Thoughts in a Haystack

Don’t dismiss the Discovery Institute too quickly. The naturalistic paradigm embodies a troublesome host of problems. While the one theistic paradigm can explain a wide variety of phenomena with a single explanation, naturalism is left to scramble with a variety of inadequate or non-existent explanations in the following areas: the existence of time, space, laws of nature, DNA, life, the cell, fine-tuning of the universe, freewill, consciousness, moral absolutes, cognition (math, reason, logic), and irreducibly complex biological structures.
 

Which is why I favor the methodological naturalism account of science, rather than any "inference to the best explanation/Occam's Razor," science can answer anything account, such as Sean Carroll's. Science answers what it can now and makes no inferences from what it can't answer now, leaving those questions until it can. The DI is free to base its theology on anything it wants but it is not science.
 

"While the one theistic paradigm can explain a wide variety of phenomena ..."

You rather understate the variety.

It can equally well "explain" why the earth is round, why the earth is flat, and why there is no earth at all.

That is a remarkable advantage over naturalistic explanations which cannot account for everything, but have a bias toward explaining only the real.

TomS
 

Don’t dismiss the Discovery Institute too quickly. The naturalistic paradigm embodies a troublesome host of problems.

That doesn't necessarily follow. It is quite possible to dismiss the Discovery Institute even if "the naturalistic paradigm embodies a troublesome host of problems."

Their whole shtick is about "pointing" at strawmen they don't like, and then claiming they are right by default. Right about... something. Who knows what they're right about. But they're right though darn it. I guess they're right about somebody else being wrong. That's assuming they get what it is that somebody is wrong about right. (Which they usually don't.)
 

"While the one theistic paradigm can explain a wide variety of phenomena ..."

You rather understate the variety.

That's probably because the Intelligent "Gap Seeker" sees fewer gaps when it seeks out something that is explained well by naturalism. They don't call it the Intelligent Gap Seeker for nothing, you know.
 

If ID isn’t science, then how can naturalism be science? These oppositional theories are both imported to account for and unify the findings. We may not be able to see or measure God, but this also pertains to “natural” forces, which also can’t be seen or measured. While we all agree that phenomena act and respond in formulaic, predictable ways, we cannot directly determine the nature of the law which underlies the phenomena—whether a natural, free-standing, unintelligent law or a law in the mind of an Intelligent Being.

However, as a paradigm, ID has some great advantages. It is both adequate to explain the phenomena within its domain and it’s parsimonious. Furthermore, a life centralized in God has many psychological advantages.
 

Oh, my.

If ID isn’t science, then how can naturalism be science?

Perhaps naturalism is not science? Perhaps methodological naturalism is a feature of the practice of science?

These oppositional theories are both imported to account for and unify the findings.

ID is not a theory, so there is no "oppositional theory", not even naturalism.

We may not be able to see or measure God, but this also pertains to “natural” forces, which also can’t be seen or measured.

Can you name any natural force which anyone claims cannot be measured? It is only people like creationists who claim that things which cannot be directly observed are unknowable.

However, as a paradigm, ID has some great advantages. It is both adequate to explain the phenomena within its domain and it’s parsimonious.

Please tell us how ID offers an explanation for anything. Tell us how ID explains "why this, and not something else". Tell us what happened and when - and what did not happen. Tell us where it happened, how it happened, why it happened. And, of course, ID is famous for refusing to say who did it, how many "intelligent designers" there are, not even whether there are still any designers around and designing.

Example: How does ID "explain" that humans have very much the same bodies as chimps and other apes? Is it because the designer(s) were somehow faced with the same problem to solve, or that they were constrained by the properties of the material they were using, or that they had similar purposes in mind for humans and the others?

Tom S.
 

Dear Anonymous Tom S,

You wrote, “Can you name any natural force which anyone claims cannot be measured? It is only people like creationists who claim that things which cannot be directly observed are unknowable.”

We can measure the impact of what we call gravity, but we can’t see or touch it. More importantly, we don’t know if gravity is a natural, unintelligent force or a law in the mind of God.

Although you correctly point out that merely saying “God did it” doesn’t tell us much about the intermediate causation involved. However, I must retort that claiming that “Natural forces did it” tells us nothing more. Please realize that we all lay claim to the same empirical evidence.

You also wrote, “How does ID "explain" that humans have very much the same bodies as chimps and other apes? Is it because the designer(s) were somehow faced with the same problem to solve, or that they were constrained by the properties of the material they were using, or that they had similar purposes in mind for humans and the others?”

