I first noticed the phrase “Intelligent Design” about ten years ago. Not long after,William Dembski produced his website, Uncommon Descent, and declared his intentions:
This blog is for me mainly to get out news items about the ID movement and my work in particular. For more sustained writing and development of my ideas, I refer you to my website: www.designinference.com. I am not a journalist nor do I intend to become one. Thus this is not “The ID Answer Man” or “Ask Your Questions about ID Forum.” If I don’t respond to your comments and questions, even if they are good comments and questions, understand that I have way more commitments than I can fulfill, and that I will only occasionally contribute to a comment thread here.
Finally, there is one cardinal rule at this blog, namely, I make up the rules as I go along. In other words, these policies can change at any time. Moreover, if they change, it will most likely be in the direction of curtailing the time I need to spend with comments.
I made an early assessment of ID here. And I made the confident and wrong prediction that ID would fade completely from public view within five years. Dembski has since relinquished the site to one Barry Arrington, a lawyer by profession, and there continues to be the same consistency in moderation. “I make up the rules as I go along” could equally be Arrington’s mantra. Since Dembski’s withdrawal from public discussion, though (well indeed, since I first heard of “Intelligent Design”), I’ve seen no genuine effort to convert the claim that ID has some scientific merit into reality.
What I think I see now at Uncommon Descent, the only remaining discussion venue I am aware of where ID is still claimed to be real, is a gentle decline that may take a generation. What I don’t see at UD are many young or female advocates and no young, female advocates. What I no longer see is the pretense that ID is a useful scientific paradigm rather than a banner for the religious right (white male) to gather around.
Who’s left there with anything interesting to say? Who is left at UD who merits attention and consideration rather than being ignored? Anyone at all?
Bueller?
Behe is in only a flesh wound mode.
The less insane contingent at UD continues to hammer the theme that anything really complicated is designed.
Much like ID itself.
It’s not religious, but we’re going to be complaining forever about the evil of “darwinism’s” effects upon religion.
You can’t criticize “design” for being “poor”–and we’ll ignore forever that when it’s “poor” it’s so due to evolutionary constraints–but junk DNA doesn’t exist, unless at whatever level we think is consistent with “good design.”
Darwin was a good person who believed in academic freedom and/or he’s the Satanic inspiration for Nazism, eugenics, etc. Never mind the fact that science isn’t beholden to Darwin, except when we insist that this fact proves that Darwin has to be wrong altogether.
We’ll make up “Darwinism” as we go along, too, and it will be in line with whatever misconceptions we prefer. Thus, “Darwinism” is inconsistent with “stasis,” plus horizontal transfers of DNA just plain contradict “Darwinism,” cause we said so. Unless it’s not–we’ll decide from post to post.
Design is whatever we say it is at a given time, totally consistent with evolution, or completely contrary to evolution, and remember that evolution is however we misconstrue it to be at the relevant time.
Basically, Dembski could have said that UD would be about making up everything as it goes along.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
In addition, they use “materialism” to mean anything and everything that they want it to mean, and if pressed, the same three or four quotes from Lewontin, Rosenberg, and Provine are trotted out over and over. It’s hardly surprising that they think that “emergentism” or “non-reductive materialism” is incoherent. And because they have an “us-vs.-them” mentality, all criticisms of materialism go in one big blender and everything that sounds even vaguely like materialism goes in the other. I don’t even think that they understand the views that they endorse, like Nagel’s.
Personally, I quite like Timaeus, but he’s a philosopher, not a scientist. From what I understand, he’s interested in whether or not intelligent design is true, not whether or not intelligent design is a good scientific theory. (This position involves the thought that metaphysics can arrive at truths that science cannot get to. To put it politely, that’s highly controversial.) But I’d also add that Timaeus, for all his cultural conservativism and Neoplatonic metaphysics, is much less doctrinaire than the other UD regulars who know some philosophy. One can actually have a pleasant rational dialogue with Timeaus. I’m not sure I’d say that about anyone else who comments at UD on a regular basis.
Kantian Naturalist,
I’ve encountered one or two. They don’t tend to stick around.
