RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Fw: Apple computers run on satanism (fwd)

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Ross, Matt wrote:

> I note they make reference to drdino, I suppose in an small jab at
> http://www.drdino.com/, a Christian scientist website.  While I don't agree
> with the priciple of 'Christian Scientists', I do like some of the things
> "Dr. Dino" puts out there, such as his challenge to evolutionary theory.

There are times when it pays to be delicate, but other times when
you really just have to say what you think about something.  I have
just looked at some of the material in the FAQs at www.drdino.com,
and I have no qualms whatsoever with declaring it to be a steaming
heap of manure.

Really, this kind of thing saddens me.  Groups that set themselves 
up to debunk scientific ideas really do have a responsibility to
understand the ideas they wish to discredit and be intellectually
honest about what those ideas really imply and predict about the 
world.  The ideas, in other words, don't just exist in a vacuum but
gain their power from their use and our ability to understand more
about the world than what we knew before.

Or, let's put it another way.  If there really were a creation
science worth studying, you need to show how it can explain all of
the phenomena we have already (predicted and discovered and)
explained by means of orthodox science.  You should also be able to
make exact statements about where this creation science differs in
its assumptions or laws or calculations from contemporary orthodox
science (and not some cartoonish and highly selected subset of
factoids taken from the scientific literature).

But, hey, I have never seen anybody make a *single* calculation from
some first principles of creation science and have it match observed
reality.  In any way.  And it gets just completly painful when you
have to deal with "young earth" creationists.  Almost nothing in
real science will give them the answers they want in terms of dates,
so they basically have to deny the truth of the entire enterprise.
And then they should have to explain how, if conventional science
has gone so horribly wrong, how scientific ideas have lead to the 
development of miracle devices like rewritable CDs, gene therapy,
magnetic resonance imaging and on and on and on.  And why the only
thing that creation science can produce is tackily packaged DVDs.

And that's the ultimate irony.  To be taken seriously, these folks
need to be able to use their science to calculate an age for the
earth of only 6000 years while simultaneously explaining how their
science can explain the processes involved in the creation of the
DVDs their unscientific ideas are stamped on.  The more difficult
creation for them to explain will be the latter one, of course.

> Interesting reading, even if you don't agree with it.

No, it isn't interesting.  It is merely sad.  If you want 
interesting, give me a physical email address and I'll send you a 
*free* copy of Feynman's QED, a book discussed previously on this
list.  After you see and understand that book, I would be completely
shocked if schlock like the stuff you see on www.drdino.com would
continue to impress you in any way.

jking

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