Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from a report in Geotimes by its editor David
Applegate's regarding the ID movement's congressional briefing on May
10. My comments are in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.geotimes.org/current/scene.html Geotimes ... July 2000 ...
Creationists Open a New Front David Applegate ...
What geoscientists might find remarkable about this briefing was its topic:
Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design and its Implications for Public
Policy and Education. Intelligent design is the latest variation of creationist
theory, and it may be ... the first wave of the creationists' new front: the
U.S. Congress.
[The continual attempts to try to depict ID as just another "variation of
creationist theory" (i.e. YECs) will eventually backfire. When it
becomes clear that IDers are not all, YECs, and in fact some (if not
most) IDers aren't even theists, it will have expanded the meaning of
"creationist" in the public mind well beyond YEC. It would probably
have been a better tactic to have distinguished between creationism and
ID and then tried to play one off against the other]
Last summer's events in Kansas...Since then, efforts to discredit evolution
have intensified ... Until now, the issue has been quintessentially local. But
the May 10 briefing could represent a shift to a national stage.
[It is a bit of evolutionist mythology that the creation/evolution "issue" has
only ever been local, e.g. red-necked Bible thumpers from the deep South.
But he is probably right that Kansas where ID gained national prominence
and now this briefing represents a shift of ID to the national stage.]
...about a dozen members of Congress - including two members of the
House Science Committee - served as honorary "hosts" (mostly in absentia)
or introduced the speakers. The briefing and reception were held in a
hearing room of the House Judiciary Committee, the space having been
arranged by ...chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution. ... Petri
is first in line to become chairman of the House Committee on Education
and the Workforce ... the committee responsible for federal education
programs may be run next year by a man who expressed his hope for a
"swelling chorus" of support for intelligent design creationism.
[It is interesting to see that ID may have support among members of the
"Science", "Judiciary", "Constitution" and "Education" Committees!]
Those who attended the briefing were treated to a three-hour primer on ID
creationism from some of the movement's leading lights, including ...
Stephen Meyer, ... Michael Behe and ... Phillip Johnson. ... Joining them
was ... Nancy Pearcey ....
[Hopefully the audience learned the difference between "ID" and
"creationism" at this "three-hour primer", even if Applegate did not!]
Most of the ID advocates were excellent communicators. ... leaving the
audience convinced that life could only, obviously, be the handiwork of an
intelligent designer. Consider it Occam's razor run amok: confronted with
two explanations, one (seemingly) dizzyingly complicated and the other
disarmingly simple, choose simple. Choose design.
[Interesting how if simplicity is the criterion, Occam's razor supports
design! I was reading an old New Scientist which admitted this possibility:
"From those opposed to religion comes the view that God is an
unnecessary hypothesis and should become redundant according to
Occam's principle that 'entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity'. Occam may not have agreed - he was, after all, a
theologian. And his razor appears double-edged: many of our
correspondents argue skilfully that a simpler Universe includes
God." ("The God letters," Comment, New Scientist, 15 May 93.
http://archive.newscientist.com/archive.jsp?id=18730200)]
... They did not thump Bibles. ... nor did they seek to explain that the
Grand Canyon was formed during the Noachian flood. The intelligent
design creationists voiced their acceptance of the depth of geologic time ...
even certain aspects of evolution itself. In fact, ID creationists not only
accept the advances of science, they argue that those advances have
revealed a universe of physical and biological systems so complex that they
could not possibly have come from evolutionary processes. .... This
approach cleverly places ID theory at the cutting edge of scientific
discovery ....
[Maybe readers might be wondering why Applegate still keeps calling them
"creationists" if they "voiced their acceptance of the depth of geologic
time". But he does at least realise that ID is not based on what we don't
now know, but on what we *do* now know!]
Intelligent design, they said, is one side of a debate between two
competing, empirically derived scientific theories - a debate that does not
include religion. ... But while ID creationists tout the empirical derivation
of their theory, their intentions are far from secular. As Pearcey wrote ...
while [intelligent design theory] does not require any theological
presuppositions, it has theological implications: It is resolutely opposed to
the atheistic, purposeless, chance view of evolution taught in the power
centers of science."
