Posted on 11/14/2009 8:48:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” biologist Richard Dawkins brands those who doubt Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolution as “history deniers,” even stooping to compare them to “Holocaust deniers.”
In today’s highly charged political climate, scientific debates over controversial subjects such as climate change and evolution increasingly substitute such overblown rhetoric for careful analysis.
We commonly see one side depicting the other as not only wrong, but as unreasonable, irrational, or immoral. As a result, two terms are presently in vogue to describe those who question scientific ideas: “Skeptic” and “Denier.”
In practice, the terms have virtually the same meaning – a person who questions an idea - but vastly different connotations are associated with each. “Skeptic” is used when one wants to sound like a critical thinker, portraying oneself as a rogue academic who bucks the trend in order to break new ground.
In contrast, “denier” has all kinds of pernicious connotations and is used to dismiss critics as close-minded, relying on sinister motives to reject some obvious fact.
These connotations often slip by unnoticed, subconsciously shaping public perceptions of an issue. They are powerful tools of persuasion in our conformist culture, where everyone wants to be a chic, hip, and intelligent skeptic, but no one wants to be a clumsy, dimwitted, or even worse, morally deficient denier.
To be sure there are deniers of certain recent historical facts who hold unquestionably false and abhorrent views. But evolutionists abuse those connotations when co-opting the denier rhetoric into the debate over intelligent design (ID).
Dawkins’ latest diatribe notwithstanding, examples of this rhetoric abound. In an oped published by The Los Angeles Times in 2007, Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal gloated that, “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not spare deniers of evolution.”
P.Z. Myers, an outspoken evolutionary biologist, calls pro-ID biochemist Michael Behe an “evolution-denier who claims that there is no evidence for evolution.”
I submit that labels like “denier” are meaningless, conversation-stopping terms. The only information they convey is that the person levying the insult is so supremely intolerant (and unconfident) that they must assert that anyone who disagrees is in denial.
Scientists who challenge Darwin do not discard all of his ideas. No serious “evolution denier” disagrees that natural selection is a real force, and that antibiotic resistance must be fought by modern medicine.
Rather, scientists like Behe observe that the only way to combat anti-biotic resistance is to intelligently design drug cocktails based upon the fact that there are limits to evolutionary change.
Behe is not alone in his views. Over 800 Ph.D. scientists have courageously signed a “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism,” declaring that they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”
Such scientists commonly cite the inability of blind and unguided Darwinian mechanisms to generate complex cellular machinery and the billions of bits of language-based information encoded in our DNA.
As one signatory, Stephen C. Meyer, argues in his new book, “Signature in the Cell,” the discovery of the specified digital information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA.
In place of rhetorically charged labels like denier, I suggest using more civil terms like “critic” or “skeptic,” even when describing one's opponents. ID proponents are critics of Darwinian evolution.
And many evolutionary scientists are skeptics or critics of ID. Such terms accurately reflect that both sides have serious scientific reasons for their positions.
Once the rhetoric is toned down, perhaps we can have a real discussion about the evidence and find out which side’s skepticism is most convincing in this intriguing debate.
-- Casey Luskin is an attorney with the Discovery Institute, working in public policy and legal affairs.
“Let’s Restore Civility to the Debate”
You can’t argue with a psychotic Leninist...it’s just not possible.
IMHO
I'd like to point out that the above sentence would be more accurate if the words "facts are" replaced "skepticism in" ... giving us ...
Once the rhetoric is toned down, perhaps we can have a real discussion about the evidence and find out which side’s facts are most convincing in this intriguing debate.
The following are a few of my favorite quotes on Intelligent Design, dedicated to the geniuses who cannot find any “evidence” of it in nature.
“This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” —Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), The Principia
“The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation ... His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.” —Albert Einstein
“Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us. ...the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.” —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
“The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the work of the Creator.” —Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
“One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. ... The better we understand the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based. ... I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life, and man in the science classroom.” —Wernher von Braun, father of the American space program
“I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. God cannot be explained away by such naive thoughts.” —Ernst Chain, Nobel-laureate biochemist
“So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. ... The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” —Sir Fred Hoyle, British astonomer (and self-professed atheist), from a lecture in 1982
“A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” —Sir Fred Hoyle
“The Darwinian theory has become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of scientific advance.” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist
“Much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: they stop thinking rather than stimulate it. Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist
Do you think any of these guys have “produced any “actual scientific results”?
