Posted by zeugma on December 22, 2005, at 16:11:20
In reply to Re: survival instinct, posted by alexandra_k on December 21, 2005, at 23:22:17
I was a little disappointed in the commentary (we didn't hear the judge or what he said). I think... Creationism should be taught as part of philosophy of science, but not as science. The job of science... Is to teach the best current scientific knowledge we have... If you want to know *why* evolution by natural selection beats creationism as a scientific theory hands down then that is a topic for philosophy of science.>>
I think the creationist view was prefigured in the writings of Deists in the 18th century, and David Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is the definitive reply on the topic. Interestingly, the poet William Blake also hated the idea of Intelligent Design: he wrote a pair of tracts called "There Is No Natural Religion" that basically isolate the core of Hume's skepticism: "Man by his reasoning power can only compare and judge of what he has already perceiv'd," then arguing that as perception is only a "natural organ subject to Sense," it cannot infer anything supernatural from what has been perceived- a fascinating proposition he makes is that "From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth"- compare with the difficulty of conceptualizing time as in any way analogous to the three dimensions of Euclidean space. It's ironic that Blake picks up on Hume's point about the limitations of induction, since it is clear that he detests every English philosopher except Berkeley (he also has quite a lot against Rousseau, as anyone familiar with his poetry would know).
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:590717
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20051215/msgs/591310.html