Last week ago in Two Items from the Discovery Institute, we mentioned a couple of minor matters the Discovery Institute was blogging about. One of them was what appeared to be an unpromising work by Douglas Axe of Biologic Institute. As you know, the Biologic Institute is the Discoveroids’ captive research lab. We were told:
Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the “design intuition” — the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can only be accomplished by someone who has that knowledge. For the ingenious task of inventing life, this knower can only be God.
Axe’s book is Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Amazon listing). There wasn’t much we could say about such an intellectual undertaking, so we let the situation speak for itself.
But now, at the Discoveroids’ creationist blog, we read Doug Axe’s Undeniable Not Yet Out, Tops Amazon’s Organic Evolution List; See the Trailer Now. It was written by David Klinghoffer, a Discoveroid “senior fellow” (i.e., flaming, full-blown creationist), who eagerly functions as their journalistic slasher and poo flinger. We’ll give you a few excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis.
Not bad. Here’s Doug Axe’s new book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, not out for another month and a half but it’s already had the distinction of hitting #1 on Amazon’s Organic Evolution list: [screen shot of info from Amazon].
To find that screen shot — where the book now appears as number 2, not number 1, you need to go to Amazon’s list of best sellers, then select the catagory “Science and Math,” and from there select “Evolution,” and from there click on “Organic.” You’ll see it listed in that sub-sub category. Let’s read on:
Note that Dr. Axe is right ahead of Steve Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt, which in turn is right ahead of Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. That’s good company, and a satisfying threefold juxtaposition in itself.
Dawkins’ book is now listed as number 1 in that category, and it was originally published in 2010. Let’s wait and see how Axe’s book is doing after six years. Anyway, Klinghoffer continues:
Meanwhile, here’s the trailer where Axe briefly discusses the validity of intuition that “life is designed” …
You’ll have to go to Klinghoffer’s post to see it. Then he tells us that we can pre-order the book before it’s released on 12 July, and if you do, they’ll throw in three books from the prestigious Discovery Institute Press. How can you turn down a deal like that?
Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Klinghoffer said: “For the ingenious task of inventing life, this knower can only be God.”
So, gone is any pretense that the great “intelligent designer’s” identity is unknown, for poo-finger clearly notes it is none other than his sky god. We’ve all known this from the git-go, but more and more it’s creeping (slithering?) out of the woodwork, and the dishonesty institute is one big lie.
Do you think that this book will address.the questions that evolutionary biology is concerned with? Why are humans most like chimps and other apes? How did animals come to have eyes? What is the relationship between birds and dinosaurs?
Do you think that this book will suggest an alternative account to life on Earth? One that does not mention evolution?
I think the book will contain exactly three elements.
1. Evolution Theory is wrong.
2. Science can’t explain, hence God eeeehhhh, an Intelligent Designer.
3. X looks designed hence was Intelligently Designed.
DavidK notes that the DI’s David K abandons
But five’ll get you ten that he’ll still throw his wonted hissy-fit if you say he’s a Creationist rather than a Proponent of Intelligent Design.
Of course, the DI’s terminology is a distinction without a difference, and the whole schtick was never an adequate fig-leaf for their attempted concealment–it was barely a four-leaf clover. They hope to return humanity to an earlier age, when we delighted in slugging it out with claims that “My God can beat your God up!”
That said, it is striking to me that the DI is more openly advocating (I won’t say ‘arguing for’, for they never offer for any of their claims any evidence) the primacy of ‘intuition’ over empiricism, and that this all-trumping faculty is ‘innate.’ Since we’re all endowed at birth with this faculty, there is no need for science or reason–indeed, the pursuit of either is likely dangerous.
If your intuition tells you monkeys can’t be carried across water on rafts of vegetation, then hey presto, quod erat demonstrandum! No need to develop an alternative explanation for any data point; if your intuition doesn’t give you an answer you find satisfying, then just put the awkward evidence down to an act of magic–and do reverent obeisance accordingly.
“Gushes”
I would have used a different word but it probably would have been [edited out].
