Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

A friend wonders about The Atlantic’s definition of ID

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You know, the claim that ID is supposed to somehow be going out of fashion (what? In favour of some people have tails?)

The friend notes that The Atlantic writer (Emma Green) claims that ID is “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,”and asks, “Why don’t such people use what we define it to be instead of reading the entrails of uncertain data, using their own definition?”

This analysis is illuminating.

They never want to talk about the evidence base, of course.

Why doesn’t she? Because It’s called “controlling the conversation.” Make sure that actual opinions are not aired, only caricatures of them. Make questions depend on elite caricatures, so the actual voices fromthe street are never heard. Find profs to pronounce on how awful it is that the great unwashed still don’t believe, after decades of indoctrination.

Okay, guys, here’s the solution: fire the public and hire a new one. 😉

Comments
Had scientists framed the issue of 'intelligent design', simply and solely, as that of 'design', it would have sounded as unspecific and vague as a claim to love your Mom and apple-pie.: 'Yes, I believe in Mom and apple pie.' And yet that is precisely how it should have been described. No qualifying adjective at all: 'Do you believe the world and everything in it was designed? As it is, by inserting the qualification, 'intelligent', we have rendered extraordinary assistance to the enemy, aided and abetted them in their perverse propaganda. Patently, there is no design, plan, scheme, plot, etc, without a forward-looking recourse to intelligence. There has to be a teleology implicit. It is just the way it is. There is no getting round it. AND YET, by qualifying the word, 'design' in this way, we have enabled the numb-skulled myrmidons of nihilism to conjure all sorts of phantasmagorical scenarios, to claim that the designs we see all around us are the products of chance, of random chemical combinations, etc. Yet, in terms of their meaning within this context, 'chance' and 'design' are antonyms, plain and simple. The qualification, 'intelligent', just gives them an 'out'. DO YOU DENY THAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOUR EYES, EVIDENCE OF DESIGN? What happened to all the other MEANINGLESS and useless junk of random chance's creation? Why is it we only see the successful or quasi successful creations of random chance, and not what must be the almost infinite stream of garbage that it also haphazardly created, which makes no sense and has no practicable use?Axel
June 12, 2014
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At least they know it gets readership attention. So they are in fact helping the cause while trying to destroy it. yEC and ID are bigger then these obscure writers who don't know anything about these subjects. they are just on a team and presume they can and must influence people to the right answers. Fire them all and pick a name out of a hat and that person will be better.Robert Byers
June 11, 2014
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I didn't find her article or definition offensive even if inaccurate. It was an honest enough piece. Her column is actually very good.lpadron
June 11, 2014
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Let me see, what did she get wrong about ID? 1. ID doesn't make any assumptions about common descent. Some are believers in it, others are not. 2. ID doesn't postulate anything about divine origins or any particular deity. That'll do for starters.OldArmy94
June 11, 2014
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