No, you. I was neither mean nor confrontational, I merely expressed my personal skepticism. I could have gone into detail as to why his statement is implausible, but that would have been mean.
So as to minimize confrontation, I won't respond to any further provocation.
I will also note that religion is off-topic at HN, for obvious reasons.
"An important part of being able to truly ask oneself if they are wrong is the humility to seriously consider an alternative."
Which he did, at length.
"The author's treating of ID research as a foregone conclusion"
No, it's a consequence of massive amounts of evidence, not just of evolution, but of the character of the sort of people who work at the Discovery Institute.
Having spent months trying to track down bugs that turned out to be due to occasional timing errors in esoteric mechanical devices, it is indeed a relief when I discover that a bug is due to something I did wrong and am able to fix.
Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Because that's definitely not it. Consider that, as you acknowledged, you don't even know who he is, so you certainly aren't familiar with his work.
Dan was toying with you ... his thesis was on the distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness, and he more than anyone was familiar with the point you were making (erroneously).
Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Because I for one think you're seriously misreading and mischaracterizing his piece, and failing to extract from it some valuable advice.
Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Dan Dennett is one of the world's most renowned thinkers, and you would do well to take the broader lesson of his article to heart. Also look into Dunning and Kruger.
>This is my big gripe with the intellectual crowd - because they want to be smart solely for being smart's sake so they'll sacrifice the due diligence it takes to correctly solve a problem in order to "get further" and appear smarter, and it misleads a lot of people on what true intelligence is.
That's a remarkable generalization. In reference to the article, perhaps you should have thought longer about it.