British Professor of Sociology supports Intelligent Design

[Ian R]

Steve Fuller : Designer trouble

Darwinism has had it all its own way for too long, Warwick's controversial sociologist tells Zoë Corbyn

Tuesday January 31, 2006
The Guardian

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/profile/story/0,,1698284,00.html

[randb]

Well...he can't be proven wrong.....or right!!!

[Maksutov]

Headline:

French Professor of Astrophysics Supports Phrenology

Makes about as much sense... :doh:

[mid]

Reading the article further, it seems that he's just in favour of teaching ID alongside Evolution because he'd much rather they taught the sociology of science history than actual science.

So, where are the English professors supporting the textual analysis of the Prinicipa as part of Physics lessons?

[long live the queeb]

[QUOTE=Ian R]Steve Fuller : Designer trouble

Darwinism has had it all its own way for too long, Warwick's controversial sociologist tells Zoë Corbyn

Gosh, I wonder why.:whistle:

[Monique]

Headline:

French Professor of Astrophysics Supports Phrenology

Makes about as much sense...

If professor is French, must be true!! :naughty:

:)

[Disinfo Agent]

The guy seems pretty clueless. But what else should we expect from a "relativist"? :rolleyes:

[peteshimmon]

Sociology!?....enougth said:)

[Disinfo Agent]

I wouldn't say that. I've heard very reasonable sociologists. His arguments are essentially philosophical, not sociological.

[soylentgreen]

Based on his questionable(stilted, in my opinion) take on what the sciences have to say, this would be the equivalent of asking Shakes the Clown to opine on who was more of an influence on modern farceurology, Pierrot or the Auguste.

[Disinfo Agent]

Looking back, the replies here -- mine included -- have been dismissive. It can't hurt to look at some of Mr. Fuller's arguments.

Fuller claims he doesn't personally favour ID, but feels that it should have a "fair run for its money". His view on evolutionary theory is that the jury is out, though he acknowledges that Darwinism does have the most evidence on its side.

[...]

Fuller's research field is social epistemology and he cites "putting it on the map" as his greatest achievement. It's a radical attempt to bring philosophy and sociology together, within the discipline of science studies. The resulting fusion looks at how knowledge is justified and legitimised in society. According to Fuller, what does and does not count as science is the result of a power struggle between the evolutionists, who control the scientific establishment, and a marginalised ID community with a large religious following. "I see myself in an affirmative action position, voicing a point of view that would otherwise be systematically excluded," he says.He completely fails to understand that what science is ultimately about is the evidence. 'Darwinism has the most evidence on its side', and, in science, that in itself is damning for ID. ID has no evidence on its side, and that, in itself, places it outside of mainstream science.

'Power struggles' have their place in scientific discussion, but they've never been, and they never will be, the crucial factor. It's amazing how a self-styled practitioner of 'science studies' can fail to understand this basic difference. :naughty:

And I can't resist commenting that, for an observer of social phenomena, Mr. Fuller is way off track when he paint the ID controversy as a conflict between evolutionists who 'control the scientific establishment, and a marginalised ID community with a large religious following'. What about the massive political power of the 'marginalised' ID community, as witnessed by the bills recently brought to the courts in the U.S. -- that doesn't count? :silenced:

[The Saint]

The Red Coats always muck things up!

Though the British legal System has no constitution, and an ID court case there would get a better hearing than in the US, there being no separation twixt Church & State, & maybe even a favourable result, "God forbid"! It would be interesting to see Dawkins and Bowden in the dock.

[Celestial Mechanic]

Fuller's research field is social epistemology and he cites "putting it on the map" as his greatest achievement. It's a radical attempt to bring philosophy and sociology together, within the discipline of science studies.
Hmm, combining philosophy and sociology, two of the squishiest soft sciences, into one even squishier and more useless "soft science"! Lovely. I wonder if he's read up on Popper and Kuhn? Not that I'm recommending their books to him, no, no, no ... :shhh:

[Disinfo Agent]

Philosophy is not a science.

[N C More]

Headline:

French Professor of Astrophysics Supports Phrenology

Makes about as much sense... :doh:


Hmm...which leads me to wonder... can those cerebral contours exceed the speed of light? Je ne sais quoi!

[Monique]

Hmm...which leads me to wonder... can those cerebral contours exceed the speed of light? Je ne sais quoi!
Must learn to think "outside box"

Is lesson from ATM forum :)

[Grand_Lunar]

Hmm, combining philosophy and sociology, two of the squishiest soft sciences, into one even squishier and more useless "soft science"! Lovely. I wonder if he's read up on Popper and Kuhn? Not that I'm recommending their books to him, no, no, no ... :shhh:

Squishy science, huh?

