Sunday, December 07, 2008

Intellectual charlatanry ...

... Books That Emphatically Debunk Pseudohistory. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

He is particularly effective at exposing the sleight of hand employed by the "intelligent design" school, which uses the twisted methodology of all pseudoscientists: Start with what you want to prove -- in this case, that nature could not have evolved without divine intervention -- and then work backward.
Of course, that is what David Stove - no advocate of intelligent design - argued that much evolutionary theorizing does: Starts with a point to be proved - that art or religion , say, "evolved" as survival strategies - and then works backward.

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