Feb 05 2006 08:54:27 PM EST
Unintelligent Design at NASA
Distressing to read in the New York Times that political appointees are trying to dictate how NASA reports science. I note that one White-House-appointed flack apparently wants “intelligent design” to be considered as an alternative to Big Bang cosmology. This is new and weird, since “intelligent design” has up until now been offered as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
There are of course no observational data at all to support the idea that the universe was intelligently designed. (It may well have been, but nothing in what we can observe cosmologically suggests this is so.)
Feb 05 2006 09:31:27 PM EST
Comment by: Michael
Not just a White House appointee, but an Aggie! How low can they sink?
Apr 17 2006 05:17:42 PM EDT
Comment by: gertrude smith
dear sir, Easter Monday ‘06
i came to your website because godwin’s law was mentioned in the day-by-day cartoon that my dad looks at all the time. i looked it up on wikipedia…interesting….and there was a link to your site. as a scientist who spent 6 years in a trappist monastery, i ask you, whose backround in education is the law…do you know about enantiomers? i went to college fully convinced that evolution as taught in high school(i was a national merit scholar and attended the college of my choice tuition paid)was completely acceptable. as a catholic, i really didn’t care whether g_d did things the long way or the short way…it was As A Scientist that i found flaws in evolution. study enuf chemistry to understand enantiomers and you will see why some scientists are again looking for the ’seed from the cosmos’ (in short…the chemical soup struck-by-lightning no doubt could make long chain molecules, but there is No Chemical manner to make the opposing Matching strand)…it would have to happen by chance. do law students study statistics? otoh…i am amused by people who get all excited about how much of our genome is shared by apes…after all Yeasts and us share more than 25% of common genes. also, what is your expertise in mysticism/g_d or for that matter, theory of design? do lawyers study that stuff? biologists and mystics study design from different epistomological attitudes, but both make it lifelong study.
sincerely yours,
gertrude smith
(arizonablueeyes from the reflecting pool as-was)
Apr 18 2006 08:03:47 PM EDT
Comment by: mnemonic
Hi, Gertrude.
I took organic chemistry, so I know basic stuff about enantiomers.
Studied statistics as well — not as a law student, but before I became one. (In fact, Godwin’s Law is itself a kind of homage to statistical thinking.)
Like many lawyers (and many non-lawyers), I studied lots of different topics, including the sciences, before I chose my profession.
–Mike