Pharyngula::Intelligent Design IS creationism

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Intelligent Design IS creationism

PZ Myers • 23 Comments

They hate it when you tell the Intelligent Design creationists that their whole schtick is just warmed over creationism—at Behe's recent talk, one of the questioners amused me greatly by expressing her anger that scientists call it creationism. However, in Dover, we've already had testimony that the publisher just replaced every instance of the word "creationism" with "Intelligent Design", and now there's more damning testimony.

When the books arrived, Ms. Spahr was asked to unpack the texts. Inside she found a catalog for other materials from the company that sold the books. She was asked to read the heading from page 29 of the catalog, which was "creation science." She noted that there was a reference to Of Pandas and People on that page.

Ouch. These guys are inconsistent, incompetent, and the one truth that is shining through is that they say one thing to the public, and another in private—they are nothing but creationists under an alias, with the intent of dodging the law.

I'm feeling confident about Dover. I think the trial is going to be a solid legal defeat for the creationists, but even better, it's exposing their lies to public scrutiny and slapping them down on the record. A mountain of garbage of their own making has just fallen on the Discovery Institute's grand strategy, and it's going to take them years to dig out from under it.

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Comments:

#43694: — 10/12 at 09:58 PM
Meanwhile in China recently uncovered evidence may support FSM theory. The Pastafarians will be all over this;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1590734,00.html

#43695: — 10/12 at 10:00 PM
Casey Luskin, last year, to me: "How could you possibly think ID was about religion?"

Gee, I don't know, retard.

#43700: Duane Smith — 10/12 at 10:31 PM

it's going to take them years to dig out from under it.

This is true only if the scientific community continue to make their case in public. Public memory is very short in the face of a well organized PR campaign. Of course, the legal presidents will hold up as long as we don't end up with a pro-creationist Supreme Court.

#43701: Duane Smith — 10/12 at 10:34 PM
I meant "precedents" not "presidents." Dr. Freud must have been looking over my shoulder.

#43702: coturnix — 10/12 at 10:44 PM
Legal Presidents is something we have been lacking for five years now....

#43711: Alun — 10/13 at 02:41 AM
A mountain of garbage of their own making has just fallen on the Discovery Institute's grand strategy, and it's going to take them years to dig out from under it.

Well it would if they were scientists. Alternatively they could just move one letter along the alphabet and push Intelligent Evolution. Though I've no idea what the plan would be once Intelligent Zoology was outed as Creationism.

#43713: — 10/13 at 04:30 AM
I thought it was interesting that apparently Miller conceded under oath in Dover that Behe's position was not "creationist", as Miller himself defined the word in his sworn testimony in the Cobb County sticker case.

#43715: PZ Myers — 10/13 at 05:49 AM
Behe's position is so confused and incoherent that it's hard to call it much of anything.

I'd call him a creationist, though. He's an outspoken evolution-denier who claims that there is no evidence for evolution, who is extremely vague about when and where his highly hypothetical intelligent intervention occurred, and who has proposed no natural mechanisms to replace the ones he foolishly claims don't exist.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#43717: The Commissar — 10/13 at 06:53 AM
Does a copy of that catalog exist? An image of page 29 would very powerful evidence.

Trackback: Just Like The Gays The Bible Called Me An Abomination Tracked on: Pandagon (66.33.218.138) at 2005 10 12 23:36:14
Washington University physics professor Jonathan Katz is proud to be a homophobe. Well, at least according to the essay “In Defense of Homophobia” that he authored and posted on the university web site . So I think I know what...

#43718: PZ Myers — 10/13 at 07:01 AM
It's been submitted as evidence. Maybe someone who is on the spot in Dover will get us a picture.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#43721: — 10/13 at 07:33 AM
Have you seen this PZ?

Creationism’s Reluctance to Enter ID’s Big Tent http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/395

I'm not sure whether it is just Dembski trying to show that there is room to slide a peice of paper between the D and the C in IDC or whetehr there is really some pseudo-academic jealousy there.

#43724: PZ Myers — 10/13 at 07:56 AM
Yes, it's very amusing.

By creationism, I don’t mean merely the belief that God created the world. All theists believe that. Rather, creationism denotes the view that the Bible, and Genesis in particular, guarantees the truth of certain scientific models.

It's a semantic game, trying to dodge the accusation of creationism by redefining creationism to be a sect-specific set of beliefs. They all look the same to me.

