Stubborn Idealism

This Damned Computer

Date: Tue 2 May 2006
Time: 3:03 PM EDT

I have been spending too much time sitting in front of this computer. I'm going to try to stay away from it unless I have a good reason to use it.

We'll see how long this lasts. This isn't the first time I've gotten fed up with my computer addiction and tried to change.

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New Shoes

Date: Sat 29 April 2006
Time: 7:27 PM EDT

I got a new pair of shoes today:

just twelve months after I got my last pair:

The pair before that lasted me four years. Apparently they wear out a lot faster when you don't drive. Or I just got crappy shoes last year. You can't really tell from the picture, but there's a hole in the left side of the left shoe, near the front, big enough to poke a couple of fingers through, and the foam padding is all worn out of the back of each shoe.

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Censored by the Creationists

Date: Fri 28 April 2006
Time: 9:08 AM EDT

9:50 A.M. Update: I may have been hasty with this accusation. While I am pretty sure I saw my comment posted before I saw it was missing, I have no proof. Their page does say that comments may not show up immediately. I will give them till the end of the day and see if it shows up.

10:21 A.M. Update: Yup, they deleted it, and part of another of my posts (see below).

End of updates.

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A few minutes ago I posted this comment to an entry at William Dembski's blog Uncommon Descent. Just now I checked again and it had been removed:

It’s guys like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett who are constantly preaching how random mutation plus natural selection supports atheism.

I don't know anything about Daniel Dennett. As for Dawkins, according to him he became an atheist when he learned about naturalistic evolution because his faith had been based on the design argument. He no longer saw a need for religion.

Then you have people like Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller who are constantly harping about how random mutation plus natural selection is compatible with Christian religion.

Whether evolution is compatible with the Christian religion depends on who the believer is. As long as the believer is humble enough to change his beliefs whenever science shines its light into territory previously occupied by religion, then science and religion are compatible. The conflicts arise when people use blind faith as their primary method of forming their worldview instead of simply using it as a temporary way to fill in the blanks in our knowledge until evidence-based explanations come along.

And then there’s the Clergy Letter Project where 10,000 Christian clergymen were conned persuaded to sign a letter saying Darwinian evolution doesn’t conflict with the bible.

Here is a link to the open letter of the Clergy Letter Project:
Clergy Letter Project

Since you implied that people were conned into signing this, I read the letter with an eye towards spotting weasel words or deception, but I honestly cannot find anything like that in the letter. In fact, it states its point quite explicitly: "We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests." How is it people were conned into signing it?

And lets not forget that in Cobb County, the ACLU represented some parents who sued the school district saying that calling Darwinian evolution a theory, not a fact, amounted to the gov’t trying to establish a religion.

The point of that case was the motivation behind the push to label evolution as "just a theory." Theory in science is a technical term that means "an explanation that accounts for all the facts," but of course 'theory' in popular usage means "groundless speculation or guess." The people behind the push for evolution to be labelled "just a theory" are aware of this.

That’s why God keeps coming into the picture whenever evolution is discussed.

Actually, I was asking about ID, not evolution. Debates about evolution among biologists do not involve religion. It is when ID is the topic that God inevitably comes into the picture. Dembski himself makes this clear:

I think at a fundamental level, in terms of what drives me in this is that I think God's glory is being robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution, creation, the origin of the world, the origin of biological complexity and diversity. When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these mindless material mechanisms, God's glory is getting robbed...And so there is a cultural war here. Ultimately I want to see God get the credit for what he's done - and he's not getting it. - address given at Fellowship Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, March 7, 2004

I had heard from others that Dembski and friends habitually delete comments from people who do not agree with them. I had given Dembski the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the comments he deleted were disrespectful or abusive, but now I know better. All you have to do is provide a reasonable argument, and you're outta there.

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Heres where they said they deleted it:

Yes I did delete one of your comments because I didn’t feel like correcting your errors of fact regarding the Cobb County evolution sticker lawsuit nor was I going to let you use this blog for a soapbox to propagate said errors of fact. I also edited out the gratuitous inclusion of your blog’s URL in this comment for the same reason - this isn’t a soapbox for ID antagonists. If that’s your intent you can leave now.

Here's the comment that they removed the URL from:

I bet you’re a Darwinist too just by the fact that you couldn’t discuss evolution without mentioning religion.

In fact I was discussing ID. Please let’s keep it civilized and respectful, and not be disingenious.

Yes, I am a Darwinist. As a matter of fact, just earlier this month I wrote a computer simulation that uses random mutations and undirected natural selection to produce complex, organized structures (neural nets). Fascinating stuff:
http://wbrameld4.name/blog/misc/?id=114

They didn't bother to point out what exactly my "errors of fact" were, so I cannot address them.

I responded that it was unfortunate that they cry 'antagonism' when somebody criticizes ID. Show them evidence that random mutation and unguided natural selection work? Antagonism! We will not display a link to your computer simulation on our pages!

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