"ID insiders" and what they really think

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

!?!?

They’ve published six of his books, plus videos with him.

If I went to a training seminary run by the Discovery Institute, do you think they would teach that evolution proceeded through front loading that was implanted at the beginning of the universe? I’m thinking they wouldn’t.

@Eddie

No. “They” have not rejected common ancestry. Some of them reject common ancestry. Even most of them. But not “they” as a collective.

Please, Eddie. If you searched Evolution News and Views, what impression would you get? Would you think that ID supports universal common ancestry?

@Eddie

He tells us: A massive infusion of new biological information. And he’s pretty clear that this comes from an intelligence beyond nature. But that’s Meyer; that’s not ID.

What Meyer proposes is not ID? Everyone keeps saying it is.

When Casey Luskin argues fervently against the transitional nature of fossils, how exactly does he think large groups of animals came to be?

This isn’t the exception. This is the overwhelming majority of ID.

@Eddie

Yes, and that’s Ann, not ID per se.

If ID can’t even determine which species shares common ancestry, what does that tell you about the viability of the theory (as if there is one)? It can’t even agree on the most basic answers. The vast, vast majority of ID is just a cover for creationism.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@T_aquaticus

If I went to a training seminarY run by the Discovery Institute…

Freudian slip?

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@John_Harshman

You should note that “the universe is fine-tuned for life” is incompatible with “the origin of life very likely needed design input”.

No, it’s not incompatible. Some conditions may be necessary yet insufficient for a given outcome.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@John_Harshman

@Eddie

I can only speak for myself, and for some others I’ve met through the ID movement who have shared their positions with me. If you showed me that Jesus had never lived, I’d still be an ID proponent.

Why?

Because Eddie religiously ignores the evidence, I’d say.

@Eddie

@T_aquaticus

If I was presented with evidence for the supernatural or for design I would absolutely change my mind.

Give some examples of what would count as evidence. Write in plain language, not the language of population genetics etc., so that an educated layperson who is not a biologist can understand the sort of evidence you are talking about.

But you don’t hesitate to assess the relative levels of knowledge of people who are active contributors to science. Why the false modesty?

@Eddie

But you don’t know the insiders. You have no friendly or personal relations with any ID proponent, as far as I know.

We don’t know that you have any, either. You write many, many things here that are obviously false.

@Eddie

@T_aquaticus

" To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

First of all, that ancient statement is not a statement of what ID is as a theory,

As there is no such thing as “ID as a theory,” you have no leg to stand on here.

@Eddie

@Faizal_Ali

The pertinent difference being that he gets the science wrong

In the only example you ever gave of his getting the science wrong, from a Bio-Complexity article, you did not understand what you were reading.

Prove it.

@Eddie

@Faizal_Ali

he gets the science wrong and thereby misrepresents evolution as “A Theory in Crisis.”

His use of that phrase, and its misunderstanding, I have covered here many times before, but you have conveniently managed to forget. Read his third book for his correction of the misunderstanding.

Denton is still selling the first book. An honest academic doesn’t hide a correction two books later.

@Eddie

By the way, he is both an ID theorist and an evolutionist, as every English-speaker would have used the word “evolutionist” in everyday conversation,

I have never heard the word “evolutionist” used in everyday conversation. It’s a silly contrivance, which is why you use it so often.

@T_aquaticus

Given their long standing rejection of common ancestry, where do you think they have new species or species groups coming from? Meyer continually argues that there are no ancestors for the groups of species seen in the Cambrian. Where do you think Meyer has those species coming from?

Good questions. I predict that Eddie will ignore them in favor of Culture Warring.

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

So ID is a subset of creationism.

No, they just agree on a number of points. If I found four points where the Republican Party agreed with the Democratic Party, would it prove the Republicans were a subset of the Democrats? Or vice versa?

If you found four points where the Republican Party agreed with the Democratic Party and could find no points where they did not agree, then the Republican Party platform would indeed be a subset of the Democratic Party platform.

Can you name any core claim of ID which is not also a claim of creationism?

If anything, the logical order would be the other way around, with “intelligent design” being the more generic position, and “creationism” being a specific form of intelligent design, …

That’s the same way round. A subset of claims/requirements/restrictions is more generic.

[John_Harshman]

@Eddie

Epistemological error there. Lack of evidence should leave you agnostic, yet you “reject”.

I would consider what you say to be an epistemological error. Absence of evidence can indeed be evidence of absence. A better way to think of it would be to consider the expectations of what would be observed under particular hypotheses. If the expectation of hypothesis X is that we should observe Y, and we don’t observe Y, that’s evidence against hypothesis X. One problem is of course that the hypothesis “something or other, don’t know what, was designed by someone or other, don’t know who” is not very well formed and doesn’t provide much in the way of expectations.

