Discussion of Big Science Today, by an Important Member of the National Association of Scholars

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I don’t know anyone, apart from those who are specifically ID apologists, who holds to anything like a view as narrow and weirdly contrived (“they must deny evolution; but not actual denial of evolution; rather, denial of a very specific Eddie-defined notion of what evolution is”) as yours. And, of course, ID apologists apparently feel that their litigation/lobbying strategy hasn’t breathed its last breath, because they’re still at this farcical denial of being creationists. It’s Mr. Hilter and Bational Bocialism all over again.

While it is only a single anecdote, I will point out that MY introduction to IDC came courtesy of a baseball-fan correspondent of mine; a friend in a manner of speaking, but also a crazy person who was in training to be a pastor in some godawful Evangelical church. I said to him that creationism was “empty” or some such thing, and he said to me that this might be true of old-style creationism but that creationism was now breaking out of that mold. And he recommended I read, as an example of this new and exciting creationism, Darwin’s Black Box. He was, in terms of these things, as slack-jawed a yokel as you could possibly ask for: a model creationist and a model ID proponent, and HE equated ID with creationism.

I think you underrate the fact that people can see what is plain. The creationists understand ID to be creationism, unless they are within that particular subset of creationism which makes a point of denying that. In those cases, they STILL understand ID to be creationism, but they of course do not say so.

It is of course possible to imagine other universes, in which ID is not creationism: where it is merely a very, very bad idea which arises from some unfortunate reasoning of some entirely different sort. But that would not be our universe, and as it is a key part of a dishonest litigation/lobbying strategy to try to make it seem as though we live in such a universe, I’m not on board for that.

You misunderstand. I of course do not equate belief in any of the gods with creationism. But Meyer’s book is clearly a creationist work designed specifically to advance a variety of creationist arguments; I don’t think it would be possible for Denton to say what he said merely on account of a “god of the philosophers,” because that’s not the kind of god which Meyer is arguing for. A person who only believed in the “god of the philosophers” would call Meyer’s book what it actually is, and that comment probably wouldn’t wind up on the dustjacket.

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Between scientific disciplines, yes. Engineering is not one of them.

What is your qualification for judging how much anyone else knows about anything related to science?

And have you ever noticed that you’re much more interested in judging people by how much they know, instead of how much they’ve done or how much new knowledge they’ve created?

Why is that, Eddie?

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My summary of how I see this discussion:

Lia Thomas: I identify as a woman. Therefore I am a woman.

@Eddie and co: We identify as non-creationists. Therefore we are non-creationists.

Me: If it walks like a creationist and quacks like a creationist, it’s a creationist.

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428

Well, yeah. I find these arguments really odd.

I spent two decades bashing heads, and sometimes having mine bashed by others, arguing, among other things, over formal definitions. In a field like the law, formal definitions can be highly consequential. Do you and I have an informal understanding, or do we have a “contract”? Is the woman I live with my long-time girlfriend, or my “wife”? Is the decision of this regulatory agency “final” for purposes of review?

I spent pages upon pages, and many hours of underlying library research, once, arguing that last one: what does “final” mean? And in the right legal context – which I was in – that is a multi-million dollar question. In that case it determined whether my client was pretty much at the mercy of an out-of-control regulatory agency, or whether he was now free to do precisely what he wanted to do. I was pleased as Punch when I not only won the case, but found that the court liked my exposition upon the word “final” so much that it adopted most of it, verbatim, in its decision. If I’d been a cdesign proponentsist, perhaps I’d have accused the court of “plagiarism,” but I was a human being, smiling ear to ear.

But in most of human affairs, formal definitions don’t matter one whit. There is no formal and authoritative definition of “creationist.” There will never be. What there is, as with all such terms, is a constellation of meanings which might be differently described by different people, in different contexts. Ultimately, an argument over whether so-and-so is a creationist tends to boil down, if so-and-so’s views are known, to a mere argument over definitions, in a situation where no definition is formal or official.

