Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

"Mainstream" ID theory generally infers a single designer from its examination of organisms.

Design by a committee. BRILLIANT!!. That would account for the stegosaurus and the camel. BRILLIANT.

Design by a committee. BRILLIANT!!. That would account for the stegosaurus and the camel. BRILLIANT.

High rates of divorce delight the toy makers because this means two sets of parents to buy toys,...

Although fewer than 4% of the world's children are American, they consume 40% of the world's toys.

FLAT EARTH: The History of an Infamous Idea by Christine Garwood

Macmillan £20 pp436

Up until 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, everyone believed the earth was flat. Since then, everyone has known better. In fact, as Christine Garwood demonstrates in this quirky and highly entertaining slice of intellectual history, both these statements are false. The Ancient Greeks knew very well that they lived on a globe, while the Flat Earth News ceased publication only in 1988.

Not the least attractive thing about Garwood's study is her criticism of modern scientists whose arrogant assumption that the present always trumps the past only flatters their self-esteem. She dismisses "supposed Christian closed-mindedness" as a post-Enlightenment myth. The Church was at the forefront of intellectual and scientific discovery for centuries. Indeed, it's really quite stupid and credulous of us now to believe that most medieval people thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world. They could see as well as you or I that a ship disappears over the horizon after a few miles, or that during a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth on the moon is round. Duh. There was "no mutiny of flat-earth sailors on the Santa Maria".

(Edit) Forefront eh. Still is.)

Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, St Augustine and Bede were all firm "globularists", in Garwood's pleasing neologism, while Newton refined things still further by showing that we really lived on an "oblate spheroid" (the earth bulges in the middle, to you and me). As with scientology, belief in alien abduction, or wildly overpriced face creams containing such bogus substances as "micro-oils", for real stupidity you need a dash of dodgy modern science.

(Edit)

The tone of their scientific debates was also vigorous. They dismissed each other's arguments as "loquacious twaddle and milk-and-water moonshine", and their opponents as "brainless boobies, infidel upstarts, swaggering freethinkers, knavish professors and the scum of the literary world". It all makes contemporary scientific debates seem a little anaemic, except perhaps those featuring Richard Dawkins. (There is no God, and Dawkins is his Prophet.)

(Edit- likewise today but with less style)


Garwood's history elicits plentiful laughter and astonishment, and even a degree of pity. Her exceptionally polite conclusion is that "personal perceptions are not necessarily ordered according to external reality". There's no quarrelling with that. Tom Cruise believes that the world is cluttered with the disembodied souls of those murdered by an evil galactic warlord called Xenu 75m years ago. Icke believes that both the Duke of Edinburgh and the singer Kris Kristofferson are 13-ft lizards from the constellation Draco. And "a few old-timers" in Zion City, Illinois, still insist that the earth is flat. For a brusquer conclusion, Garwood quotes a certain king from around 1000BC, noted for his timeless good sense. "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes" (Proverbs 12:15). This book is one long QED to that.

Darwin nearly failed to evolve in print
(Shirley English, The Times, April 25, 2007)

As rejection letters go, it would have taken some beating. The publishers of Charles Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species, considered turning down his manuscript and asking him to write about pigeons instead.

The near-miss was unearthed in 150-year-old correspondence between Darwin's publisher, John Murray, and a clergyman, the Rev Whitwell Elwin. Elwin was one of Murray's special advisers, part of a literary panel that was the Victorian equivalent of a modern focus group.

He was asked by the London publisher for his opinion of Darwin's new work, which challenged Old Testament ideas of Creation. Unsurprisingly for a man of the cloth, Elwin disapproved. Writing back from his rectory in Norwich on May 3, 1859, he urged Murray not to publish. Darwin's theories were so farfetched, prejudiced and badly argued that right-thinking members of the public would never believe them, he said. "At every page I was tantalised by the absence of the proofs," Elwin wrote, adding that the "harder and drier" writing style was also off-putting.

He suggested that Darwin's earlier observations on pigeons should be made into a book as "everybody is interested in pigeons". He enthused: "The book would be received in every journal in the kingdom and would soon be on every table."

Fortunately, Murray chose to ignore the advice. He went on to publish On the Origin of Species. The rest, as they say, is history.

The letters are among more than 150,000 literary items that form the vast John Murray archive, a collection of documents from some of the greatest thinkers of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Built up over seven generations of the publishing family, and valued at £45 million, the collection is now housed at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

spendi, What exactly is your point with your last post?

Not the least attractive thing about Garwood's study is her criticism of modern scientists whose arrogant assumption that the present always trumps the past only flatters their self-esteem.

She dismisses "supposed Christian closed-mindedness" as a post-Enlightenment myth. The Church was at the forefront of intellectual and scientific discovery for centuries.

in Garwood's pleasing neologism,

Well, the whole wide world is filled with speculation
The whole wide world people say is round...

"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes" (Proverbs 12:15). This book is one long QED to that.

an early attempt at muzzling science

When I was a kid, I was always afraid to look up anything about Basilisks. My damn father told me about all kinds of monsters when I was very young,including the one that basilisks could kill you by you just looking at them. I came across one while rummaging through a dictionary and there was his picture . I knew I was in big trouble and went screaming to my mom who was certain I was nuts and immediately began a novena with my busha and some aunts. I was maybe a five year old kid then, over 50 years later, am still working off issues about stuff thatll kill you just by knowing about it. Having a special intercession novena made me feel likeFather Damien and I hadnt even seen the Exorcist yet.

So early on I decided I wanted to be a priest. Surely they had a monster immunity clause with their contracts. Father A'Hearn clued me in that this was all made up (I threw in Santa Claus and learned very early about how adults keep us held back by these legends) When I learned that all this crap was legend, I began to feel somehow empty as if my Guradian ANgel just had a massive heart attack and left me. So I needed, really needed to

learn about the real dragons of the world and got smitten by Stegosaurs, Mormoops, science and quickly lost my religion.(and I wasnt even 10 yet) ALL because of a basilisk and a priest .

still working off issues about stuff thatll kill you just by knowing about it.

Look out kid-they keep it all hid.