Thinking Christian

Thank you, Larry Fafarman, for answering this, written by Nick Matzke at Panda’s Thumb:

Just last week over at the Thinking Christian blog there was a huge stink raised over the alleged inappropriateness of linking ID to creationism. After much argument the anti-linkage people more or less conceded that there were some good reasons to link ID to a somewhat generic definition of creationism (relying on special creation), but still protested loudly about how inappropriate it was to make the linkage, because most people (allegedly) would assume that creationism = young-earth creationism, and linking ID to young-earth creationism was oh-so-wildly unfair.

Larry wrote,

No, the “huge stink” was not “over the alleged inappropriateness of linking ID to creationism” — the huge stink was over the term “ID creationism,” which represents the notion that ID and creationism are so intimately linked that ID cannot or should not be mentioned without also mentioning creationism in the same breath.

That is correct. Note that Nick acknowledges we got somewhere at the end of all the discussion. (Thank you for noticing, that, Nick.) But he got it wrong.

I did not protest that “linking ID to young-earth creationism was oh-so-wildly unfair.” I never said, “unfair;” I said, “confused, and poor communication.” I said that to carelessly link ID to creationism, without specifying what you mean by it in context, is to obfuscate issues that should not, must not, be made more muddled than they already are. It is poor communication because it is so likely to be misleading. False conceptions abound on both sides of this issue, and for ID opponents to be careless with their terminology this way is no help.

For Nick to be so careless with his assessment of our discussion does not speak well either for his own awareness of what is going on, or else for his willingness to address it honestly.

In fact it is no help to his own position. In any conflict, dispute, or battle, the last thing a wise contender wants to do is to enter with a distorted view of the other side’s position. Military commanders want to know the enemy’s true strength and position, not some watered-down version that makes them look weaker or stupider than what is real. To see a conflict falsely is to reduce your own readiness for it. Thus the more that opponents misunderstand and misrepresent ID or its proponents, the easier they make it for us in the long run.

So do I think it’s “unfair” that ID gets distorted by careless, unspecified linkage to creationism? Sure, it’s an annoyance: I think in the short run its effect is detrimental to ID’s position, because of the time we have to waste on clearing away misconceptions. In the long run, though, ID’s opponents are the ones being damaged; they’re hurting themselves with it.

In other words, Nick, you’re being unfair to yourself.

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Commenter John on one of the recent Intelligent Design threads said that science never interprets results after bringing them in. I think there’s truth in that as a general principle, though its extreme nature makes it subject to frequent exceptions, and not the absolute truth he seemed to want it to be.

Anyway, I’m about to make an interpretation after the results, and it’s by way of a postscript to all this recent discussion, so by John’s standard this might count (with abject apologies to Kierkegaard) as a concluding unscientific postscript.

Here’s my observation and interpretation. Once I commented on Panda’s Thumb, using the user id TomG (I later found there’s a regular there who also uses that handle), making a very specific point about a very specific aspect of how the controversy has been played out in public discussion. I really can’t remember what the question was now, but it wasn’t about ID’s scientific, legal, or religious status; it was about something more obvious and more narrowly focused than that.

Those of you who have seen PT in action can guess what happened. Of course I got jumped on; that was expected. But I wasn’t jumped on for that point I made. I was held personally responsible for the Wedge document, the Discovery Institute’s political agenda, Michael Behe’s stupid mistaken theories of irreducible complexity, all of ID’s idiotic arguments for incredulity, and every creationism court case since the Scopes trial. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.) It was impossible to get any traction on the one point I made, and it was impossible for me to make it clear that all I was taking responsibility for was that point.

This last discussion has been focused on a very specific question: whether calling Intelligent Design “creationism” (without specifying what is meant by that) is helpful to clear communication and productive communication, or whether it is a source of confusion; and if it is a source of confusion, what motivates ID antagonists to keep calling it that. It was a specific issue that should have had a focused discussion following it.