I shall call him squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my squishy!

[Enzp]

And i will love him and squeeze him and call him George.

[skepticfrog]

Take a look at Fuller's testimony in the referenced Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Not sure he really helped out the ID proponents when he suggested that ID is in such a poor state that it needs "affirmative action."

See his testimony here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html (scroll down to Day 15 -- that is where his testimony began).

[Glutomoto]

If the true motive is --> ID should have a "fair run for its money" <--

then why the push to teach it to children ?
shouldn't it be debated at the college level ?


:)

[The Saint]

If someone like Dawkins recanted, disavowed atheistic evolution, and became an IDer, what would you say? And if Gould, Einstein, Asimov, Hoyle (oops..he already was one!) etc likewise, would you join them, or would you say: they've all gone potty!

Recanting atheistic evolution is not unkonwn eg Malcolm Muggeridge, another Brit!

[Fram]

If someone like Dawkins recanted, disavowed atheistic evolution, and became an IDer, what would you say? And if Gould, Einstein, Asimov, Hoyle (oops..he already was one!) etc likewise, would you join them, or would you say: they've all gone potty!

Recanting atheistic evolution is not unkonwn eg Malcolm Muggeridge, another Brit!

If they gave no serious (scientific) reason for doing so? Yes, I would say they'd all gone potty (though probably not with those words).
People change position all the time, both from atheism to religion and from evolution to ID as the opposite. But if they don't have good (scientific) reasons to do so, then using them as an example is an appeal to authority, and using them to ask a one-sided hypothetical question is not very useful.

And evolution is evolution, not "atheistic evolution". Dragging religion (or the lack of it) into the discussion in this way is quite unnecessary and incorrect and probably not really in the spirit of this board and its rules, but that's not for me to decide.

[The Saint]

Hoyle's colleague Wickramasinghe stated:

"From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has been painfully shed. At the moment I cant find any rational argument to knock down the view that argues for conversion to God. Now we realize the only logical answer to life is creation".

Would this categorise him as an IDer?

[Wolverine]

According to what I'm seeing online, that quote was published in 1981. The concept of ID as we know it did not even exist at that time.

Further, see my posts here (http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=671174#post671174) and here (http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=671176#post671176). Your appeals to authority grow tiresome.

[Heid the Ba']

Though the British legal System
Britain has three legal systems, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England & Wales.

has no constitution,
Of course we have a constitution, how could a country function without one? What we don't have is a single document called "The Constitution".

and an ID court case there would get a better hearing than in the US,
Why?

there being no separation twixt Church & State,
Legally no, in practice there is. The Queen is head of the Church of England and also signs bills into law. She has no political power and cannot influence parliament. In theory she can refuse to sign bills but has never done so, and to do so would lead to the demise of her position as a figurehead.

The Archbishops and senior bishops of the Church of England (the Lords Spiritual) sit in the House of Lords, they number 26 out of the total of 726, and they while they can vote, they do not.

If the Church of England did try to throw its weight about it would lose what little influence it has. We are a very aetheist/agnostic country.

Notwithstanding all that, my understanding is that the CoE's official position supports evolution.

& maybe even a favourable result, "God forbid"!
Maybe, but I don't see how. Since school curricula are set nationally any case would be at that level rather than decided locally.

Please explain why you think ID would be better received here?

[Lianachan]

Maybe, but I don't see how. Since school curricula are set nationally any case would be at that level rather than decided locally.

Just chipping in that the school curricula also vary between our constituent countries, to a certain extent. Different educational, as well as legal, systems.

[SolusLupus]

"It set a precedent because, up to that point, the only people allowed to testify on the nature of science were professional scientists," Fuller recalls.

Gee. Wonder why?

[SolusLupus]

Hmm, combining philosophy and sociology, two of the squishiest soft sciences, into one even squishier and more useless "soft science"! Lovely. I wonder if he's read up on Popper and Kuhn? Not that I'm recommending their books to him, no, no, no ... :shhh:

What's so bad about sociology? It studies the actions of people, and gives surveys and statistics.

Should we destroy it altogether, then? It has NO USE whatsoever?

[The Saint]

In the UK legal system, unlike the US, in a slander case the defendant has to prove his claim was true, not the plaintiff prove that it was false! Would that favour the IDers?

[Disinfo Agent]

What slander case are you thinking of, specifically?

[The Saint]

I was thinking of the Irving vs Lipstadt case. Irving could have sued in the US courts. But he thought he'd win with the British system. He chose his ground, and he lost.

If the ID cases were heard in the UK, I think the judges couldn't help but favour them. Being that in the UK it's all based on case law, which gives them plenty of flexibility and latitude, the judges pride themselves on the wording of their rulings, which are often read as precedent 200 years later. And with a few UK Muslims and UK Christian blacks on the jury, a jury'd give it to them.