Evolution remains burdened with the very ambiguity it started with — commonality in design or structure need not imply a common ancestry. Design theorists are untroubled about these similarities, because the design hypothesis can just as easily account for the findings.
 

However, I must retort that claiming that “Natural forces did it” tells us nothing more. Please realize that we all lay claim to the same empirical evidence.

Except, for purposes of science, all that is necessary to know is that gravity is reliably associated with mass in a reliable way. There is nothing more needed to to account for and unify its findings. Moreover, that reliability is and can be repeatedly tested, while a "Designer" deliberately declared to be untestable lends nothing to our understanding that cannot just be asserted as theology.

You also wrote, “How does ID "explain" that humans have very much the same bodies as chimps and other apes? Is it because the designer(s) were somehow faced with the same problem to solve, or that they were constrained by the properties of the material they were using, or that they had similar purposes in mind for humans and the others?”

Now here you have a choice: on the one hand you can have a trickster "Designer," who supposedly designed human beings but then set up the world to mislead those humans he/she/it designed into thinking the world is consistent enough to be understandable, in which case, science is a lie we've been told. Or the world can be understood only through revelation from the "Designer," in which case science is superfluous. In either case, ID winds up useless. Naturalistic science is a live possibility in every other possible universe where naturalism is true either fundamentally or where there is no trickster god.
 

the design hypothesis can just as easily account for the findings.

The "design hypothesis" can just as easily "account" for anything - it can "account" for humans having eyes like chimps, or eyes like flies, or eyes like potatoes.

But, as your reply indicates, this "account" does not accomplish anything. One thing that science does is suggest a path for investigation. If we notice that something is odd under the current explanation, we know that there is something to look for, and we are apt to find out something new and interesting. ID is "untroubled" by anything, so all intellectural curiosity is eliminated.

Tom S.
 

John,

You wrote, “Except, for purposes of science, all that is necessary to know is that gravity is reliably associated with mass in a reliable way.”

If this is “all” you’re concerned about, why then the importation of “naturalism” or “methodological naturalism” into the discussion? Let’s be consistent! If you bring in “naturalism,” what is to prevent someone from bringing in “super-naturalism!”

Rather, it’s legitimate to ask questions about the overall causes and unifying principles if we are looking for answers. But I think you would agree here.

Regarding the similarities between apes and humans, I think you’ve failed to demonstrate how the naturalistic hypothesis better accounts for the evidence than the super-naturalistic (ID) one. Once again I must point out that the ID theorist makes use of the same evidence as you do and doesn’t disdain intermediate causation while understanding that all causes originate with God. ID makes science no more superfluous than claiming that a “natural force did it.”

Tom S.

It was the curiosity of the early design scientists that had originally led them into science. Please note, science arose within a Christian context!!
 

Constant promises that there is a "design science", but no actual "design science".

Please, let's just hear of one example of an explanation of some feature of the world of life using the "design hypothesis": "some unknown being or beings did something or other at some time or other and some place or other using some method or other for some reason or other."

You're claiming that that "design hypothesis" can explain everything. I've given you an example of one thing: that humans have a body plan much like the body plan of chimps and other apes, rather more like that than like the body plan of potatoes. Rather than the situtation where humans are more like potatoes.

Please tell us how "intelligent design" makes it more likely that humans are like apes than that humans are like potatoes. Did the designers want us to behave like apes? Did the designers find constraints in the materials that they were given to work with? Did the designers lack the imagination to do anything different?

And, please, don't make this, once again, a mere complaint that there is maybe something wrong with evolution/common descent. Give us, for a change, something positive about "intelligent design".

Tom S.
 

If this is “all” you’re concerned about, why then the importation of “naturalism” or “methodological naturalism” into the discussion?

Because methodological naturalism is a proven heuristic. It delivers reliable knowlege about the world that does not involve unnecessary and often misleading metaphysics. If you feel such add-ons are important to "overall causes and unifying principles" (all of which ID denies doing, of course, as part of its cynical attempt to avoid the Constitution), we have other diciplines in which you can argue for them, namely: philosophy and theology.

Regarding the similarities between apes and humans, I think you’ve failed to demonstrate how the naturalistic hypothesis better accounts for the evidence than the super-naturalistic (ID) one.

There is no super-naturalistic hypothesis, just some possibilities for explaining away the evidence. Give us a hypothesis as empirically testable as common descent and then (maybe) ID will begin to approach being science.