So how does the Amazon bestseller ranking work; can you buy your way in to it?
Klumperthumper (rhymes with Bible thumper) burps:
New sign above the Disco Tute entrance:
Abandon All Science Ye Who Enter Here
Yep, it’s gone. All of it. In one sentence Krapplesnapple has wiped out decades of “work.” Gone is irreducible complexity. Gone is the Nixplanatory Filter. Gone is complex information, specified complex information and functional specified complex information, and, my favorite, boom-a-lakka boom-a-lakka framastatic chocolate-flavored information. It’s all gone.
The Tooters have cycled right back to the beginning as full-blown (that should have been [edited out]!) creationists – Gee, looks designed, praise the Lord! Not all bad, though. Maybe they’re going to open a museum like Ken Ham and try to ride that gravy train for a while.
Can you imagine the grief God got when he commanded somebody to sail spiders and snails to Hawai’i? Our “intuition” tells us they couldn’t raft there. It also tells us that no one would volunteer to take invertebrates there. Given what happened to Jonah, I wonder what punishments God meted out for those who tried not to comply?
My intuition says that a single electron cannot go through two slits at once.
Good read on intuition (good and bad) ahead of the DI book would be Malcom Gladwell: Blink (book) – Wikipedia
I can’t help noticing that Bill Nye had a book out in 2014 called Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation. Could it be that Axe is trying to go head to head with the “Science Guy?” Nye offers science, Axe is appealing to “intuition,” how lame is that? What ever happened to the creationist/ID mantra that the the evidence is really on their side?
Nye’s book has 594 customer reviews on Amazon, I wonder how many Axe will get, and who will write them?
I have “intuited” a lot have things that have been wrong 🙂 Methinks Axe has gone down that path.
I find this hilarious. The IDers are explicitly doing exactly what researchers have already shown they would do.
The summary article: http://www.livescience.com/16151-god-belief-intuition.html
The paper: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-141-3-423.pdf
The takeaway:
People who got these questions wrong tend to have higher belief in God:
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take
100 machines to make 100 widgets?
In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size.
If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it
take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
Source: http://www.sjdm.org/dmidi/Cognitive_Reflection_Test.html
I also wonder what Kling & Co. would say about the Monty Hall Problem.
Like sorting rocks on the seashore?
Also my intuition is that the less knowledge someone has of reproduction the more likely it is to be accomplished by that someone.
@Draken:
So how does the Amazon bestseller ranking work; can you buy your way in to it?
If the DI buys enough copies and hides them over at the biologic lab where the green screens are kept, then maybe it’ll move up a notch from zero to infinitely small.
Meyer’s “Doubt” book is ranked #14,571 in Amazon, the DI didn’t buy enough of them.
Sewell’s book “In the Beginning” is #993,647
Gonzalez and Richards “Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Christian Answers to Hard Questions) (Apologia)” is #1,233,949
Gonzalez’s “The Privileged Planet” is #248,440
My intuition tells me that only a creationist could come up with Intelligent Design to sneak the Bible into the classroom.
And there you have it:
• The “intelligent designer” is revealed at last (big surprise!) as the God of the Bible, Jehovah himself, despite all the cagey creationist claptrap about how “design” has nothing to do with religion. As I’ve written before, ID isn’t a scientific theory but rather a legal maneuver intended to get around court decisions unfavorable to creationists.
• Klinghoffer to the rest of us: Intuition and belief can beat up reason and evidence any day of the week, so there!
From Wikipedia:
“Intuition, a phenomenon of the mind, describes the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.[2] The word “intuition” comes from Latin verb intueri translated as consider or from late middle English word intuit, “to contemplate”.[3]”
The use of intuition might be best saved for deciding where one might place a vase of flowers in whatever room your intuition tells you it might look best in. I doubt that any of the fellows of the D.I. use intuition as part of their financial planning strategy.
Alas, Kryerliar still has an out! He was just expressing his personal opinion. That was the story the Attack Gerbil (bless his flinty little heart) used to spin. Publicly, it’s all science. Privately, it’s all baby Jeebus.