The Benjamins, too…
Ah, yes. The first thing in “fundamentalism” is, of course, “fund.”
People are obviously against ID because of the evidence, which do your pomo best to avoid.
I’ll give you an example of two different dictionary entries to answer your question.
Non-partisan entry:
Young Earth Creationism: The view that the earth and life are very young, created only about 6000 years ago by God in accord with the narrative given in the Biblical book of Genesis… This view, though held by millions of Americans, has been characterized by most scientists as pseudoscientific."
Obviously partisan entry:
Young Earth Creationism: The pseudoscientific view that the earth and life are very young…
The first entry describes the view without either emotive language or judgment, and does not impute to its proponents anything that they would not freely admit; only later in the article does the encyclopedia render a judgment, and then not in its own name but in the form of a report of the views of scientists.
The second entry “poisons the well” by inserting “pseudoscience” before the reader has even heard what the view is, thus priming the reader to read the actual description of the view with a pre-existing bias. The reader never gets to hear the view simply described before he is invited to make a judgment about it. Further, the second entry has the encyclopedia making a judgment, rather than reporting a judgment, and thus uses the authority that people tend to give encyclopedias to cajole the reader toward a certain conclusion.
A good scholar would not write an encyclopedia article in the second way. A polemicist, however, would.
I assume I am never going to see the independently-arrived-at definitions of creationism and ID that I asked for. I guess none of your “scholarly” sources contain such definitions. Certainly the article by the three Dutchmen didn’t.
You are obsessed with the political. I guess it makes sense that you went into law, which is about courtroom victory rather than truth, rather than academics, which (ideally) is about truth, not about victory. It’s because I can separate the two notions – winning a social/political fight and discovering a theoretical truth – that I can both think Trump was a terrible disaster and give intelligent design some breathing space to advance its case. You, on the other hand, can’t separate the two, and everything is about politics in one way or another.
Plato and the Stoics and Paley and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises would be surprised to hear that their theories and suggestions about nature were nothing but right-wing politics aimed at subverting the Athenian or Roman or British constitutions.
I would suggest that the people here who tend to see everything as political make an effort to get out and reduce the extreme politicization of American culture, rather than bellyache about ID. For example, there is a movement afoot to create a new political party which would, if it could get going, greatly reduce polarization, in both economic and cultural areas. I wonder how many of the people here intend to support this new party, either with donations or with arguments and legwork. And I wonder how many will instead continue to support the wokism and statism of the hard left.
I think they might be surprised to see you characterizing my remarks that way, certainly. Very odd, and hard to explain.
As for “everything being political,” no. Everything’s not political. ID is mostly culture-war, which goes beyond mere politics, but the culture war does have a political component. Prior to IDC, my main pseudoscience concern was quack medicine, and while that had many nasty aspects, politics and culture war were not a large part of that picture. Different pseudoscience, different causes, different problems.
No explanation of the existence of ID can work, so long as it assumes the good faith and sincerity of the cdesign proponentsists. There simply is no realistic possibility that these people are merely mistaken on the many topics on which they simply lie to their audience, and there is no realistic possibility that they actually believe they have a worthwhile scientific project, but feel they must continuously lie to the public in order to advance it. The lies – the substance, rather than the mere form, of their arguments – are the end of any possibility of this being a serious attempt at scientific inquiry.
I’d enjoy seeing someone actually try to formulate an actual ID hypothesis. If the idea were for real, as opposed to being a culture-war project, I’d be fascinated to see what study of it would reveal. But there is no study of it worth a damn, and there will not be so long as the objective of the cdesign proponentsists remains cultural, not scientific. Indeed, most “ID” writings just recycle non-ID-specific classic creationist claims that evolution is difficult, limited or impossible, rather than actually attempting to make any positive case for any ID-specific hypothesis (or, indeed, formulating any hypothesis which bears on the questions at issue and which could be tested).
