Thursday, September 29, 2005
Evolution in the news
It's strange that evolution has all-of-the-sudden made it to a highlight of the national news. I think that the influence of creationists has really frightened the Darwin establishment. It has now degenerated to name-calling and near-slander. Oh well. The creationists are not completely clean in that regard either.
Anyway, I thought I'd point you to a few articles I found interesting:
An interesting read on why the ACLU is so adamant about evolution
A very interesting reply to the evolutionist's open letter to 50 state governors
[UPDATE]A very good reply to the Elie Wiesel open letter
On another note, I recently read Eugenie Scott's new book "Evolution or Creationism". I didn't read every word, but what I found really amusing was that she presented young earth creationism fairly correctly, while completely misrepresenting the Intelligent Design movement. She also did a pretty good job of covering the facts of the scopes trial, though she left out one important one -- Bryan only took the stand under the condition that Darrow would do the same, but Darrow backed out of the deal so he wouldn't have to be questioned.
Anyway, what I take from this is that Eugenie thinks that young-earth creationists don't have a chance, so they can be fairly represented. This wins points from AiG and the rest for being fair and balanced to their side. Apparently she does see ID as a threat because of the gross misrepresentation of it. Eugenie basically admitted the reason that the ID'ers kept their articles out was because Eugenie would pick the worst ones, and would give the ID'ers no editorial input (this already happened to Dembski once with "Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics"). You know, it's funny, if you were to publish my thoughts in your books for you to rip apart, I would at least want to have some control over which specific papers were included, too.
Anyway, it's clear that Eugenie feels the need to misrepresent ID, but feels no need to misrepresent young-earth creationists.
Personally, I think that this is going to blow up in her face for several reasons:
* The distortions of ID are fairly obvious
* Her book will not have any real impact to the ID movement -- it's not anything anyone hasn't heard before
* Creationists are going to come from behind and take the ball while noone is looking. It's already happening. Over the next 10-20 years, creationists are going to make huge strides in building a sensible model which makes sense both physically and historically
* Once that happens, the boat will have already passed
The election of the next president and congress is fairly critical, because I can see the other side getting desparate once they start losing in the scientific culture as well. Already they are playing games with the schools (as pointed out in the "open letter" response above), they may soon start playing games with the government. We'll see.
Anyway, I thought I'd point you to a few articles I found interesting:
An interesting read on why the ACLU is so adamant about evolution
A very interesting reply to the evolutionist's open letter to 50 state governors
[UPDATE]A very good reply to the Elie Wiesel open letter
On another note, I recently read Eugenie Scott's new book "Evolution or Creationism". I didn't read every word, but what I found really amusing was that she presented young earth creationism fairly correctly, while completely misrepresenting the Intelligent Design movement. She also did a pretty good job of covering the facts of the scopes trial, though she left out one important one -- Bryan only took the stand under the condition that Darrow would do the same, but Darrow backed out of the deal so he wouldn't have to be questioned.
Anyway, what I take from this is that Eugenie thinks that young-earth creationists don't have a chance, so they can be fairly represented. This wins points from AiG and the rest for being fair and balanced to their side. Apparently she does see ID as a threat because of the gross misrepresentation of it. Eugenie basically admitted the reason that the ID'ers kept their articles out was because Eugenie would pick the worst ones, and would give the ID'ers no editorial input (this already happened to Dembski once with "Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics"). You know, it's funny, if you were to publish my thoughts in your books for you to rip apart, I would at least want to have some control over which specific papers were included, too.
Anyway, it's clear that Eugenie feels the need to misrepresent ID, but feels no need to misrepresent young-earth creationists.
Personally, I think that this is going to blow up in her face for several reasons:
* The distortions of ID are fairly obvious
* Her book will not have any real impact to the ID movement -- it's not anything anyone hasn't heard before
* Creationists are going to come from behind and take the ball while noone is looking. It's already happening. Over the next 10-20 years, creationists are going to make huge strides in building a sensible model which makes sense both physically and historically
* Once that happens, the boat will have already passed
The election of the next president and congress is fairly critical, because I can see the other side getting desparate once they start losing in the scientific culture as well. Already they are playing games with the schools (as pointed out in the "open letter" response above), they may soon start playing games with the government. We'll see.
Permanent Link posted by crevo @ 8:48 PM 
