No, that would be as misleading as saying “Many scientists have said that Flat Earth Theory is incorrect and inadequately supported by evidence.” A reliable resource does not mislead its readers. That has nothing to do with being an “aggressive culture warrior.”
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So, we are to believe that, behind the scenes, ID proponents do not speak of critics as they do in public? For in public (places like EN), almost every ID proponent of note (the only exception as far as I can tell is Behe) reflexively will call their critics atheists (except, of course, in cases where the religious affiliation of the critic is well-known). You will pardon my skepticism when it comes to your anecdotal claim.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this. I am just noting that, in so doing, the discussion necessarily takes on a religious nature. Atheist vs. believer and all that.
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You’re taking my remarks out of context. I was addressing your claim that ID is “all about religion.” If it were “all about religion” then ID folks would be largely talking about religion when they were out of public hearing – indeed, they would talk about religion more than ever, given the hypothesis of just about everyone here that they downplay their interest in religion for public consumption. But the opposite is the case. Precisely where they could speak freely about their religious motivation – among friends and out of the public eye – they talk mainly about science. In other words, they have a genuine interest in what the best science of today says about nature, and what implications it has for notions of design in nature.
Do you understand this point?
Now I come to your first sentence:
When they are speaking of their critics, they do sometimes speak of their atheism or materialism, in the way that you have noted; but my point is that they spend much less time speaking of the atheism and materialism of their critics than they do speaking of scientific literature about evolution, the origin of life, fine-tuning, etc. – of the contents and implications of that literature. If I thought as you did, my mental picture of intra-ID conversations would be of constant group-bellyaching about the atheists of the world, but I know better, because I know the people and what they talk about. Yes, there is some complaining about hostile and unfair atheists, like the type you have seen. But there is much more to ID people than that. They have genuine intellectual interest in the subject of nature.
Yes, I agree that when ID folks do that, they are discussing religion. And I freely admit that they do that at times. And there may be surges where they do it more often. For example, when Dawkins put out his anti-religious books, there were likely more notes flying back and forth objecting to atheist attacks on religion. But before those books, when Dawkins’s main book relevant to ID was The Blind Watchmaker, ID folks were more interested in his defense of classical neo-Darwinism, and in pointing out the flaws in his biological arguments, including flaws in his computer simulations.
No, it wouldn’t. The flatness of the earth is an unproblematic assertion now. But what counts as “science” is not a matter of fact, but a matter of definition, and historians and philosophers and sociologists of science (unlike many and probably most working scientists, and unlike most science groupies) know that the definition has changed over time, and that it can be massaged to serve particular agendas. So a cautious scholar would pull back a bit in expressing the idea. But of course, the writers of Wikipedia articles are neither cautious nor scholars. And this won’t change, and I can’t stop it. All I can do, as a scholar and one who has produced lots of scholarly work, including an encyclopedia article (I mean, in a real encyclopedia) on the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of modern science, is warn students and others against Wikipedia, regarding articles on controversial issues. And of course, like many university teachers, I would never accept any essay that cited Wikipedia as a source for anything.
So, @Eddie, you see my point. That’s all I was getting at.
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I should point out that I did not and do not assume the worst about @Eddie, because I don’t need to. His posts, both style and topic (especially the topics he avoids) provide so much evidence of ignorance, hypocrisy and dishonesty that all doubt has been vanquished and there’s nothing left to assume.
Every single argument for ID in those books that ‘concludes’ design without bothering to identify or describe or provide evidence for the designer is implicitly assuming the existence of a designer capable of performing that design; and for the authors of those books, that designer is God.
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See, this is one of the reasons why I know @Eddie is dishonest.
Yes, the DI have repeatedly stated that they don’t want ID to be mandated in schools. But that’s a smokescreen they (and @Eddie) raise whenever some-one claims they want ID to be taught in schools, which they clearly do want, because they write textbooks and lesson plans.
The DI want ID teaching allowed in schools, but whenever this is pointed out @Eddie says they don’t want ID teaching mandated in schools, which is a different question. Bait-and-switch. Deliberately misleading. Dishonesty.
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Incorrect. If we found a machine on Mars that we knew not to be of human origin, we could infer (not assume – they are two completely different intellectual actions) the existence of an intelligent designer of that machine purely from the features of the machine, without assuming anything in advance.
All the books they have written and published are for the private schools and home school market. They know that no public school will use them. Are you arguing that it is unconstitutional to present such material to students in private schools and home school?
