Ben Stein’s Skeptics’ Circle
The latest edition of the Skeptics’ Circle is up at Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant. This time it is guest-hosted by cdesign proponentist Ben Stein.
The article I like best is “Evolution Not Responsible for Hitler” at Skeptico. This whole “evolution isn’t real because it led to Hitler’s atrocities” argument put forth by the creationists is amazingly flimsy. I can’t believe that it is the argument du jour from these people. Skeptico rightly knocks it down, writing (in part):
Even if it were true that wouldn’t mean evolution was wrong. The argument is just a fallacious appeal to consequences: the truth of something does not depend on the consequences of it being true; the truth of something depends on whether it is actually true or not. Nuclear weapons are terrible things, but that doesn’t mean that E does not equal M C squared. Even if Hitler was inspired by evolution, that wouldn’t mean evolution was wrong.
After you’ve read that, go on over to the Skeptics’ Circle and read some other great articles.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the deal with “cdesign?”
I’m assuming it’s some sort of short-hand for creationist/IDer, but I’ve never seen that before. Where did that orginate from?
March 27th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
The term came out of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. An early draft of Of Pandas and People used the term “creationist”. They decided to hide ID’s creationist roots, so they changed all instances of “creationist” to “design proponent”. In one place, they didn’t select the entire word, so they ended up with “cdesign proponentist”. SkepticWiki has more.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I’ve been saying this for a long time. It makes me pound my head in frustration to hear this argument, and I love the blurb by Skeptico above.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Watcher:
These are the same people who say that the Bible is God’s word, because it says it is! Logic is not their strong suit.