There’s a lot of discussion of censorship swirling around the ID/evolution/online world right now, which I find very odd. Apparently the magazine Nautilus has closed a comment thread (without apparently deleting any comments) on the basis that “This is a science magazine, and our comments section isn’t the place to debate whether evolution is true”.
Accusations of “censorship” by “evolutionists” have been flying around for a while now, at least since the Expelled movie and it resurfaced regarding the withdrawal of the Biological Information: New Perspectives book from the Springer catalogue. And now, recently, Jerry Coyne has been named “Censor of the Year” by the Discovery Institute.
My own instincts tend against censorship, and although I do not think that all censorship is bad, I would certainly rather err on the side of too little than too much. Here, as I hope everyone knows, only a very narrow class of material is ever deleted, and only a very narrow class of offenses bring down a ban.
But what is censorship, and who, if anyone, is censoring whom in the ID/evolution debate?
Merriam Webster defines the verb to censor as
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages
So by this definition, any editing process that involves filtering out “objectionable” contributions or content amounts to “censorship”. But that merely passes the definitional buck on to the world “objectionable”.
For censor as a noun, it gives as its first definition:
1: a person who supervises conduct and morals: as
- a : an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter
- b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful
So now we have the additional concept of material “considered sensitive or harmful”. And if we check the definition of censorship, Merriam Webster gives as its first:
we find that being “exercised repressively” is also key to English usage. So let me define, for the purpose of this post, to censor as:
- [to examine in order] to suppress or delete anything the censor considers objectionable, sensitive, harmful, especially when exercised repressively.
So to what extent, if any, are ID challenges to evolution actually subject to repressive censorship by pro-evolutionary institutions? And to what extent, if any, are evolutionary challenges to subject to repressive censorship by ID institutions?
And while I realise this is a sensitive subject, let’s try to discuss it with as little rancour as possible!
What do you think moving a post to guano accomplishes?
Richardthughes:
Exactly.
I was routinely mocked and ridiculed at UD, but I enjoyed posting there. Why? Because I knew I could out-argue my UD opponents. Mockery and ridicule lose their sting when they come from a weak opponent.
UDers — Arrington, KF, Eric Anderson, and nullasalus are prime examples — like to talk tough, but they’re afraid to venture out of the warm, cozy, heavily-censored confines of UD. They’re like toy poodles who bark up a storm at a passing Great Dane, then run through the dog flap in panic when the bigger dog stops to look at them.
We are not afraid to post at UD, but UDers are afraid to post here. As KF would say, that speaks volumes.
Disapproval. Almost as severe a censure as being ignored. OT page no?
Alan,
WJM is unlikely to answer you.
William Lane Craig says it’s on p. 180.
keiths,
Thanks, Keith.
Not my saloon, not my rules. But funny how even the light moderation causes squeals because it is perceived as so darned asymmetric. Wrongly, I think, but neither of us is an independent arbitrator.
I’m guessing you see a more general problem for malaise in society if such a ‘gang’ takes over. Atheists are the barbarians at the gates – look no further than their meanness on blogs!
It removes posts that violate the rules of discussion from the discussion.
Yet they remain accessible and readable.
This is not a “wild west saloon” and I have rules. The consequence of violating those rules is that the violating posts are removed from discussion.
Your characterization of discussion here is way off beam, I suggest, William. Sure, things get heated, and people break the very clear rules.
Exactly the same happens at UD, except that the rules aren’t clear, and it’s not necessarily the “heated” people who are banned.
On the whole, ID opponents are perfectly happy to venture in to ID proposing sites and argue their case from a minority position. On the whole the opposite is not the case – you yourself are a noteworthy exception.
I see no obvious difference between the way ID proponents are treated here and the way ID opponents are treated at UD except by the site owner. Here the minority view is welcomed by that owner (me). At UD the minority view is heavily repressed.
It’s possible that ID opponents are slightly more likely to use “rude” words (although Joe G easily evens things out). But I am much more likely than the moderators at UD to take action when people treat others with disrespect – after all it is the key rule of this site.
And pointing out errors is cause for banning at UD. Barry’s egregious quote – mining continues apace.
