| One Long Argument: One small primate helping to defend science education against the advance of neocreationism. |
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Isn't it ironic? Meanwhile, back on the ranch . . . HARRISBURG - Only hours after Gov. Rendell and several lawmakers participated in the ribbon-cutting that opened the global biotechnology conference in Philadelphia yesterday, other legislators in the state Capitol were resurrecting the debate over evolution.The Inquirer describes ID as "a concept advanced in the 1980s," which may be technically correct but neglects to mention the extent that it's just a warmed-over version of Paley's 1802 blockbuster Natural Theology, which insisted on "the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear." As he said, in his famous (borrowed) metaphor . . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use. . . . The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD."Modern ID differs in only a few details - talk about methodological naturalism (Johnson), mathematical games (Dembski), and examples drawn from modern biology (Behe) rather than "the hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennae," which to Paley were "as highly wrought, as if the Creator had nothing else to finish. We see no signs of dimunition of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction of thought by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being forgotten, or overlooked, or neglected." That's touching. I'm serious. Unfortunately, a relative of this fear - much of the motivation behind the ID movement - comes through loud and clear in the comments of the State Representative sponsoring the bill, Thomas C. Creighton (R., Lancaster). After all, he says, ""The current code has a bias toward atheists who promote evolution theory." And I suppose this is true - just as it has a bias towards atheists who promote heliocentrism, or lightning rods . . . It's not about God. (Despite what Rep. Creighton and others have been led to believe). It's about science. posted by Dan S. on 8:34 AM | |
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