Another Clueless "Analyst" 


I should have known what I was going to read when I saw this article. I should have known because the site was called "Renew America", code for "All you godless heathens need to get out." But read it I did. The guy who wrote it, Fred Hutchison, actually gives some good scientific philosophy background. Well, he got the people and their philosophy right, but he's completely out in right field when applying their work to his pet cause. In reality, he's just using this history to set up an elaborate strawman argument. One COMPLETELY and UTTERLY divorced from reality.

Check this out:
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "We do not have to respond to criticism from intelligent design people because they are not of science." Truth: It is a fallacy to say they are not of science because they do not subscribe to a philosophy of materialism. It is contrary to an essential principle of science that inconvenient criticism can be disregarded. One of the time-tested principles of science is that the science community must attempt to "falsify" the results of research. Only conclusions that cannot be falsified should be accepted as sound research. The refusal of evolutionists to answer serious criticisms might be an evidence that they have no answer and prefer to silence the conversation.
This comes toward the middle of the article. He spends most of his words creating a random chain of reasoning that somehow science is all about materialism. Well, that's nice. But what does that have to do with being able to falsify results? Materialism is a philosophy that that everything comes down to basic matter and it's interactions. Something most scientists would agree with, I'd bet, but it isn't necessarily a core tenant of science. Being able to falsify results is, and is something that the ID theorists (and the author of the article) need to throw out. See, with no way of testing their hypothesis (that an outside "being" or "force" (code for God in most of their minds) guided the creation of all life) they need to resort to tearing down science itself, by getting rid of one of it's key tenets. Their whole "theory" is nothing more than a random conjecture if you can't test (falsify) it. It's no better than Last Tuesdayism.

But it gets even better:
Recurring statement of evolutionists: "There is no evidence to support intelligent design and no evidence that challenges evolution." Truth: Such a statement can only be made by a liar, or one who has never read what the intelligent design scientists are saying. Evolutionists get away with the big lie tactic by suppressing the works of intelligent design scientists.
Yes, it's all the big bad evolutionists suppressing the poor freedom fighters of intelligent design. I'll give you a leg up here. The ONLY "evidence" that the intelligent design people have is this: Their own disbelief that something complex could come about without outside help. That's it. There is absolutely NOTHING more to it than that. Everything else is just frosting on their cake of incredulity. In other words, they can't believe their eyes, so they turn to making up invisible beings. For some reason, this makes more sense to them, but just don't ask them to tell you where these invisible beings came from.

And we come last portion of the article where the author goes and dumps out some well-worn and well-rebutted creationist/intelligent design arguments against evolution. We'll get to those in a moment, but I'd like to point something out (again.) Intelligent design doesn't give any real evidence of it's truth. It's only purpose it to attack evolution, and we can see this in this article. Instead of putting forward a rational argument for intelligent design and show why it explains the facts as they have been observed better than evolution, it's proponents only attack the the theory of evolution itself. And do it badly, as we've seen time and time again. On to his attack:

So in order, we have the old Cambrian Explosion "mystery":
All nine phyla of complex animals appeared suddenly in the Cambrian rock in China. No complex animals appear in Pre-Cambrian rock. No transitional forms of simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian rocks. Some Chinese scientists have rejected Darwinism because of these findings. The American evolution establishment has suppressed the information, so that many American scientists and students of science have never heard of the "Cambrian explosion." Scientists in Communist China have significant freedom of thought and publication. Biological science in democratic America is under the dictatorship of the evolution establishment. However, if President Bush has his way, high school children will be allowed to hear about the "Cambrian explosion."
Well it's nice that someone read a book and regurgitated the nine phyla fact. But it isn't quite true about the complex animals missing from Pre Cambrian rock. See this for more information. And I like the dodge here: "No transitional forms of simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian rocks." Notice that he doesn't say Post-Cambrian (or even during the Cambrian explosion itself!) These transitional fossils are well documented. As to these mysterious Chinese scientists, well, good for them. As we've seen, being ignorant isn't just an American thing. And it's well known that President Bush is a well-respected micro-biologist and paleontologist when he's not saving the world from the evil horde of evolutionists.

Claim two I cannot even begin to address here. It's so full of mistakes, misconceptions, and misunderstandings of basic biology it's truly amazing. Dogs can't evolve into cats? Well, ok then. "A society of breeders can start with poodles and after thousands of generations of selective breeding wind up with a Saint Bernard. All the information in poodle DNA is also in Saint Bernard DNA." Ahh, I bet their DNA isn't identical. They've evolved. And somehow this turns into a rant about micro-evolution and macro-evolution, with some sort of assumption that the evolutionists don't want our children to hear because it might make them question the God of Evolution and the Posse of Darwin. Or something. But again, President Bush to the rescue: "It is very easy to conceal the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution from students. The evolutionists do not play fair. If President Bush has his way, students will be allowed to hear about the difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution." Nobody is hiding anything. Read this for the real info.

Claim three is the old punctuated equilibrium theory, but muddled into a complete mess. He begins with a quick (and partly erroneous) introduction to PE, then inexplicably goes on to imply that the (evil) evolutionists wanted to suppress Gould's theory: "Gould was too famous and too widely published for his theory of punctuated equilibrium to be suppressed. However, the evolution establishment has enough clout to prevent school children from hearing about punctuated equilibrium." Again, we see the attacks against evolution. PE has been left by the wayside because it didn't fit the facts well enough. But to these crusaders, is a suppression of the Truth. Or something. See, they don't really care about what's really fact or fiction. All they really want is a way to tear down the theory of evolution. Intelligent design or discredited theories - it doesn't matter to them what the truth really is, as long as they can continually heap scorn on evolution. It's they who want to suppress the truth about the world, and no one else. Apparently PE is too much for old Bush; the author doesn't mention that he'll be pushing this theory personally to the students of the world. (For more info on PE, see here and here.)

At the bottom you have these rather astounding closing paragraphs:
Like the theory of evolution, intelligent design science has links to a philosophy, namely the philosophy of Deism and natural law. However, intelligent design science is protected from corruption by its careful adherence to the empirical disciplines of Francis Bacon.

In conclusion, whether one believes in evolution or intelligent design science, one is obliged to consider that at present, the intelligent designers are operating at a higher level of integrity than the evolution establishment.
Ack! Bacon would eat these idiots for lunch. For all practical purposes, he FREAKING CREATED the methods of scientific inquiry being used today. The very same method being dismissed in the beginning of the article. Somehow, it's the scientists with an enormous body of evidence for evolution that are in the wrong here. This author should be ashamed of himself for writing such obvious and utter falsehoods. A higher level of integrity? Bullshit. This article is the epitome of lack of integrity.


 

 

Posted: Thu - August 18, 2005 at 10:47 AM          

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