In what way are they in different brackets, in your opinion? Don’t they mangle science and misrepresent the evidence itself in the same ways?
To completely different extents.
It’s very easy, almost to the point of being trivial, to see that “young earth” is a joke. The amount of scientific knowledge you need to realise that the Earth is old is very rudimentary – a basic understanding of how error bars work should be enough. Or distant starlight. Or the RATE project’s 22,000°C accelerated nuclear decay. Or the success of old Earth models in finding oil.
On the other hand, evolution is significantly more complex and nuanced. Sure, claiming that it doesn’t happen at all is every bit as ridiculous as a young Earth, but when it comes to more nuanced varieties of ID, some of the concepts involved are significantly more complex and counterintuitive. It’s much harder to see what the problem is with irreducible complexity or genetic entropy than it is to see what the problem is with accelerated nuclear decay.
And why not? Young Earth Creationists and Old Earth Creationists differ in some of the things they believe. But what they have in common is that 1) their denial of the theory of evolution is motivated by their religious belief in a “creator”, and 2) They make ridiculously inaccurate scientific arguments in support of their denial.
On that basis, ID’ers belong in the same category.
I couldn’t find what I was thinking about there, but there’s a much simpler example. The flagellum.
Basically all the proteins have homologues outside of the flagellum, several of them are homologous to each other, yet Behe denies the flagellum could evolve by exaptation or cooption of proteins from other systems despite the direct evidence from phylogenies of it’s components that it did.
It doesn’t get more straightforward than that. It is in essence to throw phylogenetic trees as indicators of actual history out of the window without saying this is what you’re doing.
I just don’t find that to be a plausible reading of what he is trying to achieve with that article. The intended effect of the output of these people can be most easily understood by simply probing what impression their intended audiences are left with from having read their materials for years.
Obviously they will rarely ever say something as obviously inane as a statement that we can’t make reasonable inferences about the past. But they can damned well write a lot that is designed to leave the reader with that exact impression. Phylogenetic analysis has a lot of pitfalls, unsolved questions, and so on. And someone has to know what they’re doing (fudge the numbers deliberately, wink wink) to get good trees. All you have to do is repeat something similar to that often enough and it will have the intended effect. It is designed to leave the impression that it’s just fanciful drawing of lines, and that the implied evolutionary history is some sort of carefully constructed fantasy. That is, after all, what their adoring fans come here believing. How did they end up with that impression?
You see a similar thing with James Tour, who has come this close → ← to saying the origin of life is impossible, without actually ever literally stating that. And yet everything he’s ever written on that subject amounts to that conclusion. That’s what all his fans come here telling us. He doesn’t have to literally type in the conclusion to the argument - therefore life’s origin is impossible - when he can just repeat premises that appear on the surface to imply such a conclusion often enough that his readers/listeners can’t help but draw that connection themselves.
Buggs’ article is really just another instance of this style of writing. Saying it without literally saying it. A kind of dog whistling. It’s the Fox News method. You don’t have to say “black people are criminals”, you just have to keep talking about crimes committed by black people.
I agree that if you’re YEC the amount of science you have to think is wrong is pretty close to pretty much all of it, and it’s a lot more obvious that the Earth and the universe isn’t young, than it is obvious why, say, an irreducibly complex structure or pathway can still evolve.
That said, there are quite a lot of rather sophisticated YEC and anti-evolutionary ideas coming out of organizations like AIG and ICR on everything from information theory, to population genetics and human genealogies. It is easy to see how these arguments can mislead laypeople who have no specialist knowledge of molecular biology or evolution.
Sure, though Genetic Entropy is a YEC idea. John Sanford is a YEC. It’s supposed to not just show that life couldn’t evolve, but that it couldn’t even have existed for as long as it has and that everything has been basically falling apart since “the fall”.
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I think that you are biased by your greater understanding of geology over biology.
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Only if “some people” are ignorant of the history of Creationism. For most of the 20th Century, Old Earth was the dominant form of creationism. The Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis (and the latter’s “fanboys”) are johnny-come-latelys.
I would point out that one form of OEC is Progressive Creationism, which exhibits a more than passing resemblance to the ID espoused by common-descent-friendly IDers such as Behe. Both posit a ‘tinker’ Creator/Intelligent Designer, who periodically creates new-but-very-similar-species (PC) or alters existing species by adding new ‘Irreducibly Complex’ features (ID).
