Thoughts in a Haystack

William Dembski, diligently pursuing his new strategy for ID, decided to leave a birthday greeting for Richard Dawkins. I think anyone reading it might come to doubt its sincerity:

Happy Birthday from Ft. Worth, Texas

There are rare times and places, in the illustrious history of science, when outbursts of genius supply human civilization with the supreme wonders of human greatness. It is the contemplation of these that raises the mass of humanity to levels not unworthy of what, in less enlightened ages, we would have regarded as the divine image and which we now, rightly, regard as the pinnacle of evolutionary development. Such moments of supreme scientific achievement are to be found in the works of Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein. However, never before–or since–has scientific genius burst in such profusion on the human scene, as in the 19th century when Charles Darwin propounded his theory of evolution and taught the creatures of evolution to understand that they are products of evolution. If an award were to be given for the single best idea anyone ever had, it would go to Darwin, ahead of everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. Natural selection is the greatest, simplest, most elegant logical construct ever to dawn across our curiosity about the workings of natural life. It is inarguable, and it explains everything. Every human good that we enjoy today is, directly or indirectly, a legacy from what Charles Darwin wrought and what Richard Dawkins has preserved.

--WmAD

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:28 AM