Thinking Christian

“Pantalaimon,” a commenter on Thinking Christian, supplied a number of quotes yesterday to show that (in his words)

ID is not a scientific research program in any sense, and never has been. Scientific understanding is of no intrinsic interest to ID. Any “research” they may undertake is strictly subservient to the philosophical goal of crushing naturalistic science for religious and philosophical purposes.

Strong generalities like that are risky; nobody is one-dimensional, and in fact Pantalaimon’s quotes were a great example of quote-mining out of context. When I pointed that out to him, he graciously offered me the opportunity to track down the source of the quotes myself and put them in correct context. I have declined his generous suggestion. Instead I’m going to try to put the issue in its proper full perspective, based on my entire experience with Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design is entirely a ploy, manipulating science in order to win religious/political battles. That’s the charge. This statement touches, albeit lightly, on something like the truth of the matter. Many leaders of the Intelligent Design movement are Christian believers, and one (Jonathan Wells) represents the Unification Church. (Unification Church theology as I understand it has little in common with Christianity, other than a belief in some spiritual reality.) These ID leaders recognize strong opposition between a certain dominant form of evolutionary theory–naturalistic neo-Darwinism–and their religious beliefs. Not surprisingly, they consider their religious beliefs not only true but also important. Thus there is a conflict.

I don’t know anybody who has ever handled a major conflict perfectly. I do not need to be convinced that everything ID leaders have done was done just right. The infamous “Wedge Document” was a strategic mistake, in that opened a wide and inviting door for interpretations of evil scheming. The Discovery Institute has worked hard to correct misinterpretations related to the Wedge, not entirely successfully. I think it’s fair to acknowledge errors, to learn from them, and move on wiser than before.

Phillip Johnson is regarded to be the father of the ID movement. At the core of his message is a direct, unflinching, head-on assault against philosophical naturalism, a form of atheism. From his first foray into this field, Darwin on Trial, Johnson has highlighted the close association between Darwinism and philosophical naturalism. His disagreement with Darwinism has been based in part on its assumptions that nothing could have happened, and nothing ought to be explained, by any means other than strict natural cause and effect.

Johnson has been accused of falsely assuming all evolutionists are Richard Dawkins; that is, that evolution is equivalent to atheism. I don’t know that he has actually always made that error. Nevertheless there is a strong association between evolution and atheism in this sense: evolution may not entail atheism, but atheism certainly entails evolution. Without evolutionary theory, atheism has no explanation for nature whatsoever.

Confronting philosophical naturalism has been one aspect of Johnson’s approach to the issue from the beginning. Further, he took a very long and careful look at the scientific literature, and came to the conclusion that evolutionary theory is not well supported by the evidence. Though he is a lawyer, let that not blind you to the fact that he was approaching the question from the basis of science and the available evidence. He concluded that evolution’s explanatory strength depends critically on the assumption that all explanations must be in terms of natural causes and effects and nothing else. This, he rightly noted, is a philosophical assumption that is open to question, which puts evolution itself open to question.

So in Johnson, back at the start of it all, there were three intersecting streams: religious, scientific, and philosophical. He was not an expert in all three (with apologies to all of you out there who are). He proceeded to gather conferences and symposia of scientists and philosophers to explore the question further. Out of this the Intelligent Design movement was born.

The three intersecting streams still pervade the question, but not monolithically so. When David Berlinski’s new book, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions comes out, don’t expect a shrill screed for some kind of fundamentalist American Christianity. He is a secular Jew living in Paris. Whether or not Michael Denton wants to be associated with ID now, the fact is his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis critiqued evolution strictly on scientific grounds, and set a course that is still being traveled.

Anti-theists also follow the same three threads. Daniel Dennett employs philosophy and evolution in service of dissolving what he calls religion’s “spell” of misunderstanding. Richard Dawkins uses science, and something reminiscent of philosophy (I can’t call it better than that), to call God a delusion. They both have a strong interest in defeating religion, but that hardly means they are uninterested in science–though it would be easy to quote-mine them and make it appear that way.

