it has been made. In the same way, we don't see the bits and
pieces that might have held the first flagella together, but it's a lot easier
to posit the existence of some machinery that has since been eliminated, than it
is to require there to have been an "intelligent designer".
--DaveL
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: In the interest of full disclosure...
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| (...) I realise the limits of taking an analogy too far...but since you already did it.....what you've just said is still intelligent design. What are the chances of a moustrap forming if you put all the parts into a box and shake it - that's not (...) (23 years ago, 9-Feb-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | In the interest of full disclosure...
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| My views about creationism should at this point be fairly well established, but I came across this piece in the local paper today. (URL) Pittsburgh Post Gazette isn't exactly a rigorous scientific journal, so the inclusion of this article shouldn't (...) (23 years ago, 8-Feb-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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