UK judges are far smarter and fairer than in any other country, and they'd have felt the wind that evolution in its present format is in the incipient stages of becoming extinct, and they want to be judged favourably by posterity! The Scopes trial set in England would have been a hoot!

"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy" (Charles Darwin 1887).

[SolusLupus]

UK judges are far smarter than in any other country, and they've got a feeling in their bones that evolution is becoming extinct, and they want to be judged favourably by posterity!

????

That seems like an unfair judgement. They're "smarter" than in any other country? So other countries employ dumber judges? How can you make that judgement?

I also doubt evolution is "becoming extinct", despite who feels what in their bones.

[Disinfo Agent]

What do the ID cases have in common with a lawsuit for slander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Lipstadt)?

[N C More]

Originally Posted by The Saint
UK judges are far smarter than in any other country, and they've got a feeling in their bones that evolution is becoming extinct, and they want to be judged favourably by posterity!


????

That seems like an unfair judgement. They're "smarter" than in any other country? So other countries employ dumber judges? How can you make that judgement?

I also doubt evolution is "becoming extinct", despite who feels what in their bones.

Not to mention that it's fallacious reasoning....appeal to popularity (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html) and appeal to emotion. (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-emotion.html)

[SolusLupus]

Not to mention that it's fallacious reasoning....appeal to popularity (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html) and appeal to emotion. (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-emotion.html)

Good call. Considering the judges thing, looks like there was an Appeal to Authority, too!

[The Saint]

ID is claimed to be "closet creationism".

If you could take God, the Bible and religion totally out of it, would ID fold, or would it persist? Are there many Richard Miltons around?

[GDwarf]

ID is claimed to be "closet creationism".

If you could take God, the Bible and religion totally out of it, would ID fold, or would it persist? Are there many Richard Miltons around?
Without God (or his equivilent) ID would fold. That's the main claim of ID.

However, since it folded even with all three, I hardly see where this reasoning is going. Evolution has none of the above and isn't folding, obviously opinion and faith are not needed for a theory.

[SolusLupus]

ID is claimed to be "closet creationism".

Because it is.

If you could take God, the Bible and religion totally out of it, would ID fold, or would it persist?

It would fold.

Are there many Richard Miltons around?

Doesn't seem it.

[Faultline]

The biggest problem I have with ID is that it becomes impossible to avoid magical origins of life.

My argument (and I don't take claim for inventing it) goes like this. IDer's claim that life is too complex to have evolved spontaneously from chemistry, and that life forms are evidence of this because they are too complex to have evolved merely by chance. Since chance is insufficient, there is assumed to be a plan behind the design for lifeforms, a plan implemented by some intelligence.

It's not NECESSARILY God, IDer's claim. It's just that SOME intelligent force was behind the creation of life and the organization of complex organic life.

So a skeptic asks the IDer, what was the intelligence?

And the IDer's balk at naming it. They say, "Take your pick... God, Aliens..."

(Those are the only two I've heard offered in ID arguments. God and Aliens. I suppose it would be treading on thin ice to add Satan or the Great Green Arkleseizure)

God can only be considered a supernatural force. May as well be called magic because at God's level of power, no physical law is said to hold a candle. The other option, aliens, is absurd because it invalidates the whole ID argument.

For if the aliens were the intelligence that created life by a plan, and the aliens are also organic creatures, then how did they get here if they are too complex to have formed by chance?

Chicken and egg? How scientific can it be?

[The Saint]

Dawkins said "we must stop being so damn respectful to eachother", and he did indeed describe Milton in terms such as "stupid", "drivel", "loony", "harmless fruitcake", "complete and total ignorance", "needs psychiatric help" etc etc!

Since Denton, not an IDer, dared to dare and wrote 20 years ago:

"It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which—a functional protein or gene—is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy”

has he changed his mind, or have there been any discoveries that would make him alter his wording and bring him back into the true Evolutionary camp?

[Lianachan]

UK judges are far smarter and fairer than in any other country
They don't enjoy that reputation here. For a good few years, a few prominently out of touch ones were more or less constantly lampooned in the media.

And, as my countryman has already pointed out - there's no such thing as the "UK legal system" that you've been referring to. There are different ones among the constituent nations.

[Fram]

I was thinking of the Irving vs Lipstadt case. Irving could have sued in the US courts. But he thought he'd win with the British system. He chose his ground, and he lost.

If the ID cases were heard in the UK, I think the judges couldn't help but favour them. Being that in the UK it's all based on case law, which gives them plenty of flexibility and latitude, the judges pride themselves on the wording of their rulings, which are often read as precedent 200 years later. And with a few UK Muslims and UK Christian blacks on the jury, a jury'd give it to them.

