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Jan. 28th, 2005 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearposted on talk.origins by me, earlier today.
gpatton@bayou.com wrote:
>> I have heard of the theory of evolution for over sixty years. But it
>> has only been the last few years that I heard of the theory of
>> intelligent design. Was the theory of intelligent design created, or
>> did it just evolve from creationism? If it was created, why was it not
>> intelligently designed?
long story short (too late), a few details possibly wrong, but you can get the drift. also, my view implies something of a "conspiracy" to do some of the actions; at the detailed level, prior to the creation of the "Design Institute", most things were just done by one person or another, with others being supportive but not yet a formal community. more detailed/accurate descriptions can be found on pandasthumb.org and talkorigins.org, but there's a bit more scientific jargon involved in taking apart the specific ID claims (what few there are).
put simply, the concept and terminology of intelligent design (its hardly a "theory" by any stretch, much less a scientific one) came about (as i read it) as a direct result of the supreme court decision in 1987 that teaching creationism in schools violated the separation of church and state doctrine inherent in the standard interpretations of the 1st amendment. prior to 1988, the terminology simply didn't exist, hence why its only recently that you can find references to it.
since creationism, creation science, and any references to the biblical view of genesis were finally deemed "off limits", some within the creationist camp decided to find a new angle to get their anti-evolutionary views into schools.
so they went to the least common denominator, "well, SOMEBODY had to do it" and wrapped it up in pseudo-scientific lingo called "design" -- "some intelligent designer did it, but we make no claims as to who or what that designer was". From there, the concept actually needed some "evidence" to support it (in addition to pulling in the exact same bogus "evidence against evolution" the creationists have been tossing around for 150 years). In comes Behe and/or Dembski with this brilliant idea of using the same statistics by which archeologists and anthropologists measure the possibilities of intelligence behind the design of tools of the past, and apply them to nature itself.
their dramatic (like, duh) result: nature is too complex and full of "irreduceable complexity" (as in, if any one part didn't work, it never would have worked at all) to have come about by chance. ergo, it was "designed".
all hogwash, of course. falls deep into the flawed argument from incredulity -- i simply can't imagine that X is possible, therefore Y. most of the rest of their arguments fall into the "God of the Gaps" -- we don't know what specifically causes mutations that effect speciation and have never actually seen it happen, therefore only God (or some Intelligent Designer") could have done it.
but there you go. beyond these scraps of "not X therefore Y", IDers have done little else except repeat the same "anti-evolutin" crap the creationists have done, publish a ton of books (going straight to the scientifically ignorant public, bypassing peer-reviewed journals where true science is evaluated for correctness and validity before it ever gets anywhere), and come up with this huge document describing a 3-stage approach whereby they bypass normal scientific channels and go straight to the politicians and school boards to *Wedge* their anti-evolution propaganda into biology classes.
they have even admitted that this Wedge document is legit.
much of their anti-evolution rhetoric includes what we refer to as "quote-mining": they try to argue from authority by actually quoting evolutionists out of context (usually hypothetical questions from speeches and lectures, meant to foster the rest of the presentation much like the "was darwin wrong" question on the cover of a recent national geographic).
[an aside on how science doesn't argue from authority though it seems that they do:
scientists don't really argue from authority though to the outsider it often seems that way. when an outsider hears us go "Einstein said so", they thing we're just naming Albert as an authority and they should just trust us because Einstein's a famous bad-ass. the reality is that when scientists mention a quote from another scientist it means "he published his conclusions which i'm referencing now, and you can go look it up and see all of the data that led to his conclusion which i accept as being valid research yada yada yada".
often scientific terminology and short-hand, like the use of the words "theory" and "prove", are taken out of context because their general meaning is not the same as their meaning within science. the most obnoxious example is the continued stressing of "theory, not a fact".]
--
of course, all of this ID crap really amounts to attempting to assert, scientifically, that God really exists. in this, they're just as annoying as the extreme athiests who use evolution and other scientific studies to "prove" that no God exists at all, simply because the science contradicts all current spiritual texts on the matter. to my mind, science and religion should stay utterly appart.
to my mind, science shouldn't even be in the business of "proving" God or not. science deals with nature and natural causes. God can take care of his own.
talkorigins.org has links and posts that take apart most of the writings of the IDers for the MANY flaws and lies, and has pointers to critical reviews of the Wedge document, including several that show it was and is a legitimate document within the DI.
even philosophically, many of the ID arguments don't hold up. they often talk about this perceived perfection of a jigsaw puzzle that is human life without any regard to the many times it falls apart from within (like immune system failures such as MS and Leukemia).