I was banned from UD for calling Arrington a coward for banning Lizzie.
Just because you have rules, and just because there are consequences to breaking those rules, doesn’t mean that those particular rules, and those particular consequences, prevent this from being the equivalent of a wild west saloon where some obnoxious gang takes over and essentially runs everyone else off.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, or that you shouldn’t operate it the way you do, I’m just saying there’s a reason a particular clientelle has taken over and others avoid the place, and “skepticism” isn’t the determining factor.
I don’t agree that an “obnoxious gang” has “taken over this forum”. I do think that ID ideas are extremely vulnerable to criticism, whereas standard science isn’t. I think there is a real asymmetry, but I don’t think it’s because ID opponents tend to run ID proponents off sites. I think it’s because ID opponents have the confidence to confront the people who disagree with them, even on sites where they are in the minority, while ID proponents (yourself being an honorable exception) tend not to.
It could be because ID opponents are inherently more aggressive, but I honestly don’t think so.
I think you meant that the first people you invited were people from UD.
(Sorry for responding late, just catching up. The blog has been busy while I’ve been busy.)
I see your point, but I don’t think the two types of stigma are equivalent. Atheism, in the US at least, is stigmatized by many theists. A common reason for this in my experience is that some theists genuinely cannot understand that atheists simply don’t have any belief in god or gods. The idea is so foreign, certainly in the environment in which I grew up, that they assume that there must be some other reason for claiming to be an atheist. The worst of those assumptions (hating god, wanting to behave badly, etc.) are, unfortunately, often encouraged from the pulpit.
The stigma associated with being a creationist, on the other hand, is due primarily to the behavior of the young Earth creationists themselves. Their explicit anti-science views and their aggressive attempts to inject their sectarian dogma into public schools have earned them opprobrium.
Do the intelligent design creationists deserve to be tarred with the same brush? The cdesign proponentsists Debacle in Dover show that they do. When the words “creation” and “creationist” can be globally changed to “intelligent design” and “design proponent” without changing the meaning of a book, it’s a safe bet that they are synonyms. “Creation science” is just as anti-science as YECism and is designed to achieve the same political goals. Intelligent design creationism is just more of the same.
William,
Your thesis doesn’t hold water. Opposing viewpoints are mocked at both UD and TSZ. If mockery were the determining factor, then skeptics would avoid UD as much as UDers avoid TSZ.
The real problem is that UDers cannot defend their ideas in open debate with skeptics. We know it, and they know it.
In open debate, we win. Therefore we seek it out. In open debate, UDers lose. Therefore they avoid it.
Meh…I was banned at UD after I pointed out how quiet it became.
That seems the UD party line these days. TSZ is somehow associated with AtBC, which is of course Satan’s own website as far as UDers are concerned. UDers don’t have to reply to any challenges from there because you know, tone, and um, swears and …. er… Atheists (and that time we pointed out KF keeps outing himself by linking to his website where he names himself).
Of course the UD High Priests and us both know they wont venture out because in a frank and free exchange of ideas, they get their clocks cleaned.
UD is basically Fox News. I suspect many of the UD rubes would agree with this, because in their minds Fox News is fair and balanced, because Fox News says it is fair and balanced, and something that is fair and balanced wouldn’t lie to you, would it?
Not many people who behave badly call themselves atheists. I will grant the Soviets as an exception. I can only think that Gregory has this in mind.
But Gregory doesn’t usually talk about the misbehavior of secular Europeans. He rants about Americans.
I assume that when he rants about American atheists, he is referring to the educational-industrial complex, the university system.
I know there are atheist professors. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the majority.
Not where I went to college. the day I arrived we were notified that every student at every level was required to read Chardin’s Phenomenon of Man — the “Origin” book of theistic evolution.
Barry turned me into a newt.
I wouldn’t expect you to.
What a whiner! You got better, didn’t you?
Obnoxious relativism. Especially on the wife’s side.
Sitting on the sidelines here in Europe, it is hard to comprehend how a civilized country like the US can so vocally espouse secularism and yet be so inept in achieving it.