UK judges are far smarter and fairer than in any other country, and they'd have felt the wind that evolution in its present format is in the incipient stages of becoming extinct, and they want to be judged favourably by posterity! The Scopes trial set in England would have been a hoot!

"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy" (Charles Darwin 1887).

Apart from the other errors already pointed out to you, what is the use of pointing to "UK Christian blacks"? Please explain yourself, because this comes across as quite racist.

[mid]

have there been any discoveries that would make him alter his wording and bring him back into the true Evolutionary camp?

Well, the main one would probably be that Behe's argument is also from the point of essentially saying something along the lines of:

This biological feature is irreducibly complex. If you take out any part of it, it doesn't work. Therefore there's no way to evolve into the situation, therefore evolution can't explain its existence. Therefore it must be Something Else (and for the purposes of keeping ID a supposedly scientific theory, we'll avoid any talk about what Else that could be).

Which seems like a pretty knockout argument, on the face of it. The problem is that he's said it about a bunch of different things now, and each time someone comes along and explains why he's demonstrably incorrect by producing evidence for an intermediary stage.

You see, that's the problem with trying to turn creationism into science. Scientific theories, by definition, make quantitive statements about reality. So they can be proved wrong. We can't prove God doesn't exist, but we can prove that Behe is incorrect.

[The Saint]

You're right: as with "African-Americans", it should have been "Anglo-Carribeans", "Anglo=Africans" and "Anglo-Asians". I don't think you'll find a single atheist, evolutionist, anti-IDer or anti-creationist in their communities.

Indeed, outside of a few Oxbridge halls of residence, whether from fervently Bible-believing PM Tony Blair down to the Pontypridd coalminer, are there any in the UK at all?

Since D.Futuyama made this statement in 1983, have there been any intermediate stage fossil finds to relieve his disappointment?

"Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all."

Indeed, can you refer me to any intermediate fossils?

[Van Rijn]

Indeed, can you refer me to any intermediate fossils?

Somebody may have already mentioned this page, certainly the site was already mentioned:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

We see many transitional fossils in many species. Here are some images of transitional horse fossils:

http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

Please do some research on the subject. "Fossil Gaps" are one of the sillier Creationist arguments. Short of finding fossils of every single member of every species ever on the planet (obviously impossible for many reasons) I am quite sure that Creationists would continue to complain about "gaps."

[gwiz]

You're right: as with "African-Americans", it should have been "Anglo-Carribeans", "Anglo=Africans" and "Anglo-Asians". I don't think you'll find a single atheist, evolutionist, anti-IDer or anti-creationist in their communities.

Indeed, outside of a few Oxbridge halls of residence, whether from fervently Bible-believing PM Tony Blair down to the Pontypridd coalminer, are there any in the UK at all?

Plenty. There's someone right here who qualifies on all points.

[Fram]

You're right: as with "African-Americans", it should have been "Anglo-Carribeans", "Anglo=Africans" and "Anglo-Asians". I don't think you'll find a single atheist, evolutionist, anti-IDer or anti-creationist in their communities.

Indeed, outside of a few Oxbridge halls of residence, whether from fervently Bible-believing PM Tony Blair down to the Pontypridd coalminer, are there any in the UK at all?


I don't care if you call them "black" or "Anglo-African", I care about you singling out black Christians from other Christians,as if they are somehow different wrt to this issue. And to think that you will not find one evolutionist etcetera in those communities seems ignorant or insulting, or both.

[Lianachan]

I don't think you'll find a single atheist, evolutionist, anti-IDer or anti-creationist in their communities.

Indeed, outside of a few Oxbridge halls of residence, whether from fervently Bible-believing PM Tony Blair down to the Pontypridd coalminer, are there any in the UK at all?

Why do you keep talking about with the UK? You clearly don't know the place very well. This, like most things you've said about the UK, is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

[The Saint]

Except it's not the Creationists that are complaining about the gaps. It's the Evolutionists themselves!

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that paleontologists could have accepted gradual evolution as a universal pattern on the basis of a handful of supposedly well-documented lineages (e.g. Gryphaea, Micraster, Zaphrentis) none of which actually withstands close scrutiny" (CRC Paul).

[SolusLupus]

Except it's not the Creationists that are complaining about the gaps. It's the Evolutionists themselves!

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that paleontologists could have accepted gradual evolution as a universal pattern on the basis of a handful of supposedly well-documented lineages (e.g. Gryphaea, Micraster, Zaphrentis) none of which actually withstands close scrutiny" (CRC Paul).

Nice quote.

Got anything to back it up? For all the quotes you sprinkle, all you're doing is getting the argument wet.