By the same token, if ID leaders have an interest in philosophy and/or religion, as represented in the quotes Pantalaimon pulled, that hardly means they are uninterested in science. The relation between science and design is controversial; commenter Holopupenko is convinced design cannot be detected through the sciences and that ID scientists are philosophically naive; meanwhile ID-supportive philosophers like Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and my friend Rob Koons are confident it potentially can be. On that basis, the scientists in the ID movement proceed with their research.

Let’s grant the obvious, looming in the background, which is that ID’s record of published science is hardly stellar. That in itself does not show there is no interest in science, which was the charge Pantalaimon made. The activities of Minnich, Behe, Marks, Dembski, Seelke, Gonzalez, and many others put the lie to that. Their low published output could be attributed to the difficulty of defining relevant research problems, the fiery-hot hostility toward ID among other scientists and journal editors, the relative youth of the field, or many other explanations. Many observers think they know another reason, which is that ID cannot actually produce science. My somewhat educated word of caution is not to rush to judgment on this. Whatever science ID could produce, conditions are so set against it being published that it’s worth giving it considerably more time.

There is a fourth stream that has been sometimes bundled in with ID, the political, especially in regard to public education in America. Where schools have been pressured to teach a positive theory of Intelligent Design, that has been nothing but a mistake. On the other hand, schools’ resistance to bringing up evolution’s evidential difficulties seems puzzling to me, except as just another facet of academics’ ID-phobia. In hindsight, though, I believe it would have been preferable to leave even that question off the political table, innocuous though it should have been. ID miscalculated the opposition and ended up stirring up even more antipathy without much advancing its primary agenda, which is research. Now it has become difficult to pull out of the PR battles and get focused. Nobody gets everything right.

So to Pantalaimon, in summary, I see your own deep animosity toward ID seriously distorting your view of the matter. ID is not uni-dimensional. (Not even Richard Dawkins is uni-dimensional!) Intelligent Design cannot be defined by mined quotes. It has to bear responsibility for its missteps, but so do we all. It wasn’t very long ago that evolutionists confidently spoke of the useless, vestigial appendix and junk DNA as evidence for their theory, after all.

Reading the NAS book on Science, Evolution, and Creationism, I was struck by the fact that naturalistic evolution is underdetermined by the evidence. That is, one cannot validly conclude, just from evidence in nature, that everything can be explained only and exclusively in terms of natural causes and effects. There is always a background perspective.

How, for example, does one treat the incomplete fossil record? Do we see Tiktaalik (discovered in 2004 in northern Canada, with features combining those of fish and of four-legged animals) as a strong confirmation that land animals evolved out of the sea? Or do we ask why, of all the millions of transitional forms there must have been over the eons, so terribly few have been found? If transitional forms are like rafts for a swimmer across a sea, do we pay more attention to the few rafts or the long water?

But for science, only one perspective is allowed in the debate. As the book said,

In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena.

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and trying to write on it for a long time today, and I’ve just recognized I’m not going to do any better this time than I did in previous postings on this. So I’m re-publishing something I first wrote in December 2005, with some edits and updates. As we’ll see, the NAS’s naturalistic position can only lead to one conclusion, but it’s a position (and therefore a conclusion) that precedes the evidence rather than following from the evidence.

To put it another way: how we interpret the evidences of natural history is inevitably colored by the presuppositions we bring in to the question with us. The NAS position is functionally one of ontological materialism (also known as philosophical materialism, or philosophical naturalism). It does not go so far as saying there is nothing but natural phenomena, but it only admits natural phenomena into discussion. But this is not a position that flows out of science or out of the evidence; it is a position by which one interprets science.

Everybody starts with some opinion on these philosophical and theological issues. The following chart shows how different initial viewpoints will color one’s interpretations. It is not intended to cover all options exhaustively. It’s focused on the major players in the debate. I’ve left out the impersonal pantheistic and polytheistic views of deity, which don’t seem to be involved in the discussion. Pantheists (or panentheists) of the New Age variety typically land in the Neo-Darwinian camp anyway, and other eastern religions do not seem to propose creation stories with any real attempt at credibility. I’m not qualified to speak on their views, at any rate, nor am I qualified to speak on the Muslim form of theism. Panspermia is not included here because it seems to be another version of the ontological materialist view, and this is more about the development of life than its initial origins on earth anyway.

