Replies to post #63747 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

OT - I find the whole ID fight very amusing and philosophically/psychologically interesting. It amazes me that there is a large class of people who believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God who must tinker in a hidden way to get his creatures as He would like them. Given that He is omniscient and omnipotent He should easily be able to pick the laws and the starting state and get the same place without tinkering. And even if he lacks one of the omni's, why does the tinkering need to be hidden. A god of the cracks has always seemed uninteresting. So the heat and light is fascinating.

On the other side it is equally amazing to watch scientists defending what boils down to philosophy - that a theory isn't scientific if it isn't 'disprovable' (ref Popper), and a god of the cracks is never, by definition, disprovable - but almost never saying that.

So essentially two sides fighting without ever really getting down to brass tacks.

PS I would personally fight strongly against presentation of ID as scientific theory, but would have no objection to bringing it up as a plain theory - but then ask the question as to how it could be disproved. An education in scientific thought process.

PPS My only post on this since I don't want to litter the board with OT posts.

[bladerunner1717]

microcapfun,

Darwinian orthodoxy doesn't completely stand up to scientific scrutiny, and that has been part of the problem. In this country the debate has been between the unscientific excesses of Darwinian orthodoxy and the idiocy of creationism. But there are alternatives to these theories of evolution. See, for instance, Lancelot Law Whyte's "Internal Factors in Evolution." For a rather interesting and sometimes hilarious exposition of the debate between the Lamarckians and the Darwinians, take a look at Arthur Koestler's "The Case of the Midwife Toad." Koester takes a more serious look at evolutionary happenings in his "The Ghost in the Machine." And no debate in this arena should overlook the work of the brilliant French Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin, whose work was banned for some time by that bastion of open, honest intellectual debate, the Catholic Church.

When you look at the Lamarckian objections to Darwinism, the absolute veracity of all of Darwin's theories looks rather shaky, but, of course, that in no way justifies the insanity of "creationism."


Bladerunner