A while ago KF was discussing FIASCO when it got to the point of talking about CAD style representations of his fishing reel. He swerved by noting it would require “serious reverse engineering” or somesuch to actually determine the specific FIASCO levels present, and rambled about arcs and tangents and that for a bit instead.
So if he ever applies himself and pushes through the wall and just perhaps wonders how he could actually model a “box of cogs” and perhaps say something about the possible configurations they could take and what could happen and started to write some code or otherwise do real work then in a decade or four I reckon he’d have something worth reading at the end of that, even if only tangentially related to the starting point.
You just know something interesting is likely to fall out from such investigations somewhere along the line. I did some minor searches and found a nice thing about evolving clocks: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/29/how-to-evolve-a-watch/
Not sure that was the one I watched, but you get the idea. That that’s almost a decade old. What could KF have done since then to show why clocks need Intelligent Designers, I wonder, if he’d got his hands a bit dirty with code?
They started an ID “lets actually do some science” Wiki before. Joey something perhaps? I used to visit it. Joey as the only contributor, more or less. Then one day it just up and vanished. I guess Joey wised up.
I think that, at some point long in the future, if KF actually stopped talking for a moment and actually did something, he could do some interesting work. Even if it was work that as, IIRC Ann Gauger found out, totally contradicted his desired outcome.
Especially in that case. Of course. But either way, something.
Right now UD seems like a tour through some kind of institution. Each poor bastard shouting their lines regardless of the input stimulus as anyone at all walks by. Then subsiding, waiting, until the shouting starts up again from one side of the room to the other, in the same order, with the same old cries.
is all genetic change really accidental? Evolutionists just baldly declare that it is cuz they can’t figure out any way it could be otherwise. sobs one.
Darwin explain the origin of species? He did not do that. mumbles another.
Finally at the end of the room. Someone looks up from their book filled with minute scratching like a spider run amok over an inkpot:
A reality beats a rhetorical talking point every-time.
Indeed it does, Indeed it does. Your move UDites….
@ KN,
I found Timaeus a bit wordy and his recent comments have too much “grumpy old man” for my taste. I did find his rehash of the Gonzales affair with commenter skram amusing.
I’m inclined to regard Vincent Torley as the acceptable face of ID. Maybe living in Japan has something to do with it.
As far as I can tell, Barry just keeps enough anti-ID commenters around so that the others can gang up on them. But Barry himself is completely incapable of having a civil and rational discussion with an ID opponent without resorting to insults and arrogance.
As with any blog, it is the moderator who sets the tone of discussion. Because of Barry’s poor behaviour, the other ID proponents follow his lead. Where an ID opponent will get banned for even suggesting, indirectly, that Barry may be misrepresenting the evidence, his fellow ID proponents are encouraged to be rude and disrespectful towards any who may disagree with the party line.
And yet, you guys not only keep taking the tour, you keep discussing, debating and arguing about that which you insist is dead and irrelevant. If you consider a subject dead and irrelevant, yet you keep arguing about it, discussing it, and visiting sites basically dedicated to it, one wonders, what does that make you?
Are you the Guardians Against the Dead and Irrelevant? Superheroes, maybe, protecting society from what you think are discredited ideas that nobody is even paying attention to in the first place?
**golf clap** Bravo, men. Bravo.
But, one wonders, why are you focused your efforts on what you think is such a dead concept? Aren’t there other ideas out there that are much more dangerous, and just as incorrect? Just as non-evidenced and fundamentally faulty?
How about fundamentalist Islam? Wouldn’t it be much, much braver and of far more importance to find some pro-Jihadist sites, or some pro-ISIS sites, or some other actually dangerous “creationist” worldview forums and try to argue them out of their views?
I mean, isn’t the ID community small potatoes and comparatively benign? Why bother with a handful of neglected commenters that no one is even paying attention to? Why not create a site dedicated to arguing against worldviews of those who are actually killing people by the thousands, beheading innocent people, blowing stuff up, etc?
Or, if that’s too scary for you, surely you should take on astrology. Why not find astrology or mediumship sites and ridicule them? Go to their sites and get thrown off, then document it here and complain – I mean, shouldn’t “the skeptical zone” branch out some, if ID is dead and irrelevant? A lot more people believe in mediums and astrology than even know about ID, right?
