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Biologist goes to war against language

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In “The “Newspeak” of Evolutionary Biology Hopes to Banish the term “Design,” by Design”, Evolution News & Views (April 6, 2011) Casey Luskin tells us

The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Now some ID critics today are so fearful of lending any credence towards intelligent design that they are recommending that biologists stop using the word “design” entirely.A recent article in the journal Bioessays by its editor Andrew Moore, titled “We need a new language for evolution. . . everywhere,” suggests that biologists should stop using the term “design.” According to Moore, under “Evolution old-speak” we would say, “Structure X is designed to perform…” but under “Evolution new-speak” we must simply say, “Structure X performs Y.” If there’s any doubt that Moore is worried about the intelligent design implications of the language used by biologists, consider the following passage from his article:

A banal example shows how an apparently trivial change in words can radically change perceived meaning: to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z. In an objective scientific sense, we should phrase this as ‘in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z’. It is that innocent little word ‘to’ that transforms the meaning, giving enzyme Y the essence of ‘will’ – ‘to’ being short for ‘in order to’, or ‘with the purpose of’. Purpose can only be exercised by a supernatural entity in this situation.

Here for more.

Newspeak: an imaginary form of language in George Orwell’s 1984, in which the size of vocabulary and ranges of meaning were so restricted that this in itself restricted the concepts and thoughts that a person was capable of formulating (Media Dictionary)

Newspeak dictionary here.

Comments
The intellectual degeneracy of these people is astonishing. It really is.tgpeeler
April 9, 2011
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We should realize this absurdity isn't really to prevent ID friendly folks from "misconstruing" the research of biologists. It is to prevent darwinian biologists from following the research to its intuitive, logical conclusion: If a number of individual components are tied to together to form a utilitarian whole one can easily infer it was designed for that purpose. This something any mechanic can tell you. But as Francis Crick said: "Biologists must CONSTANTLY keep in mind that what they see was not designed but evolved." (emphasis added) So if the proof if is in the pudding . . . let's just stop calling it pudding.MedsRex
April 6, 2011
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