The point has to be put with more precision and context than that. They have said that they don’t believe that merely mentioning the existence of a theory of intelligent design is unconstitutional (i.e., they believe that Judge Jones erred – not regarding the specifics of the Dover Board’s actions, but in issuing a general ban on mentioning the idea of design in schools).
As for whether they want it “allowed,” I would say that in the long run, they would like it allowed, but in the short run, they do not think it is ready to be taught in schools. They have said many times that it needs to become more mainstream in science, by getting more research published, before it is appropriate for the high schools. And I agree with that. ID is not yet ready to be taught in the high schools, as a detailed scientific theory. They have also said that right now, the personnel does not exist in the schools to teach ID properly. And I also agree with that. For these two reasons, it would be stupid to put a formal unit on ID into the schools at this time. It would be bad for the students, and bad for the scientific and intellectual growth of ID.
But it certainly should be allowed to be mentioned. Indeed, one can’t possibly understand Darwin’s Origin of Species unless one understands that Darwin had the design alternative in mind all through the book. Thus, it actually misrepresents the thought of Darwin to hide the existence of the design alternative from students. One doesn’t have to spend class time teaching the alternative in any detail, and one certainly doesn’t have to endorse it, and one certainly should not be presenting exegesis of the book of Genesis, but not to mention that the design alternative was the target of Darwin’s argument and the background of his thought is to falsify scientific history, to miss the opportunity to bring home the striking nature of Darwin’s theory (by its contrast with what went before), and to do the students an intellectual disservice.
My arguments here are transparent, and there is no attempt either to deceive or mislead in anything I have just written. I am represented my true thoughts, not trying to conceal some hidden agenda. Yet you call me dishonest and hypocritical. I look forward to Paul King’s intervention, telling you that you should not “raise the temperature” here with such language. It will be a test of the sincerity of the little lectures he has been giving to me.
And we would immediately start attempting to identify the nature and capabilities of the designer. IDers do not do this, because they assume the existence of God.
Explore Evolution is intended for use in public schools.
Icons of Evolution and the accompanying study guide are aimed at public schools.
Prior to Kitzmiller, the Discovery institute was recommending the use of Pandas in public schools.
The only reason why the DI are no longer explicitly targetting public schools with explicitly ID material is the Kitzmiller outcome.
They do. But they would like public schools to, wouldn’t they?
Meanwhile, they sell textbooks and curricula to private high schools and homeschoolers, and try to sneak watered-down ID into public schools in the guise of ‘teaching the controversy’ and suchlike.
If ID is not ready to be taught in schools, why are the DI producing school textbooks at all?.
The DI’s actions expose the lies in the DI’s public announcements.
But that is exactly what the DI is doing for private schools. If it would be stupid to put a formal unit on ID into schools, then the DI is encouraging people to be stupid, and to do things that are bad for students.
Meanwhile, you have carefully removed from the material you quoted the actual point I was making, and not responded to it at all.
They certainly are. I can see right through them.
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Yes, Eddie always leaves that bit out. Imagine the absurdity of a homicide detective who loses interest in identifying the person who designed the murder she investigated!
I think that we need to consider the possibility that IDcreationists lack sufficient faith in their hypothesis about the identity of the alleged Designer to test it empirically. That’s why they act as though their only goal is “design detection.”
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Whether or not ID proponents, as persons, assume the existence of God, and whether that causes them to identify the designer with God, is completely irrelevant to the claim I was making. The claim I made was:
“That’s why there is not a single argument for design in No Free Lunch or Darwin’s Black Box or Nature’s Destiny that depends on the assumption that the Bible is true or that God exists etc.”
Note that I said “not a single argument for design.” I was talking about arguments that only purport to show that there is design in nature. Those arguments make no claim to identify the designer. (In fact, they are methodologically incapable of identifying the designer.)
So, to repeat the challenge: find me a specific argument for design (not for a claim that the designer is God) in any of the books I referred to where a religious axiom is slipped in as one of the necessary steps in order to reach the conclusion that there is design. No one here has yet provided an argument and page number, and said, “Aha! Here, halfway down page 6, he tacitly slips a doctrine from the Nicene Creed into the argument,” or “The argument on page 221, in the second step, assumes the literal, historical truth of Genesis 1.” If can provide such an example, you are free to do so.
I thought we were talking about teaching intelligent design in the public schools, not teaching evolution critically in the public schools. I do not have either Explore Evolution or the first edition of Icons of Evolution (2000/2002), but the online description of Explore Evolution that you link to does not mention teaching intelligent design; it mentions only teaching evolution critically; and the Look Inside feature for Icons of Evolution on Amazon shows no chapter titles on intelligent design, and the index has no entry for “intelligent design”. The books looks as if it is overwhelmingly a criticism of the case for Darwinism, not a case for intelligent design.
