They like us, they really like us!

Posted 24 March 2004 by PZ Myers

↗ The current version of this post is on the live site: https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/03/they-like-us-th.html

...and now a link from Carl Zimmer!

Dang it, now I've got to get to work and post something substantial here.

4 Comments

Jeff · 24 March 2004

Something tells me you guys are going to evolve into something a little more advanced than an "insignificant microbe" in the TTLB ecosystem...congrats.

Looks great already!

Ed Brayton · 24 March 2004

LOL. At the rate this is going, we're going to be a marauding marsupial by the weekend. Talk about punctuated equilibrium!

PZ Myers · 25 March 2004

It might be more appropriate for us to talk about the perverse and annoying scala natura used at the TTLB...

Wesley R. Elsberry · 26 March 2004

Jeremy at Personal Knowledge gave us a link with this comment:

Unfortunately, most of the activity at the blog seems to be focused on critiquing Intelligent Design, which is neither "anti-evolution," nor a serious threat to the integrity of science. Of course the nice gents over at the Thumb would probably disagree with me about that.

As Jeremy predicted, I disagree with him on his assessment of "intelligent design" as not being antievolution and not a serious threat to the integrity of science. I'll direct Jeremy's attention to Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Barbara C. Forrest and Paul R. Gross, which scrupulously documents the historical and conceptual links between "intelligent design" and earlier antievolution efforts in the USA. ID advocates utilize the very same hoary chestnuts of the young-earth creationists; it is hard for me to imagine anyone seriously trying to argue that these folks are not antievolutionists. Further, they are anti-science, as they are after nothing less than a redefinition of how science gets done, so as to bring about a "theistic science". I was there at the 1997 "Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise" conference where most of the big names from the ID movement presented their thoughts on how to bring about the desired redefinition of science. As for the threat posed, let's take a look around the country. ID advocates have been extremely active in attempting to have legislation passed, textbooks altered, school boards pass their policies, and science standards rewritten. They haven't been entirely unsuccessful in all these endeavors, either. I tend to think that these things do make them a threat.