But, at the risk of again offending pedophiles by associating them with cdesign proponentsists, I return to the pedophile analogy. We do not disapprove of the pedophile because he meets some formal definition of the term “pedophile,” but because of what he does. If we had an overly-broad definition (e.g., anyone who says, “gosh, I love kids!” is a child-lover, ergo, “pedophile”) then we’d have to admit that, by this definition, only some pedophiles were within the scope of that disapproval. If we had an overly-narrow definition (e.g., a person is only a “pedophile” if he is attracted ONLY to children) then we’d have to say that we disapproved of some people who were not pedophiles, for precisely the same reason we disapproved of pedophiles in this “proper” sense. It’s the behavior which draws the disapproval, and the descriptive term is merely helpful shorthand for that.

And so when a raging pseudoscientist on a culture war to undermine Western modes of thought and usher in the New Dark Age is under examination, it hardly seems worthwhile to banter about whether he’s a “creationist,” in some narrow sense, or whether he is a “creationist” only in one of the more commonly-used broader senses of the term. What he is doesn’t change, and the argument becomes one about definitions. Is the Chinese government “totalitarian,” or really more “authoritarian”? Does it really matter as such? Maybe we should focus on what they actually do, and what we think of that.

Now, again: in some contexts definitions are immensely consequential. You’d never get me to argue about the meaning of “final” as passionately as I did in that case, if the outcome didn’t depend upon the meaning of that term as used in a statute. Who cares? All one then would say is that something might be “final” in the sense I use the word and not “final” in the sense you use the word. When definitions are NOT consequential, all arguments about them tend to be themselves inconsequential.

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429

Yes, you have pretty much nailed it.

In effect, @Eddie is arguing for a specific instance of the Sapir-Whorf thesis (with respect to creationism) – roughly, the thesis says that language determines categories. However, it seems likely that in other contexts, @Eddie would reject Sapir-Whorf.

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Don’t belittle it; it’s the first piece of empirical evidence you’ve offered, so I will give it a decent reply.

This is a good example, because it’s about how a normal person, rather than an operative of the NCSE, uses a term. And I freely admit that on the surface, it looks as if it counts against my definition of creationism. So let’s talk about it for a moment.

I have heard a parallel story about someone introducing Behe as a creationist. And I’m quite willing to believe that many creationists would see something in Behe that they liked, and then want to “claim” him for creationism. But I want to know the thinking process involved when such people say things like this.

Did you happen to ask him, when he made his claim, either of these questions (or any close variants):

1-- “What do you mean by ‘creationism’?”

or

2-- “What is it about Behe’s book that causes you to call it creationist?”

Until I know what criteria this guy was applying to determine that Behe’s book was “creationist,” I don’t know what he meant by that term.

If he meant what I mean by the term, then in calling Behe a creationist, he was simply in error. However, if he meant something else by creationist, and Behe fits that definition, that would be evidence for your “expanded meaning” of creationism among the common folk. But if you didn’t ask him the questions above, we won’t know.

So next time you have a conversation like that with someone off the street, see if you can draw some sort of definition (if not formal, at least working) out of them. I’ll do the same.

Thanks again for giving the discussion an empirical turn.

Hyperbole, anyone?

Gee, I wonder what Western modes of thought they are trying to undermine? Aristotelian? Nope, they like Aristotle. Platonic? Nope, they like Plato. Biblical? Nope, most of them like the Bible. Euclid? Nope, they like Euclid. Aquinas? Nope, they like Aquinas. Calvin? Nope, many of them like Calvin.
Milton? Nope, many of them like Milton. Newton? Nope, they like Newton. Boyle? Nope, they like Boyle. Kepler? Nope, they like Kepler. The American Founders? Nope, they like them. John Stuart Mill? Nope, they like him, especially On Liberty. Orwell? Nope, they like Orwell, for prophesying so many of the techniques of tyranny operative today. In sum, far from opposing Western modes of thought, IDers seem to want to preserve and promote them.

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I think we have already seen that on a regular basis here.

