brainstorms

Monday August 22, 2005

dream world of dembski

mark perakh's paper the dream world of william dembski's creationism (skeptic v11#4) is now online.

First, as philosopher Dembski must know, if A entails B, B does not necessarily entail A. Even if his assertion (that the explanatory filter correctly infers design whenever an event is known to be caused by ID) were true, that fact in itself would not necessarily lead to the reverse conclusion (that each time explanatory filter attributes design, intelligence is indeed the causal antecedent of the observed event).

related links:
talk reason

Friday August 19, 2005

intelligent falling...

rotfl. the onion: evangelical scientists refute gravity with new 'intelligent falling' theory [thanks peter!]

related links:
creation and intelligent design watch
national center for science education

Thursday August 11, 2005

quote of the day, about intelligent design

from paul r. gross's review of one of my favorite books, young and edis, Why Intelligent Design Fails, rutgers university press, 2004.

So it seems a trouble for busy scientists to give their time to truth-squads, examining (scrupulously, as do the WIDF contributors) the incessant nay-saying of creationists, and now of creationists who use the language of science and mathematics comfortably. But it must be done. There will be more anti-evolution, religiously motivated nay-saying, and there must be more books like WIDF. The stakes are high. Nothing less hangs in the balance than the hope that some fraction of the next generation of our children will get serious education in science, and that they will be capable of speaking truth not only to power, but to and for all their peers.

[made an exception and gave an amazon link this time, in case it helps sell additional copies of this superb book. it is not an easy read, but an important one.]

[black helicopter note: pratchett, stewart and cohen's humorous and enlightening science of discworld III: darwin's watch is still not available in the US. meanwhile, it can be ordered from canada.]

[image note: nearby storm drain cover, color coded.]

related site: fighting fashionable nonsense

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