But this is actually beside the point as ID carefully avoids offering any specificity in its alternate explanation of what is supposed to have happened instead of evolution, in order to be a ‘big tent’ for YECs and OECs. This means that if asked whether ID is OEC or YEC, it is not unreasonable to respond “it’s both”.
This lack of specificity also means that ID is simply a ‘fig leaf’ for a bunch of anti-evolution arguments. Given that the ‘Creationism’ label was a simple rebranding of the religious ‘Anti-evolution’ movement (the Creation Science Movement, the self-proclaimed “oldest creationist movement in the world”, started life as the “Evolution Protest Movement”), this is still further good reason to consider it legitimate to describe ID as Creationism.
I would further note that noted Historian of Creationism Ronald L Numbers includes a chapter on ID in the Expanded Edition of his work The Creationists (and subtitled that edition "From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design).
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Yes, I’ve seen their sophistry. The RATE project’s study on helium diffusion in zircons is one particular example. It took me several evenings to get my head round that one.
The thing is, however, that there are some young Earth claims that are both trivially falsified and trivially seen to be essential to the YEC position. Their 22,000°C of accelerated nuclear decay is one such example. I call these “FizzBuzz arguments” after the popular programming interview question that’s used to short-circuit the recruitment process when faced with candidates who are so incompetent that they should be flipping burgers in McDonald’s. If something fails such a cursory examination on the most basic points, then the sophistry can be safely dismissed out of hand without any further ado.
I’m not aware of anything similar for ID though – there are arguments around ID that I’ve seen, but most if not all of them would require a few hours of reading at least for a non-biologist such as myself to establish (a) whether or not they are correct, and (b) whether or not they are essential to the theory.
Because such an approach demonstrates the social skills of a thermonuclear device. If you want to get old earth creationists and ID proponents to take evolution seriously, you need to persuade them, not attack them.
Most rank and file OECs and IDists aren’t setting out to be deliberately dishonest about evolution: they simply have misunderstandings and misconceptions about what the subject is all about. Furthermore, the reason why they express scepticism about it to some degree or another is that they perceive it as a threat to things that are of utmost importance to them. If you want to get them to take evolution seriously, you need to demonstrate to them that it isn’t. By lumping them together with people who they themselves consider to be loons, you’re just going to end up confirming their suspicions that it is. And that will only end up putting them on the defensive, entrenching them in their positions even further, and quite likely even turning some of them into YECs and losing some evolution-friendly Christians to ID in the process.
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Exactly.
If the ID movement wishes to extend it’s appeal as broadly as possible by adopting a “big tent” posture, it is not entitled to press a distinction from its uncouth but numerous YEC contingent. Either disavow it or wear it. Just because they want it both ways does not oblige anyone to play along.
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Yes, this is how I see it.
I wouldn’t put these groups together. The difference between OEC and IDers is that OEC generally aren’t making scientific claims. I’m sure there are exceptions, but all the OED folks I know are very accepting of the science of evolution - they just believe God is behind it all. Contrast this with the ID claim that science proves the necessity of a Designer.
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I think your strategy is really strong.
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Oxford English Dictionary? OEC is a rejection of evolution, so you are misusing the term even without the typo. These days, the most prominent OEC group is RTB, and they most certainly do make scientific claims.
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I entirely disagree. Even if protein x is homologous to protein y, that doesn’t tell you how their differences arose. It could have been by magical poofing for all the tree tells you. This is not a rejection of phylogenetics at all.
Given that Buggs is on record as accepting common descent, I don’t see how you can avoid that reading.
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Can you tell us how many creationists you have managed to persuade by misrepresenting OEC and ID as scientifically respectable ideas? Just a rough estimate will do.
I think reminding OEC’s and ID’ers that they are lumped in with those loopy YEC’s is at least as likely to work as your approach, not that I claim it to be very effective. IMHO, creationists only accept science if their theological views are changed.
Well don’t complain to me about what they call themselves, I’m only the messenger.
The people who call themselves OECs actually are creationists in my experience. If you know some who aren’t, could you provide some specifics?
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I think you’ve completely misunderstood what my approach is.
As I said, focus on addressing just two questions:
- Exactly what facts about evolution specifically are they not getting straight?
- Exactly what corners are they cutting in terms of scientific rigour and accuracy?
Have you ever come across Paul Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement? What I am calling for here is refuting the central point. Lumping ID and OEC together with “loopy YEC’s”, on the other hand, is name-calling.
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