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On what basis do you assert that I and the many others who consider ID to be creationism are “operative(s) of the NCSE”?

No, it means he disagrees with you. But maybe you are just an operative for the Discovery Institute and so your opinion counts for nothing.

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433

You’ve misidentified the people I was talking about. Do you not remember that when I argued that everybody understood “creationism” in the traditional way, you insisted that you had found articles in journals which showed that in recent years “creationism” was being used in a broader way, under which ID would count as creationism? The authors of those articles were all, or virtually all, members of the NCSE or people quoting from them or citing them or who worked with them at Dover. The definition of creationism they were apparently using (which they never made explicit in any of your articles, as far as I could tell) traced back to people like Scott and Branch and Pennock and Forrest etc. If there are one two exceptions it doesn’t affect the general point. The general point is that the majority of your “scholars” who call ID creationism have either redefined creationism to make it broad enough to include ID, or by simply called ID creationism without ever giving their definition of creationism.

Almost no one from 1993 to the present has given a formal definition of creationism, and then shown, by the specific properties of ID, that ID matches the formal definition. Certainly you have not provided a single example of such a procedure, not in all your cited articles. In fact, what almost everyone has done is to use the much weaker, sloppier approach of finding examples of creationists whose approach and contents resemble the approach and content of ID. The desperate attempt to present “scientific creationism” in the form of Henry Morris as proof that ID is scientific creationism is only the most recent example of this logically flawed move.

But once again, it’s clear that everyone here except me is fixated on “the ID movement” not on ID as a theoretical perspective on nature. And because “the ID movement” is universally accepted here as evil, and since evil must be resisted by all means, it’s legitimate to abandon all the normal principles of reasoned discourse, such as “define your terms” and “show that species Y belongs under genus X” in order to destroy it. The end justifies the means. This is not a scholarly or philosophical discussion about ID taking place here: it’s a crusade against “the ID movement”; and like all crusades, it’s high on passion and low on calm, steady, reason.

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Show how that applies to all the authors of the paper below. Admittedly, the paper does cite Barbara Forrest, but only to disagree with her position. In any event, since members of the NCSE have been important sources of scholarly discussion of the ID movement since the inception of that movement, I do not think your criterion that its members be quoted is sufficient to mark someone as an “operative.”

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/956838/file/6828796.pdf

It seems I must repeat myself: My primary concern is regarding ID as the scientific hypothesis which its proponents claim it to be. IOW, as a “theoretical perspective on nature.” You, OTOH, strenuously avoid any such discussion, instead focusing on pitifully obscure and irrelevant matters of philology and on the construction of elaborate conspiracy theories by which an atheistic cabal employs its “operatives” against ID proponents.

And the kicker is that you actually expect to be taken seriously as an intellectual while so doing.

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So by “theoretical perspective on nature” you now agree that there’s no science in ID?

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Evolution is a theory that describes stuff that happens in nature. So I think it is more likely that case that “Eddie” is just using a bunch of big words that he thinks sound impressive, but which don’t really mean a whole lot.

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It may not apply to all of them; I said there might be a few exceptions, but as I said above, a few exceptions does not alter the general conclusion. But I’m less interested in showing that all the redefiners of creationism are “NCSE operatives” than in pointing out that they don’t show by reasoning from definitions that ID is creationism or a kind of creationism. If there is a specific page in your article that reasons as follows:

“Creationism is the belief that…”

“ID is the belief that…”

“Therefore [insert detailed reasoning connecting the two definitions], ID is creationism.”

– then give me the page number, and I will have a look at it. If there isn’t that kind of reasoning in the article, or in any of the other articles you cited, I’m not interested in their arbitrary assertions that ID is creationism – assertions equally arbitrary whether they came from an NCSE operative or somewhere else.

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I have provided you at least one such definition from a peer reviewed publication. Your only attempted counterargument was to dismiss this as coming from one of these, as far as I can tell, chimeric “NCSE operatives”. Since this appears to be a term that you feel free to use and define in whatever manner you wish (ironically enough) it hardly amounts to a substantive rebuttal.