@Eddie

First of all, that ancient statement is not a statement of what ID is as a theory, but a statement about an overall broad agenda for the Discovery Institute, that includes social goals as well as scientific ones.

Better to say that it’s an admission that the scientific goals are solely in service to the social goals. That would not be good scientific practice.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Faizal_Ali

I don’t think that is quite accurate. While most atheists would disagree with that position, they would probably find it more respectable and honest than those individuals’ current endorsement of ID, as it would essentially be an endorsement of theistic evolution. Many atheists, myself included, simply find theistic evolution to be an inadequately argued position which, nonetheless, does not fundamentally distort or misrepresent the extant scientific evidence.

ID, OTOH, is nothing more than a pack of lies told by a pack of liars.

The difference matters.

This.

It does make a difference. The position that the design occurred at the setting up of the fundamental constants and laws of physics at a hypothetical origin of the universe itself at least doesn’t require one to deny anything about biology, cosmology, information theory, or anything of the sort.

Of course that makes a difference. Then you don’t have to employ people like Bill Demski to state falsehoods about information theory, Gunter Bechly to state falsehoods about paleontology, Douglas Axe and Brian Miller to state falsehoods about protein functions/folding, Gauger, Hossjer, and others to state falsehoods about “waiting time problems” etc. etc.

I genuinely do find a fine-tuning sort of case to be more respectable than the sort of nonsense output by the guys above.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

If I went to a training seminary run by the Discovery Institute, do you think they would teach that evolution proceeded through front loading that was implanted at the beginning of the universe? I’m thinking they wouldn’t.

You weren’t speaking about training seminars above. Why don’t you just admit that you made a false statement when you said Discovery did not release Denton’s books and did not feature him on their website? I thought scientists were supposed to admit errors when they made them.

@T_aquaticus

Please, Eddie. If you searched Evolution News and Views,

How many times do I have to make the distinction between ID as part of a cultural movement and ID as a theory about nature? What you get on ENV is mostly the anti-evolutionary point of view, for cultural reasons, but ID as a theory is neutral on the question of common descent. I have many times here pointed out exact spots on the DI website where it says this, but you have stopped your ears, because it’s not what you want to hear. For a scientist, you have little respect for data: you cherry-pick it, counting ENV but ignoring other statements on the same website.

@T_aquaticus

What Meyer proposes is not ID? Everyone keeps saying it is.

You’re being obtuse. Read my statement in context of the other things I said, and in the context of things I’ve said a hundred times here. You should know that I meant: “That is Meyer’s personal version of ID, but ID itself is a big tent and his view is only one possible view within the ID umbrella; don’t equate Meyer’s view with ID per se.”

@T_aquaticus

This is the overwhelming majority of ID.

Ah, you’re finally getting it. “The overwhelming majority of ID” does not equal “ID”. The overwhelming majority of mammals are not monotremes, but it does not follow that monotremes are not mammals.

@T_aquaticus

If ID can’t even determine which species shares common ancestry, what does that tell you about the viability of the theory (as if there is one)?

ID, as a theory of design detection, is indifferent to the question of common ancestry. Every species could be independently created, or there could be universal common ancestry going back to a unicellular creature. You’re asking ID to answer a question that ID is not asking.

Individual ID proponents, of course, do have views on common ancestry, but they aren’t binding on other ID proponents. So there is disagreement among them. There is nothing secret or sneaky about this. They admit the differences freely.

@T_aquaticus

The vast, vast majority of ID is just a cover for creationism.

You’re speculating about motives. The topic of motives is boring. I’m only interested in the question whether nature is designed. I couldn’t care less what private religious motives other ID people have. You keep forgetting that the question whether nature is designed is one of the oldest questions in philosophy and theology and science. It goes back to at least 500 BC. The ID people have revived that question, which in its basic form does not have anything to do with the Bible. I’m interested in that question.

You can’t conceive that there are people like me, not from “churchy” background (well, I went to church as a kid, but my family was not very pious), who are interested in design just out of intellectual curiosity. You just assume that everyone in the ID network must be some kind of fundamentalist. But that’s simply not the case. I wouldn’t go to a fundamentalist church for any amount of money, and no fundamentalist church would let me in the door, except to try to save my soul. But if a fundamentalist has read Darwin and Gould and Dawkins and Hume and Mayr and hundreds of recent articles on developmental biology and Plato and Descartes and has something to teach me about design and chance, I’ll listen. And the conversations I have with ID people are much richer, intellectually, than the conversations I have with the atheists here, which are pretty much one-note affairs.

[Tim]

@T_aquaticus

If I went to a training seminary run by the Discovery Institute, do you think they would teach that evolution proceeded through front loading that was implanted at the beginning of the universe?

