News Roundup

The controversial theory of "intelligent design" has won the qualified backing of Education Minister Brendan Nelson, who says it should be taught in schools alongside evolution if that is the wish of parents.

#6 and #10 appear to be the same article, posted at different sites.

Both versions reflect the same misunderstandings and misrepresentations, and notably quote John West and Stephen Meyer but not a single biologist, atheist, or secularist, while taking wide swipes at them (and virtually equating them).

BTW, the NYT misquote of Meyer is priceless. "biblical origins" instead of "biological origins"? How ever could they have made that mistake?

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lokota and president of the Nation American Journalists Foundation Inc.

"Nothing intelligent about wars on science" Knight-Ridder Tribune

BTW, the NYT misquote of Meyer is priceless. "biblical origins" instead of "biological origins"? How ever could they have made that mistake?

"ebolution"

Hmmm, that's what you get when you dissolve that really nasty virus in water.

As a Concord, NH, resident, I decided to send a letter to the editor in response to #13. The text of this letter is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/jokermage/20017.html

A recent letter in Raleigh N&O is reprinted on my blog - the URL was not accepted by the PT spam-monitor.

coturnix -- Use www.tinyurl.com to create a URL to escape PT's spam monitor.

RBH

It is time everybody woke up to the fact that YEC is increasingly taught as SCIENCE in State Schools in the UK and has the Prime Minister's blessing.

ID certainly used to be taught in state schools in Britain. When Darwin went to Cambridge, Paley's book was one of the few texts that every undergrad had to read. And that must have set up some interesting echoes for Darwin since he lived in Paley's old digs while he was at Cambridge.

The Australian health minister has just seen a Campus Crusade for Christ DVD presentation on the matter, and he is very impressed by their intellectual weightiness. The sad thing is that even though Australia experiences much less popularity for creationism, we don't have the same ironclad legal prohibitions as the USA, so the court system doesn't necessarily become a last resort.

— snaxalotl

Re: 'AU: 'Intelligent design' an option: Nelson'

Could you Americans please keep your religious cancer in your own country.

Re: Nelson--He's precisely the kind of guy you'd want in your education portfolio! (lol) The great news is that these jokers control both Houses of Parliament now. Good one, Australia! (And they have a track record of making pet ideological projects a condition of Federal funding for schools.)

One thing I wonder about is if The Australian will give this any attention, once it gets down from its high horse on Critical Literacy. Somehow I doubt it.

Jim

Paley was far too intelligent to be ID. His work was quite good for a well-infromed cleric in 1804 and was soon found to be lacking by many long before Darwin. His book has better arguments for design than any ID book, but its flaw was that he was too early to take geological time into consideration.

ID is just some new-fangled idea which is basically god-of-the-gaps wrapped up in amino acids to look intellectual1

The book 'The Existence of God' by John Hick has a great quote concerning Paley:

'It is a lamentable instance of the lack of communication between the philosophical and theological worlds that Paley was apparently unaware that his arguments had been devastatingly criticized by Hume twenty-three years earlier.'

Calling Paley a supporter of ID is a bit of a jeu d'esprit, but not an inaccurate one since there really isn't much in contemporary ID arguments that can't be found in the old natural theology literature. If, as Aristotle said, what's oldest is most honorable, the argument from design is very honorable indeed and even philosophers who didn't accept its validity treated it with respect--I'm thinking particularly of Kant. Slapping a new coat of buzz words on the old argument hardly constitutes treating it with respect, however. By rights it ought to enjoying a decent retirement now since it has been obsolete for a good 200 years.

If anyone fancies a bit of light relief, the BBC has been running a radio comedy programme for the past couple of weeks called "The Ape That Got Lucky", which is about human evolution in much the same way that Red Dwarf was about space exploration. Still a couple of shows to go, and you can catch up with the latest episode via the Listen Again streamed archive at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/apethatgotlucky.shtml

Includes Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect) as Professor Herring, who publishes books such as "The Sugar Wasn't Brown When We Started: The History Of The Chimps' Tea Party". Contains British humour. YHBW.

R