Intelligent Design - New Yorker editorial - part 2

As I mentioned in part 1, Dembski has also responded to Orr.

A couple of excerpts but do take the time to check out his entire response and also his links to previous replies to critiques of Intelligent Design (ID).

Allen Orr in the New Yorker — A Response

I’ve now adverted to Allen Orr’s piece in the New Yorker a few times on this blog. The first I learned of it was when a fact-checker for the New Yorker contacted me before the article came out. Once it came out, I noted that virtually none of the suggestions and corrections I had offered to the fact-checker made it into the final article.

It's a shame that fact-checking seems to have taken a back seat in another mainstream publication.

Just one more tidbit. A nice close by Dembski.

**Orr attributes the enthusiasm with which my arguments have been met to “an innumerate public that is easily impressed by a bit of mathematics.” That’s one possibility. Another is that my mathematics is giving theoretical support to intuitions that most people have for a long time harbored.

**Toward the close of his essay, Orr quotes Michael Ruse: “It is simply not the case that people take up evolution in the morning, and become atheists as an encore in the afternoon.” While it is true that there is no strict logical contradiction between the nonteleological view of evolution that Orr holds and theism, I would ask him how many of his fellow evolutionary biologists are in fact theists. As a matter of sociology (rather than logic), Will Provine got it right: “Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.”

**Orr concludes: “Intelligent design has come this far by faith.” Let me urge a more compelling insight: “Evolution has come this far in spite of the facts.”

Of course, this will not end the debate. I personally find the ID proponets quite interesting and compelling on the biology. My preference, however, is cosmology as that precedes biological origins and design. But, if a good case can also be made for biological systems, then by all means, have at it. Materialists need to realize that they have no reason to be so smugly confident anymore.

Related posts:

Evolution only in public schools?
More evolution only tripe
New York Times - this is reporting?

Trackback URI                                                 View blog reactions