But I have been challenged with ID’s scientific status, all the court cases since (not quite) Scopes, Behe’s (allegedly) mistaken views on the edge of evolution and irreducible complexity, the Discovery Institute’s political purposes, the definition of science, the exclusive nature of Christianity’s claims, what I personally think about old-earth creationism and common descent, and even why I haven’t decided to go to grad school and become a biologist!

I do this for fun and it still is fun; I’m not whining about being jumped on. I’m more amused, bemused, or perplexed at the way ID’s antagonists seem to be ready to spread the argument around. I’m not sure we got anywhere on whether calling ID “creationism” without specifying what is meant by that is a bad thing, as I have proposed. Objectors said ID isn’t science, as if that meant that it was therefore that vague “creationism,” they said it was found unconstitutional, as if that meant it was that vague “creationism,” they said that the people who do ID don’t have the right to name what it is they are doing, as if that gave detractors grounds to call it that vague “creationism,” they said that ID is political, as if that made it that vague “creationism.”

What the ID detractors commenting here really never did was consider that there are varieties of meanings to the word “creationism,” that some of those meanings properly apply to ID and some of them don’t, and that to be either intentionally manipulative or carelessly confused in applying “creationism” to ID without specifying what one means is to obfuscate communication. That, along with my tentative wondering about what might be at the root of that obfuscation, has been my only point throughout all of this.

Two terms with contrasting and/or ambiguous denotations/connotations, brought together as in “Intelligent Design Creationism,” will result in ambiguity at best, contradiction at worst. It seems so straightforward and so simple.

Oh, well.

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In my earlier post this morning I covered definitions of creationism quite thoroughly but I didn’t include a definition of Intelligent Design. There was one in the post I wrote last Sunday, but not all readers would know that. I wrote:

ID sees phenomena like the high information content in biological organisms, instances of apparent irreducible complexity, or fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, and argues that the best explanation for them is to be found in a designing intelligence.

That’s fairly close to the definition used by the Discovery Institute. I’ve been amused to see scorn heaped on me at Panda’s Thumb for following the DI line. To them I’m some kind of brainless zombie unable to think for myself about what ID is or what it is worth. I can only parrot what I’ve been instructed to say; I’ve been duped into thinking DI has the goods on what Intelligent Design is all about; I should have realized that others, far more scientific than they, had figured out the real story, and that everything from the DI was a dishonest hoax.

But this is a continuation of a previous post on the communication question, and whether “creationism” appended to “ID” helps us understand what ID really is. I argued that it confuses communication rather than clarifying it, because of ambiguities and contradictions between different versions of creationism (defined in that post) and ID (belatedly defined here). There is no denying those discrepancies, and I closed that last post by saying it’s an open-and-shut case against those who would carelessly tag ID as creationism.

But there is one last piece of business to finish: am I the mindless idiot I am represented to be at Panda’s Thumb, in accepting what the DI says about ID? I would certainly prefer that not be true, but is it?

The problem with the DI and their view of ID seems to be (according to PT and others who think similarly) that ID is all fluff and nonsense, there’s no reality to it, there’s no science to it, and it’s all just posing and PR instead. Let’s suppose that’s true, for argument’s sake. Does that mean ID antagonists, who understand what’s really going on in Intelligent Design, own the definition for ID, and can correct the rest of our opinions as to what it really denotes?

Consider a parallel case, one in which almost everyone would agree that the word means nothing real: voodoo. I don’t think there is any reality to claims of supernatural power through voodoo, and I doubt most people involved in the ID/creationism debate do either. Suppose I go to some voodoo practitioner and ask him to define voodoo for me; and suppose then I go to my blog and say, “This is how voodoo is defined.” Am I being a mindless zombie to say so? (Careful how you answer: if mindless zombies really exist, then maybe voodoo really exists! Let’s take it in the metaphorical sense instead.). No, that would not be foolish for me to do; the practitioner’s definition of voodoo has real authority.

As an outsider I can evaluate voodoo’s reality, but in order to do so, I have to evaluate it according to some definition; I can’t change the definition and then evaluate it, because then I am evaluating something other than the voodoo that the practitioner told me about. The practitioner can define the term.