The ranting in the comments is new to me, though. I'm going to have to tell my wife that she's Catholic -- that'll be a big surprise to someone raised Baptist and now on the agnostic/atheist side of the fence.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#43725: — 10/13 at 08:00 AM
[Insert Dave Barry voice] Of course, I don't have to point out that Legal Presidents would be an excellent name for a rock band.[End]
Seriously, though, the Dover trial is looking good, but I worry about the makeup of the SCOTUS.

#43745: — 10/13 at 10:13 AM
NCSE resource on Creationist kinds

Hey, this book for sale by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics soundsinteresting:

What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? A Freindly Conversation About Evolution
By Robert C. Newman and John L. Wiester
(InterVarsity Press, 2000).

One could be fooled by the entertaining dialogue and cartoon format of this ingenious book. Despite its popular style and humor (the adventures of Darwinian superstars “Mutaman” and “Selecta,” for example), it addresses the right points and frames them with a keen sense of Darwinism’s true vulnerabilities. Softbound, 146 pages.

Has anyone here read it?

#43786: — 10/13 at 02:00 PM
Nice find, dissension. Dembski's dropped a bit of a clanger. Hilariously, not only does he quote an old earth creationist accurately explaining why straight-up creationism is more scientific than ID, his reply to the creationist includes the following statement: "ID is certainly disconfirmable: if someone takes an allegedly irreducibly complex system and finds a good neo-Darwinist story to explain it, then ID is disconfirmed."

That's ID out the window then.

#43793: — 10/13 at 02:28 PM
The comments in that Dembski post are hilarious too. DaveScot and Heddle are having a proper barney, and amazingly there's a non-creationist anti-IDer who hasn't been deleted. Maybe Dembski hasn't had time to read through the comments yet. Here's my favourite post: "As an ex-darwinite who has gone younger earthing strictly on evidence, the real opponent is unscientific dogmatists. That does not include most “creationists." Whatever you say.

#43806: — 10/13 at 04:16 PM

Dembski:
ID is certainly disconfirmable: if someone takes an allegedly irreducibly complex system and finds a good neo-Darwinist story to explain it, then ID is disconfirmed.

Setting aside that 'disconfirm' isn't actually a word, this statement seems to mean that ID consists merely of 'allegations,' the falsification of any one of which destroys the whole concept. Not a very robust explanatory system...

#43808: — 10/13 at 04:20 PM
I pity the sincere ID rank-and-file. They don't consider themselves creationists, and probably figure ID is close kin to theistic evolution, but less "arrogant." What a shame that such earnest people are waking up to the fact that they've been played for dupes by a PR campaign.

#43810: — 10/13 at 04:46 PM
A data-point for the "Creationists don't like ID" thesis: my local YEC-cabal newsletter once reviewed Behe's book in luke-warm terms, describing him as a "half-baked creationist".

I used to think that ID and Creationism were not the same thing (by which I mean that it was meaningful and useful to distinguish between them). Miller apparently takes (or took) that position as well. Lately however, the part of ID that isn't vacuous seems to be collapsing into one or other of the old-fashioned kinds of Creationism (which was, I suppose, inevitable). And the Dover twits sure seem to be having trouble keeping the two straight.

#43821: — 10/13 at 05:54 PM
PTS - indeed. Dembski once again demonstrates his profound lack of understanding of how science works. Moreover, it's a pretty obvious admission that ID is a God-of-the-gaps hypothesis, that will shrink and shrink as evolutionary biologists fill in the gaps. Why does Dembski hate God?

On a bigger picture note, isn't it a bit dangerous of Dembski to be publicly trying to align ID with creationists right now, what with the Dover trial going on? Maybe the DI is running low on funds.

#43822: — 10/13 at 05:56 PM
Steve: if you take them at face value, ID and creationism are different. If you look at their meaningful content, they are the same thing. Which is pretty much what you said.

#43915: — 10/14 at 11:54 AM
"Disconfirm" most certainly is a word. First, it's used by philosophers of science ALL THE TIME. Second, it's in the OED.

Dembski's a schmuck, but "disconfirm" is a word.

#44009: — 10/14 at 07:43 PM
I thought that it was pretty funny when Barbara Forrest told Richard Thompson, straight out, "William Dembski is not a scientist"

In the transcript it appeared that Thompson didn't know what to say.

Don

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Intelligent Design IS creationism

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