From Friday's Waterloo Region Record, in the Letters section, comes this gem, from Ray Zehr of Shakespeare, Ontario.
"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.
"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."
It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.
Showing posts with label idiocy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idiocy. Show all posts
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Aww. Michael Egnor Notices Me
Well, I see that physician and Discovery Institute shill Michael Egnor has noticed me.
Egnor, a man whose arrogance and ignorance has already led to the coining of a new word, is unhappy about my critique of Tom Bethell. So unhappy, in fact, that he has to resort to forging fake quotes from my article.
Egnor claims that I called Bethell "a liar" - he uses those two words, and puts them in quotes. Any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that they appear in my article. Only problem is, the word "liar" doesn't appear anywhere in my piece, as a text search will easily confirm. Gee, a Discovery Institute spokesman misleading the public - what is the world coming to?
What I said was, "Bethell then goes on to repeat a common lie of the intelligent design movement..." Repeating a lie doesn't necessarily make one a liar; it is possible to repeat a lie from sheer ignorance.
Next, Egnor misrepresents the thrust of my observation about SETI. Egnor says, "Professor Shallit ridicules Bethell’s observation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) research demonstrates that, under appropriate circumstances, the scientific inference to intelligent design in nature can be a legitimate interpretation of data." Actually, I did nothing of the sort. If we were to receive a coded message from outer space reading "Welcome earthlings! We are your reptilian overlords. Submit or be absorbed!", I would gladly join the hordes defending our beloved planet from invaders.
What I actually was objecting to - and it would be clear to anyone with connected brain cells - was Bethell's false claim that the people at SETI carry out their objectives by looking for "such things as a sequence of prime numbers". They don't look for prime numbers at all, as I showed by quoting directly from the SETI web pages.
Egnor makes the false claim that Bethell was just using an example from the fictional movie Contact. Although prime numbers do appear in Contact, Bethell said nothing at all about that movie, as a simple text search of Bethell's article will show. Bethell's claim was about what SETI researchers actually do; his claim was incorrect, and Egnor still doesn't understand why.
I find it strange that Egnor, a medical doctor, would defend Bethell, a man whose command of science is so unhinged that he has problems with relativity and thinks there is no AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Addendum: there's also a delicious irony involved in Egnor's post. The DI and intelligent design proponents are always whining about how legitimate scientists want to shut down debate about ID. Egnor's post, however, is on a web log that doesn't allow comments. The Panda's Thumb and Recursivity, by contrast, permit and encourage comments. Who, really, wants debate?
Egnor, a man whose arrogance and ignorance has already led to the coining of a new word, is unhappy about my critique of Tom Bethell. So unhappy, in fact, that he has to resort to forging fake quotes from my article.
Egnor claims that I called Bethell "a liar" - he uses those two words, and puts them in quotes. Any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that they appear in my article. Only problem is, the word "liar" doesn't appear anywhere in my piece, as a text search will easily confirm. Gee, a Discovery Institute spokesman misleading the public - what is the world coming to?
What I said was, "Bethell then goes on to repeat a common lie of the intelligent design movement..." Repeating a lie doesn't necessarily make one a liar; it is possible to repeat a lie from sheer ignorance.
Next, Egnor misrepresents the thrust of my observation about SETI. Egnor says, "Professor Shallit ridicules Bethell’s observation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) research demonstrates that, under appropriate circumstances, the scientific inference to intelligent design in nature can be a legitimate interpretation of data." Actually, I did nothing of the sort. If we were to receive a coded message from outer space reading "Welcome earthlings! We are your reptilian overlords. Submit or be absorbed!", I would gladly join the hordes defending our beloved planet from invaders.
What I actually was objecting to - and it would be clear to anyone with connected brain cells - was Bethell's false claim that the people at SETI carry out their objectives by looking for "such things as a sequence of prime numbers". They don't look for prime numbers at all, as I showed by quoting directly from the SETI web pages.
Egnor makes the false claim that Bethell was just using an example from the fictional movie Contact. Although prime numbers do appear in Contact, Bethell said nothing at all about that movie, as a simple text search of Bethell's article will show. Bethell's claim was about what SETI researchers actually do; his claim was incorrect, and Egnor still doesn't understand why.
I find it strange that Egnor, a medical doctor, would defend Bethell, a man whose command of science is so unhinged that he has problems with relativity and thinks there is no AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Addendum: there's also a delicious irony involved in Egnor's post. The DI and intelligent design proponents are always whining about how legitimate scientists want to shut down debate about ID. Egnor's post, however, is on a web log that doesn't allow comments. The Panda's Thumb and Recursivity, by contrast, permit and encourage comments. Who, really, wants debate?
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Bethell the Buffoon
Check out the final exchange about intelligent design between John Derbyshire and Tom Bethell, where Bethell insists that creationism and intelligent design are as different as chalk and cheese. (Part 1 here; Part 2 here.)