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I don’t know of any case where Denton lies to his audience. There may be places where he is wrong, but I don’t of any case where he deliberately tells an untruth. Further, even on your assumption that the reason the ID folks are lying is because they are desperate to defend Biblicist Protestantism, or fundamentalism, or whatever you name it, Denton has no reason to lie for such purposes, since he, by his own autobiographical remarks, indicated that he left anything like fundamentalism behind him long ago.
There are other examples. I have not personally observed any case where Paul Nelson appears to be deliberately deceiving anyone. You may disagree with his biological claims, or his views on methodology in science, but he seems to me to be up-front and direct in all his arguments.
I have not observed any case where Bill Dembski attempts to deceive. You may find fault with his math, you may think his conclusions don’t follow from his premises, but again, I don’t think there is any deliberate deception. Where is the deliberate deception, for example, in No Free Lunch?
I could go on and list more, but enough. More generally, my impression is that the argument for deception generally amounts to: “The science that X is presenting is so bad, that he couldn’t possibly be unaware that it’s bad, and therefore, deliberate dishonesty is the only explanation for his behavior.” But of course, X may not agree that the science he is presenting is bad, and in that case, the conclusion of dishonesty does not follow.
Was there deliberate deception by the publishers of Pandas, in changing the draft to substitute “intelligent design” for “creationism”? Maybe so; but even if that’s the case, it hardly follows that all subsequent writers who argued for design in nature are necessarily deceivers, any more than it follows that because Bill Clinton and JFK were adulterers, all subsequent Democratic presidents must be adulterers. Michael Denton had nothing to do with the production of Pandas, and he has had nothing to do with battles over science curriculum in American schools. He has addressed all his writing to those who are interested in theoretical questions around fine-tuning, structuralism vs. functionalism in biology, etc. So even it it could be shown that some Discovery people were dishonest, it would not follow that Denton is dishonest.
Well, I suppose most people are against “quack” medicine, but not every case where something new is advocated turns out to be pure quackery. There was a time when chiropractors were looked on with great suspicion by the medical profession, and now MDs have made their peace with the chiropractors (and I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of MDs go to chiropractors). There was also a time when acupuncture was regarded as pseudoscientific nonsense, but now it is conceded that it has some value. Professions are generally very conservative bodies, and thus have a tendency to shout “quack” or “pseudoscience” prematurely. I have nothing against critical scrutiny of new ideas, but my first instinct, when I see a new idea, is not to shout “Quackery!” or even “Almost certainly quackery!” My first instinct is to give the new idea some time and space to explain itself, without its words being drowned out of hearing by a chorus of jeers.
I would be interested in hearing your views on the idea of a new US political party. You have said that you are more conservative on some (economic?) issues than some people here, so I would think you would be more open to the rise of a centrist party than some of the others here. If so, you and I might actually be in agreement on something that is more important than intelligent design and creationism. The nation can survive another 50 years of quarrels over origins, but I doubt it can survive another 50 years of the general cultural and political and social polarization that exists now. A third, centrist party might be just the thing to take the venom and hatred out politics, or at least, greatly reduce it.
Paul Nelson is hoping to live long enough for that to happen, too. Me, I’m more hoping for solutions to climate change, the end of war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and universal world health and happiness.
Which is more likely?
The deliberate deception in No Free Lunch is when Dembski pretends that mathematical theorems concerning search strategies over all possible target distributions apply to evolution, when evolutionary fitness landscapes are not only a subset of all possible distributions, but a subset which is expected to contain smooth distributions.
Dembski is a mathematician. He is either deliberately deceiving, or unbelievably incompetent.
I look forward to you being snowed under with examples of deliberate deception (or unbelievable incompetence) from Denton, Nelson, Behe, Axe, Klinghoffer, Weikart, Sternberg, Egnor, Bartlett et al. 
You should be able to recall Stephen Meyer’s deliberate deception (or unbelievable incompetence) yourself, having been reminded of it so frequently.
Both are still considered to be “quack” medicine for the simple reason that the “theories” that underlie them (qi, vertebral subluxations) are ill-defined and non-measurable. That some chiropracters have incorporated osteopathy into their techniques doesn’t change that.