One can have a sort of morbid curiosity in the dead and irrelevant. Some people study ancient history. Me, I take an interest in religious nutcases. The psychology of religious nutbaggery is intriguing, and it also makes for good laughs.
It’s kind of like watching the Mormon church as it gradually implodes. Not terribly significant, but satisfying as well as entertaining nonetheless.
William,
Odd then how the topic of conversation at UD is almost always evolution.
If evolution is dead and irrelevant, why do you keep talking about it?
Braver? Words on the internet won’t hurt me, Islam or otherwise. It’s not about bravery.
More important? Religion will be gone in a few more generations. I can do little to hasten that, it’s happening quite fast enough on it’s own.
So no, one source of TARD is quite sufficient thanks.
Sure. Start an OP.
Are astrologers trying to get astrology taught in schools as science?
No? Then perhaps there is your answer. I know you would find it difficult to understand from your unique ‘perspective’ but some people actually care that what children are taught has some basis in reality. We all know about your views on reality already, so I can understand if you can’t understand this point. Hence the interest in UD over and above that given to other pseudoscience sites. Perhaps.
I don’t think anyone said that creationism is dead–in the sense that it continues to prevent good science education, at least. It’s a slowly declining problem, but ongoing nonetheless, although the bit that some forum blather’s going to do about it seems to be minimal. ID as a part of creationism remains a part of that problem, as some old boilerplate like Meyer’s latest revives at least a few religious folk with every “new” book.
Brave? Sheesh, anyone who think plonking out a few words on the internet is brave at all–save perhaps for a quite few exceptions–has delusions of grandeur. That said, how is opposing creationism not opposing fundamentalist Islam (possibly some of the real baddies aren’t creationist, but I suspect most are)? Most of us are hardly in any position to pretend any good knowledge of Islam, and aren’t at all interested in wading through a bunch of nonsense not pertaining to anything met in our lives (it’s difficult to understand well from the outside, I’ll wager). Our opposition to creationism is certainly better than the DI’s support for Islamic pseudoscience.
I think for many of us this is mostly a bit of entertainment, watching a scam shift and change–and end up with much special pleading to “defend” itself–as science proceeds to amass way more evidence for evolution. It’s not especially inspired, sadly, but still instructive. Pretty much like watching Pharyngula go cult-like and slowly decline into meaninglessness is interesting and somewhat educational.
I doubt any of us is opposed to laughing at mediums and astrology, but these scams are mostly not serious attempts at supplanting well-established science. ID/creationism is interesting to many of us largely because it involves issues of epistemology and science.
Considering the long periods of inactivity here of late, I don’t think we can generally be charged with any obsession over it. Indeed, wasn’t UD recently crowing about how this forum has been dead so often? But I like it to light up once in a while, as the intersecting issues are normally of interest to me.
Glen Davidson
William J. Murray,
“How about fundamentalist Islam? Wouldn’t it be much, much braver and of far more importance to find some pro-Jihadist sites, or some pro-ISIS sites, or some other actually dangerous “creationist” worldview forums and try to argue them out of their views?”
But Islamic jihadists are not claiming that their beliefs are based on science and objective evidence. They do not hide the fact that their fight is a religious one.
“Why not create a site dedicated to arguing against worldviews of those who are actually killing people by the thousands, beheading innocent people, blowing stuff up, etc?”
I thought that ID was about the science, not about a worldview.
WJM, I can’t speak for others but I frequent UD because it claims to be about advancing the science, which I have seen precious little evidence of, and welcoming of dissenting opinions, which I have also seen precious little evidence of. I am not saying that you are responsible for the totalitarian moderating policy; from what I have seen, you are honest and relatively civil in most of your discussions. But many others at UD, and the moderator himself, could use more of the honesty that you display.
Yeah, I’ve said it before and here I am saying it again.
For many people it’s just a bit of amusement while eating a sandwich at work.
Yet for the UDers it’s the entirety of what they believe in and what they believe will eventually be believed by everyone.
That never ceases to amuse me. It’s like watching a clown car fall off a cliff.
