Thursday, September 29, 2005

Response to an ID Apologist

A fellow posting as "mike" responded to an article at Evolutionblog with some of the typical claims about Intelligent Design "Theory": it's not religious, it's based on science, etc. I posted a response on his weblog, but I thought I'd repeat it here.

Evolutionblog said...
Introducing ID into science classes is purely a device for using the public schools to promote religious propaganda
And mike responded with...
That's a subjective statement. I can also argue that promoting evolution promotes a religion as it is filled with inexplainable holes regarding the origins of life. Are you to believe in evolution in spite of these holes? You may if you have enough "faith" in evolution. And if you do then you can certainly construe it as being just another religious movement.
The claim that ID is just a device for promoting religious ideas in public schools isn't a subjective statement; it's an observation of the facts. Please, mike, name some ID promoters who are not doing it for religious reasons. The Discovery Institute has made their religious motivations plain, as have the pro-ID members of the Dover school board (when they think there aren't any reporters listening).
ID is no way religious. It may be liked by those religous, but that's hardly the same as it promoting a religious view. ID simply proposes that some "intelligent creator" created life. Whether that intelligent creator be something that religious institutions use to their benefit or not is not the fault of the theory of ID itself, but rather of the subjective religious believer.
ID is inherently religious. If you don't agree, please name some people who take it seriously who are not religious; name someone who seriously thinks that life was intelligently designed by someone other than God. ID is just Creationism repackaged to slip past the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and "Intelligent Designer" is just a nudge-nudge, wink-wink reference to God.
The legal issue being adjudicated here is whether the crazy people have managed
to be sufficiently dishonest about their religious motivations. That is all.

If the movement by the school board were truely religiously motivated then it would NOT be ID they'd be promoting here but rather Creationism.
The same people now promoting ID are the people who were trying to push Creationism just a few decades ago. Creationism got shot down by the courts because it was obviously an effort to push religion in the classroom, so they're now trying to disguise the religion enough to get it through by saying "Intelligent Designer" instead of "God".

The only mystery I see is this: How did a school district that managed to elect an anti-science majority to their school board manage to attract such a stellar group of science teachers?

The reason why you have such a "stellar" group of science teachers is because ID makes sense; especially when you compare it to the flawed macroevolutionary theory. The only "anti-science majority" is from those that believe macroevolution occurred by "chance"!

Mike completely missed the point; I'll chalk that up to a simple mis-reading of the statement in Evolutionblog. The science teachers are consistently resisting efforts to make them teach ID as if it were science. It's the school board that's promoting the idea. If ID is science based, then its backers should be making predictions and testing them to build evidence that other scientists will accept instead of trying to peddle the idea to school kids who haven't got enough experience to see through an Appeal to Ignorance fallacy.

7 comments:

Mike said...

And here's my response to an evolutionist that uses the religion umbrella to hide under:

Lord Runolfr said...

The claim that ID is just a device for promoting religious ideas in public schools isn't a subjective statement; it's an observation of the facts. Please name some ID promoters who are not doing it for religious reasons.

ID is inherently religious. If you don't agree, please name some people who take it seriously who are not religious. ID is just Creationism repackaged to slip past the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The reason why you have such a "stellar" group of science teachers is because ID makes sense; especially when you compare it to the flawed macroevolutionary theory. The only "anti-science majority" is from those that believe macroevolution occurred by "chance"! ID is a science-based theory; therefore, how can it possibly be "anti-science"? macroevolition on the other hand ignores science - macroevolution is largely an unscientific theory.

I think you missed the point. The science teachers are consistently resisting efforts to make them teach ID as if it were science. It's the school board that's promoting the idea.

If ID is science based, then its backers should be making predictions and testing them to build evidence that other scientists will accept instead of trying to peddle the idea to school kids haven't got enough experience to see through an Appeal to Ignorance fallacy.

6:38 AM


Lord Runolfr said...

On an unrelated note, you might want to turn on Word Verification in Blogger so you'll stop getting spam posts like the one that precedes mine.

6:38 AM


Mike said...

"The claim that ID is just a device for promoting religious ideas in public schools isn't a subjective statement; it's an observation of the facts."

