Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Creationism, like herpes, never really goes away, it just flares up from time to time.
In fact the similarities with herpes don't just end there....but I'll save that for another day.
Read Ron Numbers' "The Creationists". Judging by the timelines mentioned in that book, we should be due another full on flare up in 8 to 15 years or so. The old generation are dying off defeated, the new young bucks are up and coming, yet to fully test their rehashed creationist mettle against reality.
Wesley is better placed to answer this than I, but IIRC the "ID flare up" started going public in earnest about 1997 or so. It had a couple of fairly silent years, reached a peak of hysterics around Dover and has now faded back into relative obscurity. The death throws of "Teetch Teh Notroversy*" and "A-cad-endemic FweeDumb" are the last articles of noise and fury, signifying nothing. They are a little more in tune with the quasi-relativist zeitgeist, and as such will crop up from time to time, but as dear old Lenny Flank is fond of saying (paraphrase perhaps): ID is dead. Finished. Kaput. It is no more. It has gone to meet Goerge McReady Price. It has run up the curtains to join the Choir Invisibule. It is an ex-creationist movement.
Will we see "All New Recycled ID Arguments" In Creationism: The Next Generation? Of course. We'll be hip deep in Fracterial Blagella and Ooooh Isn't It Complex for decades and centuries to come. We still hear about moon dust and radiation, why do you think anything new is going to come out of ID or its descendants? But of course you don't, you're too wise for that. What the next creationist flare up will be I can't tell, I reckon it will be yet more "information theory" based quasi-philosophy. Even listening to credible, brilliant, intelligent, incredible erudite and generally sensible non-creationist (traditional sense) theists like John Polkinghorne you can see the kernels of these credulous "information/complexity" arguments being used. As well as the ever retreating nonsensical appeals to prejudice made until one arrives at "well it's a choice between god and the multiverse" or some such drivel.
Personally Steve, I wouldn't worry. Creationism is not going away, it never will. The Boltzmann-like distribution of human qualities and abilities guarantees it. And of course, there's always Talk Origins and Alt Atheism of you want real frothers. Usenet remains the abode of some of the most perpetually bewildered individuals on the planet. McNameless still posts at TO if I'm not mistaken.....
Louis
*Chapeau: William, Reciprocating.
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Bye.
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