Thursday, July 23, 2009

Dan Hofstadter: Skeptics Don't Understand Science

Let's hope that Dan Hofstadter understands Galileo better than evolution. The author of the latest rendering of the Galileo affair thinks that the seventeenth century argument over heliocentricism (and many other things) is "essentially the same quarrel" as today's origins debate. Evolution skeptics such as intelligent design supporters and creationists, explains Hofstadter, do not understand the notion of a hypothesis:

the similarity has to do with the failure to understand the notion of a scientific theory, and the inability to understand what it is to perceive nature, to know nature, which was really very understandable in 1616 ... But (it) is much harder to understand or sympathize with now.

It seems that Hofstadter is yet another evolutionist who criticizes without understanding. And as usual the evolutionist's strawman version of evolution skepticism is overflowing with hypocrisy.

Evolution skeptics don't understand the notion of a scientific theory? Unbelievable. Evolutionists make up just-so stories to explain an origins myth that is contradicted by empirical evidence but mandated by religious convictions--and it is the skeptics who are at fault?

Religion drives science and it matters.