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.
What is the ID hypothesis and what is the experiment?
That's because actuary isn't science. The fallacy is the assumption that anything that involves math is "scientific". You will have to find some other way to conflate science with liberalism.
You claim to be a Christian but don’t believe that an intelligent God designed life? This doesn’t make any sense.
“What is the ID hypothesis and what is the experiment?”
OK, if you want to play that game, let me turn it back on you again. Remember, *you* are the one who said that SETI has a hypothesis and is testing it. So I ask you:
What is the SETI hypothesis and what is the experiment? What is the “experiment” to determine if a signal from space originated from intelligent life?
I’m trying to get you to think, but you are not cooperating. If you think about it, you will realize that the answer for ID is in principle very similar to the answer for ID. Not exactly the same, but similar.
I don’t get it either. If you believe in that God created the universe and life, then what is “science” but the study of the Creation? Yet HospiceNurse and many others apparently believe that absolutely no trace of design can be determined by “scientific” methods.
I realize that some very accomplished scientists hold that view, but it has always baffled me. A common view of Catholics, for example, is that the Neo-Darwinian ToE is absolutely, completely true — but it was God’s way of creating life. But the ToE specifically rules out the need for *any* design whatsoever. The ToE says, basically, that you are welcome to believe in a Designer if you wish, but it is really nothing but a fantasy. Sorry, but it’s more than a fantasy.
No the deception is that evolution is 'science', rather than science fiction. The system of the scientific methodology is like a computer program that gives a computer its brain. That 'scientific methodology' is liberalism in action. If generation after generation of young minds are taught they are animals then do not be surprised to observe base animal instincts become the norm from the top down, or the bottom up. Why do evolutionists think their science is just about biology and a family tree?
I believe that God created everything and used evolution to create us. You will note that ID proponents NEVER offerscientific support for ID and yet they claim it is scientific.
You'll have to do better than simply saying "the scientific method is liberalism" over and over again to make that case.
I will attempt to and I will use that computer analogy to do so. But I know going out the gate of my explanation that you and I are using different programs. The computer was designed to store, use collect, etc., data using specific programs to function. Liberalism is a program by design to follow established knowns about human nature.
Evolution or the story of only fits within the established knowns of human nature. The designers by their very bold and proud statements says they cannot account for or 'test' things they cannot see. NOT that these things do not exist but they can't account or manipulate evidence in the world outside of their naked flesh eyes.
BUT as liberalism is about the programming of a system that requires the individual which literally exists to no longer exist as the individual. BamaKennedy and his bunch will point to the 'spirit' of their programs, but even BamaKennedy told that gal that he nor his experts did not have the ability to 'test' the 'spirit' of a person's will to live, thus, advisers would be needed to determine if an old American grandma would get a 'pill instead of a procedure', because of her age.
Now the majority of Americans are so steeped and immersed into the 'spirit' of the methodology they are willing turning over to liberalism what the Heavenly Father gave each individual when He created their soul/spirit. Evolution ignores who is in charge and who is going to be visiting face to face with each and every one of those individual souls/spirit yet future.
Ok, it seems you believe in Intelligent Design and that it responsible for life on earth. Your position is that Intelligent Design is true but not scientific. So why the hostility towards those you agree with? Why bash something you believe to be true?
Except that creationists have no interest in evidence. Otherwise they wouldn't have to lie and continually mislead their readers.
This is a transparent marketing ploy to sell more literature.
Among the "established knowns" about human nature is that it resists and eventually rebels agains socialism. It is demonstrated over and over again in history. Socialism is a perfectly good, workable system - for ants and bees. They are all identical clones, so the survival of the individual is irrelevant. People are different, and socialism just plain doesn't work for people and human nature.
I think your argument is flawed because the premise is invalid.
That IS NOT my position. Intelligent design is not supposed to reference a deity. I do not believe that biological systems were "designed" at all. I know there is no scientific basis for thinking design is involved. If there was, some ID proponent would have offered it.
You stated that God created everything. You also wrote that biological systems were not designed at all. So, you believe that God created biological systems but didn't design them at all? How is this possible? Wouldn't God Who created everything qualify as an intelligent Designer?
Like most devout followers of darwin who also claim to be followers of Christ, your position on evolution and ID doesn't add up. Its illogical to believe that God created everything but designed nothing.
You’re putting us on, right? Do you honestly believe that no one has offered any evidence of ID? Well, let me offer you some very strong evidence right now.
We don’t have a clue about how the first (or any) living cell came to be. Not only that, but mathematicians have shown that it is extremely unlikely to have happened by random chance. Furthermore, experiments intended to demonstrate that a living cell could have formed by random chance have completely failed.
Yet ID deniers insist, against all mathematical analysis and experimental results, that the first living cell formed by random chance. Forget for now that their claim is “unfalsifiable” and therefore “unscientific,” according to their own arguments against ID. When pressed, they claim that, given the age and size of the universe, “anything can happen.” But they do not understand combinatorics. If every cubic yard of the universe was filled monkeys typing randomly for 100 times the age of the universe, they would still be extremely unlikely to type the first page of Macbeth correctly.
If you saw the words “Hey, you ID deniers are bozos” written on the sands of a beach, would you claim that it got there due to random winds, with no intelligent design? Of course not. Why? Because common sense says that it could not have happened by random chance. The same reasoning applies a billion times more to the simplest living cell, which is perhaps more complex than all of man’s technology.
Quit parroting nonsense about ID, and start thinking for yourself.
Yes
If you understood the subject at all, you would see that these two sentences are mutually exclusive.
Can you explain this to me? It seems like an intelligent God Who intentionally created life would have had to design it. I guess if you believed that God guided evolution you might not consider it to be ‘design’ but it still would be. Using a process to design life would still be design. If you believe that life came about randomly, then God didn’t do it and Christianity is false.
God “designed” the laws of the Universe and set it in motion. Life evolved naturally based on those laws. That is why biology is so sloppy. A perfect God would have designed perfect life based on a perfect design concept. Our biology is a design mess.
It’s a figure of speech. I could have worded it more precisely, but if that is all you can find wrong with my post, we’re making progress.
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