Proper legally supported secularism is the only way to ensure the rights and freedoms of all religious and non-religious groups. It’s not my business to interfere in the private beliefs of others and I thank others not to inflict their beliefs on me.
Of course that should not prevent public discussion of published religious claims, especially those that run counter to evidence.
William J. Murray,
OT William, Is Keith correct about page 180?
ETA
Your quote and the text in my copy of “The Grand Design” don’t match, William! *shocked*
The U.S. has never espoused secularism. Quite the contrary. The only actual legal prohibition is regarding something like the Church of England.
The absence of atheists in elected offices is due entirely to the proclivities of voters.
Perhaps off topic, but I find sitting on the sidelines and reading about a place is a bad way to find out about it. No place I’ve visited or lived has been like its image seen from afar. That includes Vietnam.
People who don’t want to or who are unable to defend their claims avoid this place, yes.
That’s why you’ll never see the likes of KF here. It’s also the same reason why he will never publish any of his work, despite having already written the equivalent of a careers worth of words (volume only obviously).
petrushka,
I thought Secularism was guaranteed by the constitution.
Separation of church and state and all that.
Sure, I agree there is no better way to see a country than to go there. I have seen Goat Island from Niagara but that is as close as I’ve come.
You can imagine, if you wish, that it is because of the superiority of your arguments that ID proponents don’t come here. You can imagine that they know this. You can imagine all sorts of convenient and self-serving, self-aggrandizing scenarios.
In the venue of real public debate by the heavy hitters, though, it isn’t the ID proponents that refuse to appear. It is the anti-ID critics that generally refuse to show up.
I can assure that as surely as you think you have cleaned their clock, they think they have cleaned yours – many times over. I’m sure you think that you’ve cleaned my clock several times over; while from my perspective, I consistently expose your foolishness, and irrationality. I would suppose we all think we’ve made our points in our own minds.
One of the reasons I’ll stop posting here for a few days is not because I feel like I’ve had my clock cleaned, but because at times the obnoxiousness, contempt, mockery and ridicule becomes so pervasive I’m content to let it speak for itself as a commentary on the “virtues” of atheism/materialism. I’ll peek in to see if the invective has died down and something interesting has been posted. I’ll participate for a while, but the pattern repeats.
Also, from the UD perspective, a good many of you deliberately martyred yourselves to get banned, so that you could say “I got banned because of X” and contribute to the self-serving narrative that UD doesn’t allow criticism of ID or that the contributors are “scared” of open debate.
Your narrative is not their narrative, regardless of your imagining it to be so.
But what about that discrepancy on your quote from page 180 of “The Grand Design”?
What an odd little essay. We don’t know anything and can’t know anything, therefore the existence of a transcendent Creator and Designer of the cosmos.
I think Hawking is stretching also. There are times when it would be best to lay out the self-consistent hypotheses and back away from conclusions.
No, it is not. That provision is intended to keep the government from having an official religion, not to keep people in government from practicing or exhibiting their religion (and “religion”, back then and to them, meant “Christianity”). Thomas Jefferson turned the national capitol into a church, got the army band and ministers to hold services there.
The attempt to reinterpret the constitution as a means of enforcing increasing secularism across the USA is a recent, ideologically-driven phenomena.
William you are technically correct, but it is perfectly legal to insist on a secular government and to insist that government not sponsor religion.
It’s for a lay audience, and Mlodinow is a co-writer (I’m sure he put in all the bad jokes). The diagrams are great and I almost think I understand the bit explaining Feynmann’s sum over histories (but only while I’m reading it)
Not those pesky atheists again! You see no reason for giving people freedom to think and express thoughts you might not agree with?
ID is dead. Why should anybody bother?
Outside of UD, where is ID gaining ground?
Yes, the pattern seems to be you vanish when a point you cannot or will not rebut is made.
Thanks William. Its because IDists are kind and gentle flowers, sensitive souls. Not because they don’t know the material and can’t make a decent argument. Their heavy censorship is to protect like minded folks [THANK YOU BIG BROTHER!]. And the fact that the “Heavy Hitters” (??!!!) sell popular books and want public debate* rather than submit scientific papers for peer review is because, erm, atheism and snark.
*Who are these ID proponents who like to debate?