... science arose within a Christian context!!

Actually, the roots of science as we know it go back far before Christianity, to at least the Greeks (before that, in fact, but without historical record) and the "Ionian Enchantment." Nothing stays the same and some involvement in the development of an idea does not mean Christianity is identical with science. The motives to go into science of every scientist is his/her own and is not part of science. Each is free to keep those motives, but that doesn't make them identical to science.
 

Please note, science arose within a Christian context!!

No it didn't. This is one of the biggest lies that people like yourself propagate.

There is recognisable scientific activity in both the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian cultures as well as proto-scientific activities in much older cultures. As John has already pointed out the Greeks conducted science to a very high degree and outside of Europe the Chinese, Indian and Islamic cultures had very healthy scientific sub-cultures.

If you are going to pontificate on the origins and historical development of science then do yourself and us a favour and learn something about the subject before making ridiculous statements.
 

While we're waiting for something-or-other that ID has an explanation for - rather than "evolution can't explain it, so it must be ID" - I'd just like to point out that if science (which would include evolution) has its roots in Christianity, then "design" has its roots in the worship of nature-gods.

Tom S.
 

... then "design" has its roots in the worship of nature-gods.

Nice point.
 

The historical testimony in favor of the Christian role in the development of science is overwhelming. British scientist Robert Clark sums it up this way:

“However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did. And no wonder. For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science. In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods.” ("Christian Belief and Science," quoted by Henry F. Schaefer, 14)

Why should this be the case? Is there anything endemic to Christianity that would incline Christians to engage meaningfully with the creation? When Johannes Kepler was asked why he engaged in science, he answered that his scientific research was an attempt “to obtain a sample test of the delight of the Divine Creator in His work and to partake of His joy” (Schaefer, 16).

Other Christian scientists expressed similar thoughts. Isaac Newton stated, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being” (Schaefer, 17). What can imbue science with greater excitement than the understanding that we are actually discovering the mind of God!

The biblical revelation of a God of order and beauty who truly wants His subjects to know Him has understandably inspired many seekers to attempt to plummet the depths of His ways. I would suggest that you acquaint yourselves with this revelation. You hopefully will find that everything that our God reveals about Himself is not only beneficial for doing science but also for living life. I would like to challenge you in this regard.
 

However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped.

This is just special pleading. You choose a particular historical era and claim it is the high point of science and because that era happens to coincide with the ascendency of one culture that was, for historical reasons, associated with one religion, you declare that the religion was the cause of the science. In fact, there were many reasons for the ebb and flow of science within those cultures, not a few of which were in tension with or even outright conflict with the dominant religion. For example, the era of the greatest expansion and appreciation of science has been since the Enlightenment, which many Christians then and now (including the DI) decry. And the greatest expansion of science of all has come since Darwin completed the process of science accepting only naturalistic explanations as scientific explanations, begun by Bacon.

Citing scientists who utter pious pronouncements as if that proves a link between science and religion suffers from many problems, such as: how many of those pronouncements were pious noise uttered to deflect the suspicion that many religionists have toward science? What does the motivation of scientists have to do with the science itself, if the motivation causes them to propose naturalistic causes for phenomena, as Newton did, without claiming supernatural causes were or could be scientific? The number of atheist and other non-Christian scientists today would argue, under your own standard, for Christianity having been passed by and no longer having whatever connection with science that you are claiming it had in the past. And so on ...

I would suggest that you acquaint yourselves with this revelation. You hopefully will find that everything that our God reveals about Himself is not only beneficial for doing science but also for living life. I would like to challenge you in this regard.

Sorry. I've been proselytized by real experts who made at least basic sense. It didn't take then and your feeble efforts certainly aren't going to do it.
 

It is a shame that MW didn't seize the opportunity to educate us with an example of how ID explains something.

Tom S.
 

I have posted a detailed reply to Mr Mann's newest inanities on my own blog
 

These comments are most unkind. Mann'sWorld had a very good point that God is needed to explain gravity. All those immense calculations needed to determine the trajectory of objects in a gravity field clearly indicate the supreme intelligence of the Designer.

IF only can explain that.
 