In any event, we now have another peer-reviewed publication that explicitly refers to “Intelligent Design Creationism”, and to which you have not provided any semblance of a rebuttal. Recall that your argument consists entirely of what you claim to be documentation of how the term “creationism” has been used. You have not, to this point, demanded that in every such instance the person using the term must provide a detailed rationale for why they are using the term. So I guess this is another of your new rules you invent periodically to avoid having to admit you are wrong?

(As “Eddie” continues to doggedly avoid any scientific discussion of the (supposedly) scientific idea called “intelligent design”…)

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439

I find this often-repeated notion of yours fascinating: that people’s statements, rather than their plainly contrary actions, are the best way to judge their motives. While most of us are ready to accept many statements of motive when those motives are consistent with actions, most of us also recognize that when, as in the case of cdesign proponentsists, statements are sharply at odds with deeds, deeds are the best guide to motive.

Do cdesign proponentsists want to preserve and promote Western modes of thought? Obviously not, unless we limit ourselves to those “Western” modes which characterized the times prior to our giving up burning witches. They are opposed to the principles of the Enlightenment and of the western liberal tradition.

Now, I am happy to see you voice qualified support for the notion of empiricism (though it’s amusing that, even as you do so, you also dismiss the empirical evidence at hand because it doesn’t suit you). Because empiricism, rather than this post-modern text-based world in which you seem to dwell, is where you need to go if you want to actually understand the motives of cdesign proponentsists. Specifically, you need to invest in a sufficient understanding of biological reality to be able to understand something which is obvious to any well-informed reader: that it is not the case that the cdesign proponentsists are merely mistaken. Nobody with the technical competence these people possess could possibly believe that the things they write honestly represent the science. Stephen Meyer’s claim that the mammals appear abruptly in the fossil record without evident precursors, Douglas Axe’s claim that evolutionary biologists now say evolution has stopped, Jonathan Wells’ claim that in a population like that of whales, one could only fix one mutation per million years, Dembski and Wells’ claim that the basis for the homology between basal amniote jaw structure and mammalian jaw structure and ear ossicles is founded on nothing better than a ”bone count” – these aren’t just mistakes. They are lies. Their authors are too competent to be this fantastically mistaken.

Now, I realize that you know none of that. When any biological “controversy” in this zone arises you fall completely silent, or, as in the case of Meyer’s RNA World lies, expose the fact that you do not understand the issues. You think it is ill-mannered and unkind to call these people liars, but as to whether they ARE liars, you haven’t the foggiest. But, if you could lift your head out of the “text is all there is” po-mo world for a moment and actually understand these issues you would know that there simply is no possibility whatsoever of these people honestly believing in ID Creationism. Once that is understood, the naïve notion that they are motivated by a sincere interest in science falls away. What is left? The religious-nut, anti-enlightment, illiberal tradition, in evidence all around us in these days. But this, alas, is evident only if you actually try to understand the issues.

Your cdesign proponentsists “want to preserve and promote” Western modes of thought like the Capitol rioters want to preserve and promote democracy. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

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I would only take issue with that analogy to the point that many of those rioters did sincerely believe that the election had been stolen by a conspiracy of Woke Leftist Libtards. In this regard, they are analogous to @Eddie, @colewd , @lee_merrill, @Marty and so forth…

The DI, meanwhile, would be represented by Trump, Bannon, Stone, Giuliani and the rest who (I believe) knew exactly what lies they were spinning and how to convince the rubes to believe them.

I haven’t quite figured out where the My Pillow Guy fits in…

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I think that might be Neil Thomas, author of the most hilarious DI book in recent memory, Taking Leave of Darwin. More hapless than dishonest.

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Please remind me of the definition (not mere assertion, definition) by quoting it, and remind me of the source.