That’s an extreme case of an obvious fake. Some readers here consider ID an obvious fake, but even for them, the definition of ID rightly comes from its practitioners.

The other charge that flies around this debate is that the DI keeps changing the definition of ID, so that it’s a moving target. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see evidence of this over the past ten to twelve years. This is still a young field, so that’s a relatively long period of stability. My own very direct involvement goes back only about five years, and in that period I am quite sure it has not been a moving target.

That doesn’t mean it has to remain static forever. Bradley Monton in his book Seeking God In Science has proposed a refinement of ID’s definition. He has taken a sensible route to it: Does the DI’s definition really convey what the DI intends it to convey, or can the definition be improved to better communicate what it is intended to communicate? People can learn along the way. But there’s nothing wrong with looking to the chief practitioners of ID to define what they mean by ID.

Here’s another way of looking at it. If some ID antagonist says, “I don’t believe in ID creationism,” the DI could easily say, “I don’t either. Whatever ID creationism is, it’s something we’re not promoting or practicing here. If you try to re-define our terms, you’re going to end up criticizing something we’re not doing. Why would you want to waste your time on that?”

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Cameron said this morning, in the thread, “Maybe They Really Can’t Tell the Difference,”

The relevant purpose here, per the OP, is to determine if ID shares enough similarities with creationism to justify using the term “ID creationism.”

That’s an excellent clarifying point, so thank you, Cameron. The answer is quite simple. The point of putting words in sentences is to communicate through them. It is a communication issue. From a communication perspective, what does “creationism” contribute to the term, “intelligent design”? Does it promote understanding or confusion?

Versions of Creationism

That’s a helpful question worthy of exploring. Adding “creationism” to ID indicates that it’s a subspecies of creationism. That means it is a subspecies of one or more of these beliefs, all of which could be called creationist:

1. That something or someone unknown, outside the natural order, has intervened through a creative act sometime in natural history (a bare, minimal denial of philosophical materialism as a way of viewing origins)

2. That some god or gods created the initial conditions of the universe and has let it unfold uninterrupted since then, without intervention and without teleological design of any sort. Life happened, but not because of any divine intent (Deism; bare, minimal denial of philosophical materialism, with the addition of some deity)

3. That God created the universe billions of years ago and “front-loaded” the initial conditions so that unfolding natural processes would inevitably lead to life as it now exists (“front-loading”)

3.1 And signs or hints of his work in doing so aredetectable scientifically now, looking backward (FL with God’s fingerprints)

3.2 And signs of his work in doing so are not detectable (FL undetectable)

4.That God created the universe billions of years ago, starting with a Big Bang, and has let it unfold without interruption except by seeding the earth with its first life. Subsequent life evolved from that point with some intervention from God, but none that would be detectable by the tools of observation even as it was happening, much less looking back eons in time (Theistic Evolution)

4.1 And humans were no exception: we evolved by unguided chance and selection just like every other organism (TE non-exceptionalism)

4.2 Humans are the one exception; God intended and directed us to evolve the way we did, but his intervention then is not subject to being detected by science today (TE exceptionalism)

5. That God created the universe billions of years ago starting with a Big Bang and intervened on earth to produce the first life and subsequent life in ways that leave recognizable signs or hints of his intervention at various points along the way (Fingerprints on Creation)

6. That God created the universe some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, all scientific indicators of an older universe are either misinterpreted data or some other form of confusion, and that each kind or species was a distinct separate act of creation (Genesis interpreted literally)

6.1 And signs of his creative acts are detectable by science today (Scientific Creationism)

6.2 And signs of his creative acts are not detectable by science today (Creationism without scientific support)

I’m sure this is not a complete list, but it serves the purpose. (I made up the “Fingerprints on Creation” label; if anyone knows a better or more standard label, please let me know.) What these have in common is that something outside the natural order did something at some point in natural history. Otherwise they are quite different and in many aspects mutually contradictory.

