Questions about God and Science

[Angrboda]

I'm going to reverse the order of your arguments, in order to bring out the important point, even though Rhythm has partially addressed them.

Why should the example of Mr. Monton be more persuasive than yourself (or the principle proponents of ID)? Why should I give a shit if someone thinks that ID is valid science? In the same vein, upon what metrics do you imagine ID to be valid science (he offered no elaboration), just a short quip about how "some arguments (which ones...he doesn't care to elaborate here either) make him "less certain" about his atheism. Do you think you might be able to fill in those blanks for me?

(reading through his blogs on the subject offer no insight, though they do provide compelling evidence that this guy is a goddamned moron. He thinks ID is science despite having no evidence supporting it, but simultaneously thinks that Quantum Mechanics is bullshit despite there being evidence to support it........just as one glaring example)

3. I also listened to a lengthy interview where he offered more than in his blog. I won't try to speak for him. I suppose if you read his book or spent a little more time reading what he's got to say you could hear his reasons for thinking that ID is worthwhile as science.

You, in the context of a thread asking basically why conjecture in science is accepted for (basically) intangibles when in theology it is not. And here we notice yourself retreating into a world where authority is the basis of credibility, not rationality. We might "say" we have faith in our doctor's diagnosis, and that he is asking his conclusions be accepted on faith in his expertise, but this is a different specimen of faith. If pressed, the doctor could explain in detail why he believes you have X disease, and demonstrate that this belief is reasonable. However if you look to say the Bhaghavad Gita for knowledge, many of it's pronouncements cannot be unfolded to demonstrate their reasonableness. It's the difference between someone making a legitimate appeal to authority to found the claim's credibility, and an illicit appeal to authority where the authority's credibility cannot be established through reason and ultimately derives solely through blind faith.

And it's not the least bit ironic that when referring to someone you claim can provide substance to the notion of possible intelligent design as science, you refer solely to his claims and his authority as a professional, not to any specific argument or evidence he presents. This is an illegitimate appeal to authority, and makes your dwelling on a fallacious appeal to authority all too familiar ground for you. Science doesn't appeal to authority because we revere them as men, but because we have reason to have confidence in their judgments, and, if we wanted, we could duplicate their path to verify its integrity; you can't do that with a holy book.

1. Only because he's a pro philosopher with a PHd and a professor of philosophy at University of Colorado. He's also more sympathetic to atheism than I am.

Again, here we see you appealing to the authority of a professional, but in an illegitimate way. We don't really care what he claims so much as whether he can back up those claims or not. I haven't seen the latter.

And for what it's worth, being a professional philosopher does not make one's ideas about philosophy automatically credible, much less those about science. (In recent months, an atheist book club and I read Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves about free will (at my urging). While there were certainly rewards to be had, to my mind, the second half of the book is fatally flawed by a logical gaffe rendering it invalid. I love Dennett and have been reading him for 20 years, but I'm interested more in whether the ideas make sense, not whether the men behind them make sense.

This is a common theme with Creotards, that they think if they can discredit Darwin, they've debunked evolution. It doesn't work that way. Argumentum ad hominem is still ad hominem, no matter how you dress it up. And illegitimate appeals to authority result in all your sand castles being built on top of quicksand.