Too ridiculous to bother to comment on.

“By the way, no one seems to like it when Dembski or Behe become the skeptics. By challenging the status quo, aren’t they in fact doing what science is supposed to be doing?”

They would be if their arguments were scientific or had any merit. But they keep repeating the same old refuted arguments over and over and over and over. Dembski’s “explanatory filter” doesn’t work and Behe’s “mathematics” are hopelessly flawed.

So, even atheists aren’t immune. Alas, we are none of us free of foolishness. I smoke.

I realize that atheism probably comes in more flavors than Ben & Jerry’s. My thoughts were prompted, as I said, from reading primarily Dawkins & Harris as they argue primarily against God (which is why I used the term “anti-God” rather than “atheist.” You simply can’t deal with the Bible or with the Christian God without dealing with the issue of evil.

Regarding selective skepticism, it certainly appears to exist in science. The instant adoption of Dawkins’ dog-breeding example, given to refute Behe’s latest book, is a prime example. Another is the oft-repeated “it just needs more study.” A skeptic would add “let’s see if we can disprove this,” not “but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.” By the way, no one seems to like it when Dembski or Behe become the skeptics. By challenging the status quo, aren’t they in fact doing what science is supposed to be doing?

http://news.speeple.com/scienceblogs.com/2007/09/01/aww-poor-mike.htm

(if you ever want a huge spike of readers on your blog, get mentioned by PZ.)

Science works by attacking gaps. The people I mention attack the science done by other scientists with far less mercy than they go after blowhards like the ID’ists. Like our science teacher, Mr. Erickson, taught us in fifth grade “When science answers a question, twenty more appear.” When a scientist asks a question of religion, they are told that they are trapped by a “presupposition.” “You just have to believe because the True Religion is self-evident, but just in case you don’t believe it, the evidence is that 10 x 10^20th is beyond the edge of evolution.”

Or am I misstating it? Are there only non-overlapping magisteria when the claim is used to keep scientists away?

“In no way now can it seem plausible
That while space yawns in every direction, endless,
And numerous seeds in seas unfathomable
Fly this way and that, driven on in ceaseless motion
Our world and sky should be unique creations
And all those seeds out there accomplish nothing!

“When after all our world is made by nature
Of her own, by chance, by the rush and collision of atoms
Jambled any which way, in the dark to now results
But at last tossed into combinations which
Become the origins of mighty things,
Of the earth and the sea and the sky and all that live.”

This was written by Lucretius just before the time of Jesus; and it, along with the following stanzas, illustrate that the “New Atheist Noise Machine” has been around far longer than Darwinism:

“When before our eyes man’s life lay groveling, prostrate,
Crushed to the dust under the burden of Religion
(Which thrust its head from heaven, its horrible face
Glowering over mankind born to die,)
One man, a Greek, was the first mortal who dared
Oppose his eyes, the first to stand firm in defiance.

“Not the fables of gods, nor lightning, nor the menacing
Rumble of heaven could daunt him, but all the more
They whetted his keen mind with longing to be
First to smash open the tight-barred gates of Nature.
His vigor of mind prevailed, and he strode far
Beyond the fiery battlements of the world,
Raiding the fields of the unmeasured All.

“Our victor returns with knowledge of what can arise,
What cannot, what law grants each thing its own
Deep-driven boundary stone and finite scope,
Religion now lies trampled beneath our feet,
And we are now made gods by the victory.”

_De Rerum Natura_

It would not be until Constantine evangelized with the sword some 400 years later that the “New Atheism” was forced underground for more than a millenium, surfacing only in pockets and quickly quashed by Torquemadas, Luthers and Calvins.

btw:I see that O’Leary’s and Beauregard’s book is out soon. I’m curious yet about how they will make the tie between MRI’s and Jesus.