Rhetorical Ploys
I just posted
on the rhetorical situation surrounding Intelligent Design. Now I'll illustrate
from recent comments here on this blog.
On March 31, Ron
introduced a familiar topic: Intelligent Design is just repackaged
Creationism.
"What if I were to tell you there is evidence that initial drafts of Of Pandas and People referred throughout not to Intelligent Design but Creation Science, but in later versions of that "textbook" nearly all the verbage remained the same except that the phrase 'creation science' was replaced with 'Intelligent Design'. The 2 phrases were used interchangably between the earlier and later versions. What would that tell you?
"What if I told you that the earlier definition of 'creation science' was identical to the later definition of 'Intelligent design' in Pandas?"
Ron has carried this idea through a series of comments on that thread. Now, Scientific Creationism has been looked down upon for some very specific reasons: its denial of evidences of the earth's age and its insistence on a worldwide flood, coupled with its use of the book of Genesis as a literal source of scientific data and its apparent hope that overturning evolution would provide Genesis with strong authentication.* It has been rhetorically very useful for Intelligent Design opponents to link ID with Creationism.
In fact, Intelligent Design is committed to none of these propositions. Its methodology is based on observation and mathematical reasoning, not the Bible. A large number of ID proponents accept an old-earth theory; in fact, many of them, including Michael Behe, accept common descent. A universal flood is never mentioned. Many ID proponents are not Christians; in fact one of the more prominent, Dr. Jonathan Wells, is an adherent of the decidedly non-Christian Unification Church. The one thing ID proponents generally agree on, that carries a shade of a connection to Creationism, is that philosophical materialism is a poor starting point for finding out truths about reality, and that there may be some reality beyond matter and energy, law and chance. But even that opinion is not necessary to be a Darwin skeptic. I'm not at all sure that Michael Denton or David Berlinski believe in such a further reality, but both have been strong doubters of Darwin.
But someone like Ron will ride the history of Of Pandas and People for miles, insisting that ID and Creationism are one and the same. This is a convenient item for them to point to, in their quest to tell ID proponents what we believe. The matter should be easier than that, though: if ID and Creationism are identical, they should share identical tenets. But they don't. ID and Creationism agree that evolution's answers are suspect, and that there seems to be more to reality than mindless matter and energy. That's about it.
(How then did Of Pandas and People interchange "ID" with "Creationism" in its various editions? I don't know how they chose "Creationism" as text in early editions, but "Creationism" as defined here was never the intent of the text, and the change to "Intelligent Design" was a correction of an erroneous word choice. But even if Of Pandas and People were evidence that ID is equivalent to Creationism, it would be but one thin strand of such evidence, completely eclipsed by other data. I think scientists should understand that concept.)
On to another topic. Olorin asked for
"Evidence of whether ID stifles research includes whether ID itself has produced or suggested any fruitful research. It has not. None. Nada. Nichevo."
This exemplifies the "ID is not a science" theme. Olorin has made an absolute statement, which is easily shown to be wrong. (Dr. Michael Egnor's research suggestion is another example.) Admittedly the body of ID science literature is still small. It is not, "None, Nada, Nichevo." There are other fruitful questions to be pursued. Has there ever been an observed example of new structures or functions arising through mutation in the laboratory? How did the bacterial flagellum evolve, if indeed it did? How did other complex systems evolve? How did the giraffe's neck acquire the supporting systems, like blood-pressure control systems, required for it to elongate over the eons? How did life originally appear on earth? These are good questions to pursue from dual directions: from a design perspective and from a non-design perspective.
But this leads us to the next theme common among ID opponents: ID destroys the search for understanding and thereby undermines science. Ron wrote a good example of that this morning:
"What new insight do you gain into why a particular flagellum is assembled the way it is and not some other way by invoking design? How does invoking design explain why there are hundreds of different configurations of flagellum--what, the designer couldn't make up his mind? Demonstrate how invoking design explains why some bacteria have a flagellum but others don't. How does invoking design explain how God--I mean, the Designer--makes a flagellum in the first place?
"I've posed these questions to you before and you couldn't answer any of them.
"Are you really trying to find out more about how and why the flagellum works the way it does? Or are you more interested in proving that God exists, and once you've done that, all your interest in biology evaporates?"
