Letters to the Editor
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The Reporter Was Unqualified.
There is no rational reason I can think of for the fellatiotic article on Thompson. It wasn't until halfway into the second page that the sheer nonsense of this man's views were made apparent.
Clearly, the reporter thinks Thompson is just some colorful character who makes great press. He is not and he doesn't. Gordy Slack needs to understand that articles like this are precisely what projects a bogus sense of legitimacy around the idiocy that is "intelligent design." Slack also needs to get an education on exactly what the issues are. This is not cutesy, folksy, Americana. This is a bald-faced attempt to establish a cheap, ugly religion as the law of the land.
It is utterly irresponsible, if you care about truth in reporting, to give a man like Thompson so much space, and to wait so long before disputing his views. Slack should know better. So should Salon.
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design tool
john milton may be considered to have weighed in on the intelligent design controversy in book vii of paradise lost:
...in his hand
He took the golden Compasses, prepar'd
In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things:
One foot he center'd, and the other turn'd
Round through the vast profunditie obscure,
And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,
This be thy just Circumference, O World.
Thus God the Heav'n created, thus the Earth....
here we have not only a designer, but a design mechanism.
cliff barney
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So THAT's why they get so steamed about this!
Mr. Thompson's expressed dismay about being merely "an accident of nature" solved a mystery for me. Now I understand why folks get so darn upset about evolution: they are terrified of death, unless there is the guarantee of something beyond it.
News flash, Mr. Thompson: It's true that "if you die ... you'll change into something else." When someone dies, the body rots, the worms come, and before long, you're compost. If there is a noncorporeal component that endures (and science doesn't have anything to say about that, really, since "noncorporeal" is not in science's portfolio)that's fine and good, but the body rots.
Death is truly terrifying, the mystery to end all mysteries. For some people, faith is a way to deal with the terror, but for a few of those folks, it only works if it is unchallenged. That's sad.
I hope for Mr. Thompson's sake that he can someday find a faith that will stand up to the idea that not everyone agrees with him about Heaven and Hell. I hope that he finds out, someday, that there are lots of human beings who behave themselves not out of a terror of hellfire, but because they believe their behavior matters, not only on some account book in the sky, but in the greater scheme of, yes, creation.
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Maybe ...
You know, I very much doubt it, but I'll grant them this: MAYBE Intelligent Designers are onto something. MAYBE in a few years they'll stumble across some key piece of evidence that brings the theory of evolution crumbling down. As ID'ers will admit, new insight has in the past come from seemingly unlikely places, often from people vilified by mainstream scientists of the day.
So sure, they're certainly welcome to go on studying and researching and writing papers and maybe even getting some of them published in credible journals. That's their right and their duty if they're serious scientists.
But UNTIL that breakthrough happens, until they've been subjected to the necessary critical review and proven their theories scientifically apt, Intelligent Design doesn't belong in public education. Otherwise from a scientific standpoint we'd have to give "equal time" to any crackpot idea that comes along and can hire a few "expert scientists" to vouch for it. If ID wants to be respected, it has to take the time and the effort to work at it and prove themselves, just like the Darwinists have.
(And that's not even taking into account ID's religious motivations ...)
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Why would Salon go out of its way to print this?
For Salon to publish an article granting even a hint of credibility to the "intelligent design" ploy is unconscionable for a progressive publication. Those who cannot or will not accept the empirical consensus of science as the foundation of history and reality must be refused a seat at the table of public discourse.
Just as many scholars of the Holocaust will not actively debate Holocaust-deniers lest such a position be given an air of legitimacy, so too should we treat deniers of evolution by natural selection -- their position is no less intellectually and morally outrageous.
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ID and extinction?
Is there an ID explaination for why species become extinct?
Why are there sterile half-breeds like the mule in an ID world?
Are genetically modified foods moral or immoral to an ID'er?
What about "imperfect" traits like sicle-cell anemics being resistant to malaria?
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Defender of Intelligent Design not so intelligent
I wrote a long screed refuting Thompson point by point in a vitriolic manner, but I scrapped it in order to respond to this single quote: 'Did you see me show that there's no scientific evidence for man coming from an ape?'
In his unadulterated megalomania, Thompson reveals his true self. He's so infatuated with himself that he can't even get the facts right about his own refutation. Wow. Man didn't 'come from' apes, and if he were a real scientist, he would know that. Not only has he failed to refute 100 million scientists, he can't even get the question right. Perhaps, one day in the future, when South Korea has produced a cure for Alzheimer's using embryonic stem cells, and a huge outpouring of US capital goes overseas instead of into our own economy, will Thompson ponder our true 'floundering society'. I doubt it. I assume he won't be in line to get the cure, because that would be 'moral relativism'.
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Not so irreducible
Oh man, if you are going to trot out the same tired arguments on bacterial flagellum that the ID folks seem so proud of could you at least mention the fact that scientists have already dealt with this "problem" in the scientific literature. I imagine not everyone reading your site has a strong biology background and the article leaves one with the impression that irreducible complexity is actually a valid argument for the IDers, when that is sinply not the case. Here's one link:
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html