Meyer Responds to the Charge that ID Was Created to Get Around Court Decisions

I used to belong to the Facebook group of a Muslim apologist. Some of the members would make comments about Sharia law mandating the death penalty for apostates. They never mentioned me by name, but I knew who they were talking about.

It seems @Jonathan_Burke, for one, is as perceptive as I was.

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Moe is their leader. :sunglasses:

Then you have no excuse for your continued insistence that ID is not a rebranding of creationism.

Critics of ID are honest, and do concede that the concepts of ID existed before 1987 in such works before they were given the name ID. They were called creation.

IDers, on the other hand, are not honest, and do not concede that the concepts of ID were called creation until 1987. Not even IDers who have effectively admitted that when YECs aren’t explicitly stating their religions views, YECs’ arguments for creationism cannot be distinguished from IDers’ arguments for intelligent design.

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Heh. Wouldn’t be a day without honest Sal posting an out of context quote-mined passage:

Darwin letter to Sir John Herschel 1861

You must permit me to have the pleasure to thank you for your kind present of your Physical Geography. I feel honoured by your gift, & shall prize this Book with your autograph. I am pleased with your note on my book on species, though apparently you go but a little way with me. The point which you raise on intelligent Design has perplexed me beyond measure; & has been ably discussed by Prof. Asa Gray, with whom I have had much correspondence on the subject.—

I am in a complete jumble on the point. One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed; yet when I look to each individual organism, I can see no evidence of this. For, I am not prepared to admit that God designed the feathers in the tail of the rock-pigeon to vary in a highly peculiar manner in order that man might select such variations & make a Fan-tail; & if this be not admitted (I know it would be admitted by many persons), then I cannot see design in the variations of structure in animals in a state of nature,—those variations which were useful to the animal being preserved & those useless or injurious being destroyed. But I ought to apologise for thus troubling you.—

Link to original source

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Who does that leave to play the part of Curly? Hmmmm… :smile:

Ah, of course. Another totally appropriate comment from Sal that contributes positively to the discussion here. Because he was courteous, don’t you know?

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It’s been that way on many if not most C/E boards

Blatant Creationist lie told politely = appropriate
Irritated reaction by scientist at being lied to = inappropriate.

And so it goes.

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And not just “creation”, but even “Special Creation”.

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There is absolutely nothing in ID worthy of the term “theory.”

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And once again, the guy loudly claiming he’s not a fundamentalist is quacking loudly like one.

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That quote-mining is as obviously deliberately deceptive as one can get, Sal.

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Of course I have an “excuse”, or rather a reason: Judge Jones was intellectually incompetent to make the judgment he made. He should have simply thrown out the Dover policy and shut up. But he had to play the philosopher of science, theologian, etc. and made a number of ignorant comments on matters of methodology etc. that were over his head.

Speaking of over someone’s head, how many of the 58 immunology papers presented as evidence have you read?

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Of course the losers in a court case always bawl about how badly they wuz robbed!

You can tell just how wrong Judge Jones was about ID-Creationism by looking at all the scientific research and published results IDC has produced in the 15 years since Dover. As it turns out the very next piece of positive evidence IDC produces will be the first. :slightly_smiling_face:

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“… the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s…”

“It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.”

" ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID."

“The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.”

Seems dead-on to me.

BTW, an important part of the factual backdrop would be the 58 immunology papers. Have you read them, since you’re a glutton for punishment?

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And by the salient fact that neither Eddie nor anyone else, despite all that whining, has bothered to write an appeal…

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Although, to be fair, @Eddie Eddie has said he agrees with the central part of the decision in terms of throwing out the disclaimer that the Dover school board had required.

It is also not only creationists who have disagreed with some aspects of Jones’s ruling:

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Thank you. I have said this scores of times, on BioLogos and here, that the Dover board was religiously motivated (i.e., they were latching onto ID in order to smuggle creationism in, because they – wrongly – took ID to be identical with creationism), and that because it was religiously motivated, the policy was rightly trashed by the judge. But then the Judge went on to identify the essence of ID with creationism, and there he was dead wrong, and he was wrong because he didn’t understand the history or philosophy of science regarding the subject of design.

Yes, that’s the DI’s party line. Problem is virtually everyone in the scientific community, certainly those familiar with the history of Creationism in this country, disagrees with you. Do you remember the push for “Scientific Creationism” back in the 70’s and 80’s? How did that go over?

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Thanks for acknowledging this. Now, perhaps, you are starting to see where I am coming from. I am one of those non-creationists you have just admitted to exist.