Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Hitchens’ Hackery

I’ve filed this under "entertainment" as I don’t have a category called "tripe" at the moment. "This" being an article by Peter Hitchens on the so-called "Evolution versus Intelligent Design debate" The article turns out to be pretty much a load of old codswallop published in something that can only loosely be called a newspaper. The fact that Hitchens manages to mistake Intelligent Design for "an interesting intellectual development" in his opening sentence when it is nothing of the sort made me want to projectile vomit from the outset.
 
Luckily, Jason Rosenhouse manages to overcome my feelings of disgust and deconstructs Hitchens’ folderol more level-headedly than I am able to do.

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2 responses to “Hitchens’ Hackery”

  1. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Although his statement,  "But Darwinism is all about events that happened when there was nobody there to witness them. And it is also about events which – if happening now – are happening too slowly for anyone to live long enough to see them" is patently ridiculous and marks him as an observationist, he does not completely throw the baby out with the bathwater, as is evidenced in the closing statement of the article.   Where he fails in his argument is to treat Darwinism as a fact, forgetting that, as with all theories, it is constantly being tested and revised as we acquire further knowledge and evidence.  There is far more evidence for evolution in the fossil record than there isn’t.  Hitchens assumes however, that what we can’t answer about Darwinism mitigates against it.  This is sloppy thinking. 
     
    Were he truly as open minded as his closing statement enjoins us to be, he would set forth an argument for Darwanism and Creationsim to coexist.  They need not be mutually exclusive for the faithful and would satisfy the agnostic.

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  2. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    Coboró, you write of the "argument for Darwanism and Creationsim to coexist.  They need not be mutually exclusive for the faithful and would satisfy the agnostic". I’m sure that this can be so for the faithful and the agnostic, but so far I’ve not found a satisfactory argument for myself. However, I’ll keep looking. On my "to read" pile is Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. I’m interested to see whether I find his arguments to be persuasive. 

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