Even if they did teach “that evolution proceeded through front loading that was implanted at the beginning of the universe” (i.e. Denton’s views), how is this a form of “design detection”?

How much of the DI’s output is explicitly about design detection?

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

He tells us: A massive infusion of new biological information. And he’s pretty clear that this comes from an intelligence beyond nature.

ROTFLMAO! Yeah, what a great answer. “A massive infusion of new biological information.” Uh huh, very specific, very clear.

Tell you what: Have Meyer or one of his ID friends go into the lab and create a trilobite out of thin air just be “massively infusing” some “biological information”.

Imagine if cookbook authors had the same standards of explanation: “How To Bake a Chocolate Cake: Step 1. Massively infuse chocolate cake information. Step 2. There’s your cake!”

Hilarious.

This is the kind of “answers” the unscrupulous charlatans of the DI feed to ignorant rubes, who eat it up and donate money.

The only question, “Eddie”: Are you one of the unscrupulous charlatans? Or one of the ignorant rubes?

@Eddie

Note that when I have used such a line of argument here, John Harshman has jumped on me for restoring to “whataboutism”. I complained that you had not read sufficient Denton to understand his thought, and instead of dealing with that, you turn around and tell me that I supposedly did the same thing elsewhere.

Because your accusation is baseless. My criticisms of Denton were solely directed at an article HE HAD WRITTEN with the intention of it being treated as a peer-reviewed scientific publication (even though it was published in a fake journal) and which I HAD READ in its entirety. You claim that I did not understand that article, but that accusation is baseless. Such an article is intended as a stand-alone and self-sufficient explanation of an idea. It should not be necessary to read every other thing the author has written in order to understand it.

And similarly, I (and others) also criticized a 45 minute lecture BY DENTON HIMSELF based on HIS OWN BOOK. I think it is entirely reasonable to form an opinion of the book based on that. And, since you refused to watch the video yourself, you are just blowing hot air if you insist that somehow the book is going to be radically different and better than that execrable lecture would suggest.

This is not remotely the same thing as you claiming you can determine the private thoughts scientists had when they wrote highly technical articles, just thru watching a few quotes provided by some guy who thinks Hannibal might have crossed the Alps riding a T. rex.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

You weren’t speaking about training seminars above. Why don’t you just admit that you made a false statement when you said Discovery did not release Denton’s books and did not feature him on their website? I thought scientists were supposed to admit errors when they made them.

Go look at ENV. Denton is hardly ever mentioned. Look at ID in the public. Is Denton even really mentioned by the lay public that supports ID? No. In the lay public, ID is all about creationism. That’s what it has always been.

@Eddie

What you get on ENV is mostly the anti-evolutionary point of view, for cultural reasons, but ID as a theory is neutral on the question of common descent.

There is no ID theory.

@Eddie

“That is Meyer’s personal version of ID, but ID itself is a big tent and his view is only one possible view within the ID umbrella; don’t equate Meyer’s view with ID per se.”

If creationism fits in ID then ID is creationism.

@Eddie

ID, as a theory of design detection,

No, it isn’t. If it were you could point to this theory. It doesn’t exist.

@Eddie

You’re speculating about motives.

Read the title of the thread.

@Eddie

You can’t conceive that there are people like me, not from “churchy” background (well, I went to church as a kid, but my family was not very pious), who are interested in design just out of intellectual curiosity.

And yet when asked about the science, you claim ignorance.

[John_Harshman]

@Giltil

Some conditions may be necessary yet insufficient for a given outcome.

So you’re saying that fine-tuning isn’t all that fine? You-know-but-won’t-say-who is incapable of creating a universe that runs by itself?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

Go look at ENV. Denton is hardly ever mentioned.

You’re still trying to avoid admitting that you made a false statement. You are losing my respect. Your original claim was not that Denton wasn’t featured on ENV. It was that he was featured

@T_aquaticus

nowhere in the literature released by the DI nor on their website.

So I corrected you. Six books. Videos. Just admit that you made a false statement.

@Roy

Can you name any core claim of ID which is not also a claim of creationism?

You’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: Is there any absolute requirement of “creationism” (as that term has been used in popular American debates about origins since at least the 1920s) that is not an absolute requirement of ID? And there is: The belief that Genesis offers a more or less accurate description of the events that produced the world, and that, where this description conflicts with the claims of modern science, the Genesis account is to be upheld and the modern scientific claims denied. Since ID per se does not include this claim, ID cannot be a form of creationism. (Though ID proponents can, in addition to being ID proponents, also be creationists.)

All creationists in the sense specified accept that the world is designed, but not all those who accept that the world is designed are creationists in the sense specified. Creationists are a subset of those who believe in design, not the other way around.

@John_Harshman

Better to say that it’s an admission that the scientific goals are solely in service to the social goals. That would not be good scientific practice.