In it, Bethell demonstrates once again why he is a blathering buffoon. Bethell tells us that "Structures or signals of specified complexity permit an inference to design without any necessary recourse to the supernatural" without bothering to mention that "specified complexity" is junk mathematics and doesn't permit an inference to anything at all, except that Bethell is rather gullible to accept William Dembski's assurances as gospel.
Bethell then goes on to repeat a common lie of the intelligent design movement: that the SETI Project (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) spends its time looking for "such things as a sequence of prime numbers". Sorry, Tom, that was the movie "Contact". You know, fiction?
In real life, SETI researchers look for look for narrow-band signals, because such signals don't appear to originate from simple systems, and because we believe intelligent beings, if they exist, would use a method of communication similar to ours. Repeat after me: SETI detection doesn't use prime numbers, "specified complexity", or red herrings. Bethell claims he's actually visited the SETI project, so how come he doesn't know this? Is it dishonesty, or simple stupidity?
Next, Bethell shows a profound misunderstanding of information theory when he claims, "Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA was asked how the all-important coding information found its way into the DNA in the first place. It's so complex that a reliance on random events will never get us there." Bethell apparently doesn't understand that in the Kolmogorov theory of information, complexity is the same as randomness. It's easy to get complexity; all you need is a source of random events.
Here's a funny one: early on, Bethell solemnly intones that "Science is not properly based on authority, however." Later, however, in discussing the RNA world hypothesis, he says, "But I'm told that the alternative, the "RNA world," has huge complexities of its own. It's all pure guesswork." Oh. So he's been told that the RNA world hypothesis has problems, and he apparently accepts that without even looking into it. But I thought science wasn't based on authority? Mr. Bethell, meet your opponent, Mr. Bethell.
Mr. Bethell needs a good closer, so to finish up he reaches deep into the creationist playbook and comes up with the Colin Patterson story. It goes without saying that Bethell gets the details wrong; Patterson, for example, did not deny common descent. For the sake of argument, let's pretend for a moment that Patterson is on Bethell's side. Then the point of Bethell's misremembered anecdote is that we should rely on the authority of Colin Patterson, but not on the authority of all the other biologists who accept that evolution is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life as we see it today.
Altogether, a rather unimpressive performance for Mr. Bethell, who has been denying evolution for 30 years without learning anything about it. Funny -- he behaves just like a creationist.
In it, Bethell demonstrates once again why he is a blathering buffoon. Bethell tells us that "Structures or signals of specified complexity permit an inference to design without any necessary recourse to the supernatural" without bothering to mention that "specified complexity" is junk mathematics and doesn't permit an inference to anything at all, except that Bethell is rather gullible to accept William Dembski's assurances as gospel.
Bethell then goes on to repeat a common lie of the intelligent design movement: that the SETI Project (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) spends its time looking for "such things as a sequence of prime numbers". Sorry, Tom, that was the movie "Contact". You know, fiction?
In real life, SETI researchers look for look for narrow-band signals, because such signals don't appear to originate from simple systems, and because we believe intelligent beings, if they exist, would use a method of communication similar to ours. Repeat after me: SETI detection doesn't use prime numbers, "specified complexity", or red herrings. Bethell claims he's actually visited the SETI project, so how come he doesn't know this? Is it dishonesty, or simple stupidity?
Next, Bethell shows a profound misunderstanding of information theory when he claims, "Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA was asked how the all-important coding information found its way into the DNA in the first place. It's so complex that a reliance on random events will never get us there." Bethell apparently doesn't understand that in the Kolmogorov theory of information, complexity is the same as randomness. It's easy to get complexity; all you need is a source of random events.
Here's a funny one: early on, Bethell solemnly intones that "Science is not properly based on authority, however." Later, however, in discussing the RNA world hypothesis, he says, "But I'm told that the alternative, the "RNA world," has huge complexities of its own. It's all pure guesswork." Oh. So he's been told that the RNA world hypothesis has problems, and he apparently accepts that without even looking into it. But I thought science wasn't based on authority? Mr. Bethell, meet your opponent, Mr. Bethell.
Mr. Bethell needs a good closer, so to finish up he reaches deep into the creationist playbook and comes up with the Colin Patterson story. It goes without saying that Bethell gets the details wrong; Patterson, for example, did not deny common descent. For the sake of argument, let's pretend for a moment that Patterson is on Bethell's side. Then the point of Bethell's misremembered anecdote is that we should rely on the authority of Colin Patterson, but not on the authority of all the other biologists who accept that evolution is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life as we see it today.
Altogether, a rather unimpressive performance for Mr. Bethell, who has been denying evolution for 30 years without learning anything about it. Funny -- he behaves just like a creationist.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
