Talk:Intelligent design movement/Archive 1

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Beginning Intelligent design article split

This article began as a split from Intelligent design, as that article had grown to 65kb.--ghost 15:02, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok. Did a restructure, and it seems coherent enough for now. Will need references, etc.--ghost 18:24, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to tip my hat to FeloniousMonk for helping with the article split. It's alot of work, and I appreciate the results.--ghost 12:55, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. But as I said on my talk page, you've actually done all the heavy lifting here. And seeing the two articles now broken out, I admit you were right to suggest the split, and my reluctance for it was not warranted. The thanks here go to you. FeloniousMonk 19:14, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nice URL

Short, simple, to the point. FuelWagon 19:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Shorten intro

Any chance someone can shorten this intro? Maybe move some stuff to the body of the article? FuelWagon 06:43, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

ID is intended to detect design among biological information. The philosophy behind it and the nature of the source of intelligence(s) is beyond the scope of ID. See the history:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=526

--Swmeyer 23:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Really? You might want to consider reading the article again and follow some of the links to read the supporting cites. Also, the Discovery Institute makes dissembling its agenda a matter of policy. Just as it also makes obfuscation of that policy a matter of policy as well. This is covered in the article and supported by many, many credible cites. You should consider reading them. The NPOV template is unjustified. FeloniousMonk 23:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Let me give an example. Atleast Discovery's response should be included. Probably more of a description of how the movement got started should be included. The assertion that "the Discovery Institute makes dissembling its agenda a matter of policy" should not be the interpreting lens through which all else is discussed. We should leave that up to the reader.

Swmeyer 13:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

More reason this is should be marked as not of a NPOV:

The movement's Teach the Controversy campaign is designed to portray evolution as "a theory in crisis" and leave the scientific establishment looking close-minded, that it is attempting to stifle and suppress new discoveries supporting ID that challenge the scientific status quo. This is made with the knowledge that it's unlikely many in the public can or will consult the current scientific literature or contact major scientific organizations to verify Discovery Institute claims and plays on undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and distrust of science and scientists that can be found in particular segments of American society. In doing this, the movement claims that it is confronting the limitations of scientific orthodoxy, and a secular, atheistic philosophy of Naturalism. The ID movement has attracted considerable press attention and pockets of public support, especially among conservative Christians in the US.

This whole paragraph, while attempting to provide ID proponents' perspective, actually gives it in the context of a conclusion that ID proponents know there is nothing to their doubts of Darwinian evolution or their hypotheses about design and are really after power. They clearly do not believe this:

• Dembski's math is foundational to ID and makes up the basis of the hypothesis

And has been roundly criticized. What's the point of saying this? We all know that Dembski does some weird probability calculations and believes he is above criticism. Joshuaschroeder 15:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Regardless of whether it has been roundly criticized (mostly by people who don't get it), he legitimately there is something substantive to it. And using the argument that we all know it is akin to playground mockery.

• They believe that their perspective goes back as far as Aristotle.

Irrelevent. In the history of human thought, there is nothing new under the sun. Joshuaschroeder 15:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It is not irrelevant to bring in this point because ID proponents believe they are consistent with a history of thought associated with design in nature. It shows they do not think they are putting forth a false argument in order to win political something, but rather fit within a legitimate lineage of thought.

• They attempt to engage the data as evidenced in Meyer's latest publication that cites 148 sources.

Not an attempt to engage the data, but rather an attempt to write a "critical review". This is like claiming that a follower of modern geocentrism who writes a review is attempting to engage the data. Engaging the data is responding to a specific research question, not writing a survey piece. Joshuaschroeder 15:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

While I did use data in this sense as the articles, etc., what you put forth is a legitimate but different approach to what he did. Yet, he still attempts to put forth conclusions based on past studies. And to equate this with modern geocentrism proves my whole point--your anti-religious bias gets in the way of you actually engaging ID ideas as they are, not as they are set up as straw men to be. It's unfortunate.

Swmeyer 19:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Swmeyer 15:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

As demonstrated above, your evidence for this does not pass the muster. Joshuaschroeder 15:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

You dismissed my evidence without giving it a chance. There is nothing that could "pass the muster" that you would require because there is no argument that can be put forth to convince a skeptic. Also unfortunate.

Swmeyer 19:42, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph is accurate as it stands. Any accurate and fair article on ID cannot rely solely Discovery Institute statements as being definitive. This is because the institute and its leadership have explicitly stated that obfuscating their agenda is matter of policy, as stated by Johnson and as outlined in their Wedge strategy. Outside observations as well as the Discovery Institute's statements are what is the article. You and I have discussed this already, and you know that the policies and guidelines at Wikipedia do not demand that articles assist their subjects in their dissembling. Stop trying to spin this as an NPOV issue. It's a specious claim that wastes the time of other good faith editors. FeloniousMonk 16:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I do not agree that they are dissembling what is a religious conspiracy. Please read this post that describes their take on what happened with the "wedge document". Is this dissembling or bringing the appropriate context to the document (rather than the context you want to impose on the document and the movement).

