Saturday, November 27, 2004

Counterpoints

I've recently had two responses to arguments I put forward that are worth reading. The first is at Pharyngula and Grupp has responded to my musings on his article in Dialogue. I don't have time to respond in detail to either at the moment, and I'll have to consider the Grupp response more carefully than I've been able, but they are both worth reading.

[UPDATE: I suppose I should say something about the Pharyngula post. What strikes me about Myers's unfolding of what he sees as the real argument is that it really shows how 'indistinguishability' does no work whatsoever in an argument like this (which is, he is right, not erroneous). In fact, the whole tendency of the argument is in directly the opposite direction: it is an argument that even where apparently indistinguishable, ID is on closer rational inspection highly distinguishable from evolutionary theory, as distinguishable as shoddy imitation and real deal. And that is precisely the right way to argue. It is the introduction of 'indistinguishability' that garbles the argument: at best it is a misleading distraction, at worst it makes a perfectly good argument incoherent. ]