Confusion and Contradiction

Of these, ID’s hypotheses are fully consistent only with 3.1 and 5 (Front-loading with God’s Fingerprints; Fingerprints on Creation). It shares with Scientific Creationism the expectation that signs or hints of some of God’s creative acts in history may be detectable scientifically, but it does not share Scientific Creationism’s biblical assumptions, its insistence on a young earth, or its a priori denial of common descent. Intelligent Design’s hypotheses are generally in contradiction to the other versions I’ve listed here.

Evolution, on the other hand, is quite consistent with 2, 3.2, 4.1, and 4.2 (Deism, Front-loading Undetectable, Theistic Evolution), unless one insists on philosophical materialism as part of the evolution package.

So what additional understanding are we adding, what confusion are we removing, by adding “creationism” to “Intelligent Design,” without specifying what creationism we’re talking about? None. From a communication perspective the additional word serves no positive purpose; it adds contradiction and confusion.

Does Context Help?

But maybe I’ve rushed too quickly to that conclusion. Lots of words have multiple meanings, and we use words like that in almost every sentence without stopping to define which meaning we have in mind. Why not allow using “creationism” without stopping to explain?

The reason we can use words with multiple meanings that way is because context tells us clearly what meaning is intended. If context fails to do that, then we have what our English teachers called a “mistake.” Some of them are called “crash blossoms or “Garden path sentences” (these are mostly for fun, but also to demonstrate the point):

• McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers
• Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms
• The old man the boat.
• The man returned to his house was happy.
• The author wrote the novel was likely to be a best seller.
• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Even in these odd sentences, context determines the meaning of the words (eventually). But what context determines the meaning of “creationism” in “Intelligent Design Creationism”?

Typical Contexts for “Intelligent Design Creationism”

Usually the relevant context is one or both of the following:

A. The immediate surrounding context of communication, which is typically that of an ID antagonist. Usually that context points toward something very much like 6.1 Scientific Creationism; which is contradictory to ID’s hypotheses. Adding “creationism” in that sense seriously confuses the meaning of Intelligent Design by introducing a contradictory concept.

B. The larger social context, which of course includes the historical aspect that commenters have incorrectly but repeatedly accused me of ignoring in the prior three posts. This is more ambiguous. More often than not, I think, it tends to point toward something like 6.1 Scientific Creationism, so it is confusing in the same way (A) is. Even if that is not the case, “creationism” adds ambiguity rather than reducing it. It indicates that ID disputes philosophical materialism, but didn’t we all know that already? It’s wasted verbiage at best, like “atheism that denies a knowable God;” but it’s really worse than that because of the wide and ambiguous range of possible meanings it introduces, some of them mutually contradictory.

If speakers and writers were careful to disambiguate “Creationism” when they used it in conjunction with ID, and if they were also careful not to assign it a meaning that contradicts “Intelligent Design,” then the word could be useful for some purposes. But that doesn’t happen very often.

An Open-and-Shut Case

Much of the argument in the past three posts has been about the scientific status of Intelligent Design and its historic connections to creationism. From a communications perspective, though, appending “creationism” to “Intelligent Design” definitely detracts, and this is true regardless of whether ID is science, and regardless of what its historical background may be. Those objections are irrelevant to the communication issue. It’s an open-and-shut case: “Intelligent Design Creationism” is poor communication. Cameron’s question is answered; there is no good justification for using the term that way.

Except…

One final exception to this much be acknowledged. If the speaker really wants to associate ID with 6.1 Scientific Creationism, without signaling that their assumptions and hypotheses differ in many ways, then “Intelligent Design Creationism” is a useful term. Inaccurate, dishonest, manipulative, but useful.

Added at 10:55 am: this aspect of the question, which I should have included here.

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A few days I posed a tentative question, wondering whether some of those who do not distinguish Intelligent Design from creationism may be exhibiting a kind of worldview blindness, one that causes them to see everyone different themselves as being all the same. That led to one of the highest-velocity discussions I can remember having on this blog, continuing also here.

I posed it as a question, not a dogmatic statement, and I am committed to remaining a learner in this blogging business. Anyone can suffer from worldview blindness; in fact, I’m sure to some extent all of us do. The best antidote I know of is to listen to and learn from people with different perspectives. Having had this discussion, I would not pose the question the same way I did on Sunday.