We are talking about Discovery’s policy today, not what it was 18 or more years ago.
They would not like ID (as opposed to criticisms of Darwinism) taught in the public schools at the moment, for reasons I gave above. In the long run, once ID has a larger presence in universities, and once there are high school teachers competent to understand it, then yes, they would like ID presented as an intellectual option (not “taught” if by that you mean “asserted as true”).
I haven’t “carefully removed” anything. I responded to what I thought were the key notions in your posts. If there is something I didn’t deal with, please give me the passage you have in mind and I will respond to it. But if you charge me again with deliberate dishonesty for not dealing with the passage, I won’t reply at all. I’m tired of the constant imputations of bad motives to me around here, and I’m not going to reward you by giving you replies when you indulge that in sub-academic habit. Just tell me what you want me to comment on, without speculative editorializing about why I didn’t comment on it.
Sober? Drunk, perhaps, but never sober. What you have offered here is a classic example of “praising with faint damn.”
What the ID proponents say among themselves might be interesting, if scrutinized by someone who had some understanding of the merits of the issues. My strong suspicion is that there is a good deal of dishonesty and incomprehension behind the scenes; the usual pattern in ID books is flagrant, contemptible dishonesty, and the usual pattern in their readers is horrifying, mind-numbing ignorance which leads to them having the sense that they are having intelligent and interesting conversations about worthwhile topics when they are not. I would expect that, if fair-minded people reviewed the materials written by ID proponents and supporters to which you have referred, the ordinary pattern would emerge.
And, since my own objectivity in such matters is always reflexively assaulted when I point something like that out, I’ll remind people of just what the character of ID books is by a quote from The Design of Life, by Dembski and Wells. This is of course only one example in a long, long list of utterly indefensible, dishonest statements; the honesty, sincerity and good faith of people like this CANNOT be defended by any fair-minded person.
Let’s examine the proposed evolution of the mammalian ear more closely. The skull and mandibles (lower jaws) of the therapsids are said to have bones similar (homologous) to those of the first mammals. The upper and lower jaws of reptiles articulate (fit together) with two bones (one each located at the back of the upper and lower jaws) not found in mammals. According to Darwinian theory, these two bones relocated in the middle ear of the mammals in the course of descent with modification (see figure 3.11). Darwinists describe the reptilian jaw bones as “migrating” to their new locations in the mammalian ear. Nevertheless, there is no fossil record of such an amazing process. Nor is it clear how the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic changes can cause bones to move and relocate. Consider that to make this change, one of these bones had to cross the hinge from the lower jaw into the middle ear region of the skull. Thereafter the neo-Darwinian mechanism would have had to reshape and refine these bones into a highly specialized, delicate instrument of sound transmission. Such an occurrence would be extraordinary enough by itself, but Darwinists propose that this happened more than once and without the need for any intelligent guidance!
The evidence for the evolution of the mammalian ear from the reptilian jaw therefore comes down to balancing a bone count. In every other respect, the bones are very different and there is no evidence of how evolution might have caused the reptilian jaw bones to “migrate” to the mammalian ear. Why, then, should we think that the identical bone count serves as reliable evidence for the macroevolution of reptiles into mammals? If a mere match of a bone count can provide conclusive evidence of macroevolution, then how can we dismiss the far more detailed similarities between species that evolutionists agree do not indicate evolutionary relationships?
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If we found life on Mars we would infer natural processes.
If we dig in the ground and come upon a piece of pottery and an earthworm, which one do we take back to the museum as an example of intelligent design?
What they lack are research grant proposals and peer reviewed papers, the things people actually interested in scientific discovery work on.
This is why scientists do not accept ID as science. There is no ID scientific output. Instead, they are focused on pushing their material at kids without any of the hard work that has gone into actual scientific theories.
ID has been around for a while now. Why hasn’t any of this research been started? The DI brings in millions of dollars a year, yet they aren’t able to produce any research outside of failed attempts to cast doubt on evolution?
Religious beliefs aren’t alternatives to scientific theories in science class.
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Speak for yourself. I wouldn’t. Not as a certain inference, anyway. And in any case, your comment does not refute the point I was making to Roy, i.e., that one can in principle infer design (not God, design) without making religious assumptions. (Whether particular inferences are valid is an entirely different question.) If you disagree, you are welcome, of course, to show the page and line numbers in No Free Lunch and Darwin’s Black Box where theological premises are brought in to complete a design inference.
