Beautiful irony


Uncommon Descent astrologyFrom Denyse O’Leary:

I mean, if you leave out the crackpots, the idea that the stars, which are much more significant in size than Earth, rule our destiny makes sense. It’s beautiful and it was just what court intellectual needed, centuries ago. It doesn’t happen to be true.

The idea that natural selection acting on random mutation could fill the world with exquisitely complex life forms makes sense to fashionable intellectuals today and it doesn’t happen to be true.

From Michael Behe’s cross examination in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial (day 11 p.m., p. 38):

Q: But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?

A: Yes, that’s correct. And let me explain under my definition of the word “theory,” it is — a sense of the word “theory” does not include the theory being true, it means a proposition based on physical evidence to explain some facts by logical inferences.

Comments

  1. Ridana says

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

    Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  2. rjdownard says

    I’ve been tracking O’Leary’s ID output for some time in my TIP research (about 90 citations from her in my data field currently, not comprehensive by any means, but I feel they are representative of her ouevre), and she’s on Twitter so I’ve been following her there too, where she regularly links to posts at Uncommon Descent. Overall she’s a glib secondary pundit who takes extended pot-shots at science she doesn’t like. Not by offering a workable detailed testable ID alternative (mercy, no, never that), but by flogging the work from afar by snarky comments largely on secondary media coverage of the work (which she almost never links to directly, and shows no sign of diligently studying even when she does). By volume & dogmatic tenacity she’s rather like David Coppedge, except that full blown creationist at least links to and extensively quote mines from the primary source works (a pitfall of detail that O’Leary avoids by her perpetual vagueness).

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