Also, I’m not suggesting that every contributor to this discussion does or should approach it this way. There are Darwin skeptics who haven’t done much metaphysical work, at least not publicly; they’re primarily concerned about empirical (scientific) problems they see in evolutionism. This chart is designed to fit only those who approach it from a particular perspective, and that within limits.

And a final disclaimer: because it is not exhaustive, this chart only works from top to bottom, not in reverse. A philosopher like Antony Flew can accept Intelligent Design and yet have problems with Biblical revelation.

Much of the debate on ID centers on whether it’s credible even to consider the possibility that the development of life has been purposefully guided. That’s where this chart begins. Those who say “no” are ontological materialists/naturalists: they are convinced that nothing at the ground of existence (ontology) has purpose or can act as a guiding agent; all there is, is matter and energy and their interactions. The only option on the table for materialists is neo-Darwinism and/or its intellectual descendants.

Belief in purposeful guidance, on the other hand, is typically tied to belief in a personal God. God’s guidance may conceivably have been entirely contained in “seed” form from the moment of creation, such that God has not intervened since then. This is a generally deistic view, which leads also to something like a neo-Darwinian conclusion, though its assumptions may not be as strictly materialistic as those of many neo-Darwinians.

Among those (including myself) who believe in a personal God who intervenes (the theistic view), some are young-earth creationists who view Genesis 1 as being literally true. Others view Genesis 1 as not being literally true in that sense; most of these hold what I call the figurative/literal view. It’s possible to believe that the Bible is literally true according to the authors’ original intent, and that Moses, the author (under the Spirit’s inspiration) intended the creation story to be viewed in a poetic, figurative sense. There’s no need to discuss that at length; the point is that it’s possible to believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible and yet not believe in a literal 6-day creation.

Thus there are those who believe in a personal God who may have intervened in the development of life since creation, and who do not ascribe to the young-earth view. This group may further divide into two sub-groups, based on their theology or their view of the evidences. The determining question at this stage is whether God’s intervention was hidden or discoverable. Theistic evolution believes God was present and involved in the development of life, but his work was hidden, perhaps even tucked away on a quantum level, so that we will not discover his intervention through empirical means. The final group is that of Intelligent Design theism, those who believe that God’s intervention left traces that scientists can discern today. (Remember where this flow chart begins and how it progresses. It leads to a theistic version of Intelligent Design, but that does not mean that all ID is theistic. ID research that sticks with empirical evidences in nature leads toward intelligence as a conclusion, not toward God. To move to God from ID is to move from science into philosophy and theology. That’s a legitimate move to make, as long as one has recognized the shift in methods and disciplines employed.)

The first octagonal box on the chart points out that neo-Darwinism and theistic evolution are empirically indistinguishable. There is no science that can discern between God being absent or having just hidden his interventions. This contributes to answering whether evolution science and religion are necessarily incompatible. They are not, if this box represents any possible reality. Neither can disprove the other, so neither need view the other as enemy. It also demonstrates that atheistic evolutionists like Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson, etc. have not arrived at their dogmatic atheism through evolutionary science (as they claim) but through other prejudices. Their position is not determined by the evidences.

The second octagonal box asks whether there is any theological need to choose between ID and theistic evolutionism. The question mark is there for a reason. Our friend and former commenter here Mike S. has said there is nothing unbiblical at all in theistic evolution. Young-earth creationists strenuously object. For me, this is a matter that requires more work, yet for now I lean toward a figurative-literal interpretation of Genesis 1, after the hermeneutic suggested by Lee Irons, and an old-earth version of Intelligent Design with God as creator. But it may be that for theists the only way in the end to choose between theistic evolution and ID will be the empirical method.

Interesting, isn’t it, that empirical methods are more determinative for theists than for naturalists! We do not have all our answers pre-determined regardless of evidences; but a strong case could be made that naturalists do.

Related:

• I Had No Idea Intelligent Design Proponents Were So Stupid
• The NAS and the Fact-Value Dichotomy
• The NAS on Science, Evolution, and Creationism

What If?

Intelligent Design is often accused of being nothing but an attack on evolution, offering no positive theory of its own, and hence not a science. I want to do some thought-play with that. Certainly ID includes negative science, the attempt to demonstrate that naturalistic evolution cannot be correct, that it is inadequate to account for life as we see it. Without conceding that ID is merely negative, let’s do some what-if thinking. Suppose ID were nothing but an attack on evolutionary theory–what then?

