RE: Berlinski has problem with the 'whale'
January 15, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I think the question is a good one, and I can think of a few reasons:
1) These people are blinded by their religion and
cannot accept any other view. At Royal Holloway on 29th Janurary at 7PM (if anyone wants to turn up) there will be a debate between an Evolutionary biologist student (and a good friend of mine) and a Dr Steve Lloyd from the "Biblical Creation Ministries" on the subject of I.D as a scientific theory. I have checked out Dr Lloyd's website, where the statement of faith has the following:
Quote:No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any historical or scientific field of study can be valid if it contradicts the record of Holy Scripture. Evidence is always subject to interpretation by people who are fallen, fallible, and limited in knowledge.
People with outlooks like this are not scientific, and I am going to call him up on it during the question time.
2) People are not blinded, but tricked into false arguments (often through misconceptions) and therefore simply argue what they have been taught.
3) People like Berlinski are lying because it is more beneficial to themselves to be a defender of religion and creation (they certainly get more book sales) than to be in support of it.
Oh, and my friend (the biologist in the debate I mentioned) has a simple answer to Berlinski's claims:
They completely fail to include natural selection in their calculations. People like Berlinski and Demski come up with very very unlikely probabilities for life evolving, but these probabilities simply do not include natural selection. They are the "odds" that a creature would evolve simply on chance alone, and this is where the entire anti-evolution argument falls down.
Here is a nice rebuttal of the video you showed CoxRox:
[youtube]x1a7t76K2dE[/youtube]