Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Demea’s no dummy

.....As we’ve often noted, Trustee Tom Fuentes is among the directors of Eagle Publishing, of which Regnery Publishing is a subsidiary.
.....Regnery publishes books that are, shall we say, south of academe. They’re often south of honest, too. Consider the execrable Unfit for Command. You remember that one.
.....Occasionally, I check out Regnery’s “featured books.” Among them these days (see) is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, by Jonathan Wells.
.....Regnery’s description of Wells’ book makes it sound like old news: the absence of transitional fossils, the Cambrian explosion. Evidently, Wells accuses some “Darwinists” of faking the evidence. Yeah, sure. It's all a plot. We'll meet at Disneyland later this summer and distribute the loot.
.....These days, no opponent of science leaves home without the “intelligent design” argument, which, in essence, judges that, since there exist complex natural phenomena the explanation of which we have not yet found, it follows that God (i.e., a grand intelligence) must be the explanation.

.....Imagine hanging with some ancient Babylonians. Suddenly, lightning hits a tree, sets it on fire. Everybody’s impressed. Babs (the Babylonian) says, “must’ve been God.” Lonnie (the Babylonian) replies, “Maybe it’s something else—something maybe we’ll figure out some day.”
.....Babs gets hostile. “Yeah, Mr. Wizard? Like what?”
.....Lonnie doesn’t come up with anything.
.....“OK, then,” says Babs. “It’s God.”

.....According to Regnery,
Wells … turns to the theory of intelligent design (ID), the idea that some features of the natural world, such as the internal machinery of cells, are too “irreducibly complex” to have resulted from unguided natural processes alone. [Yawn.] … As Wells explains, religion does play a role in the debate over Darwin—though not in the way evolutionists claim. Wells shows how Darwin reasoned that evolution is true because divine creation “must” be false—a theological assumption oddly out of place in a scientific debate….
.....I’m not sure what that last part's about. But it is often noted—by scientists and philosophers—that science is concerned with “the natural,” i.e., with nature. It is therefore not concerned with the “supernatural”—i.e., that which is beyond the natural. Bringing supernatural entities into the explanation of natural phenomena is, therefore, a mistake, like trying to open a bottle of beer with, say, a sentence fragment, or with a pain in one’s toe.
.....It’s just stupid.

.....The other day, I mentioned to one of my classes that there is, of course, a problem with the design argument, one noted 240 years ago by David Hume, among others. In his famous Dialogues, upon hearing a description of the design argument, the character Demea, a theist, immediately objects:
I shall be so free…, said DEMEA, as to tell you that from the beginning I could not approve of your conclusion concerning the similarity of the Deity to men; still less can I approve of the mediums by which you endeavour to establish it. What! No demonstration of the Being of a God! No abstract arguments! No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no farther in this subject than experience and probability? I will not say that this is betraying the cause of a Deity. But surely, by this affected candor, you give advantage to atheists which they never could obtain by the mere dint of argument and reasoning.
.....Demea is saying that, if theists rely on this argument, they argue for a designer who operates at our level, the lowly level of human experience. That is, if we say that we must believe in God specifically because of what we see in the world, then we are talking about a God who makes worldly things, like cells and stars and cow pies. We are not talking about a God who makes things whose limits are only our wildest imaginings.
.....Demea may be a theist, but he’s no dummy. And he’s honest, too.
.....—Unlike the boorish yahoos of Regnery Publishing, including Jonathan Wells and Tom Fuentes—a man who helps to oversee South County's community colleges.
.....Good Lord!

March 2005: the community responds to Fuentes' nixing Spanish study-abroad:

15 comments:

torabora said...

Was Hume always fond of wearing a showercap in public?

Go to Northstatescience for excellent discussion of the subject by a professional archaeologist.

torabora said...

Re: Unfit for Command...Well he was.

Anonymous said...

TB, you're turning into one of them before our eyes. Do you really, really, believe Kerry wounded himself to get a purple heart? Geez.

Anonymous said...

Actually, it isn't uncommon for soldiers at war to "pad" their military resume with an act of trying to get a purple heart. There are many benefits for career advancement, and I've seen it happen...

torabora said...

10:51 Do you really believe he spent Christmas in Cambodia?

As far as padding a war resume goes how about this one. During WWII Lyndon Johnson was a REMF. He arranged to go on a milk run as a ride along on a bomber crew. He flew on the plane as an observer and was never shot at nor shot at anyone. For that act of heroism he received a Silver Star.

Kerrys performance was witnessed and reported on. I believe the men that were there, I do not believe Kerry. YOU can believe who you wish . I always tend to believe the many over the few. Unless I was there I have no other way to judge what the truth is.

Anonymous said...

If you choose to believe the Republican smear machine, then feel free to do so. It does not speak well of your choices, however.

torabora said...

The "Christmas in Cambodia" lie first came up in 1979. Kerrys political have actually danced on the head of a pin on that one.

Anonymous said...

"cells and stars and cow pies." Nicely done. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Anonymous said...

If some "Cambodia" story is so important, and if that's your basis for supporting chimpy, then please give all sorts of supporting details as to the claim, and the evidence against it, and its overriding importance.

Then we'll get into some real lies, you know, the ones that ended up in a disastrous war somewhere.

Anonymous said...

On the book's cover, Ann Coulter is quoted: "Annoy a godless liberal: buy this book!"

"Boorish yahoos." Precisely.

torabora said...

10:34 You've got BDS so bad that if anything negative is said about anyone YOU like, then your belief is then that person must be a W supporter. Also if there is anything negative said about your guy (or gal) then you automatically believe that it is not true as well. You're very ill.


BTW I ain't got much use for W either.

Anonymous said...

I will confess to a steaming dislike of W, yes. But as his campaign impugned the service of Kerry, then such prevarications should stand up to scrutiny.

If Obama gets the nod, prepare to be told he was a member of an Al Queda cell, and we know it's true because, well, people know that.

Thanks for sharing the distaste of our useless pres, though.

Anonymous said...

Of course God makes worldly things. How? By the process of evolution, exactly as Darwin described it, silly! Yes, know it or not, and like it or not, Creation Theorists are closet Darwinians. But of course, it's not just living things that God makes in this way, but the cosmos as well. Yes, even the universe has been "evolving" since the Big Bang when God sneezed (burped, passed wind, or whatever). You can read all about this in the writings of a contemporary of Darwin's named Herbert Spencer. Wouldn't be surprised if Regnery brought some of his works back into print some day soon. (Oh, Spencer was a radical libertairian too-- free market all the way with this dude. Ayn Rand even stole from him :).
You see, Darwin and Spencer both evolved out of Hegel. They kept Hegel's dialectical method and entitative interpretation, but substituted simple principles for Hegel's reflexive principles (Marx did the same exact thing, but substituted actional principles for Helel's reflexive principle. Either way, no Absolute)

Roy Bauer said...

Thanks, MOPI. Always love hearing such things, especially from you.

Anonymous said...

Moose, you're talking as if there's really a god out there, really making things "in this way." Presumably you mean the platypus and the leisure suit as being in the mix.

What on earth does this mean, and have you any source? Just curious.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...