--Swmeyer 18:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I've read the text. Fully, and studiously. I feel ill. I'd like to point out a few points,. that should blow it out of water, and would be fatal to any other text:

At the bottom, it features a link: "Read the Wedge document for yourself". One would expect this link to lead one to the actual Wedge document, so one could 'read the Wedge document for [oneself]'. It does not. Instead, it links to a PDF version of the article. What are they trying to pull here? Surely, that is not the manner of a respectable institution.

A similar contention can be found in the section "What the Document Actually Says", or rather, the title of said section, as the section itself contains no quotes from the actual document. In fact, it merely states things like: "It simply doesn’t advocate the views they attribute to it." and "this document does not attack 'science' or the 'scientific method.'

The document ridicules 'evolutionists' for believing the Discovery Institute has a biblical agenda, when ironically "the Chairman of Discovery’s Board was Jewish, its President was an Episcopalian." Huh? (see the last point in 'The Rise of an Urban Legend')

Please stop asking people to read this. It's drivel, honestly. Please, re-read it yourself to convince yourself of the validity of my points. Please re-read the article to convince yourself that the article makes no factual claims, no referenced claims, and rather is simply an emotional appeal. Please. -- Ec5618 11:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I've read it already. And their explanation itself serves as evidence they are dissembling. If someone has been shown to dissembling, then their protestations they are not are not just dubious, but disingenuous. And it's not just the Wedge document that indicates that they are dissembling, but Johnson and others call for dissembling explicitly outside of the document. FeloniousMonk 18:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Show me one place they explicitly call for dissembling their religious agenda.

--Swmeyer 18:22, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Here:

• "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." --Phillip E. Johnson Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin in Christianity.ca. [1]
• "So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do." --Phillip E. Johnson Touchstone magazine. Berkeley’s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson [2]
• "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." --Phillip E. Johnson Witnesses For The Prosecution in World Magazine. [3]
• "The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'" --Phillip E. Johnson Church and State Magazine [4]
• "If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this,...We call our strategy the "wedge."" --Phillip E. Johnson pg. 91-92, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997
• "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," --William A. Dembski Touchstone Magazine [5]
• "... intelligent design should be understood as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in Scripture. ... To be sure, creationists who support intelligent design think it does not go far enough in elucidating the Christian understanding of creation. And they are right! ... Even so, there is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This gives intelligent design incredible traction as a tool for apologetics, opening up the God-question to individuals who think that science has buried God"" --William A. Dembski designinference.com [6]
• "Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration." --William A. Dembski designinference.com. Intelligent Design's Contribution To The Debate Over Evolution: A Reply To Henry Morris [7]
• "The best way to resist being labeled, however, is not by denying the labels but by developing our own vocabulary and ideas that set the agenda for the debate over biological origins. In this way, the other side is increasingly forced to engage us on our terms. Consider the following terms: (1) irreducible complexity; (2) specified complexity; (3) design inference; (4) explanatory filter; and (5) empirical detectability of design. The other side now spends an enormous amount of time discussing these terms and the ideas underlying them. Insofar as the other side engages us on our terms, it is in no position to label us. Of course, the other side sees this, and therefore self-consciously makes a point of labeling us and our program. Labeling is therefore inevitable. Still, we do ourselves good service by, as much as possible, steering the discussion to matters of substance and away from labels. I've found that clarity and consistency in how we express our ideas is the best antidote to labeling by the other side. Increasingly, the media are grasping our ideas and expressing them not with tendentious labels but in our own words. For instance, the media now consistently refer to "intelligent design" and not to "intelligent design creationism." --William A. Dembski designinference.com [8]

In response to your inevitable denials of the obvious: Just because you don't find these words of the leading ID proponents compelling proof that they are talking out of both sides of their mouths, other objective readers have and do. Those who view Discovery Institute proclaimations critically find it very compelling. The article's content has been shown to be accurate and within the policies and guidelines, surviving many previous challeges. Since you're bringing nothing new in the way of objections, you'll need to find another way other than repeating the same objections at different articles in which contribute to Wikipedia. FeloniousMonk 19:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

FeloniousMonk, I can see you haven't looked at anything I've put up here because you are already dismissing what I've said. Context of discussions are signficant in your out of context quotes above. If ID was creationism, then why would agnostic scientists think there is something to it? Answer that question sufficiently, and you can take the NPOV off. Until then, I will hold to the opinion that your campaign to cloud ID with creationist tones is unfounded. Your conclusion that it must be is your own theological/philosophical conclusion. It does not necessarily follow from ID. Implications and motivations aside, ID is not creationism, and those who know about it such as Ronald Numbers agree.

--Swmeyer 02:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I have read them — I just don't find them convincing. ID is creationism by definition. ID says the universe and life are designed... in other words created. ID's identity is not defined by the number of "agnostic scientists" that may support it. FeloniousMonk 02:52, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Please restrict a single discussion to a single Talk page, perhaps your own, as this sort of disjointed discussion is confusing.