You all have been waiting patiently for me to provide an example of what ID adds to scientific explanation, and I don’t want to disappoint you. However, I must confess that ID doesn’t do science differently, but rather provides a variant ontological account for the origin of the basic findings. ID doesn’t offer a variant explanation of how water boils at 212 degrees or how and when liquids turn into solids. However, ID does offer a superior explanation of origins based upon several factors that establish the viability of a theory. ID is adequate in that it offers a cause adequate to explain the entire range of effects. Unintelligent naturalism is inadequate and cannot account for the origin of informational systems like DNA. Naturalism is only capable of explaining formulaic or patterned findings. If DNA was the product of natural attractions and couplings among molecules, it would be regular and formulaic and therefore it couldn’t convey nuanced and necessary instructions. Similarly, if Hamlet had a natural origin, it would be incapable of conveying the message that it does.

ID can account for the findings in a most parsimonious (simple and elegant) way, while naturalism must resort to a wide variety of supernatural and fantastic explanations to account for the various phenomena. In order to explain the fine-tuning of the universe, naturalism posits an infinity of universes—something scientifically unfounded and logically incoherent. To account for freewill, many naturalists simply deny its existence, against our experience to the contrary. To account for consciousness, the naturalist insists that it must be inherent in the nature of matter. To account for moral absolutes, like “it is wrong to torture babies,” the naturalist must deny these absolutes along with the very stirrings of his own heart.

The ID theorem also has proved a good predictor of future findings. It predicted that phenomena were governed by laws. It argued against the “steady-state” hypothesis, insisting that the universe had a beginning. ID argued against gradualism and was finally validated by the fossil record and the 1st law of thermodynamics which has demonstrated that matter and energy couldn’t have developed gradually. ID also predicts de-evolution, as opposed to evolution, and we find evidence for this in the disappearance of 99% of the species without a corresponding addition of new species, the de-evolution of the human genome, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy). In addition to this, there is evidence of thousands of super novae while the natural creation of a star has never been observed.

You mistakenly call ID the “god of the gaps” theory. However, in your insisting that ID provide the explanations, it seems that you are arguing from a “naturalism of the gaps” position.

As far as the roots of modern science, I’d be glad to provide additional quotations pointing back to the Christian soil from which it sprang forth.
 

ID is adequate in that it offers a cause adequate to explain the entire range of effects.

No, by proposing a "Designer" that operates with motives and means, and at times and places IDers specifically refuse to posit (or, if we want to stop playing stupid games, a God with no limits at all on its means and abilities), ID is "adequate" to "explain" any result at all, which means that there is no way to test it and it can't be science. As Robert T. Pennock has said:

The moment one rejects the evidential requirement limiting appeal to lawful causal processes and opens the door to supernatural interventions -- which is what creationists do when they reject methodological naturalism -- explanatory chaos breaks loose. Since there are no known constraints upon processes that transcend natural laws, a supernatural agent or force could be called upon to "explain" any event in any circumstance; that is what miracles supposedly can do. However, the concept of a transcendent designer or other miraculous force that can explain any event under any set of conditions is no explanation at all. Moreover, because such a hypothesis neither makes any specific or general predictions nor rules out any possibility, no observation could count for or against it; it is in principle untestable. Thus, if the design inference is construed as the best explanation while rejecting methodological naturalism (as ID creationists do), it cannot possibly win in a comparative assessment of hypothesized explanations.

The rest of your stuff is babble where you are simply playing the "if science cannot explain this (now), it must be design" game. Pray tell, though, since it is so amusing, what quality of DNA other than natural attractions and couplings among molecules has ID discovered?
 

Let's see, belief in our Creator demonstrates that the natural world follows law-like behavior, rather than just changing arbitrarily with the inscrutable whim of some unknown designer(s).

That sounds like an argument for the world of life being formed by something like common descent, or maybe some other natural, law-like process, rather than every living thing being an independant and unrelated special creation.

Tom S.
 

P.S. BTW, being the helpful person that I am, in case anyone (I'm not saying who) didn't get Dave's comment above, IF = Intelligent Falling.
 

As far as the roots of modern science, I’d be glad to provide additional quotations pointing back to the Christian soil from which it sprang forth.

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”

You haven’t produced any quotes up till now that point back to the Christian soil from which modern science sprang forth so how can you bring more?

The quotes that you have brought are a collection of totally unsubstantiated claims several of which are outright lies. Also your quotes from Kepler and Newton only show that they were both deeply religious; they were scientists who were Christians (although in Newton’s case the main stream churches would probably deny him the status of a Christian) that does not make their science Christian. Your implicit argument is a logical fallacy.
 

Thony C.