Should I laugh? They are clowns after all.
William wrote at UD
Not sure this is true.
I’d suggest Aristotle was a remarkably good scientist and the first whose research has survived. His work on cuttlefish is quite remarkable and his discovery of the hectocotylus and its purpose was not confirmed till over two thousand years later. I’d agree that early natural philosophers of the Medieval period accepted and worked within religious authority but science does not really get going until the end of the seventeenth century, the start of “The Enlightenment” when the shackles of religious authority began to be shrugged off.
Perhaps William would like to show the way by explaining how science can be re-coupled to theistic principles and how that will be more fruitful than not doing that.
How sexist. I guess that’s par for the course with your ilk however.
It’s hard to spot when a slow decline becomes terminal.
Well, I was more interested in the maneuverings to get a bogus pseudo-scientific “theory” taught in US public schools. It’s not the ideas. I grant everyone the right to their own beliefs. But ID was paraded as real science and, by some, dishonestly so.
It’s not the ideas, per se, that are dangerous. It’s people who are dangerous. And dangerous people often cynically exploit whatever vehicle for their advancement is at hand.
Again, it’s not Islam that is dangerous. It is the cynical Jihadists prepared to exploit impressionable and disaffected youngsters to strap on explosives.
I don’t know about brave, but dialogue has to be an option worth trying; probably not with the exploiters, but with those they exploit.
Again, religious intolerance and fundamentalism is a perversion of a free and fair society. But IS terrorist leaders are exploiting the ordinary people to whom they have access and seek to control. They are not reasonable people and I suspect military action will have to continue and escalate to contain the problem. There will be, I fervently hope, a time when reason, diplomacy and negotiation will take over.
Outside the US, that might be true, though it is impossible to be sure what people really believe. Travelling hopefully is perhaps less disappointing than arriving. Anyway, people are entitling to believe any daft thing they like. I object to people being exploited. TV evangelists, bogus fortune tellers and faith healers all make money off the back of gullible people. These scammers should be challenged to support their claims. False claims from such individuals should have to be justified by evidence. Advertisers are subject to legal sanction if they make false advertising claims. Why not TV evangelists?
That’s not quite right, and the historical details are important.
What gets underway with the Scientific Revolution (Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, Hooke, Boyle etc.) is not a rejection of “religious authority” per se but a rejection of Aristotelian physics and Aristotelian biology. These were “religious” only in the sense that Aristotelian science had been incorporated into Catholic doctrine in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Galileo’s distinction between “the Book of Nature” and “the Book of Scripture” – the 17th-century version of NOMA — was widely accepted throughout the early modern period, including by scientific geniuses like Leibniz and Newton. Even though they did not accept the Aristotelian science that was established as authoritative for the Catholic Church, many of these scientists were devout (if heterodox) Christians.
The first major philosopher to argue that science can be decoupled from any metaphysics (theist or otherwise) was, I would say, Hume. Before Hume, you did find a lot of Spinozists (esp. in France), but they were as committed to materialist metaphysics as their political adversaries were to theistic metaphysics. Hume helped lay the groundwork for subsequent phenomenalism and agnosticism in Huxley, Mach, Russell, and the logical positivists.
Though the history of the Enlightenment is not my strongest of areas — I’m much better in everything from Kant onwards — I have heard a lot of good things about Jonathan Israel’s massive, three-volume history of the Enlightenment. Israel’s key innovation is to distinguish between “the moderate Enlightenment” and “the radical Enlightenment”. The moderate Enlightenment is the Enlightenment of reformers who question some aspects of established authority but generally speaking don’t want to rock the boat too much, because they are sitting in it. This is the Enlightenment of Locke, Newton, and Kant. The radical Enlightenment begins with Spinoza’s all-out attack on organized religion (and the political system which relies on organized religion for its legitimizing ideology) and continues through La Mettrie, d’Holbach, Diderot, and (I would say) Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud.
(Nietzsche is usually read as an anti-Enlightenment thinker, but I think he is best read as a radical Enlightenment thinker who is critical of the moderate Enlightenment but whose criticisms of the moderate Enlightenment were co-opted by the Counter-Enlightenment that culminated in Nazi Germany.)