It's entirely subjective as it's entirely untrue. You could certainly argue that the motives of the school board members is religious; but you can't argue that ID is religious - it simply isn't. It may imply a religious view by infering the "Creator" is God; but that's not ID's fault - that's the subjective thinker's fault.

"ID is inherently religious."

Again, that's entirely subjective but very untrue. Show me a definition of ID that states the creator is some religious-based being such as God. No definitions I can find make blanket statements that some "God" is the creator in this ID theory. For all we know, life on earth was created by intelligent aliens! I'm willing to accept that. But I doubt you are because it doesn't fit your biased conviction of a flawed theory.

"If you don't agree, please name some people who take it seriously who are not religious."

Wow, that's a big list! I for one am 100% NOT religious as there's no evidence of a "God". But that doesn't mean I need to believe in evolution (only 34% of the population believes in evolution). Here's a URL with a large list of scientists, many of whom are NOT religious at all: http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/scidoubtevol.htm

Let me ask you something, are there evolutionists that are religious? I'm 100% positive the answer to that question is "Yes"! And why shouldn't it be that way? Evolution has nothing to do with one's religious views, just as Intelligent Design has nothing to do with one's religious views either!

But, to satisfy your request, here are some who, I believe, believe in ID but whom have no religious preference: Michael Behe, Francis Hitching, Peter Saunders, etc. You'll find many, many more if you do some searching!

Also, to touch on that subject, read this article: http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=16853

As Michael Behe put it, evolutionists ALWAYS use the religion scapegoat to build reference legs for their biases: "They also do not see that there is a distinction between arriving at a conclusion simply from observation of the physical world, as a scientist is supposed to do, and arriving at a conclusion based on scripture or religious beliefs."

And, "They also do not see that there is a distinction between arriving at a conclusion simply from observation of the physical world, as a scientist is supposed to do, and arriving at a conclusion based on scripture or religious beliefs."

"I think you missed the point. The science teachers are consistently resisting efforts to make them teach ID as if it were science. It's the school board that's promoting the idea."

There's more obvious subjectivity: if you define science as the "ability to produce solutions in some problem domain" then ID is 100% scientific. It addresses the problems of evolution and proposes some "solutions". It produces alternative explanations for the gaps in evolution; therefore, it's entirely scientific!

"If ID is science based, then its backers should be making predictions and testing them to build evidence that other scientists will accept instead of trying to peddle the idea to school kids haven't got enough experience to see through an Appeal to Ignorance fallacy."

Why of course, and this has happened, here are some references for you:

http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/
http://www.arn.org/

If you're belief in evolution is not a conviction, you'll view the evidence at the preceding sites objectively; otherwise, you'll submit to the typical subjective ways of the evolutionist!

7:51 AM


Lord Runolfr said...

Here's a URL with a large list of scientists, many of whom are NOT religious at all: http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/scidoubtevol.htm

What you have is a list of people who "have publicly expressed serious doubts about Darwinism, other naturalistic theories of life's origin, or have expressed support for intelligent design theory, either in scientific journals, books, web-documents, letters, or other public statements". In my admittedly brief examination of the list, I haven't seen anything to suggest that any of these people are non-religious. In fact, the list shows that many of them are open Creationists. From what I understand, your spokesperson, Michael Behe, is in fact quite religious, but I'm still looking for a definitive statement from him on the matter.

Please, tell me why these scientists are trying to push their work on grade school students instead of publishing research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. That's how real theories develop credibility and earn their places in textbooks. If real research is in progress (and I'll look at the resources you cited on that matter), then ID will earn its place in the scientific community and work its way into textbooks just like Evolution did.

9:34 AM


Mike said...

Sorry, many typos, this is the corrected version - typing too fast ;-)

"In my admittedly brief examination of the list, I haven't seen anything to suggest that any of these people are non-religious. In my admittedly brief examination of the list, I haven't seen anything to suggest that any of these people are non-religious."

But have you otherwise? See, this is the kind of subjectivity I'm talking about. The fact, it so obviously seems, is that you don't want to find out that many of those "respectable" scientists are non-religious as it hurts your conviction.

"From what I understand, your spokesperson, Michael Behe, is in fact quite religious, but I'm still looking for a definitive statement from him on the matter."