Anyone who has been here as long as FeloniousMonk has, can be assumed to have read such texts. It is possible he found them to be inconsistent, based on mischaracterisations or misunderstanding of science, filled with wild claims, trying to claim martyrdom and oppression by the 'establishment'.

It's possible he read it, saw all these things, and was saddened by human nature, as it seems that some people are willing to assume the best of faith from people they want to believe, and will accept nothing from people they disagree with.

And that he was saddened by the state of certain education systems, as many people still have no idea of how to test the credibility of a text, or even of what a Theory or science is.

And it's possible that he was saddened at the state of religion, if it now seeks to supplant science as the best and brightest source of knowledge. In the past, religion sought to suppliment science (and vice verse), and each had very distinct areas of expertise. Why am I here? > Ask a cleric. How can I harness the power of the wind to mill my grain? > Ask a naturalist. I hope you can't imagine doing it the other way around.

-- Ec5618 09:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

ps. Yes, ID is as much religion as it is philosophy. Its main proponents are religious, and have admitted to having been trying to merely change the focus, or even just the name, of creationism. But whether you agree with that or not, please, let's all agree that there are obviously disemblers within ID circles, and that ID is not scientific. -- Ec5618 09:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Rpspeck 9 November 2005: To state that “Darwinian Evolution” has no problems that would call for discussion in school is far from a neutral presentation! The correlation of even “Neo Darwinian” theory (stripping Darwin’s conjectures of their totally discredited components) with objective data is pathetic! Now that biology is no longer a “black box” and much more is known of the Earth’s history, evolutionary “science” is actually a possibility. Some of it has been attempted. However, detailing the molecular changes which would transform one species into another has shown this to require a great many improbable steps. Driven only by infrequent viable mutations (with the result preserved and multiplied in the population by the advantage of each minute molecular change) is slow at best. And of course there is no such multiplication of the new gene when it has no advantage! Rare genes (a few samples in billions of population) don’t magically link up with other rare genes to make a useful combination. This 10^18 power improbability (for two mutations) must be included in the statistical product if clear benefit at each step can not be demonstrated. And the rate of progress, demonstrated by experiment, is appallingly slow! One effort with 20,000 generations (more than the existence of Homo sapiens) and a far greater population than ever existed for the later showed barely detectable adaptation to environmental pressures: change thousands of times smaller than that which separates humans from others of the genus. It is FAR TOO SLOW!

Darwin, among other things, failed to imagine that genetics was a DIGITAL (like DVD) copy system (also with error correction) and not an ANALOG copy system (like copying video tapes). The later quickly produces selectable variation which ratchets up the desired analog parameter for the next generation. Darwin never imagined monoclonal populations with no inheritable variation at all! Computer “simulations” based on the wrong genetic model are a fraud! If we don’t start “teaching the controversy” we will never empower the thinkers who will SERIOUSLY ADDRESS THESE PROBLEMS!

ID (Intelligent Design) has a long history in scientific archeology. Piles of flint chips aren’t imagined to appear on a cave flood by accident. The transformation of Indian corn into what we have today (with discovered intermediate products) is acknowledged as INTELLEGENT, not random selection. When we prohibit similar effects in paleontology we reject all possibility of intelligence elsewhere in space and time, and lock this field of science into a doctrinal cage. Yes – there is the scary possibility that biologists will be forced into the uncomfortable position of physicists, whose “Big Bang” violates all known science. And yes, there is the certainty that “evolutionists” will be forced to do real experimental work in place of “Greek style” “thought experiments”.

To stigmatize the ID on the basis of the philosophical motivations of its early supporters is inappropriate, not NPOV, and intellectually corrupt! The fact that “Birth Control” was once promoted by people for eugenic reasons – people outspoken about their desire to reduce the population of racial minorities - does not make birth control a bad idea! The fact that Karl Marx pointed out that the democratic process could allow citizens to raid the public treasury does not make that point untrue! Often, it is fringe thinkers who are motivated to take the most critical look at “Politically Correct” thought, and to discover real weaknesses. Their irrational motivation allows them to face establishment backlash and broadcast the dirty secrets others hide. For the intellectually honest, the challenge is to fairly consider their points, and acknowledge them when appropriate!

2005 Bryan controversy

The Bryan controversy needs to be updated IMHO. It doesn't really exactly explain how exactly Bryan was able to have such a great influence in the selection of this thesis reviewers. I'm quite surprised by this. I believe in most countries outside the US, the candidate has little if any say in the makeup of the reviewers...

The rules for OSU allow student particpation in the makeup of the panel:

Upon completion of the [candidacy] examination, the student may reorganize the committee to reflect the expertise needed for the dissertation. The dissertation committee must have at least three members: two from the science education program area and one from outside the science education program area.

I added the emphasis there. It's been implied that Bryan selected those on the panel who he knew to be pro-ID, and there the rule requiring a public announcement of a thesis defense may have been subverted [9] [10]. I'll roll this information into the article. FeloniousMonk 15:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. FeloniousMonk 19:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)