I did not agree to accept usage from people who were obviously partisan against ID (and thus had every motive to manipulate normal language), or from others who uncritically borrowed usage originating with partisans. Some of the sources you have given are obviously partisan, and others, like your latest article by the three Dutch scholars, uncritically borrow the phrase “intelligent design creationism” from American partisan sources (their bibliography shows many works by Scott, Forrest, Pennock, etc.), without even acknowledging that there has been dispute over the propriety of the term. At the very least, they owed their readers an initial footnote explaining what they meant by the term and why they were disregarding disputes over its propriety.

You have not yet shown me even one source with a differing definition of creationism where (a) the authors are not heavily partisan about ID and (b) the authors can be shown to have reached their definitions of ID and of creationism independently. If you can show me such examples, I will concede that the meaning of creationism has changed over time for reasons that have nothing to do with ID.

If you cannot do this, then, yes, for all the examples you have provided I do demand a rationale for the use of the term, a rationale along the lines I have proposed. And I don’t think a rationale is likely to be forthcoming from any of them, because people who are deliberately manipulating words are not about to allow a spotlight to shine down on their manipulations.

I never said this. We should always take into account actions, if we are trying to judge motives.

But I’m not interested in motives; I’m interested in ideas. I’m interested in the idea that the facts of nature point to design. That’s what ID (as an intellectual venture) is about. That idea existed long before ID, long before the Scopes Trial, long before the American doctrine of separation of church and state, and long before America itself. And that idea is not inherently “creationist”; it has nothing to do with the beliefs that animated Ken Ham or the Scopes trial. It doesn’t even have any direct connection with evolution (if evolution is understood as descent with modification). It can be, and is, held by people who affirm or deny descent with modification, and by people of all religious views (except the most hardcore materialist view) or of no religion at all.

Ah, so you were using a biased, truncated definition of “Western”, when what you really meant was “post-Enlightenment Western.” Caught you!

But even your truncated, mutilated concept of Western thought is not accurate for ID. Mill is post-Enlightenment, and IDers are big boosters of his On Liberty. The American Founders were steeped in the Enlightenment, and IDers are big boosters of them. (All men are created equal – stirring words!) Orwell is post-Enlightenment, and many IDers love his analysis of tyranny through language control. Other post-Enlightenment writers admired by many IDers include Alfred Russel Wallace (co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection), James Clerk-Maxwell (great founder in modern physics), novelists such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy – the list goes on and on. IDers can live comfortably with all that is true and good in post-Enlightenment thought.

I agree; none of them believe in “ID Creationism” – and neither do I. Instead, we all think there is evidence for intelligent design in nature – a different thing.

Are you referring to me? I, who have a dozen times here complained about lack of freedom of speech and intellectual discourse in our universities – and have been put down by some here who have said or intimated that suppression of certain intellectual positions in universities is good and should be maintained? I’m a complete libertarian in intellectual matters. It’s the people who want to control what should be taught or said that are illiberal.

The Capitol riots have nothing to do with ID.

Oh, and by the way, where do you find witch-burnings recommended by Plato and Aristotle?

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Interesting use of language. Are those who reject the claims that the earth is 6000 years old or is flat and describe these beliefs as pseudoscience also “obviously partisan” and therefore should be dismissed out of hand? What would be an example of someone who is neutral on those two questions?

Good thing “Eddie” keeps telling us about his ten years of university and how this imparted to him such excellent close reading skills. Because there is no way we would know this otherwise.

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Indeed. The notion of being “partisan against ID” is sort of amusing; it suggests, completely contrary to any realistic view, that there is such a thing as being objective on this subject without finding ID to be a completely dishonest affair. The convenient thing, I suppose, about believing an obscenely nonsensical dogma is that it provides one ample opportunity to insist that people are “partisan against” it, and that a fair judgment upon it can only be rendered by someone so naive as to have no idea that the whole thing is a lie.

I didn’t say they did, or imply as much. But I do take from your eager denial that you are probably aware that they did. Same culture war, same side, same values, same epistemology (heck, Bill Cole posted Peter Navarro’s paper on the election to this very board, proving only that the inability to assess a mathematical argument is disabling across all disciplines). Different day, yes; different battle in that culture war, yes.

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