Actually, I am interested in evidence for the existence of God, but I don't put a whole lot of stock in ID's providing that for me (see the footnote). As to my interest in biology evaporating, that's a pretty interesting charge to make against someone who started out as a music major and then took a Master's in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Does it look like my interest in biology is waning here? It's a sideline for me, not my main occupation; but how many people read dozens of technical books every year on sideline topics in which their interest has evaporated? Maybe Ron is referring to a recent blog post in which I said I would not try to argue technical biology on this blog. That's not for lack of interest; it's because in the midst of other responsibilities, I don't have time to chase down the "article wars" that ensue when I try to do that.
Intelligent Design is accused of being a science-stopper, but I'll wager that no one could find any evidence for that sociological prediction. Nevertheless, it's a cute rhetorical trick opponents can play. It makes ID seem so intellectually backward. In actual fact, there's nothing in ID to dissuade anybody from pursuing natural knowledge to its absolute ultimate end. It just says that once you have reached that end, there may be more knowledge yet to throw in with it! Is that intellectually lazy? Hardly.
Ron asked, "What new insight do you gain into why a particular flagellum is assembled the way it is and not some other way by invoking design? How does invoking design explain why there are hundreds of different configurations of flagellum--what, the designer couldn't make up his mind?"
That's a funny question. The first and most important new insight one might gain from seeing that the flagellum is designed is (get ready now, this is complicated) that the flagellum is designed! (I told you it would be hard.) If the result of ID research leads to a confirmation that there is design behind the natural world, that is an absolutely earthshaking new insight! Or, if we discover that evolution is not a sufficient explanation for natural history, that's genuine scientific knowledge, isn't it? As to the hundreds of different configurations, I think that could be the subject of a whole lot of empirical research. Invoking a designer doesn't hinder such study in the slightest.
So we see that this rhetorical trick of ID being a curiosity-quencher is empty and meaningless.
Four ploys of ID opponents, all nicely represented in comments here in the past few days: ID is equivalent to Creationism, ID produces no fruitful research, ID is a sly means of sticking religion where it doesn't belong, and ID stifles the search for knowledge. All of them are emotively powerful. All of them are empty. All of them try to steer us off the topic, which is a genuine empirical program that asks whether there features in the natural world that are best explained by reference to intelligence.
(I acknowledge again Thomas Woodward's Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design for the concept of rhetorical ploys.)
*See here and here for my take on that.
"What if I were to tell you there is evidence that initial drafts of Of Pandas and People referred throughout not to Intelligent Design but Creation Science, but in later versions of that "textbook" nearly all the verbage remained the same except that the phrase 'creation science' was replaced with 'Intelligent Design'. The 2 phrases were used interchangably between the earlier and later versions. What would that tell you?
"What if I told you that the earlier definition of 'creation science' was identical to the later definition of 'Intelligent design' in Pandas?"
Ron has carried this idea through a series of comments on that thread. Now, Scientific Creationism has been looked down upon for some very specific reasons: its denial of evidences of the earth's age and its insistence on a worldwide flood, coupled with its use of the book of Genesis as a literal source of scientific data and its apparent hope that overturning evolution would provide Genesis with strong authentication.* It has been rhetorically very useful for Intelligent Design opponents to link ID with Creationism.
In fact, Intelligent Design is committed to none of these propositions. Its methodology is based on observation and mathematical reasoning, not the Bible. A large number of ID proponents accept an old-earth theory; in fact, many of them, including Michael Behe, accept common descent. A universal flood is never mentioned. Many ID proponents are not Christians; in fact one of the more prominent, Dr. Jonathan Wells, is an adherent of the decidedly non-Christian Unification Church. The one thing ID proponents generally agree on, that carries a shade of a connection to Creationism, is that philosophical materialism is a poor starting point for finding out truths about reality, and that there may be some reality beyond matter and energy, law and chance. But even that opinion is not necessary to be a Darwin skeptic. I'm not at all sure that Michael Denton or David Berlinski believe in such a further reality, but both have been strong doubters of Darwin.
But someone like Ron will ride the history of Of Pandas and People for miles, insisting that ID and Creationism are one and the same. This is a convenient item for them to point to, in their quest to tell ID proponents what we believe. The matter should be easier than that, though: if ID and Creationism are identical, they should share identical tenets. But they don't. ID and Creationism agree that evolution's answers are suspect, and that there seems to be more to reality than mindless matter and energy. That's about it.