Although you quoted me correctly on your blog—“Science arose within a Christian context”—none of your arguments came close to contradicting this claim. You succeeded in pointing out that Kepler and Newton had their foibles and also that other cultures had also done science. However, you’ve entirely failed to show that science didn’t arise in the “Christian context.”

Clearly, you can’t! It’s just so patently obvious that modern science did not spring forth out of Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism, Islam or Polytheism. And there is good reason for this. Some religions regard this physical world as illusory and therefore attempt to transcend it, rather than explore it. Others have deities who don’t want to be known or investigated. Some have deities who are capricious and therefore don’t employ laws.

Perhaps more importantly, you claimed that I was “lying,” but you failed to show where or how I was lying. (I've supplied the source of my quotes. You can check them out!) Making such unfounded libelous charges is a serious thing. It makes me wonder about what limits you have and what morals you live by. You owe me an apology. And you will find that I will receive it most graciously!
 

It is interesting, isn't it, how adept a creationist is at changing the subject when the subject is "design explanations"?

Tom S.
 

Definition: to lie: to make an intentionally false statement.

“Please note, science arose within a Christian context” is a false statement.

“The historical testimony in favor of the Christian role in the development of science is overwhelming” is a false statement.

“However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture” is a false statement.

“It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did” is a false statement.

“For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science” is a false statement.

“In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods” is a false statement.


Now that is six false statements made by you and there are two possibilities. Either you made them intentionally and are therefore a liar or you are completely ignorant, don’t know what you are talking about and are therefore a fool. If the second should be the case I would apologies for calling you a liar and call you a fool instead. However despite the fact that you have been clearly informed that the statement is false you continue to claim that “science arose in a Christian context” so you are in fact a liar so no apology is necessary.

As you appear to be somewhat renitent I will explain in somewhat more detail why the statement “science arose in a Christian context” is false. Of course the truth or falsity of this statement is dependent on how one defines science but there is a general consensus that science arose in ancient Greece. One could argue that there was in fact science earlier than this in Babylon but if your definition of science requires systematic presentation and proof then it is clear that this form of science in a product of the eastern and northern shores of the Mediterranean Basin between the 600 and 200 BCE in a culture that was under Greek hegemony. Christian culture came into existence at the earliest in the 4th century CE and was in no way scientific so to claim that science arose in a Christian context is not only false it is ridiculous.

As you quoted Kepler and Newton as your supposed witnesses I assume that you are probably referring to the rise of the erroneously named modern science. I say erroneously named because science has experienced at least two major reorientations since the time of Kepler and Newton, in the 19th and 20th centuries. I would prefer to call it the science of the early modern period. Now it is formally correct to say that this development in the already existing science took place in a Christian context but it also took place in a mercantile context, in a political context, in a military context and in several other contexts as well all of which are considerably more significant to this particular period of scientific development than the Christian context. In fact it is a commonly held view under historians and philosophers of science that the extreme development that science underwent in the 16th and 17th centuries was actually to a large extent the result of science freeing itself from the constrictions and limits imposed upon it by the religious scholastic culture of the mediaeval period. Far from the Christian context being in anyway responsible for the rise of so-called modern science it was the weakening and partial removal of that context that made this rise possible.

also postedhere
 

Fascinating. Mr. Mann (and here I'm irresistibly reminded of the ridiculous cartoons in a certain series of children's picture books) gives a list of the characteristics of ID, and all the things it has predicted. And just about all of them are things that used to be attributed to Creationism (and can, I think, be found in the t.o index). So thank you, Mr. Mann for confirming what we already knew:
ID == Creationism == Religion (and of a generally fundamentalist stripe). The fact that many of the items on that list are also *wrong* is just icing on the cake.

I'm not going to waste time on the whole Gish Gallop of ignorance and misconception, but this item in particular should not go unmocked: If DNA was the product of natural attractions and couplings among molecules, it would be regular and formulaic and therefore it couldn’t convey nuanced and necessary instructions.
News, dude: take apart a DNA molecule, and you will find nothing but "natural attractions and coupling among molecules" -- chemists call them covalent, ionic and hydrogen bonds. That's it, that's all. You will find no mysterious semantic phlogiston or computational caloric. Information is not a transcendent property imposed from some Platonic realm. It is an abstraction humans impose on certain systems (in this case, a biochemical one) to help us comprehend them.
 

