The mistake of referring to evolutionary science as Darwinism and evolutionary biologists as Darwinists.
I think it is a mistake to think of it as a mistake rather than as a rhetorical strategy. While I don’t place Behe quite in the same bucket as the other cdesign proponentsists, it’s clear that for Behe, as for the others, ID is primarily a rhetorical strategy rather than a framework for data-driven inquiry. This would be fine if he were merely defending an intuitive judgment that calls for further investigation, but it’s not so great if one thinks one is defending an alternative theory.
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It seems like a mistaken rhetorical strategy. It strengthens my rhetoric every time he takes that path.
I think that’s right, but that it’s also a ‘preaching to the choir’ thing. The audience here at Peaceful Science is not the average audience in the pews, for whom ‘Darwinism’ has been successfully demonised. Using the term in books addressed to that audience is probably unsurprising.
I think it also relates to authoritarianism: the notion that science is about the authority of a big name, as religion often is, rather than a massive collective enterprise conducted by a huge international community of scientists.
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It’s not just Behe. Virtually every talking head from the DI refers to “Darwinism” in every one of their attack articles and vanity publications. They know their target audience isn’t the scientific community. It’s uninformed laymen who will be misled and fall for the term “Darwinism” since Darwin is a name they all know. That’s one of the many reasons it’s so funny when DI fanboys like Eddie try to claim ID isn’t a political/religious movement.
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I wonder if it is disrespectful to call this a “mistake.” That would imply an intellectual dullness that is hard to square with what we know to be this professor’s intelligence.
It’s not a mistake. It is not anywhere near a mistake.
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Well, how would you describe it?
Well, but that may be because you imagine that the audience for these interviews and discussions is more educated than it is. I can tell you that most people really do not have the foggiest notion about a distinction between “Darwinism,” (or “Darwin’s theory,” as it sometimes is rendered) or “neo-Darwinism,” or “evolutionary theory.” They don’t. People who are obsessed with religion think about these as different names for the same thing, and get cranky when you start trying to express what the difference between one of them and another might be. They think that drawing these distinctions is just shifty hiding-the-ball stuff.
And that’s where the DI is at its best: understanding what the limits of public understanding are, and understanding how to EMPLOY that selective ignorance to advantage. So, before a scientific audience, yes, it “strengthens [your] rhetoric,” as you note. But before a non-scientific audience I’m not sure whether you come out the winner or the loser in that exchange. You’re RIGHT, of course; I understand that. But there is a difference between being right and winning over an audience.
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I do wonder if Darwinism is a term for “a lot of faith” in natural selection though I haven’t read Behe’s books.
I agree. Right now, ID is saying - we’re the “god of the gaps” of evolutionary theory as Joe explains so well.
After reading Sanford who decides to make natural selection his victim and pummels it over and over again as I’m beginning to read the book, and reading these shared by @Giltil…
First, balancing selection, the evolutionary process that favors genetic diversification rather than the fixation of a single “best” variant, appears to play a minor role outside the immune system.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6019/872.3.full
https://www.johnclamoreaux.org/smu/core/s/crabtree.pdf
To understand the extremes of selection that must have occurred when our ancestors went from using speed, strength and agility to survive and began to survive by using thought, we have to consider the difficulty of optimizing 2,000 to 5,000 genes.
…I think the strategy for ID is simple. Stop letting them fight your weakness…bring the battle to their weakness. Start calling natural selection the “god of the evolutionary gaps” or perhaps something more pithy. But “Darwinism” doesn’t cut it because it isn’t specific enough: If natural selection is where biologists are wrong, point out every time it’s used to fill in the gap and make them prove it. Cut where it hurts until it starts to bleed if you want to win the war. 
Rhetorically speaking of course.
What do you think @pnelson?
I think the charitable interpretation might be what I mentioned above: tailoring the message to the audience.
I describe chemistry quite different to a Grade 7 student versus a Grade 12 student, and differently again to a 5 year old or a university student.
If the audience - the people who buy and read ID materials - are predominantly Christians, that community is most familiar with a very simple dichotomy of Darwinism/creationism (or various brands), and when speaking to that audience it makes sense to use the language they speak and understand.
At least, as a book author with something to sell, it does. As an educator, I’d always want to help people to elaborate and improve their understanding of ideas, whether or not I personally subscribed to those ideas.
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It’s part of a deliberate strategy to belittle evolutionary theory by making it sound like it’s based primarily on the say-so of authority figure Charles Darwin and not on 160+ years of positive scientific evidence. It’s not a mistake, it’s done deliberately by all the DI’s henchmen.
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Yes, exactly.
It may well come from market research. They have probably found that the term “Darwinism” works well for them in selling their ideas.
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But their rhetoric is not aimed at convincing you. It is aimed at people who might be persuaded to join their side in the culture wars.
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As Puck said, it’s a strategy.
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Not at all. By not understanding it, one has less guilt to deal with when saying things about it that are untruth.
I would call it rhetorical ploy. It’s the converse of how ID’ers refuse to refer to themselves as creationists
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We should call it a ploy. And we should call it dishonest.
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Sure. We can call it a ploy. It seems horribly ineffective. That’s the confusing part. Ploys are supposed to work. If they dont work, you abandon them. So why hasn’t he abandoned this?
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What is your evidence that it’s horribly ineffective?
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As already pointed out, it doesn’t work with the scientifically literate but the scientifically literate are not their target audience. The “Darwinism” subterfuge is trying to sway the opinions of religious believers who are not scientifically trained. Sadly the scam does work on a not insignificant number of scientifically unknowledgeable people.
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I don’t think the ploy works very well when it is directly called out.
Here is one high profile piece of evidence: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/josh-swamidass-on-adam-and-eve-part-1/ . To be clear of course, quite a few people tell me similar things in private, and Behe often seems taken off guard every time I point out that evolutionary science isn’t Darwinism.