I’m still in the process, but this is how I would summarize my views following this discussion (so far). Can Intelligent Design be distinguished from creationism? Several commenters said no, for historical reasons. Its roots are intertwined with scientific creationism of the mid-twentieth century. Early writers on ID used the term interchangeably with creationism for a period of time in the 1990s. Some ID proponents are or have been believers in special creation, some of them even believing in young-earth creation. And ID’s most likely and most common interpretation is that the Designer was God, who is believed to have actually created the world ex nihilo.

So there are multiple ways to define creationism. One commenter said creationism was anti-evolutionism, and if so then ID is creationism. I challenged that person’s view: not that it was necessarily wrong, but that it was an essentially private view that most people would not think of when they hear or read “creationism.” Still it demonstrates that there is not just one way of looking at things.

I acknowledge now that there is a sense in which ID is (usually) a form of creationism, broadly construed as the belief that there has or have been some creation event or events outside the course of law- and chance-driven natural processes. In that broad sense of the term I proudly stand up and proclaim myself a creationist. I was wrong in my first post to define it exclusively in the terms that I used then:

Creationism begins in Genesis and argues for certain conclusions based on a certain understanding of the Scriptures. It is known for its persistence in seeking scientific data that fits that interpretation of Genesis, and for finding creative but irregular interpretations to help in that search. As such it has gained an unsavory scientific reputation.

On the other hand, Plato and Aristotle both made inferences to a First Cause or a designer of some sort, so it is obviously possible to draw a design inference without being a theistic creationist. In the first twenty or so comments on the first post it became apparent that we were dealing with an issue of multiple definitions. That issue was still at the forefront early this morning. For without dispute there are different ways of viewing creationism. On Monday morning I began asking the question a different way: given that there are varying meanings attached to the term, which one is relevant? I content that the relevant meaning of the word is whatever springs to most readers’ or hearer’s minds when they encounter the word, and secondarily it is whatever the person who uses the word intends when they speak or write it.

If every person who said “Intelligent Design is creationism” or insisted always on calling it “Intelligent Design Creationism,” had the broad definition in mind; and if every listener understood it that way, then there would be no strong reason to quibble over it. (There would still be technical problems with it, but I wouldn’t argue them myself.) I don’t think that’s the way the world is, though. It’s certainly not the sense conveyed by my chief interlocutor in these two posts, when he famously said, “Intelligent Design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo. If there was a court case, it would not be found constitutional.” It’s not the sense conveyed in a comment like,

Intelligent Design as a term has quite simply been hijacked for the political purposes of sidestepping the First Amendment in education when Creation Science finally failed its constitutional test.

Charlie reminded us of one ID leader’s take on the topic:

Is [Phillip] Johnson a creationist? The trial lawyer answers the question cautiously, demanding to define the term. “In what sense?,” he asks. “The word ‘creationist’ has been turned by the media into a very specialized word: it means a young-earth, six-day, Biblical literalist.”

If he is right (and I think he is), then that is the relevant definition for purposes of the discussion we have been having.

So for now this is where I land:

1. There are multiple ways of understanding “creationism.” According to one of them, I am a creationist, the vast majority of ID proponents are creationists, and it would be generally fair to describe ID as creationist (with some exceptions I don’t need to worry about here). I say so with no qualms or reservations, provided the appropriate sense of “creationism” is in view.
2. Most of the time when “creationism” is used in popular media and especially by ID detractors, however, it is intended to communicate something else: young-earth, Genesis-based beliefs, accompanied by irregular scientific interpretations. It also entails rejection of common descent.
3. Intelligent Design does not entail rejection of common descent, a young earth, or belief in Genesis.
4. Intelligent Design therefore is not creationism in the sense stated in (2).
5. Therefore, from (2) and (4), when “creationism” is used in popular media, and especially by ID detractors, most of the time its effect is to communicate something that does not accurately apply to ID.
6. Nevertheless ID detractors imply or explicitly affirm that ID is creationism, understood as stated in (2).
7. When ID detractors communicate this way, they are affirming a false proposition.
8. When ID detractors affirm this false proposition, they do so either knowingly or unknowingly, aware or unaware.
9. If they do so knowingly, it seems to me the most likely purpose for their doing so is rhetorical manipulation (see here, here, and here), which is essentially dishonest.
10. If they do so unawares, then one possible explanation for their doing so is worldview blindness. I continue to hold this as a tentative theory, but I am open to other explanations.