I would like to see a statement from him that suggests he is. Please let me know when you find one as I have not. Even if you do, it still doesn't "prove" that ID itself is religious. By the way, one not need be a "spokesperson" in order to see the flaws in macroevolution. Macroevolution does that well on its own. For some solid examples of what I'm talking about, please visit this URL: http://www.scienceagainstevolution.org/

"Please, tell me why these scientists are trying to push their work on grade school students instead of publishing research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. That's how real theories develop credibility and earn their places in textbooks. If real research is in progress (and I'll look at the resources you cited on that matter), then ID will earn its place in the scientific community and work its way into textbooks just like Evolution did."

The reason why, in my opinion of course, is because macroevolution pretends, by using fuzzy science, that the origins of life "evolved" when in fact there's no evidence supporting such a claim. ID exposes such an issue and proposes an alternative. Why is it so wrong to teach a scientific alternative when evolution clearly does that same? Why is it so hard to assume that inanimate matter did or did NOT, by "chance", turn into complex life? ID proposes that it didn't and evolution proposes that it did. Isn't that the basic difference? I see no problem with that. But of course, I'm opened minded to any possibility. If evolution can prove that life "evolved" then go ahead and make a case for it and i'll listen with all ears. But at the same time, I'm open to the possibilities ID proposes as it too makes sense. It makes even more sense then life happening by "chance" as evolutionary theory requires. And you can no longer run under the umbrella of "religion" to defend macroevolution and to bash ID - it doesn't work any more and people are starting to see that. Otherwise more than 34% of the population would most likely believe in evolution.

11:51 AM

Lord Runolfr said...

My goodness... my first round of dueling blog posts. Do note, mike, that one of your reference sites lead me into a long article on "specified complexity". This exchange is turning out to be educational, if not in the way you hoped it would.

Lord Runolfr said...

Just to sum up, according to Phillip E. Johnson of the Discovery Institute:

The objective ... is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus'. -- Reference

It's hard to claim that ID isn't driven by religion when the primary advocates are saying that pushing religion is their goal.

Lord Runolfr said...

Here's another beauty:

The purpose of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Club is to:

·Promote, as a scientific theory, the idea that life was designed by an Intelligent Designer

·Educate people about scientific problems with purely natural explanations for the origins and evolution of life

·Challenge the philosophical assumptions of Darwinism, naturalism, and materialism

·Hold, through other arguments, that the identity of the Designer is consistent with the Christian God.

-- University of Oklahoma Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness Club

No, there's nothing religious about ID at all... really. They just happen to be trying to connect ID with Christianity on their web page for no reason.

They also say:

One may believe the intelligent designer to be whatever seems to them most reasonable. That is, some might identify the Intelligent Designer as Jehovah, Allah, a cosmic life force, space aliens, whatever. Nonetheless, the IDEA Club at OU feels it is necessary to acknowledge that we believe the existence of an intelligent designer to be, at least, consistent with traditional Christian belief and especially theism in general.

They absolutely don't want you to think that they're a bunch of atheists... no siree.

Lord Runolfr said...

And as for the big names in ID...

William A. Dembski, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in mathematics, philosophy
Master of Divinity in theology
Associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science, Baylor University
Senior fellow, Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology, religious studies
Senior fellow, Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture


That establishes their religious attitudes reasonably well. The remaining big name in ID is...

Michael J. Behe, Ph.D.
Ph.D. in biochemistry
Professor of biological sciences, Lehigh University
Senior fellow, Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture


Behe's religious affiliations aren't publicized the way Dembski's and Well's are, but according to Wikipedia, he is a Christian.

So, we're again left with a the simple observation that no one jumps to the ID conclusion who doesn't have a religious background. Indeed, you pretty much have to come from a "God made the universe" upbringing to buy into the "theory" of Intelligent Design.

Lord Runolfr said...

Since we've established that the major PhDs behind the "Theory" of Intelligent Design are all fellows at the Discovery Institute, let's look at the DI's motivation.

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature -- Reference

Again, we see that the ID movement is firmly rooted in religion.

Lord Runolfr said...

For a moment, let's ignore the obvious religious motivations for pushing ID and consider its scientific value.

1) ID makes no predictions, so it has no scientific value.
2) Because of #1, ID is untestable, and an untestable theory is inherently unscientific.