Whether that’s true of Discovery could be debated; however, I will say that I agree with it as a general principle. By the same reasoning, if any scientist ever asks another scientist to not tell the whole truth about the science, for a social goal, that scientist at that point is not following good scientific practice. So if, to take a random and perhaps only hypothetical example, a scientist heavily committed to persuading governments to take certain drastic actions on climate change ever told another scientist in an email not to talk publicly about technical problems in some of the modeling, lest the public, hearing about such technical problems, might not be strongly enough motivated to take drastic political action, that would not be good scientific practice; it would be compromised scientific practice, dictated by politics.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

You’re still trying to avoid admitting that you made a false statement. You are losing my respect. Your original claim was not that Denton wasn’t featured on ENV. It was that he was featured

Great, the DI published some of his books. Now what? Is Denton a part of the public face at ENV, or any of their seminars?

If we go through the articles at ENV, is there anything that would push us away from the idea that ID is creationism?

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

@T_aquaticus

Go look at ENV. Denton is hardly ever mentioned.

You’re still trying to avoid admitting that you made a false statement.

What’s the ID theory of design detection? Do you think that by repeating your false statements, they magically become true?

@Eddie

You are losing my respect.

Given that, public seppuku appears to be the only path remaining to you, Taq.

[John_Harshman]

@Eddie

Whether that’s true of Discovery could be debated; however, I will say that I agree with it as a general principle.

Since you agree, I see no reason for debate. And I’ll just forget the whataboutism. But are we now agreed that the DI is not following good scientific practice as an institution, in fact as the chief institution in what would be called the field if there were actually a field?

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

Can you name any core claim of ID which is not also a claim of creationism?

You’re asking the wrong question.

I’m asking the question which will determine whether ID is a subset of creationism.

You aren’t answering it.

Can you name any core claim of ID which is not also a claim of creationism?

If you can’t (or won’t), then ID should be considered a subset of creationism.

(I may reply to the rest later - dinner is ready)

[Faizal_Ali]

@T_aquaticus

If we go through the articles at ENV, is there anything that would push us away from the idea that ID is creationism?

Certainly not this one, where Denton is caught on tape sheepishly apologizing to the audience for a quotation refering to the earth existing for millions of years, by saying of the person quoted, “He’s an evolutionist.”

Michael Denton Identifies TWO Intelligent Designs in the Universe | Evolution News

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

Can you name any core claim of ID which is not also a claim of creationism?

You’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: Is there any absolute requirement of “creationism” (as that term has been used in popular American debates about origins since at least the 1920s) that is not an absolute requirement of ID? And there is: The belief that Genesis offers a more or less accurate description of the events that produced the world, and that, where this description conflicts with the claims of modern science, the Genesis account is to be upheld and the modern scientific claims denied. Since ID per se does not include this claim, ID cannot be a form of creationism.

If ID originated as creationism with the explicit references to God and the bible removed in order to circumvent US laws regarding the teaching of religion in schools, then

• ID is a form of creationism,
• its claims are a subset of those of creationism, and
• the lack of references to the Genesis account does not invalidate these.

That many leading IDers are very coy about what they believe actually happened is consistent with the above. That you conveniently forget this possibility is also consistent with the above, as is your failure to ever produce any evidence against it.

@Eddie

All creationists in the sense specified accept that the world is designed, but not all those who accept that the world is designed are creationists in the sense specified. Creationists are a subset of those who believe in design, not the other way around.

Creationists are a subset of those who believe in design because ID is a subset of creationism.

Just as Vegans are a subset of vegetarians because vegetarianism is a subset of Veganism.^[1]

You should learn set theory. It may increase your understanding.

---

1. Veganism: Do not eat meat. Do not eat dairy products. Do not eat eggs.
   Vegetarianism: Do not eat meat. ↩︎

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

Great, the DI published some of his books.

Not “some”, but almost all of them – six out of eight. (They did not publish the one that is deemed the most offensive by anti-ID people, i.e., Denton’s first book.)

@T_aquaticus

Is Denton a part of the public face at ENV

He’s part of the public face on their website, not necessarily of ENV. There is much else on their website besides ENV – videos, podcast interviews, etc. And even ENV has often plugged his books, so there goes your claim that there is nothing on ENV that shows non-creationist ID views.

He is also advertised as one of the teachers for one of their Seminars; see C.S. Lewis Fellows Program on Science and Society | Discovery Institute

For a list of articles, videos, etc. by or about him on the DI site, see:

Search Results for “michael denton”

and learn just how wrong your claim is.

They definitely regard him as one of their big guns, and promote him vigorously.

(They also vigorously promote David Berlinski, who is an agnostic Jew and therefore not a creationist. His latest book is just coming out, or has just come out.)