I plan on periodically blogging about the animal rights movement. Yet how does this fit within a blog devoted to things related to ID and teleology? That's simple "“ many critics of ID have made the fit for us.

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This is one of the top 25 questions that Science asks in its Top 125 questions facing scientists today The list that Science has put together is potent for discussion, so let's use the comments section to discuss some of the more provocative questions. (Hat tip to PhilBio for the news lead)

Naturalism has a long, long history and the most popular flavor of contemporary times is certainly not representative of the diverse and robust conceptions of nature that Naturalists have had over the millenia. Contemporary naturalism is probably the simplest instantiation and, I think, the least interesting (and also the least successful at dealing with some obvious facts about nature).
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[I've been asked to post this message for our holidaying friend.]

The torch has been passed to Tu Quoque to host the next 'Meeting of the Minds' carnival. Krauze, here at telic thoughts, is the brain behind the Meeting of the Minds carnival, since it's inception several months ago.

Here are the guidelines:

Tu Quoque will be accepting article submissions from now until Monday, July 12. To send a submission, email tuquoquethoughts AT yahoo DOT com (replace AT and Dot with '@' and '.'). All articles must take a positive approach towards teleological concepts in nature. So if you have a blog, and are interested in Intelligent Design, send me an email with a brief description of the article and a link to it.

Please note:
One post per person. Two post maximum per blog.

If you are interested in hosting the next Meeting of the Minds carnival, email Krauze_ID AT hotmail DOT com.

There have been three blogs posted in the last couple of days harkening to the oft-repeated theme of the Neodarwinian Defense League of gross "imperfection" in the state and conditions of life on planet earth as reason for rejecting any notion of teleological design in life. [see If Only We Were Perfect by Mike, Intelligensia Illogica and Somebody's God Some 'Splainin' to do by bipod].

Leaving out specific referral and recourse to theological argument - which should not be considered a scientific defense of ID against the entirely theological 'imperfection' argument of DarwinDefenders, Exile from Groggs make a very good lead-in point in his response to "If Only We Were Perfect" - why it is that human beings should have an expectation that life should be anything other than what it is?

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This Opus cartoon does a brilliant job at making an obvious point. The fact that "somebody's got some splanin to do" doesn't nullify the design inference - it qualifies it. The bad design argument is pointing to *just that* -> bad design. Design that is bad is still design.

The bad design argument lacks force *unless* it introduces (slips in) some very specific expectations about the designer. An intelligent design theorist can reject these specific expectations, and thereby make the bad design argument impotent.

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Bill Dembski has blogged about Michael Shermer's piece in Scientific American. Shermer gives us a report of the 2005 World Summit on Evolution otherwise known as "the Woodstock of evolution." Let's have a look.

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Cornelia Dean of the NY Times knows how to write a good canned article on intelligent design. Here's the recipe:

Step 1: Give your essay a sexy title that invokes the authority of quantum physics

Step 2: Reach into the BuzzBox 3-5 times (the BuzzBox is the container of heavily recycled memes that address people at a 5th grade reading level, most of which have been well refined and propogated by the NCSE, an organization which seems to enjoy pandering to its 5th grade audience)

Step 3: Copy what the BuzzBox says, because you know the BuzzBox is right

Unfortunately, Cornelia Dean trips over the BuzzBox and makes herself look foolish.

Here are her BuzzBox memes and the errors they produce:

BuzzBox Meme 1:
Guilt by (irrelevant) association: lump the intelligent design theorists in with the creationists by making the age of the earth seem like a point of debate.

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Bipod has already skillfully handled David Barash's article. Barash is yet another ID critic who hears "God" when ID is mentioned. As a result, he takes the intellectually lazy way out and looks for "imperfections." I suppose the argument is supposed to work like this: ID = God; God = Perfection; the human body is not perfect; thus God did not create the human body; thus ID is false. One of the advantages to hearing "˜God' when ID is mentioned is that you never really have to address ID. Nevertheless, there is another fundamental problem with this whole line of argumentation.
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You know somethings gone wrong with the state of discourse when you've got members of the intelligentsia liberally employing illogic to argue the illogic of their opponents position.

That's exactly what David P. Barash does in his LA Times article, Does God Have Back Problems Too? The illogic behind 'intelligent design.'. Unfortunately for Barash, the article does little more than reveal his lack of intellectual sophistication.

He make the following logical errors:

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