In short, it’s hard to generalize about “the Enlightenment” (also, the French, German, Scottish, British, and American Enlightenments are all very different!), with some Enlightenment thinkers affirming that science relies on theistic metaphysics (even if heterodox by the standards of organized religion) and other Enlightenment thinkers embracing a radical critique of theism. It’s important to get the history right so that we know what we’re talking about when someone brings up Newton or Galileo as a model of a theistic scientist.
Yes, well, the English had their revolution a century too soon. 😉
This on the Islamic State’s anti-science stance:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/isis-targets-evolution-iraqi-schools
More or less expected, but it’s good to have the evidence that is readily available.
Glen Davidson
“If it was funny, clowns wouldn”t be doing it.”
— Terry Pratchett
Galileo was certainly striking at Aristotelian “science,” but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Inquisition explicitly and, apparently, as final authority, invoked Scripture against Galileo’s position. And Galileo’s distinction between the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of Scripture” wasn’t really traditional, for he was basically driving a wedge between the two, while Scripture had long been held to be the ultimate authority. Of course he could and did appeal to Augustine’s statement that more or less would allow nature to prevail over mysterious scriptures, so it’s not like there are no counterarguments. And the Inquisition perhaps allows that argument when it claims that the Copernican model is contrary to reason, yet Scripture is given the final authority in any event (whether the matter of final say has ever been worked out well according to their beliefs yet, I wouldn’t know).
Still, it may not have been so much a matter of a religious shift to give science the final word as it was a shift in science, because the latter began to be capable of deciding many important issues during the Enlightenment, especially with Newton. In practice, though, this shifts power from the Church and gives it to science, so that the effect is for religion to recede as final arbiter. Newton, especially, seems exceedingly pious, although heterodox, but really, it’s Newtonian physics that turns God into Watchmaker who merely wound it all up and just let it tick for many of the leading thinkers.
The triumph of evolution was merely the final major act set in motion by many, but notably by Galileo and Newton. Get the religious clutter out of the way and find the best explanation of effects by invoking observed causes. No big deal, it was what had happened numerous times previously, except that there just weren’t the kinds of mysteries left over that could be ascribed to God that there had been in previous advances in understanding. And so this advance is especially despised, although the importance of life’s creation in Abrahamic religions matters is clearly crucial to multitudes.
Glen Davidson
If only he didn’t believe in levitating monks.
Alan, you’ve been noticed:
An Instructive Discussion… (by Timaeus)
Flash! Bang!
They owe me a new irony meter.
Are you an unlevitating atheist, then Piotr?
Right. If I recall correctly, the Inquisition took exception to the Galileo’s claim that the sun could not have stopped during the battle of Jericho. Galileo thereby took upon himself the authority to interpret Scripture. The Church frowned upon that.
Actually, it’s not clear to me that there weren’t medieval antecedents to this distinction, but I admit that Galileo was a revolutionary. But I wasn’t pointing to Galileo as traditional; I was simply pointing to Galileo as an example of how the competing jurisdiction of religion and science evolved gradually over a long time. It wasn’t “there were the bad Dark Ages, when religion had complete authority, and then Science! Freedom! Democracy!” And while no one here has endorsed that caricature, I want to put us on guard against it.
Yes, I believe that Laplace occupies an important place here.
I’m a bit nervous about the triumphalism here, to be honest. For one thing, I do not think that evolutionary theory really answers any of the questions that previously required theistic responses. It seemed to, for a time, but only because it undermined a certain tradition of Christian thought, natural theology. There’s still plenty of room for a robust theology of nature.
For another, I think — and here I’m going out on a limb — that Darwinism produces this intense negative response not because it puts God out of a job, but because it emphasizes creativity and contingency over essences and absolutes. I don’t know all the details, but I suspect that fundamentalism (both religious and secular) emerges as a reaction to pragmatism. For pragmatists, morality is a type of experimental inquiry, because the answers aren’t already out there, knowable by a priori reason or divine revelation. Pragmatism is anti-absolutism, and that makes some people nervous — especially in an increasingly uncertain world. That goes together with the conception of the human intellect informed by cognitive neuroscience, according to which we simply don’t have the kinds of cognitive capacities that could intuit a priori moral absolutes, even if there were any.