Thony C,

My quotations were taken from “Science and Christianity” written by Henry F. Schaefer. About him, the “U.S. News and World Report” cover story (12/23/91) speculated that he is a “five time nominee for the Nobel Prize.” He has received four of the most prestigious awards of the American Chemical Society, as well as the most highly esteemed award (the Centenary Medal) given to a non-British subject by London’s Royal Society of Chemistry. However, according to you he is a “liar.” Why? Because his view of the history of science is at variance with your own highly exalted and dogmatic position! Why should anyone regard your dogmatic denunciations any more highly than his reasoning? Against him and anyone else who disagrees with you, you show no reservations about thoroughly degrading them with your insults. You need not worry about me visiting your blog anymore.
 

Schaefer is [...] a prominent proponent of intelligent design. He is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the hub of the intelligent design movement, and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design,and a signer of the Discovery Institute's anti-evolution letter, A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

Schaefer is often cited as an example of the Discovery Institute inflating the academic credentials and affiliations of prominent intelligent design advocates. The institute prominently and frequently mentions the Nobel Prize in connection with Schaefer, referring to him as a "five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize" despite the fact that Nobel Prize nominations remain confidential for fifty years. Intelligent Design critic Barbara Forrest, Glenn Branch and Reed Cartwright allege that in elevating mere speculation to a fact, the Discovery Institute is inflating his reputation. The original source of the estimate that Schaefer has been nominated 5 times for a Nobel Prize is a December 23, 1991 cover article in U.S. News and World Report.

Source Wikipedia

Need one say more
 

I realize that MW is distracted with other issues, but I'd just like to remind him that he said "one theistic paradigm can explain a wide variety of phenomena", and has yet to give even one example of such an explanation.

I've taken the observation of the similarity between the human body and the bodies of chimps and other apes. MW seems satisfied that what he thinks is an inadequacy of one explanation is enough to count as evidence for his explanation. Even though he doesn't present his explanation, so it is merely idle talk to discuss what might be evidence for a non-existent explanation.

What with all of those smart people who are creationists, why haven't they managed to come up with even the first small step, and offer at least one explanation of one thing?

Tom S.
 

Mann has offered an explanation ... of sorts ... "read your Bible." Now, the Discovery Institute doesn't use that explanation for reasons which are obvious. Doing so would make it clear that ID is nothing more than Biblical exigesis and impermissible in public schools under the Constitution. They do their best to hide that fact, making them liars.

Schaefer, as Thony points out, is deep into the DI and its dishonest strategy. Quite apart from the fact that he is pushing a highly flawed and misleading view of history, if you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. We have good reason to think his "history" is a deliberate fabrication.

And where is it written that scientists, even great ones (which Mann has clearly not established Schaefer is), can't be liars, particularly when they are humping their personal theologies? It's just another of those "vapid arguments from authority" that I thought IDers eschewed.
 

It's just another of those "vapid arguments from authority" that I thought IDers eschewed

While the DI and others at the higher-IQ end of the movement may make some (albeit not always consistent or successful) effort to eschew such, Mann has shown himself to be just another cdesign proponentist doing a clumsy job of re-branding standard creationist dreck as ID. It may go over well at his "Bible School", but no one else is fooled by the change in labelling.

An ideologue, and not a very bright one.
 

Schaefer is in fact a very good and highly honoured physical chemist but what worries me is the fact that this in no way qualifies him as a historian of science.

The claim that a scientist is automatically qualified to express views on the history of science is like saying that a professional soldier is qualified to write about the Thirty Years War!

In fact some of the very worst history of science in circulation was written by scientists who simply don't recognise that being a scientist and being a historian are two completely different things.
 

Schaefer is in fact a very good and highly honoured physical chemist ...

I don't doubt he is, just that babbling on about USN&WR cover stories and Nobel "nominations" and the like don't establish it.

But I wonder ... since he addressed his last comment to you, are you the one who "need not worry" about him visiting your blog anymore or am I? He was a good source of traffic. Maybe we can rent him out for entertainment value and share him.
 

Maybe we can rent him out for entertainment value and share him.

Pieret's "Rent a Fundi" service for blog authors ;)
 

Finally! A way to make money off the web!
 

John,

Please do rent me out. This would be preferable to what you have done -- having thrown me out.
 

I haven't thrown you out. I told you in one tread that I was tired of you simply posting the same arguments over and over with slightly different phrasing and wasn't going to let you try to wear me out on my own blog. You're free to comment here up until you become annoying again, at which point I'll let you know that that topic is closed.