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Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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Category: Philosophy of Science
Posted on: September 16, 2006 9:14 AM, by Josh Rosenau
I think Gil means something different, but this pretty much explains why IDC doesn't make any sense:
A microbe did not mysteriously mutate into Mozart and his music, and most people, thankfully, are smart enough to figure out that this is a silly idea.This is essentially what ID argues. With a few magical tweaks here and there, the IDol just *poof* created whatever. No process, just "mysteriously mutate" something into something else.
Science doesn't operate by invoking mystery. ID does.
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Comments
NO, instead you argue that there have miraculously been enough mutations that ended up being beneficial to account from the long grey line from the first cell to the human mind.
Of course, you can't verify this, but you have faith that it is so.
Posted by: Intelligent Design is a FACT | September 16, 2006 11:04 AM
IDiaF is also confused; ID proposes miracles, evolution does not.
Posted by: somnilista, FCD | September 16, 2006 8:02 PM
It seems neither Gil nor his punch-card-programming commentators have ever programed even a single layer neural network. It's amazing what self organization can do, even in a computer program. It's especially amazing how very simple interacting neural networks can spontaeously produce truly "irreducible" behaviours, like walking. It doesn't require "an unimaginably complex, sophisticated, fault-tolerant, self-repairing, self-replicating computer program." And (as just one example) with no "poof" involved.
But then, I suspose they would claim that the walking behaviour is "front loaded".
Posted by: Scott | September 17, 2006 2:42 PM