One of the All-Time Worst Discoveroid Posts

Once again we visit the creationist website of the Discovery Institute. Their latest is titled Listen: How Darwinian Materialism Poisoned Mainstream Ethics, and it has no author’s by-line. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

A new ID the Future episode [Ooooooooooooh! A Discoveroid podcast!] again features Darwinian Racism [Link omitted!] author and historian Richard Weikart and radio host Hank Hanegraaff exploring the pernicious impact Charles Darwin and Darwinism have had on modern ethics.

Ah yes, Darwinian racism. We’ve posted numerous times in response to that outrageous claim — see, e.g.: Racism, Eugenics, and Darwin, and also Westie Says Darwinian Racism Is Everywhere. Okay, then they say:

Ideas laid out in Darwin’s The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man fueled scientific racism in the United States and Nazi Germany, Weikart says, and undergird the ideas of contemporary white nationalists, who tend to be virulently anti-Christian and pro-Darwin.

They’re still babbling about Darwin and the Nazis. See Discoveroids Still Claim Darwin Inspired Hitler, and then Discovery Institute Returns to Its Roots, and also Hitler, Darwin, and Churchill — One More Time.

This Discoveroid post is an amazingly huge pile of garbage — and it isn’t over yet. Next they tell us:

We can take some comfort from the fact that white nationalists are a fringe movement and that most evolutionists today are anti-racist [Thanks, guys!], but Weikart notes that Darwinian materialism has poisoned mainstream ethics in another way, by devaluing humans generally.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Now what have we done? The Discoveroids continue:

This is why someone as mainstream as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins felt free to publicly encourage experimentation in ape-human hybrids, work that Dawkins hopes will undermine the idea that humans are anything special.

That’s very old stuff and we’re not going to bother with it. Let’s read on:

When the biblical idea that humans are made in the image of God [Huh?] is replaced with the idea that we are just a collocation of atoms spit out by a blind evolutionary process, all manner of evil against humans becomes far easier to justify.

What’s going on here? The Discoveroids have always pretended to be doing science, but now they sound like ol’ Hambo himself. Ah well, the moment passes, and now we come to the end:

Fortunately the scientific evidence has turned against evolutionary theory. [Hee hee!] To learn more about that, check out the short videos at Discovery Science, beginning with the series Science Uprising [Link omitted]. Download the podcast or listen to it here [Link omitted].

Maybe we’re just in a bad mood, but this one seems like it could be the worst Discoveroid post ever. What do you think, dear reader?

Copyright © 2022. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

The Holy Moley Truth About the Multiverse

Once again we visit the creationist website of the Discovery Institute. Their latest is titled Listen: Dr. Meyer in the Multiverse of Madness, and it has no author’s by-line. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

On a new episode of ID the Future [Ooooooooooooh! A Discoveroid podcast!], radio host Michael Medved sits down with bestselling science author Stephen Meyer to discuss the Marvel movie Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! You know who Stephen Meyer is. His Discoveroid bio page says that he’s one of their senior fellows and currently the Program Director of their Center for Science and Culture — very impressive! Then the Discoveroids say:

Medved isn’t wild about the film, but he uses it as a springboard for a discussion of what he calls “the madness of the multiverse” — namely, the proposals in physics and cosmology for the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.

Do you know anyone who is a proponent of the multiverse? Neither does your Curmudgeon. Anyway, the Discoveroids say:

Meyer explains some of the early motivations among 20th-century physicists and cosmologists for proposing a multiverse. Then he turns to what he says is the main driver for interest in the multiverse in our day — a desire to explain away something that is deeply puzzling on the grounds of atheism, namely that the laws and constants of physics and chemistry are exquisitely fine-tuned for life.

Ooooooooooooh! It’s “deeply puzzling” that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life. The Discoveroids continue:

For the atheist, fine-tuning smells too much like intelligent design, and on a cosmic scale. The solution from the atheists: there are countless universes, they suggest, maybe even an infinity of them, and our universe is just one of the lucky ones with the right laws and constants to allow for life. In essence, we won a multiverse cosmic lottery.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, we’re all so stunned that the universe is fine-tuned for life that we desperately conjured up the idea of the multiverse in order to evade concluding that the universe is the handiwork of the intelligent designer — blessed be he! We’ve blogged several times about this Discoveroid claim — see, e.g.: The Multiverse or God-Did-It? Okay, then the Discoveroids tell us:

Meyer’s recent book, Return of the God Hypothesis [Link omitted!], lists multiple problems with this explanation. One problem is that these postulated universes are unobservable and that even indirect evidence for them is weak to nonexistent.

Hey — that’s the same problem the intelligent designer has! Anyway, the Discoveroids continue:

But Meyer cites a more fundamental problem: a multiverse, it’s broadly agreed, would require a multiverse-generating device, and it’s now clear that it would have to be exquisitely fine-tuned to generate even one habitable universe. So the multiverse theory doesn’t remove the need for a fine-tuner. It merely moves the need back a step.

Can’t they see that their intelligent designer has the identical problem? Who designed their designer? Anyway, now we come to the end:

Meyer says the fine-tuning of the cosmos is better explained by reference to the one type of cause that in our experience is able to look ahead and fine-tune multiple components to achieve a goal — intelligent agency.

That’s his explanation? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh wait — they also add this:

Download the podcast or listen to it here. [Link omitted!]

Okay, dear reader, now you know all there is to know about the intelligent designer, the multiverse, and all the other [*Bleep*] the Discoveroids are famous for. Now go out into the street and start shouting it — because it’s The Truth™!