Michael Denton’s 1986 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis was something very much like that. Without ever mentioning Intelligent Design and without any proposed solutions, it raised serious questions about evolution. Remove the inference to intelligence from Intelligent Design discussions since then (this is what-if, remember), and a very large proportion of what remains consists of an assault on the adequacy of evolution (from this point, by “evolution,” I specifically mean naturalistic or unguided evolution).

Michael Behe has proposed Irreducible Complexity as something that evolution could not accomplish, in principle. More recently in a book by the same name he described what appears to be a severely limited “edge of evolution.” Ralph Seelke is experimentally testing to see whether evolution can accomplish two adaptive changes at the same time, and has so far come up negative. These are quite candidly attempts to show that evolution cannot explain life’s complexity and variety.

We could cite other examples. That’s enough, though, to illustrate what ought to be obvious: even if one looks only at its negative aspects, ID involves scientists doing scientific investigations. Is Intelligent Design “A Science?” If your definition of “A Science” requires that it include a scientifically describable and testable theory, that’s a debatable question. One could argue that the inference to design is not scientific, that it’s philosophical instead; and that since it’s an argument by analogy, it’s not testable. For my part, I do see that inference on the other side of a line of demarcation between science and philosophy. Separating these disciplines is difficult, though, and answers are debatable.

Or maybe they are moot. Undeniably, when ID-sympathetic scientists conduct research to contest evolution, they are working in science. Note the heated discussion on Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Behe says that in the case of malaria and HIV, trillions of opportunities for evolution have never accomplished more than a small number of adaptive changes. He makes his case on the basis of studying the actual organisms and their genomes. This is unquestionably work in the field of science. His disputants on the Amazon blog and elsewhere are primarily asking him scientific questions.

So why prolong this debate over whether Intelligent Design is a science? If it is not “A Science,” it certainly is “science,” the inference to intelligence notwithstanding.

What Objections?

But our what-if scenario here supposes that it’s all negative science, nothing but an attack on evolution, with no theory to propose in evolution’s stead. If that were so, the whole thing would need a new name; perhaps Evolutionary Skepticism in place of Intelligent Design. Other than that, what problems would there be with such a program? Based on my impression of the debate, mainstream science would still object on three points:

1. Evolution cannot be questioned. Where evolution sits, where no doubts can be voiced, no dissent raised, no questions asked. Evolution must be true.

2. All doubts raised toward evolution are religiously motivated, and religion ought to keep its interfering nose out of science’s business.

3. Evolutionary skeptics are not publishing in peer-reviewed articles; therefore they are not doing science.

No Other Answer Allowed

The first two objections interact. Evolutionary theory is mightily committed to philosophical and/or methodological naturalism. The first of these in particular is a strong version of atheism. Philosophical naturalism says that no matter what question you ask about the natural world, the only right answer is that all causes are strictly natural. Evolutionists committed to this include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Richard Lewontin, Barbara Forrest, and G.G. Simpson. Methodological naturalism is slightly different: it says that the only right scientific answer is that all causes are strictly natural. Careful thinkers can distinguish philosophical naturalism from methodological naturalism, but such careful thinking is far too rare.

Under naturalism, there is no other option but evolution, as this brief syllogism shows:

P1. No explanations can be proposed or admitted for any natural phenomena except such as are entirely natural.
P2. Evolutionary theory (in one of its forms) constitutes the only entirely natural explanation available.

Therefore

C. Evolution is the only explanation we can propose or admit.

Given the premises, no contrary evidence could overcome the inexorable logic of the conclusion. Evolution is evidentially invulnerable. Any positive evidence it can garner is sufficient (little or much, it matters not), for it carries no obligation to overcome negative evidence.

Evolutionists might splutter in objection, “We’re not claiming we’re invulnerable! We know that if we ever found a human buried with a dinosaur, that would disprove everything! We’re open to the evidence!” Well, just how open are you? You acknowledge the appearance of design in everything, you admit the astonishing volume of information in DNA, you can show no other system that can assemble information like that by strictly natural processes, you have never produced observational evidence of evolution happening beyond the very narrow limits Behe described, you think a secretory system that likely developed after the flagellum may have been a step on the way to the development of the flagellum, and you think a mousetrap assembling itself one piece at a time is a good counter to Irreducible Complexity!