I don’t accept your dichotomy, but even if I did, it would not establish the “dishonesty” option, and Puck is concluding that the “dishonesty” option is the only one possible. I’m quite open to the possibility that ID people have on occasion made scientific blunders. I’ve never defended everything that ID people wrote; I’ve defended only the reasonableness of taking seriously the possibility of design.
But the atheists and materialists aren’t content with finding errors here and there, and thus showing that particular arguments for design are not very good; they hate the very idea of design, and want to do everything in their power to make sure that no human being will take it as a serious possibility. I don’t believe there’s an atheist currently posting here who would be personally comfortable with the possibility that this world had a designer. Yes, I know several of them would say they are perfectly open to the conclusion of design if evidence is provided, but I don’t for a moment believe that they are existentially, as opposed to formally and abstractly, open to the notion.
And if you say, I’m reading too much into people’s motives, well, perhaps, but then, in my view, people are reading too much into the motives of Denton, etc. ID people are not people in the eyes of many here, they are abstractions of creationist and theocratic thought, automatically equated with the politics of Trump, etc. I don’t see how anyone could listen to any of Denton’s videos and see, in this calm, polite old man, anything like a fierce culture warrior who wants to overthrow the US constitution. And the Michael Behe I have heard in live talks is a soft-spoken, self-deprecatory individual on the personal side, with an elvish sense of humor, the last sort of human being to wish to establish a theocracy and tell other citizens what to believe about God. These guys might be wrong about some scientific matters, but they aren’t fiends, and they aren’t totalitarians. The militant, hostile tone adopted by the atheists here blinds them to the humanity of their opponents. Which, unfortunately, mirrors the state of most cultural and political and social conversations in America today, where those who disagree with the other side are demonized. If America cannot do better than the atheists at “Peaceful Science” have done, then America is doomed.
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For the same reason that I do - that the level of incompetence required for many of these misrepresentations to be honest mistakes is so inconsistent with their perpetrators qualifications and experience to be literally unbelievable.
But there are also the many instances that could not possibly be scientific or other blunders, but have to be deliberate dishonesty.
Behe’s attempt to use only half of a table of data, for example.
No-one is calling them fiends or totalitarians - only dishonest. The MIchael Behe I spoke to was indeed quiet, self-deprecatory and unaggressive. But he was also dishonest.
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Several people here have said that Discovery aims at subverting the US constitution, violating the separation of church and state, etc. And I don’t believe you have never heard the word “theocracy” from the lips of critics of Discovery and/or ID – and theocracy, in the fullest sense, is a form of totalitarianism.
I defy @Eddie to find a single paragraph by him in this thread which is about a perspective on nature, rather than being about the ID movement, its members, definitions, motives, textbooks or some other side-issue
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Since @Eddie is still complaining about not having unbiased definitions of creationism and ID that show ID is creationism, I offer these:
Creationism: the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation.
Intelligent design: the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.
Both are the central aspect of definitions, with examples, codicils and opposites deleted. The former is from Oxford dictionary (an independent source), the latter from the DI.
The differences are small: the DI don’t identify the designer, or what it did.
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You have not actually answered my question.
If someone writes a textbook, paper or other scholarly work that states, in no uncertain terms, that the earth is not flat and those who claim it is flat are wrong and are engaging in pseudoscience, does this make the author “obviously partisan” and a “polemicist”?
For instance, if they called those people “obviously partisan” and “polemicists”?
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Here is part of Puck’s comment which you did not quote:
Have you any response to that? Do you disagree with Puck and think those claims are, in fact, true? Is Puck lying or mistaken and the the ID’ers cited never actually make those claims? Are they honest mistakes on the behalf of the ID’ers, which would mean they are grossly incompetent in the fields in which they claim expertise (and are therefore likely still lying, but it’s a different lie)?
Please clarify.
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I will let the irony of this passage speak for itself.