When you make morality an experimental science, you make priests obsolete, including secular priests.
Well, yes, I think I’d agree in those senses, more or less. I’ve never liked the idea that you just rip into the God of the Bible and you’re dealing with theists, because the Biblical God is pretty much what most theists believe. For, people actually have a feel for the kinds of problems that gave rise to the “philosopher’s god,” like where is there something rather than nothing, and what makes for right and wrong. Then there are issues of disenchantment of the world and “where do we go for meaning?” And no, sorry Dawkins, it may work for you, it doesn’t work for a lot of people.
But with science becoming very important as arbiter, and evolution giving us organisms and their forms (with origin of life still not answered, true, but that’s your big miracle now?), you just don’t have a mass of phenomena where magic at least might be the answer, if you’re relatively naive scientifically and philosophically. Why do flowers please us so, and the peacock dazzles like he does? Not magic, not to please us, basically it goes to sexual success, according to science.
To be sure, there are problems that may vex regarding morality, existence, aesthetics, and living in a world that awes us, but you don’t get the flash and bang of miracles with evolution, rather, perhaps an odd insinuation into the world by God, or maybe God is rather more remote than even that. Once we have evolution we’ve filled in the major observable gaps, with at least some promise for answering the whys of the mysteries of mind that aren’t fully explained. And then, both rainbows and flowers exist and existed without us appreciating them at all, and are explained by physics and biology, so they really don’t fulfill some purpose for humans, at least.
The average theist is disturbed by some of the “great questions” of philosophy, it’s true, but a large number of them aren’t willing to go for the philosopher’s god. That’s why ID is never like a real scientific idea at all–being limited to a specialized field of study–or even a real philosophy, rather it’s a broad “argument” against “materialism” and for a magical God, not God as a deep substrate to reality or some such thing. They want the pleasure the peacock gives to be magical in humans, and the peacock to exist due to magic by God. Evolution “doesn’t explain free will” or what-not, so why bother with it at all–or if at all, why not as merely incidental?
Unfortunately for them, it is not incidental, it explains both superficial traits and extremely old and “essential” features that follow hereditary constraints, and not the loose limits (if any) of an extremely capable designer (apparently one that understands nearly all of the biochemistry and ecologic interactions of every last bug and bacterium). It makes no sense, unless, of course, finding “the purpose” simply is the imperative, rather than explaining the details that have been discovered. There’s space for God, then, for many people, there’s just no place for evolution which doesn’t provide “the answers” demanded. For science, though, there’s really no place for magic.
Glen Davidson
So, I deliberately misled, did I? From someone who completely falsely calls my ideas on consciousness “mystical” in nature? Not unless electric fields and their interactions are mystical. Why Timaeus cares not a whit about honesty and truth when he wishes to attack I don’t know. But I can guess.
On to the BS about ID not being creationism, here’s Phillip Johnson:
http://tinyurl.com/o7xylwy
Creator and creating, but not creationism, eh? I’ve heard presentations by Behe, by the way, and he complained there about the “no ghosts” rule in science, illustrating it with a crossed-out “ghosts” sign from Ghostbusters. Yeah, I really am reaching in calling him a creationist, aren’t I?
Thomas Jefferson has been labeled by them as a Design proponent because, you know, he actually referred to the Creator. Sure, design but not creation–makes no sense.
At best they’re presenting some weird hybrid of evolution with design/creation, something occasionally compared with technological evolution–as if there were any but the barest similarities between the results, and especially with the patterns produced. Some of them accept “common descent,” and yet they’re not appealing to normal descent processes, but deliberate interventions by a “Designer.” No, no creation here, nuh uh, a designer stepping in because “natural processes” supposedly are inadequate, yet adhering to the limitations of evolution (or expanding on by remaining true to them as far as possible–but why?) almost as if evolution were responsible.