I’d take both (presuming the museum had a natural history section), and explain to the museum curator that the worm is an example of far more complex design than the pottery. But of course, I would not tell you what you should do.
The research record of ID is not what Roy and I were discussing. We were discussing whether Discovery wanted to mandate ID in the schools.
Pushing? Offering home school and private school material which parents and private schools can choose to buy or refuse to buy at will, is pushing? Is McDonald’s “pushing” you when they put a flyer in your mailbox? Can’t you just toss the flyer out and refuse to eat there? Who’s putting a gun to the heads of the parents who buy this material?
Doesn’t address the point I made, which was about the history of scientific thought, not religion. If you don’t understand the notion of design, you don’t understand Darwin’s argument, which was self-consciously framed in opposition to design. If we want kids to understand what Darwin was trying to do, we’re being less than honest with them if we don’t tell them this. In other words, explaining the concept of design (not creationism, not Genesis, not the Bible, not Christianity, but design) is part of educating people regarding the theory of evolution. Even Dawkins admits this in his book The Blind Watchmaker, where he argues that Darwin provided a credible designer-substitute.
They began with the religious assumptions and then tried to use bad science as a cover for those religious assumptions.
Read the Wedge Document.
I find it illustrative that you focused on my use of the word “push” instead of the rather obvious problem of trying to teach an idea as science that isn’t science.
It was self-consciously framed in opposition to God creating fixed species.
Yes, creationism. That’s what it was. Paley’s watchmaker was God. The fixity of species was based on God creating species supernaturally.
Even George Romanes understood intelligent design to be supernatural creation clear back in 1882:
Good question! I note that Eddie isn’t answering it.
I think none of it has even started because ID, and the DI, are just a con.
What about ID 3.0, Eddie?
YOU were the one who mentioned research as an alleged prerequisite, remember?
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Perhaps. But a serious, sober, traditional encyclopedia would say “some scientists believe that no research has even been started because ID, and the DI, are just a con. Other scientists can’t even be arsed to think about it, or haven’t even heard of the obscure and insignificant yowlings of the DI, however, so the jury’s still out.”
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You’re confusing “belief in creation” with “creationism.” Creationism in modern popular parlance is tied to (i) antievolution; (ii) a literal reading of Genesis. Paley’s argument doesn’t require a literal reading of Genesis. And in fact Paley did not rule out the use of secondary causation in the implementation of the design.
You’ve pulled up this same Romanes quotation before, and I replied to you. I can’t remember what topic it was under. Anyhow, you’re still missing the point I’m making. Of course Paley thought the designer was God, and yes, the ID people all think the designer is God, and no, contrary to what you’re suggesting, they don’t hide that belief under scientific language, but freely admit that they think the designer is God. But none of that affects my point in the slightest, which is that neither you nor anyone else here has been able to show, over the past four years, even a single instance where a religious premise comes into any argument in the major ID works. The argument involves reasoning from the facts of nature to design, not from Biblical texts or theological creeds to design. The arguments aren’t religious arguments, even if one motivation of some of the people doing the arguing is religious faith. And even then, it’s only one motivation, since there is a genuine curiosity about nature and a long philosophical tradition, predating the Bible, of reasoning from nature to some sort of Mind behind nature.
Reread the paragraph that your words are a reply to. You couldn’t possibly have understood the meaning of my paragraph and then given that reply, so I have to conclude you didn’t understand the meaning of what I wrote. Or you don’t understand the meaning of the word “premise” in either philosophy or logic.
We all understand your desire to avoid the WD.
No less problematic than is the truth of the theory of evolution, and the fact that ID is pseudoscience. Your logorrheic bafflegab about the definition of science is, as usual, irrelevant. By no definition of science do flat earthism and intelligent design creationism fail to qualify as pseudoscience.
Now, now. Don’t make @Eddie mention “Bio-Complexity” again. I don’t think my sides could take it.
And let us remember how often “Eddie” reminds us about how good as science he believes he is.
Well, of course. Since the ID movement was conceived for the sole reason of sneaking creationism past the Establishment Clause, they can’t very well make their religious motivations and premises explicit. On the contrary, they must conceal them at all costs.
Or, at least, they did. Perhaps their two decades of deceit and chicanery was unnecessary, and all they needed to do was wait a few decades until the Supreme Court was stacked with Christian extremists who consider following the First Amendment to be optional.
Yeah, Meyer’s The Return of the God Hypothesis kinda put an end to that. It’s crazy-ass fundamentalist whackjobbery all the way down.
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