[*Obviously* ID "is resolutely opposed to the atheistic, purposeless,
chance view of evolution". But what Applegate does not point out is that
the latter "has theological implications" too!]
... Ironically, the ID creationists accept the achievements of science and
indeed place their theory at the pinnacle of modern knowledge, but also
demonize the scientists who made those advances ... Johnson portrays
scientists as an elite priesthood ... There is a disconnect between the pains
they take to portray the debate between ID and evolution as purely
scientific and this separate line of argument portraying Darwinism as a
religion.
[This is false. Johnson does not "portrays *scientists*" as "an elite
priesthood" (for starters Mike Behe is a scientist) but the science
*establishment*. In fact unless Applegate equates "scientists" with
"Darwinism" his own words above make this distinction.]
The speakers also tarred evolutionary theory with the controversial findings
of social scientists who apply Darwinism to human interactions. Pearcey
shocked the audience with a recent sociology book that asserted rape was a
natural male impulse... She also blamed Darwinism for the excesses of
popular culture ...."
[Darwinists are always claiming that Darwin is more than anyone else
changed our view of who we are. Only in this month's Scientific American,
Mayr claims that "Modern thought is most dependent on the influence of
Charles Darwin" (Mayr E., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought,"
Scientific American, July 2000, p.67), so if they claim the credit, they have
to also take the blame.]
... Intelligent design will be even more a part of the landscape if its
partisans succeed in convincing the often warring factions within the
creationist camp to unite under their big tent.
[Applegate at least acknowledges that there are different factions within
creationism, and ID, being more general (and aligned with none of them),
can unite them under its "big tent".]
... Two of the briefing speakers coauthored a legal guidebook on how to get
intelligent design material into public school science curricula. Their efforts
threaten to erode science education at the very moment when our
technology-based society needs it more than ever.
[Applegate just *assumes* that ID would "erode science education",
without any evidence. If anything ID would repair the erosion to "science
education" that shackling science to a materialist philosophy has caused. It
can't be good for science to be virtually at `war' with 90% of the
population. The *real* threat to science is postmodernism, which takes
Darwinism's anti-design seriously and concludes that there can no such
thing as science! The atheist vice-president of Australian Ratiionalists,
Professor Brian Ellis, observes:
"First, neither science nor religion can survive in an era of social
constructivism. If scientific theories are social constructs, and
scientific disputes are power struggles between competing scientific
elites, as the social constructivists say, and there are no rules for
resolving these disputes which have any objective validity, then
science has no natural authority. The test of a theory about reality,
according to this view, is whether it works for the individual or
tribe who accepts it." (Ellis B., "Has reason a future?," Australian
Rationalist, No. 42, Summer 1996/97, pp.14-19, p.18)
So ID might well be science's last hope?]
... both the House and Senate were actively considering legislation to
overhaul federal K-12 education programs. .... If creationists choose to
move into this arena and gain support from leading members of Congress,
good science will face an even tougher challenge.
[ID is no threat to "science and math education". ID is not even a threat to
evolution, in the sense that does not support evolution being banned. ID's
stated position is that it wants *more* about evolution to be taught:
"Phillip Johnson takes a different approach. `I always say we ought to
teach the young people much more about evolution than the science
educators want them to know -- because the science educators don't want
them to know about the problems, they want them to think that all you
need to have is variation and everything is perfect."'
(http://www.cbn.org/newsstand/stories/991007.asp)]
Applegate directs the American Geological Institute's Government Affairs
Program and is editor of Geotimes.
[...]
(c) 2000 American Geological Institute. All rights reserved. ...
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"It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart
disagreed with his observations he *rejected the observation* and followed
the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static
filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not
fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing. If this were just an
individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural
phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural
intellectual patterns based on past 'facts' which are extremely selective.
When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don't throw out
the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep
hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries,
before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two
have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too."
(Pirsig, Robert M., "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals," Bantam: London, 1991,
pp.343-344. Emphasis in original.)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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