One further point is that of all the (ahem) “errors” that have been discussed above (and that is only scratching the bare surface) have been brought to the attention of the ID’ers, and in not a single instance have the ID’ers acknowledged the errors and made corrections. Instead, they simply double down on the mistake and usually retaliate with vicious attacks against the honest and competent scientists who shown the temerity to dare question the ID’ers claims.
In case there was any room left for reasonable doubt that we are dealing with more than mere carelessness or incompetence…
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No way are you dragging me into this mess.
[Mod-Hat=off]
There is no definition of ID because it’s made to be that way. Without any definition of Design or the Designer, no defined limits or capabilities, supporters are free to make any claims they like. When pressed for these necessary details proponents can retreat to “It’s not that kind of science” without providing anything resembling a falsifiable hypothesis. Forget for a moment all the wrong claims of ID, and simply note that it is useless; it answers no useful questions about how/why/when/where/what/who(?), and nothing is learned.
This is the only way for ID to persist, because if there were anything to be falsified, it soon would be.
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Whitehoused version:
So everyone else has to provide “independently-arrived-at” definitions of ‘ID’ and ‘creationism,’ while you want to use your own non-standard, self-serving definition of ‘evolution’ - in order to show that two people who not only use a different definition of ‘evolution’ themselves but have written books explicitly critical of evolution are not anti-evolution.
It proves that Genesis was removed from the definition of “scientific creationism” by Henry Morris long before Denton became involved, so your accusation that “You are still redefining “creationism” to take the Genesis part out of the definition, and you have no reason to do that, other than to find a way to put someone like Denton inside of creationism” is counterfactual in multiple independent ways. An accusation that you decided not to include with your comments on its refutation.
It does. That’s not a refinement of your claim that the DI’s curriculum for private schools and home schools is predominantly concerned with the defense of theistic beliefs. It’s a less precise claim that doesn’t differentiate which books were intended for private/home use.
As usual, this is untrue.
We also have the argument evidence that ID uses the same arguments as scientific creationism. To such an extent that the only argument they use that is not based on arguments from scientific creationism is Ewart’s design dependency tree.
And of course we have the argument evidence that ID began as an explicit renaming of “creationism” for legal reasons.
We need a shortcut key for including the definitions of “Creationism” and “intelligent design” from Pandas drafts.
That’s not an “independently-arrived-at definition[s] of creationism”, so has no force. A better definition, that doesn’t exclude non-JudeoCharistian and non-literalist creationists, is that Creationism is the idea that evolution didn’t happen, and creation is what happened instead. As much as ID can be said to affirm anything, it affirms both those things.[1] ID is a form of creationism.
If you believe that the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation, you’re a creationist.
With creation renamed ‘design’. ↩︎
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Denton might be the exception that proves the rule. I’m not sure what motivates Denton. I would probably not describe Denton as a creationist.
If nothing else, he is deceiving himself. And he is clearly a creationist.
He surely is deceiving himself. He surely knows enough mathematics to know that his arguments are unconvincing to mathematicians. His reasoning is full of what mathematicians would describe as “hand waving”.
(I know that was not addressed to me, although I am a fiscal conservative but a social liberal). The problem here is that third parties don’t work well with our election system. I would like to see and end to the primary system and the adoption of some kind of preferential voting.
Seen from my perspective, the polarization is primarily due to the moral bankruptcy of conservatism.
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Are the two things mutually exclusive? Could there not be both a new political party and an end of the current primary system? Would there not be support for both measures among a large number of voters? The details of how the two might be achieved together would need working out, but is there anything logically or constitutionally impossible about it?
I assume that you mean a preferential ballot used by each party in order to determine its candidate for the Presidency. Is that what you mean? I think it’s a good idea, but is it not compatible with the existence of more than two parties? Many other countries have several parties, and some of those parties in some of those countries now employ a preferential ballot to elect their party leaders.
I don’t agree with this one-sided allocation of blame (it takes two to tango), but even if it were the case, the presence of a third party, between the Republicans and the Democrats, would force the Republicans to change, for fear of losing votes to the new centrist party. They would have to become less “morally bankrupt,” or they would lose so many votes that they could not possibly win an election.