Copyright © 2022. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

The Universe Was Made for Us (and the Dung Beetle)

They’ve suddenly become entertaining again. We’re talking about the creationist website of the Discovery Institute. Their latest gem is titled The Miracle of Man: Extraordinary “Coincidences” All the Way Down, and it has no author’s by-line. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

On a new episode of ID the Future [Ooooooooooooh! A Discoveroid podcast!], Miracle of Man [Amazon link] author and biologist Michael Denton continues his conversation with host Eric Anderson.

Denton is a Discoveroid “Senior Fellow.” Here’s one of our earlier posts about him: Michael Denton’s Wonderful New Book. That book — like the new one — was published by the Discovery Institute, so you can be certain about their quality. The new Discoveroid post says:

Here Denton offers a review of several more anthropic “coincidences” in chemistry, biochemistry, and Earth sciences that are fine tuned to allow air-breathing, bipedal, technology-developing terrestrial creatures like ourselves to exist and thrive.

Ooooooooooooh! The world was fine-tuned, just for us! Whenever some creationist makes that claim, we remind you of the tale told by Douglas Adams about an intelligent puddle that woke up one morning and thought:

“This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, [it] must have been made to have me in it!”

It’s also worth mentioning yet another creature for whom the world — and probably the whole universe — was fine tuned: see The Genius of the Dung Beetle. But let’s get back to the Discoveroids. They tell us:

The fine tuning, what Denton calls anthropic prior fitness, would seem to require foresight and planning on literally a cosmic scale.

Ooooooooooooh! Planning on a cosmic scale — for us and the dung beetle!

And now we come to the end:

The wide-ranging conversation, the final one in a four-part series, gives a flavor for the breadth — if not the depth and richness — of Denton’s new book from Discovery Institute Press, available here. [Duplicate link omitted!]

We know you’re interested, so click over to the Discoveroids’ blog, find the link, and buy the book. Hey — don’t forget to tell ’em the Curmudgeon sent ya!

Copyright © 2022. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

Without Intelligent Design, You Wouldn’t Exist

Once again, our entertainment comes from the creationist website of the Discovery Institute. Their latest gem is titled Three Realities Chance Can’t Explain That Intelligent Design Can, and it was written by Granville Sewell.

They say Granville is a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso. It’s been a while since we wrote about him. The last time was Granville Sewell and the Second Law, Again. Here are some excerpts from his latest, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

The scientific establishment is slowly beginning to allow scientists who believe in intelligent design to have a platform. [Really?] Why? It may be because the theory that the universe was crafted intentionally explains many realities that theories based on chance do not.

This Granville guy is amazing. Then he says:

Perhaps the simplest and best argument for intelligent design is to clearly state what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, as I did in my book, In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. [Link omitted!!] Peter Urone, in his physics text College Physics, writes, “One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena.”

Okay, four forces. Wikipedia has an article on it: Fundamental interaction. What does that have to do with intelligent design? Granville tells us:

This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design: that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics. Thus you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science texts and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones.

How many fundamental forces does Granville want? He continues:

These four unintelligent forces of physics may indeed explain everything that has happened on other planets, but let us look at three essential elements of our human existence and examine whether the currently believed origin theory can explain them.

Okay, here it comes:

1. The Origin of Life: To appreciate that we still have no idea how the first living things arose, you only have to realize that with all our advanced technology we are still not close to designing any type of self-replicating machine; that is still pure science fiction. We can only create machines that create other machines, but no machine that can make a copy of itself.

We wonder how Granville will react to some recent news we found at PhysOrg: Scientists announce a breakthrough in determining life’s origin on Earth—and maybe Mars. Anyway, let’s see what else he says:

2. The Origin of Advanced Life Forms: Furthermore, imagine that we did somehow manage to design, say, a fleet of cars with fully automated car-building factories inside, able to produce new cars — and not just normal new cars, but new cars with fully automated car-building factories inside them. Who could seriously believe that if we left these cars alone for a long time, the accumulation of duplication errors made as they reproduced themselves would result in anything other than devolution, and eventually could even be organized by selective forces into more advanced automobile models?

No, we could confidently predict that the whole process would grind to a halt after a few generations without intelligent humans around to fix the mechanical problems that would inevitably arise, long before we saw duplication errors that held any promise of advances.

The idea that it could even be remotely plausible that random mutations could produce major improvements relies completely on the observed but inexplicable fact that, while they are awaiting rare favorable mutations, living species are able to preserve their complex structures and pass them on to their descendants without significant degradation. We are so used to seeing this happen that we don’t appreciate how astonishing it really is.

Granville says it can’t be done. Let’s read on:

3. The Origin of Human Intelligence and Consciousness: Trying to imagine that the accumulation of duplication errors made by our fleet of self-replicating cars could eventually result in conscious, intelligent machines might help us to realize that the evolution of intelligent beings, capable of designing computers, science texts, jet airplanes, and Apple iPhones, is an especially monumental and unsolved problem.

Aha — an unsolved problem — therefore Oogity Boogity! Skipping an ark-load of similar stuff, we come to the end:

The argument for intelligent design could not be simpler or clearer: Unintelligent forces alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and nuclear power plants and smartphones, and any attempt to explain how they can must fail somewhere because they obviously can’t. Perhaps this is the best way to understand why explanations without design will never work, and why science may finally be starting to recognize this.

Well, there you have it — without the mysterious activity of the intelligent designer — blessed be he! — you wouldn’t be here. Powerful argument, huh?

Copyright © 2022. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.