Re: Top three reasons for optimism about the ID scam

On 01-Dec-24 17:46, RonO wrote:

On 12/1/2024 3:41 PM, erik simpson wrote:

On 12/1/24 1:09 PM, Kestrel Clayton wrote:

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On 01-Dec-24 12:28, RonO wrote:

https://evolutionnews.org/2024/11/happy-thanksgiving-here-are- michael- dentons-top-3-reasons-for-optimism-about-id-2/
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The ID perps have an article up on Denton's "top three reasons" to be optimistic about the intelligent design creationist scam.  This should likely be taken in context.  Denton has deistic notions that have never been accepted by the other ID perps in their efforts to maintain their "big tent" revival creationist scam.  Nearly all the other ID perps and IDiotic creationist rubes want to believe in personal god that is constantly involved in matters of our existence.  Denton was one of the original ID perp fellows, but he quit the ID scam when the other ID perps did not appreciate his notions about god and evolution in his second book.  Denton admitted that biological evolution was a fact of nature and his deistic notions of what the designer could be did not go over well with the other ID perps.  The other ID perps published their discussion of Denton's book and Denton was not part of that discussion. So Denton was no longer a fellow until he likely needed the money and rejoined after the creationist defeat in Dover. Denton rejoined knowing that the ID scam had just been a bait and switch effort since he had left.  ID had only been used as bait to push the ID perps obfuscation and denial stupidity.  Even after rejoining Denton has not been treated very well.  I put up one article where the interviewer was making fun of Denton's claims of being an agnostic.  The conclusion from that article was that Denton had not been totally honest about the matter and that he wasn't any type of agnostic that most people would relate to.  Really, the interviewer wrote that Denton had a "sly twinkle" in his eye when discussing the matter, and that he admitted that he may only be a back sliding Christian.
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So even the other ID perps know that Denton is a liar, and that they do not want to believe in his designer.
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#1.  "the "relentless" growth of the ID movement, in academia and around the world."
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This seems to be a lie.  The ID network folded up and quit back in 2009, and started COPE.  They have since reactivated their web site, after nearly a decade of failure with COPE in selling the obfuscation and denial switch scam, but aren't doing much else.  They still have not made any press releases since around 2007.  ARN discussion board and uncommon descent were closed.
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Just the fact that the bait and switch has continued to go down 100% of the time that any rubes want to teach the junk should be noticeable.  It took around 6 years after the bait and switch was run on the Utah creationist rubes back in 2017 for the West Virginia creationist rubes to try again in 2023, and it took 4 years after the bait and switch on both Louisiana and Texas in 2013 for the Utah rubes to make their effort in 2017.  There just are not that many creationist rubes out there that do not understand that there has never been any ID science worth teaching in the public schools
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ID died on TO and uncommon descent after the ID perps put out their Top Six in their order that they must have occurred in this universe. Even the IDiots at Reason To Believe stopped being IDiots after the Top Six came out.  You can go to the Reason to Believe site, now, and you will be hard pressed to identify them as once being IDiots.  They used to claim that they were IDiots, but that they did not want to teach ID in the public schools like the ID perps at the Discovery Institute. Senator Santorum gave up on the ID scam after having the bait and switch run on him in Dover in his home state.  These guys did not quit being creationists, they just quit being IDiotic creationist rubes.
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#2.  "A second reason is the way any materialist explanation of the origin of life keeps looking more and more implausible. James Tour’s Harvard roundtable discussion with top OOL researcher Lee Cronin was telling on that subject."
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It isn't that the origin of life keeps looking more and more implausible, but that it is about the last god-of-the-gaps type arguments that are still considered to be viable by creationists. Tour has claimed to understand that ID has been a scam, and that he does not know how to do any ID science.  Tour's origin of life claims are due to his understanding that ID is dead, but he can't give up on the denial. The origin of life is only used as a god-of- the-gaps denial argument. TO found out that Biblical creationists do not want to believe in the designer responsible for the origin of life on this planet after the Top Six was put out.  The designer of the Top Six god-of-the-gaps denial arguments is not the creator described in the Bible.  MarkE, like Tour, could not give up on the origin of life gap denial, but came to realize that he did not want to believe in the designer of the gap that he was trying to claim could not be filled by a natural occurrence.  MarkE quit posting when he could not reconcile the designer responsible for the origin of life on this planet with the creator described in the Bible. It is a lose lose proposition. Even if some designer is found to be responsible for the origin of life on this planet it would not be the Biblical designer, and the Bibilcal designer would end up to be the false god.  There is no point in the gap denial when you will have to admit that the creation story in the Bible is metaphorical, and cannot be taken literally.
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#3.  "And finally, says Denton, there is a mounting realization that the mind is irreducible to matter, upsetting the Darwinian presumption that everything must reducible to matter."
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The Supreme court has already informed the creationist rubes that just because science currently cannot explain something, that is not support for their alternative.  It only means that their alternative has not been ruled out.  The problem with the reasoning behind #3 and why it doesn't mean that support for ID is expanding when it really means that the number of such claims has been constantly been getting smaller.  In the history of human kind there has been a 100% failure rate for claims like these.  Every single time we have finally figured out what is going on, some god has been ruled out.  What god makes the seasons change? What god makes babies?  No god- did-it claim has ever been verified.  The earth is not flat.  There is no firmament above the earth that some god opens up to let the rain fall through.  The earth is not the center of the universe with everything else spinning around us.  The 7 days of creation are not consistent with the order of the Top Six, nor the age of the earth based on Genesis calculations.
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The ID perps presented their Top Six god-of-the-gaps denial stupidity in such a way that it killed ID on TO.  Most of the IDiots posting did not want to believe in the best evidence for ID.  It turned out that they had only been wallowing in the denial and never wanted to have the ID perps succeed in producing any valid ID science.  Any valid science involving the Top Six would just be more science for Biblical creationists to deny.

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Regarding number three: Many years ago, after ID's decisive failure, I did wonder if "non-materialist neuroscience" would be the next stalking horse for the religious right's attempt to replace education with catechism. Unfortunately for the would-be theocrats, the ID scam appears to have recruited too many true believers, who wouldn't give up even when it was obvious cdesign proponentsism was moribund. SURELY there would be jam tomorrow... or perhaps the day after that... or a week from next Tuesday, for sure!
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Omphalism (last Thursdayism) is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
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 The last bit of creation science out of the ICR at the turn of the century before the ID scam took over TO was their RATE project.  In their first report of what they had found they concluded that the the theory of radiometric dating was sound, and that the age of the rocks should be able to be dated using those methods.  Their final conclusion for the project was that the rocks were really as young as the Bible claimed they had to be, and that their designer had just made it so that they all had the components to make them look much older than they actually were.  Somehow after the initial creation event that produced rocks that looked billions of years old their god made the lava and ash from volcanic activity to have the components that would make them look much older than they actually were even though current volcanic acivity does not produce ash and lava with the older composition. God-did-it- that-way was their explanation for why the rocks look as old as they do.

There was a time I wondered why creationists were so untroubled by the theological implications of a liar-god who fabricates evidence against his own existence, so as to send more people into eternal torture. Back then I didn't understand two vital things about white American Christian fundamentalism: One, it's essentially gnostic; and two, their idea of Heaven is a sort of whitebread gated community, where the residents pride themselves on keeping most people out.
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Kestrel Clayton
"Every normal woman must be tempted, at times, to stoke the fire,
host the black mass, and begin eating hearts." — Rose Bailey