It is perhaps one of the most stupid concoctions ever produced, although I can even see where they might prefer not to be thrown in with the YECs, despite their attempts to make the latter their allies. But aside from the fact that they most certainly do not throw out Biblical magic believers no matter how absurd their flood geology might get, the fact of the matter is that IDists of various stripes essentially believe in a few creations, very many, or in numbers between those two, and together they demand that “design” be taken seriously. They’re not creationists because some of them see evolution as having an incidental role while every “large innovation” is created by something having the knowledge of a god?
Well, ok, enough repetition of the reasons why we do include IDiocy in creationism. I especially liked the Johnson quote, though, since it pretty much gives the game away, even though elsewhere he also hypocritically claims that ID isn’t creationism.
Whether a Creator does the creating is the issue. But how could you assume that it’s creationism?
Glen Davidson
How long do you continue to visit an establishment after you’ve determined it doesn’t have what you want?
William J. Murray,
“How long do you continue to visit an establishment after you’ve determined it doesn’t have what you want?”
Are you suggesting that UD does not welcome commenters who provide evidence that is contrary to Barry’s theistic view? Well, we all know this to be true, but as long as Barry insists that he welcomes dissenting comments (an obviously blatant lie) I will continue to post from different wiFi networks and gmail accounts (due to his moderating policies), not a difficult task given the amount of travelling I do.
When he finally admits that his goal for UD is to be an echo chamber for his brand of Christian creationism, I will stop viewing, and stop commenting. Or even if he would have the honesty to say that my comments are not welcome, rather than silently banning me. Until then, I will take him at his word that we are welcome there.
From an AIG article:
Emphasis added.
http://tinyurl.com/m6gtolw
Oh, I won’t insist that the author would necessarily call Behe a creationist, I don’t really know. The point is that even creationists who don’t much like ID see it as creationism–which also contradicts some of Phillip Johnson’s ignorant tripe about creationists not accepting ID as creationism. Some may not, but he wrote as if virtually none do. That it isn’t Biblical creationism is a typical complaint from them.
I don’t intend to argue with the disingenuous Timaeus, and certainly not on a forum where he brought up what I wrote with flat-out misrepresentations and ad hominem based on his false statements. I do not find him to be an honest or worthy disputant, and my point with this is just how normally ID is taken as creationism, that it is hardly misrepresentation to call it creationism, rather ID is something that not only appeals to other creationists as being one of them, it is also quite normal for them to be taken as creationists by other creationists, even when they fault them for not being Biblical creationists. This one example doesn’t show all of that–I’m not writing a paper for publishing–it’s just an example of what we see regularly on reviews of ID books and at UD, if less explicitly there than on the reviews.
Sure, one could argue that they shouldn’t be considered creationists–at least not those who accept common descent in any way, however incidentally. Particularly, it might make sense if they really tried to be distinct and do honest science regarding real design, rather than resorting to the tripe about design being obvious in life via life’s complexity and never doing genuine science about genuine design. But IDiots typically whine about the creationism label only when “Darwinists” use the term, rarely bothering to “correct” creationists who take them as also being creationists (and even then probably for the effect upon others). Creationists regularly write reviews about Darwin’s Doubt as a creationist work. It is, of course, a rehash of ancient creationist “arguments,” complete with the usual distortions of the data, like pretending that the genetic data don’t show common descent because of fairly modest disagreements between genetic trees.
When they start telling other creationists that they’re simply not creationists, because of the relatively rare outliers who “accept common descent” in some thoroughly compromised manner that has never been explained in design terms or design strategies, then one might contemplate whether it’s fair to use on a Behe, or not. So long as they don’t care that other creationists often–probably usually–see them as creationists, normally caviling when we note their extensive creationist tendencies and associations, the question isn’t really worth contemplating.
Glen Davidson
Really? Has Alan not read the peer-reviewed online journal BioComplexity, which publishes several articles per year, and has done so for several years now?
I can’t speak for Alan, but after Casey Luskin called my partner out for observing that the DI is not a “scientific authority on evolutionary theory,” she did look into BioComplexity. She wrote a blog piece analyzing its 2012 article, “A Tetrahedral Representation of the Genetic Code Emphasizing Aspects of Symmetry“. It was the only paper that year not coauthored by one of the journal’s editors. (I think that makes it one of the only two or three papers BioComplexity has ever published without one of its board members as an author, but I haven’t counted.)