Religion Getting In the Way?

Regarding religious motivations for opposing evolution, several things could be said. In the first place, it’s irrelevant. Evidence against evolutionary theory is evidence against evolutionary theory, no matter what the motivation behind its discovery or analysis. To say otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy. In the second place, science cannot simply slam the door on religion’s nose. Christianity in particular makes claims regarding origins, and these claims pose what philosophers of science call “external conceptual problems” for science. There is no reason an external conceptual problem cannot be brought into the domain of scientific investigation. That doesn’t mean that science must perform religious tests on the problem; science performs scientific tests. But external problems may certainly be brought in to science for its special kind of inquiry.

Beyond all that, it’s simply not true that all doubts are religiously motivated. Michael Denton’s doubts were not religiously motivated: he looked at evidence, and saw that some of it didn’t fit. Where’s the religion in that? Where’s the religion in running an experiment to see whether evolution can accomplish two things at once?

Unpublished?

The third objection, that ID theorists, are not publishing in peer-reviewed journals, has been debated widely enough elsewhere. It would have considerably more merit if not for the obviously scientific discussion taking place around Behe’s Edge of Evolution. If it’s not science, why raise scientific objections? And then of course there is the chilling effect of the Sternberg affair; and just how good would an evolutionary skeptical paper have to be to get past Nature’s screens? Can’t we all just admit that no journal is going to publish anything skeptical of evolution in the near future, and quit fussing at ID for running up against that barrier?

Negative Science Is Science

To summarize, even if ID were purely negative science, it would still be science. If evolution were shown to be incapable of what has been claimed of it, that would be a scientific discovery. If ID proponents were the ones to lead in that discovery, they would be doing so as scientists doing scientific work. That would be so regardless of whether they were to propose an alternative scientific explanation. It would be so even if they had religious motivations behind their work.

Thus ends my what-if. Charges that ID is not science are at best sloppy: a little nuanced thought would acknowledge there is scientific investigation going on under ID’s auspices, whether or not it involves any positive scientific theorizing.

This is going to be interesting. I’ve just ordered my copy, which should be here within a week.

On Thursday, [the National Academy of Sciences] produced a third [book on teaching evolution]. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

[From Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap - New York Times]

I blogged previously on this, but that was based on a news report and focused on an aspect other than evolution and faith. When the book comes, I’ll have more to say about that.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as reported in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, has made another statement in favor of teaching evolution in schools. There were the usual distortions in their report, but it’s only been a few days since that topic came up here on this blog, and there’s no need to go into that again so soon. Something else there was even more interesting to me:

The report stated that the idea of evolution could be fully compatible with religious faith. “Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future,” the report said.

I don’t know who originated the terminology of a “fact-value dichotomy.” Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, credits the concept to Francis Schaeffer, although he used different words for it. (I’m sure the concept could be traced to other thinkers, though I cannot do that work from where I’m sitting in my office today.) The idea is this: the Western world generally accepts that there are facts, and there are values, and never the twain shall meet.

Facts are in the realm of knowledge; they include things like scientific discoveries, political and economic realities, and so on. They are about things we can all touch and hold and agree on; they are public. Values, in contrast, are privately held. What we value is a matter of personal belief and opinion. They’re not susceptible to being shown right or wrong; they can’t be proven. To speak of proving a value to be correct is to commit a serious category error.

Facts are publicly shared (or at least shareable) knowledge; values are private opinions. In the realm of facts you can be right or wrong, in the realm of values what matters is that you have them, and they are neither right nor wrong.

Religion is widely held to be in the the realm of values: neither right nor wrong, but a matter of personal values. This assumption fairly shouts from the quote above. “Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world,” and they need not be in opposition. Why no opposition? Because, the NAS apparently assumes, they deal with entirely separate issues. Religion does not need to deal in facts; thus, it need not involve anything that might conflict with science. Religion is a matter of belief, which has nothing necessarily to do with knowledge.