I would be interested to hear if anyone else who has been involved in these discussions could point to anything they learned from them.

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Yesterday in the thread on ID and creationism, a commenter using the handle “Wheels” pointed out,

The starting point [for both ID and creationism] is with religion, namely Christianity in this case. The arguments used in Pandas were all Scientific Creationism arguments. The terminology used in Pandas‘ early drafts were all old-hat Creationism. When ID was substituted, the arguments and substance of Pandas did not change.

Then he asks why I say the current question is not about Of Pandas and People, the Discovery Institute, or the historic roots of ID. That’s a reasonable question, and to answer it I’m going to set up some background and then ask a few questions of my own.

The meanings of terms are certainly influenced by their history, and Intelligent Design does have a strong historic link to creationism. Of course that is true for both creationism and ID; and I believe for most people, creationism still means what it did for most scientists back in the 1960s and in the decades following. It would go something like this:

Creationism begins in Genesis and argues for certain conclusions based on a certain understanding of the Scriptures. It is known for its persistence in seeking scientific data that fits that interpretation of Genesis, and for finding creative but irregular interpretations to help in that search. It is committed to a young-earth view of origins, opposes common descent, and violates scientific thinking by supposing that God can and does intervene in the regular workings of nature. As such it has gained an unsavory scientific reputation.

That’s creationism as it is commonly understood. Now, are there other ways to understand creationism? Of course there. This is a “Thinking Christian” blog, and I believe in God as creator. I believe God has performed acts of creation; thus in a sense I am most certainly a creationist. But I am not a creationist in the sense stated in that prior definition.

And I think that prior definition is the relevant one for the sake of this discussion. I’ll come back in a moment to explain why. First, we need to look at the other term under discussion, Intelligent Design. Its proponents would define it something like this (I’ve added a couple of clarifying phrases):

A scientific and philosophical research program, not committed to any source Scripture or to young-earth theories, not necessarily opposing common descent, and open on the question of God and his potential involvement in the regularities of nature; which explores the proposition that certain features of life and nature are best explained by reference to a designing intelligence.

Is there some creationist agenda hidden there? Certainly it has an anti-philosophical materialism intent, and most ID proponents would love to see that philosophy overthrown. That’s an agenda, but it’s not specifically a religious or creationist one. Certainly ID has historical roots in common with creationism, and some ID advocates would be happy to call themselves creationists.

But agendas and overlapping group membership were not the topics of the past blog entry. The question was, “why do some people insist on saying ID is creationism?” That issue is clearly distinct from agendas or group membership. Unitarian-Universalist ministers overwhelmingly vote Democratic; does that mean Unitarian-Universalism is the same thing as the Democratic Party? Of course not. There is more to both of them than their agendas; so even if Intelligent Design had a politico-religious agenda just like that of the most religious creationist, that would not make ID equivalent to creationism. In order form them to be the same (as I said yesterday afternoon), ID would have to fulfill the definition of creationism along with its own definition, like this:

Intelligent Design is a scientific and philosophical research program investigating the proposition that there are certain features of the natural world that are best explained by reference to a designing intelligence, which is not committed to any particular religious view of origins, is not committed to opposing common descent, is not committed to a Young Earth view of origins, and which is open on the question of God’s interventions in nature; which is unscientific, committed to the book of Genesis, is opposed to common descent, holds to a Young Earth view of origins, and insists on the importance of God’s interventions in nature.

So here is my first question for you who believe ID is equivalent to creationism: Do you see now why I say they are not the same? Do you see why that is true regardless of ID’s history?