Spoiler: “On final analysis, this paper isn’t really anything more than a rearrangement of existing information, trying (and failing) to find meaningful patterns in it. No new scientific knowledge has been the result. No further hypotheses were proposed. No discussion was provided of what future work might be done.” One of the authors showed up in the comments to complain a bit, but not much came of it.
Over at UD, Timaeus says, “BioComplexity represents an effort to make ID concrete in terms of detailed studies. Therefore Alan was wrong to say that ID was making no effort.” That’s quite a generous assessment. Publishing a journal may be an actual effort to put some teeth in ID thinking, or it may be an effort to make it look as if there is some rigor, or it may be a way for the ID luminaries to feel as if there is some rigor. Those are three very different things. I’m not a scientist, but I have not seen anything in BioComplexity (or in the opinions of people who are qualified to assess its work) that suggests it’s really stiffening the ID spine.
I found both Timaeus and his post to be precious.
He chides Alan,
“Has Alan not read the peer-reviewed online journal BioComplexity, which publishes several articles per year, and has done so for several years now?”
But then;
” I won’t let you draw me into a discussion about the merits of either the editorial practices or the articles in BioComplexity. ”
and then:
“This thread is not about BioComplexity, and I won’t let you hijack it. The subject is the relationship of TSZ to UD and ID in general. Stay on topic.”
Timaeus is but the latest tailor allowed to work with the finest invisible evidence thread for the emperor’s new clothes. The age old ID ruse of taking about having a thing rather than the specifics of it: Design! CSI! FIASCO! Journal!
Get a new trick, guys. But I see like Mullings and Arrington Timeaus is big on message control in a venue where my posts would never see the light of day. Imagine a world where these people had any power at all….
Also, for Timaeus’ consideration:
Pssst – this is an *open* venue, Timaeus, should you want to chat.
Hey, IDers, any of those 50 papers have the words “Intelligent Designer” in them?
What proportion had the word “evolution” I wonder?
Aurelio Smith gives us a not very sophisticated courtier’s reply:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply
“TSZ is like a little boy late to the emperor’s parade. He says “where are the clothes?”, looks round and sees everyone else has gone home. Does the emperor ignore the little boy or does he explain how he is mistaken and suggest he look at the very fine cloth on display at Biocomplexity?”
Seyz the guy who thinks faith healers are real. You’ve plenty to reflect on internally, William, before talking about other peoples motivations.
Even the creationists think BioComplexity is a washout.
Todd C. Wood:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/BIO-Complexity
If the YECs are not buying in….
I chose my words more carefully than Timaeus’ paraphrase. I wrote:
And I stand by my statement that no work has been done by anyone that genuinely demonstrates the reality of “Intelligent Design” as a scientific method, approach or hypothesis. Entailments? How, When? Where? What/Who? Criticism of a theory as inadequate to explain X is not an argument that we should adopt,,, well, what?
Thanks for the link, Colin. Excellent article and Fernando Castro-Chavez’ ad hominem comments that ignore the substantive points raised seem to endorse those points.
BTW, I’m flattered that Tmaeus should respond with a blog post at UD. In case he is unaware, I am currently prevented by account cancellation and an IP block from responding at UD so we shall have to manage with the megaphones unless he would like to pop over here. I will try and pick up on stuff as I have time and thank everyone for their contributions. I will try and make time this evening but it will have to fit around real life.
PS @ Timaeus
Glad you didn’t take offence a being called “grumpy old man”. I think I am beginning to suffer from that syndrome myself!
Interestingly, the some of the papers that Timaeus likes to talk to but not about have had some quite in-depth scrutiny here:
You’re welcome, UD.
Richardthughes,
Thanks for the link, Rich. Not that I’m qualified to assess Patrick’s post in detail but the summary is unequivocal:
PS you look remarkably like Joe Felsenstein in that avatar!
ETA
I see that due to a glitch the OP that Rich licked to was attributed to the wrong author. My comment and OP corrected.
OMagain,
I like Todd Wood!
Beneficial mutation 😉
Piotr Gasiorowski,
Sorry, Piotr. Thanks for the heads-up.