(How then did Of Pandas and People interchange "ID" with "Creationism" in its various editions? I don't know how they chose "Creationism" as text in early editions, but "Creationism" as defined here was never the intent of the text, and the change to "Intelligent Design" was a correction of an erroneous word choice. But even if Of Pandas and People were evidence that ID is equivalent to Creationism, it would be but one thin strand of such evidence, completely eclipsed by other data. I think scientists should understand that concept.)
On to another topic. Olorin asked for
"Evidence of whether ID stifles research includes whether ID itself has produced or suggested any fruitful research. It has not. None. Nada. Nichevo."
This exemplifies the "ID is not a science" theme. Olorin has made an absolute statement, which is easily shown to be wrong. (Dr. Michael Egnor's research suggestion is another example.) Admittedly the body of ID science literature is still small. It is not, "None, Nada, Nichevo." There are other fruitful questions to be pursued. Has there ever been an observed example of new structures or functions arising through mutation in the laboratory? How did the bacterial flagellum evolve, if indeed it did? How did other complex systems evolve? How did the giraffe's neck acquire the supporting systems, like blood-pressure control systems, required for it to elongate over the eons? How did life originally appear on earth? These are good questions to pursue from dual directions: from a design perspective and from a non-design perspective.
But this leads us to the next theme common among ID opponents: ID destroys the search for understanding and thereby undermines science. Ron wrote a good example of that this morning:
"What new insight do you gain into why a particular flagellum is assembled the way it is and not some other way by invoking design? How does invoking design explain why there are hundreds of different configurations of flagellum--what, the designer couldn't make up his mind? Demonstrate how invoking design explains why some bacteria have a flagellum but others don't. How does invoking design explain how God--I mean, the Designer--makes a flagellum in the first place?
"I've posed these questions to you before and you couldn't answer any of them.
"Are you really trying to find out more about how and why the flagellum works the way it does? Or are you more interested in proving that God exists, and once you've done that, all your interest in biology evaporates?"
Actually, I am interested in evidence for the existence of God, but I don't put a whole lot of stock in ID's providing that for me (see the footnote). As to my interest in biology evaporating, that's a pretty interesting charge to make against someone who started out as a music major and then took a Master's in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Does it look like my interest in biology is waning here? It's a sideline for me, not my main occupation; but how many people read dozens of technical books every year on sideline topics in which their interest has evaporated? Maybe Ron is referring to a recent blog post in which I said I would not try to argue technical biology on this blog. That's not for lack of interest; it's because in the midst of other responsibilities, I don't have time to chase down the "article wars" that ensue when I try to do that.
Intelligent Design is accused of being a science-stopper, but I'll wager that no one could find any evidence for that sociological prediction. Nevertheless, it's a cute rhetorical trick opponents can play. It makes ID seem so intellectually backward. In actual fact, there's nothing in ID to dissuade anybody from pursuing natural knowledge to its absolute ultimate end. It just says that once you have reached that end, there may be more knowledge yet to throw in with it! Is that intellectually lazy? Hardly.
Ron asked, "What new insight do you gain into why a particular flagellum is assembled the way it is and not some other way by invoking design? How does invoking design explain why there are hundreds of different configurations of flagellum--what, the designer couldn't make up his mind?"
That's a funny question. The first and most important new insight one might gain from seeing that the flagellum is designed is (get ready now, this is complicated) that the flagellum is designed! (I told you it would be hard.) If the result of ID research leads to a confirmation that there is design behind the natural world, that is an absolutely earthshaking new insight! Or, if we discover that evolution is not a sufficient explanation for natural history, that's genuine scientific knowledge, isn't it? As to the hundreds of different configurations, I think that could be the subject of a whole lot of empirical research. Invoking a designer doesn't hinder such study in the slightest.
So we see that this rhetorical trick of ID being a curiosity-quencher is empty and meaningless.
Four ploys of ID opponents, all nicely represented in comments here in the past few days: ID is equivalent to Creationism, ID produces no fruitful research, ID is a sly means of sticking religion where it doesn't belong, and ID stifles the search for knowledge. All of them are emotively powerful. All of them are empty. All of them try to steer us off the topic, which is a genuine empirical program that asks whether there features in the natural world that are best explained by reference to intelligence.
(I acknowledge again Thomas Woodward's Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design for the concept of rhetorical ploys.)
*See here and here for my take on that.
Posted: Mon - April 2, 2007 at 11:50 AM |
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