gpatton@bayou.com wrote:
>> I have heard of the theory of evolution for over sixty years. But it
>> has only been the last few years that I heard of the theory of
>> intelligent design. Was the theory of intelligent design created, or
>> did it just evolve from creationism? If it was created, why was it not
>> intelligently designed?
long story short (too late), a few details possibly wrong, but you can get the drift. also, my view implies something of a "conspiracy" to do some of the actions; at the detailed level, prior to the creation of the "Design Institute", most things were just done by one person or another, with others being supportive but not yet a formal community. more detailed/accurate descriptions can be found on pandasthumb.org and talkorigins.org, but there's a bit more scientific jargon involved in taking apart the specific ID claims (what few there are).
put simply, the concept and terminology of intelligent design (its hardly a "theory" by any stretch, much less a scientific one) came about (as i read it) as a direct result of the supreme court decision in 1987 that teaching creationism in schools violated the separation of church and state doctrine inherent in the standard interpretations of the 1st amendment. prior to 1988, the terminology simply didn't exist, hence why its only recently that you can find references to it.
since creationism, creation science, and any references to the biblical view of genesis were finally deemed "off limits", some within the creationist camp decided to find a new angle to get their anti-evolutionary views into schools.
so they went to the least common denominator, "well, SOMEBODY had to do it" and wrapped it up in pseudo-scientific lingo called "design" -- "some intelligent designer did it, but we make no claims as to who or what that designer was". From there, the concept actually needed some "evidence" to support it (in addition to pulling in the exact same bogus "evidence against evolution" the creationists have been tossing around for 150 years). In comes Behe and/or Dembski with this brilliant idea of using the same statistics by which archeologists and anthropologists measure the possibilities of intelligence behind the design of tools of the past, and apply them to nature itself.
their dramatic (like, duh) result: nature is too complex and full of "irreduceable complexity" (as in, if any one part didn't work, it never would have worked at all) to have come about by chance. ergo, it was "designed".
all hogwash, of course. falls deep into the flawed argument from incredulity -- i simply can't imagine that X is possible, therefore Y. most of the rest of their arguments fall into the "God of the Gaps" -- we don't know what specifically causes mutations that effect speciation and have never actually seen it happen, therefore only God (or some Intelligent Designer") could have done it.
but there you go. beyond these scraps of "not X therefore Y", IDers have done little else except repeat the same "anti-evolutin" crap the creationists have done, publish a ton of books (going straight to the scientifically ignorant public, bypassing peer-reviewed journals where true science is evaluated for correctness and validity before it ever gets anywhere), and come up with this huge document describing a 3-stage approach whereby they bypass normal scientific channels and go straight to the politicians and school boards to *Wedge* their anti-evolution propaganda into biology classes.
they have even admitted that this Wedge document is legit.
much of their anti-evolution rhetoric includes what we refer to as "quote-mining": they try to argue from authority by actually quoting evolutionists out of context (usually hypothetical questions from speeches and lectures, meant to foster the rest of the presentation much like the "was darwin wrong" question on the cover of a recent national geographic).
[an aside on how science doesn't argue from authority though it seems that they do:
scientists don't really argue from authority though to the outsider it often seems that way. when an outsider hears us go "Einstein said so", they thing we're just naming Albert as an authority and they should just trust us because Einstein's a famous bad-ass. the reality is that when scientists mention a quote from another scientist it means "he published his conclusions which i'm referencing now, and you can go look it up and see all of the data that led to his conclusion which i accept as being valid research yada yada yada".
often scientific terminology and short-hand, like the use of the words "theory" and "prove", are taken out of context because their general meaning is not the same as their meaning within science. the most obnoxious example is the continued stressing of "theory, not a fact".]
--
of course, all of this ID crap really amounts to attempting to assert, scientifically, that God really exists. in this, they're just as annoying as the extreme athiests who use evolution and other scientific studies to "prove" that no God exists at all, simply because the science contradicts all current spiritual texts on the matter. to my mind, science and religion should stay utterly appart.
to my mind, science shouldn't even be in the business of "proving" God or not. science deals with nature and natural causes. God can take care of his own.
talkorigins.org has links and posts that take apart most of the writings of the IDers for the MANY flaws and lies, and has pointers to critical reviews of the Wedge document, including several that show it was and is a legitimate document within the DI.
even philosophically, many of the ID arguments don't hold up. they often talk about this perceived perfection of a jigsaw puzzle that is human life without any regard to the many times it falls apart from within (like immune system failures such as MS and Leukemia).
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 09:12 pm (UTC)(note: I don't consider the ID'ers vision or of or relation to God to be my own).