[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[Stefano Mori]

On 2007-Dec-03, at 18:09, Chris Gehlker wrote:

> Awhile ago there  was a discussion between a Darwinian and an advocate
> of Intelligent Design on NPR. I was surprised at how poorly the
> Darwinist did. He came across as humorless, dogmatic, and ignorant of
> the  philosophy of science. I was waiting for him to proclaim: 'Darwin
> said it, I believe it, that settles it.' He came pretty close. I had
> heard the phrase 'naive scientism' before but didn't really have a
> referent.
>
> My own science teachers were pretty good but I remember on in 5th
> grade who didn't seem to understand that 'sea lions have ears and
> seals do not' is a taxonomic convention, not an empirical fact. I
> wonder about the  quality of scientific instruction these days. Are
> students  being fed a battery of rote facts certified by some
> authority? Are the  schools dominated by scientific fundamentalism?


The one point where the ID people have a valid criticism, is the  
question of whether the universe is old enough for so much  
"creativity" to have happened with only a series of minor Oopses.

I gather philosophical people might say that there is some kind of  
"force" driving this creativity, and they call that force "Eros".

But why there's an Eros, or how it works, we may never know.

A purely Darwinian explanation of why evolution happens probably  
doesn't include Eros, and so the ID people can say that Darwin is  
flawed, that there must be something more, and if you think Eros  
exists then they are right, there is something more, there's Eros. But  
that's it. There's a force and we have a word for it.

The ID people though, go an unnecessary step further and say that  
there must be a design God, you know, like Gucci.

Does God make apples fall to the ground? Or is it just a force called  
gravity? Whether someone created gravity or someone created Eros is  
just one of those questions which you can ask if you feel like it, but  
it's not necessary. There's some sort of force that drives systems to  
organise into ever larger systems with new emergent properties, like  
there's a force of gravity which compels planets to go into orbits.

But as for the scientists, it is a worry--their arguments are turning  
into scientism--if they simply _believe_ that Darwin explains all of  
evolution, rather than demonstrating arguments for why it does.  
Arguing with Creationists, they are partly arguing about whether there  
is an Eros, and if they simply overlook the evidence that compels for  
an existence of Eros, then they're becoming bad scientists, not to  
mention giving fodder to the Creationists.

And I'm sure there's a fair number of scientism scientists out there.

Stefano