I said I would come back to address whether it was right to define creationism the way I did above. It has a rich and varied set of potential meanings, after all. I’m going to handle that by asking my second question, which gets to the heart of the matter as it comes up in actual practice. When ID opponents say “ID is just creationism” or when they refuse to refer to it as anything other than “Intelligent Design Creationism,” what are they intending to communicate? What sense of “creationism” do they have in mind? What impression are they trying to convey?

If the answer is anything similar to the definition I gave above, then that’s the meaning that matters for this discussion. I contend that that definition is so predominant, if anyone wants to use the term to mean something else they must carefully explain what they have in mind. Otherwise listeners/readers will assume the default definition, the one given here, is what is intended.

And then I have one last pair of questions: If the default meaning of “creationism” is anything like what I’ve suggested here, does it advance productive dialogue to equate ID and creationism? Do they even care about productive dialogue?

Some of you will no doubt answer, “No, why should they care? ID is just creationism, after all!” I suggest you re-read this post.

Note to commenters: I intend to keep discussion here focused on the questions I’ve asked. If your answer is not relevant to those questions, don’t be surprised if it disappears without warning. The prior thread is still open for other topics, provided they relate to that blog post and discussion.

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Several times in the last few days the term “Intelligent Design Creationism” has crossed my line of sight. It’s a misnomer, a duct-taped concatenation of concepts that overlap somewhat, but not enough to merit being stuck together the way ID opponents have done. Robert Pennock is perhaps the worst, but Barbara Forrest, Richard Dawkins, and P.Z. Myers are also frequent offenders.

The difference between the two terms is straightforward. Creationism begins in Genesis and argues for certain conclusions based on a certain understanding of the Scriptures. It is known for its persistence in seeking scientific data that fits that interpretation of Genesis, and for finding creative but irregular interpretations to help in that search. As such it has gained an unsavory scientific reputation.

Intelligent Design has a completely different starting point in observations of nature, and in both empirical and philosophical interpretations of scientific data. It sees phenomena like the high information content in biological organisms, instances of apparent irreducible complexity, or fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, and argues that the best explanation for them is to be found in a designing intelligence.

The two overlap in rejecting any a priori insistence that nature is a closed system of physical cause and effect, acting strictly according to natural law or unguided chance. There is also an overlap among their supporters, in that virtually all creationists are theists (Christian, Jewish, or Islamic), and most (not all) ID supporters are too. Still, many creationists are uncomfortable with ID methods and conclusions, and many ID supporters similarly disagree with creationist approaches and conclusions.

In a word, the two are not the same. But opponents insist on blurring the distinction.

I have theorized in the past that their reason for doing so was simply to manipulate the rhetoric of the discussion, to tar ID with the same unscientific reputation held by creationism. This weekend another possibility occurred to me: maybe they really can’t tell the difference.

I don’t mean that quite as negatively as it might seem, or I should say, not in the way it might seem. I don’t mean to imply that they are too unintelligent to make a distinction. What I’m wondering about is whether they are handicapped by worldview blindness. I’m not drawing a conclusion; I’m just wondering.

Worldview blindness, if it exists in the form I’m thinking of, would go like this: There is the scientific, rational way of viewing the world, and there is everything else; and everything else is superstition or religion. The scientific rational way is the intelligent way, the way that comports with reality, the refined and educated way of looking at things. The religious way, on the other hand, is undifferentiated; it’s all of one irrational sort. Distinctions within the religious way are therefore just semantical, since it’s all really just one thing.

If this analysis is true for some ID antagonists, it is an ironic one. They consider themselves to be the careful, rational, empirical thinkers, but there is a whole landscape they cannot even see.

It’s not only ironic, though. We have a term for people who say, “Everyone like me is good, and as for those who aren’t like me, well, I can’t tell any difference between them anyway.” It’s not a very favorable term, either.

I wish I could think of some other explanation than the two I’ve suggested here. I would welcome other ideas. For now, it seems to me that the failure to distinguish ID from creationism stems either from intentional rhetorical manipulation, which is dishonest, or from worldview blindness, which is a different kind of fault but not much better.

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