Stumbled across an article that seems relevant to some discussions we've had here.
https://www.americanscientist.org/bl...-corona-moment
Now, i find the article to be not especially well written, and it kind of wanders all over the place. But i think the central point is an interesting one, which I'll try to summarize.
There's a conspiracy theory going around that the virus has been intentionally engineered, possibly in a weapons lab (different conspiracies point the finger either at China or the US). Biologists, looking at the changes, have shown that it largely fits in to what we know about the evolution of coronaviruses, with only one somewhat unusual feature that isn't likely to be something that anyone would engineer. (I can go into details about that feature if someone cares).
The author of this piece suggests that this is exactly the sort of thing intelligent design proponents have been saying they can settle: looking at a bit of biology and determining whether it's designed. Yet there's no indicate that any of them have even tried, or that they have even bothered to develop the tools that would help them make that determination.
Now, since ID has become pretty much irrelevant to policy, i don't follow it that carefully anymore. So, maybe the author is wrong, and the ID community is looking at this. But if not, it would seem that they're either not capable of figuring this out, or they simply don't care. That's in sharp contrast with the evolutionary biologists, who have shown that the tools they've developed can tell us important things about the virus, and are busy using those tools.
https://www.americanscientist.org/bl...-corona-moment
Now, i find the article to be not especially well written, and it kind of wanders all over the place. But i think the central point is an interesting one, which I'll try to summarize.
There's a conspiracy theory going around that the virus has been intentionally engineered, possibly in a weapons lab (different conspiracies point the finger either at China or the US). Biologists, looking at the changes, have shown that it largely fits in to what we know about the evolution of coronaviruses, with only one somewhat unusual feature that isn't likely to be something that anyone would engineer. (I can go into details about that feature if someone cares).
The author of this piece suggests that this is exactly the sort of thing intelligent design proponents have been saying they can settle: looking at a bit of biology and determining whether it's designed. Yet there's no indicate that any of them have even tried, or that they have even bothered to develop the tools that would help them make that determination.
Now, since ID has become pretty much irrelevant to policy, i don't follow it that carefully anymore. So, maybe the author is wrong, and the ID community is looking at this. But if not, it would seem that they're either not capable of figuring this out, or they simply don't care. That's in sharp contrast with the evolutionary biologists, who have shown that the tools they've developed can tell us important things about the virus, and are busy using those tools.
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