Scientist and populizer of evolutionary theory Richard Dawkins has a delightfully snarky take on “intelligent design” in the London Times for May 21, 2005.
If you’re looking for a way to refute your creationist friends, Dawkins points out a common logical fallacy used by creationists:
If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.” Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right.
Comments transferred from old blog
Thanks,,, these comments do put Dawkins into perspective and nicely frame the issue of who exactly is pushing a religous agenda on the classroom…. not too mention psuedo physchiatry.
Bill http://baarswestside.blogspot.com
Comment from bill67998 – 5/26/05 6:57 AM
Just to mention a few more Dawkins’s quotes to get the complete picture:
“There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist, and quite good reasons for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren’t so tragic.”
“I am very hostile to religion because it is enormously dominant, especially in American life. And I don’t buy the argument that, well, it’s harmless. I think it is harmful, partly because I care passionately about what’s true.”
“My last vestige of ‘hands off religion’ respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the ‘National Day of Prayer,’ when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.”
“To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham.”
“I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.”
“Another meme of the religious meme complex is called faith. It means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”
“Faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”
Comment from jaummrc – 5/26/05 6:37 A