Sunday, January 22, 2006

 

PZ Is Dealt a Bad Card

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PZ Myers is having a good time over at his blog, Pharyngula, kvetching about a painful-to-read pro-ID article by Orson Scott Card. PZ's demolition is well worth a look. However, this part of Card's article is too much of a hoot not to get some separate notice:
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Card complains that, while IDeologists (according to him) try to explain science to laypeople, "Darwinists" "tell the general public that we're too dumb to understand the subtleties of biochemistry, so it's not even worth trying to explain to us why the Designists are wrong." (PZ has a good list of many works by evolutionists where they try hard not to explain science to laypeople but fail miserably.)

Anyway, Card goes on:

When Darwinists do seem to explain, it's only to point out some error or omission in the Designists' explanation of a biochemical system. Some left-out step, or some point where they got the chemistry wrong. They think if they can shoot down one or two minor points, then the whole problem will go away.

So what is the explanation of why the IDeologists get these "minor points" wrong? Among other things:

The Designists are working from secondary sources, so they are naturally several years behind. Of course a scientist who is current in the field will understand the processes better, and can easily dismiss the Designists as using old, outmoded models of how the systems work.

Now, let's see . . . what could the reason possibly be that IDeologists are "working from secondary sources" instead of being "current in the field"?

Don't tell me . . . it'll come to me . . .
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Comments:
Gosh, you think Card's devotion to the LDS (Mormon) church has anything to do with this?

Card now joins the same folder in my mental files as James P. Hogan and Scott Adams.
 

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http://www.kuwait.prokr.net/

 
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