That’s not quite fair. From his point of view we are denying him equal time. In schools.
Depends on what you mean by “insist”. It may or may not be legal to attempt to make the government “secular”, depending on what you mean by it. It’s legal to try and change laws or add amendments towards that end.
I have no idea how you got from what I said to this question. People are free to attempt to reinterpret the constitution towards their ideological ends if they wish and use whatever legal means they have at their disposal. It is not, however, the original intent, as demonstrated by what the founding fathers and actually did in office.
William,
If the UDers really thought they could “clean our clocks”, then they would take the fight to us instead of hiding at UD. By hiding, they raise suspicions that their arguments are weak. They know this, but they do it anyway. Why? Because it’s better to raise suspicions by hiding than to confirm those suspicions by losing in a free and open discussion.
Yes indeed. It’s a point I’ve made many times, and one of the motivations for this site.
So I do hope more IDists (or anyone who thinks something not-mainstream) will show up and that the mainstreamers will perhaps try harder to sit on their hands (not that most don’t, frankly) when faced with what seems like lunacy – and accept what they think looks like lunacy from the other direction too.
So to be clear, there is a belief that:
A group has overcome ‘Darwinian Evolution’ but refuse to to places where they can make their case because those ‘Darwinian Evolutionists’ are cyber-nasties?
???
Good job IDists never had to be part of a real revolution with in-real-life people and such!
I think the clutching of pearls is a mechanism employed since forever by pastors and preachers. Again IDs religious heritage is showing.
Lizzie,
I don’t think folks on either side need to “sit on their hands”,. If you think something is lunacy, then say so — but explain why, and be prepared to respond to counterarguments.
My beef with William is not that his positions are odd, nor that he ridicules us. It’s that he ignores questions he can’t answer and bails out of the debate when things aren’t going his way.
It’s the not-responding-to-counter-arguments that I find most frustrating.
I don’t know whether it looks like that from the other side as well.
William J. Murray,
Stream of consciousness.
Why do you use the word “ideological”? Seems pejorative. Atheism is just a non-belief in the sundry religious dogmas on offer. There is no cohesive atheist club, not even here at TSZ. Fellow commenters here differ considerably in their political views.
Well, Jefferson, the slave owner, was no saint; but he did have a good idea with the Jefferson bible.
Yes, and it’s this that shows his claim of symmetry between UD and TSZ to be false. Perhaps William can restore that symmetry by linking to an example of someone here being asked about “Darwinism” and running away when things get specific.
Furthermore, when William says this
he has evidently forgotten that the proof of the pudding is in the publication.
It may be the case that they think they’ve cleaned our clocks, but you have to go to UD to find that out!
Whereas for them to find out that their clock has been cleaned they simply have to go to any science news site and search for “ID”. That this is not self-evidence to the likes of William shows how deep down the rabbit hole they are.
Yes, ESP has been the subject of scientific investigations. That does not make ESP scientific. Likewise ID. Their claims that it is science do not make it science.
You are simply wrong. Legal is whatever the laws and courts say it is, and the laws and courts have upheld the removal of religious objects and such from government buildings and sponsored events. Your not liking it is irrelevant.
You are free to argue it is inadvisable, but the law is supporting secularization.
It seems that being “satisfied with the debate” means making your points and ignoring rebuttals.
Honestly, this is the only way ID survives. If it were to acknowledge the rebuttals it would have to vanish, there would be nothing left!
But the point for me is that not responding to counter arguments is how ID has got itself into the state it has – an insular group of people circling the wagons against the materialists. So when individual ID proponents do that, they are just writing small what is writ large for ID in general.
When every question about ID can result in KF posting the same “needle in a haystack” essay, that means that KF does not care what the question actually is.
That William appears to believe he’s regularly cleaning the clocks of people here is no surprise to me. If he was aware of the real situation he’d not be an ID supporter in the first place!
That seems to be a misunderstanding.
The government espouses secularism only in the sense that the government is restricted from engaging in religion.
It would be more accurate to say that the US espouses entrepreneurialism. And that leads to entrepreneurial religion with the government forced to mainly sit on the sidelines.
It seems to me that the result is not at all surprising.