Not a single drop on "intelligent design". If you are aware of any scientific literature on ID, I would love to see it.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” —Voltaire
That’s why people like you scare me.
I am a Christian. I also believe that science is important. Intelligent Design, up until now, isn't science. Intelligent design is faith. I'm sorry I scare you. In my real life, I comfort far more than I scare. God bless you and your faith in intelligent design.
I am a Christian too, and I am not one to judge others, but I simply cannot understand how anyone, let alone a Christian, could possibly deny the obvious reality of Intelligent Design. Do you believe that God didn’t design the universe, or do you believe he designed it in such a way that we cannot determine that it was designed? If it’s the former, then you are not a Christian. If it’s the latter, then you are at odds with the greatest scientists who ever lived, several of whom I quoted earlier in this thread and on my FR home page. With Christians like you, who needs athiests? As for your underhanded “blessing,” thanks but no thanks.
There is NO scientific literature on ID and yet ID claims to be scientific. Have faith in creationism, at least it is Biblical. ID is political nonsense.
Saying the same thing over and over does not make it true. You might be interested in an essay I wrote on the topic a while back:
I started to rebut your essay claim by claim but stopped when I realized that you have abandoned science, and logic, therefore, has no power over your beliefs.
In your essay you concede that there is no scientific basis for ID. Agreed.
I sure do not hear the Darwinists/evolutionists complaining about BamaKennedy using that scientific methodology to enforce his philosophy/theology called health care.
Now it may well take a few years of BamaKennedy's tried and true methodology for some to get a wake up and start wailing 'God' help US. It does not matter what anyone believes, we all will get that same return when our flesh dies.
>>I sure do not hear the Darwinists/evolutionists complaining about BamaKennedy using that scientific methodology to enforce his philosophy/theology called health care.<<
The difference is that the arguments for and against AGW are both scientific arguments. The people who argue that AGW is junk science are climatologists using scientific methods and principles to arrive at their conclusions.
The same cannot be said for critics of TToE.
If you have an alternate SCIENTIFIC theory that explains the billions of data points explained by TToE, now is the time to produce it.
>>Evolution is a belief, a faith, a religion. If you doubt their religion, you are a heretic.<<
I invite you to produce a scientific alternative theory to TToE.
Yeah, right! Oh, gosh, I’d just love to see your “rebuttal.”
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension skills. What I “conceded” is that ID is not “scientific” according to the Popper definition of what is “scientific.” But according to that definition, neither is the current explanation for the origin of life. Nor is SETI.
Go ahead, repeat once again that ID is not scientific. The more you repeat it, the more sure you can be that it is true.
As I said before, with Christians like you, who needs athiests? What is sad is that the ignorance you promote is keeping many others from becoming Christians.
I have never made any claims aboiut SETI. They do at least, however, have a stated hypothesis and they are trying to test it. What is ID's hypothesis and what are you doing to test it?
I’ll answer your question, but first I’ll ask you to back up your claim. Please tell me what SETI’s “stated hypothesis” is, and please tell me how they are “trying to test it.” Thanks.
I will paraphrase: “If there is intelligent life in the galaxy, then they will have created electromagnetic signals that should be detectable.”
They are searching for said signals.
First, I think the hypothesis is something more like, “other intelligent life exists in the galaxy (or universe).” As I wrote in my essay on ID, that is unfalsifiable, hence “unscientific” according to Popper’s “falsifiability criterion.” Think about it. How could anyone possibly prove that no other intelligent life exists in the galaxy, let alone the universe?
But let’s suppose your version is correct. If other intelligent life exists, then “they will have created electromagnetic signals that should be detectable.” That is also unfalsifiable. How could anyone prove that other intelligent life would not have created electromagnetic signals?
But that is all secondary. You said, “They are searching for said signals.” That does not answer my main question. How will they know if they find such a signal? In other words, how are they “testing their hypothesis,” as you put it?
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