The problem with that is that facts and values cannot actually be separated. Religion, more specifically Christian religion, cannot be separated from the realm of facts, and science is shot through with values. Conflict between Christianity and science, if it exists, exists in the realms of facts and values, and therefore it cannot be neatly waved away as the NAS suggests it can.

Christianity and the Realm of Fact
Christianity begins with a statement of fact: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This means that there is no ultimate explanation for anything in nature except for one that includes God in it. There is much we can say without reference to God, but these are not ultimate facts, only contingent ones.

Christianity says God can and actually does do miracles. The regularity of natural law does not rule dictatorially. God rules, and sometimes injects himself into creation in unpredicted ways. That is a statement of fact, or at least (if you want to deny it) it is a statement within the realm of facts.

Christianity says humans have eternal souls, that morals and ethics are based in reality, that we have free will, that we are actually sinners separated from God, that we can come back into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Christianity says its understanding of values is rooted in a fact: the fact that a transcendent creator God is the ultimate determiner of what is or is not of value.

And Christianity says that these facts are known through revelation and attested to by many means, including history, philosophical inquiry, human experience, and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. All of these claims are inaccessible to science but are nevertheless claims in the realm of facts.

Science and the Realm of Values
Science, for its part, is laden with values. Science values discovery. It seeks, expects, and values regularity. It honors the unprovable but immensely useful Occam’s Razor. It respects ethics in regard to human and animal research. Naturalistic science leads to certain value conclusions, such as one discussed here recently, that humans are of no greater value than any other living thing.

One point on which I agree with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens (the atheist Gang of Four) is that they realize facts matter. They think religion is wrong. I don’t agree with that, but I agree it is the type of thing to which the word “wrong” could apply. They don’t treat it as a matter of mere private belief. I could wish for more of that clearheadedness. The NAS statement tends strongly in the other direction, and betrays a real confusion about facts and values.

“Needlessly Placing Them In Opposition”?
The NAS says we should not place science and religion “needlessly … in opposition.” But on some points, some conclusions of science and some conclusions of religion do oppose one another. This is needless opposition only if we assume that one will always yield to the other. Guess which one that would be? Yet there is so much of reality that science cannot begin to investigate. Why should we assume that it rules all possible knowledge?

My purpose today is not to show whose facts or values are better, but to show that differences between science and religion are not irrelevant, and working through those differences is not “needless opposition.” There are conflicts. If we understood science and revelation perfectly, and if we agreed on it all, there would be no conflict there, for truth is unified; but we are not at that ideal state, nor can we expect to reach it short of the return of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, the NAS seems to naively accept an unsupportable distinction between facts and values. We need not follow them there.

Postscript, 2:10 pm
No surprise here, but the Edge has just revealed their own fuzziness on this very subject. This was the opening of the email sent to their list today:

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.

When God changes your mind, that’s faith.

When facts change your mind, that’s science.

Here we go again:

According to an article appearing in the January 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal, the introduction of “non-science,” such as creationism and intelligent design, into science education will undermine the fundamentals of science education. Some of these fundamentals include using the scientific method, understanding how to reach scientific consensus, and distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific explanations of natural phenomena.

Let’s say it again:

• No credible Intelligent Design advocate is calling for anyone to stop teaching evolution.
• ID advocates want more of evolution taught, not less; the inclusion of scientifically acknowledged difficulties in the theory. This is not the same as introducing ID.
• “How to reach scientific consensus.” Well, in addition to the time-tested method of coming to agreement over time on clearly supported theory, there’s also chasing dissent out of the academy, and the No True Scotsman method (see also here).
• “Distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific explanations.” How about true versus false explanations–or logical versus illogical explanations? Because “scientific versus non-scientific” seriously begs the question of origins, when “scientific” admits only naturalistic causes, as I’m quite sure this group believes.

I would happily admit “scientific vs. non-scientific” if “scientific” were properly defined as being just one of the many valid routes to genuine knowledge–immensely useful in its proper sphere, but not unlimited in its scope and power. That, by the way, would also go a long way toward resolving that other straw man in this short quote: the “non-scientific” epithet applied to ID.

The coalition of scientific organizations mentioned in the articles headlines includes 17 different groups. Among them are the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Science Teachers Association.