you wrote, “I have emailed John Calvert and hopefully he will reply to clear up just what happened in 1999 and 2005.”

Did Mr Calvert reply? If so, are you able to summarize or forward his comments? I for one would like to know what he says about this.

If we are hanging out with juvenile delinquents (YEC’s), then you are hanging out with three-time losers; (Atheist Darwinists)?

If our friends are to be graded down for believing the improbable (God created the earth in seven days), then your friends should be flunked for believing the impossible (the universe created itself).

So inviting you into our big tent is a greater exercise in magnanimity than allowing the YECs to stay. If you choose to stay out, it is your sensibilities that are on trial, not ours.

It appears to me that TE’s problem with ID is not “creationism” (ID has nothing to do with it) it’s the creationist (ID doesn’t ostracize them). This is politics. The fact that ID definitions, wherever they happen to come from, do not include language intended specifically to separate it from creationists seems to be an objection to ID’s politics, not its science. To some it seems unconscionable that ID would not first exclude this group of fanatics, then get down to the business of science.

That said what’s more important are the differences between ID and TE on issues unrelated to association: the scientific claims of ID. The issues that separate TE/Darwinism from ID have to do with Irreducible Complexity, the Edge of Evolution, the Explanatory Filter and CSI, and the Privileged Planet Hypothesis. How does TE deal with these? Does the DNA molecule and the information processing machinery of the cell exhibit the hallmark of design (and is this design objectively detectable by the application of scientific principles) or are Darwinian processes of Random Variation and Natural Selection enough to account for it?

That TE won’t deal with these very serious and paradigm-changing observations of ID because it doesn’t politically affiliate properly doesn’t hold up. Either TE is compatible with ID based on its scientific claims, or it remains firmly aligned with materialist claims of the power of Darwinism’s undirected processes to produce the complexity of biological life. I think it’s really that simple.

Unless ID and TE can achieve some sort of harmony on IC, EoE, EF/CSI, and PPH, there will be no need to argue the playground politics of exclusion by association.

Not to worry, I am not in the business of promoting the Galileo vs the church mythology. I must have confused you.

I was going to let my tu quoque rest, but I’m in a different mood today …

Yes, you did confuse me. By using the Galileo/science/religion theme you enter the big tent of those who promote the mythology. By not explicitly distancing yourself from it, and by making use of its rhetorical impact yourself, you are, in effect, endorsing it.
Right?

As you are an IDist, and a creationist, and a theistic evolutionist, you just might see why it’s a big tent, afterall.

In the most important sense a creationist is a person who believes in creation, and that includes people who believe that Genesis is a myth and that creation involved a process called evolution and consumed billions of years.

This latter is, of course, why at first ID could be called “creationism”; that is, because a wider use of the word was being applied – one that I presume applies to TE evolutionists as well.

This does not make it accurate to call ID “creationism” now, as the term specifically separates ID from the narrower use of the term “creationism” which is intended.

I’m ignorant of many things, including many parts of science. We all are ignorant of many things.

I do know quite a bit about the history of the origins controversy in the US, and my antennae are probably much better tuned than yours are for certain things. That doesn’t invaldiate your perspective on this, DaveScot, but it is to say that there were specific reasons why I said what I did. I won’t repeat my points again.

My main concern on entering this thread was to refute the false claim that many TEs, including some members of the ASA (which is not a TE organization per se, any more than it is an ID organization, per se), simply lack the courage to support ID. That just doesn’t fit the facts for most of the people I know, and I was concerned to get that straight. Disagreement over matters of opinion and/or strategy is always fair game; the imputation of false motives is not, as folks here will surely appreciate (I’m fully aware that this type of thing goes both ways).

Stephen–

Of course, Stephen, if the only actual options were “creationism” vs athiesm, I’m with the creationists. No doubt about that.

But it isn’t helpful to restrict one’s options in that artificial manner. Even ID represents an alternative perspective, albeit one that could be a good deal clearer about setting itself apart from the “creationist” option you offered.

John Loftus–

Thank you for the link to the very interesting commentary by Avalos. I am as impressed by that, as I was by Weikart’s response to Jeff Schloss. His points about Luther, eugenical practices before they carried that name, and other things were all on target, as far as I can tell from my quite limited knowledge of those parts of history. It helps folks see more fully just why I get nervous about connecting historical dots in too simple a manner: it’s usually not very clear and simple at all, any more than human beings and human behavior are clear and simple. Weikart’s conclusions have something to them, as I stated before, but it’s easy to overstate them for ideological purposes.

If social Darwinism of any variety obviously needs Darwinism for its “scientific” and cultural cache, just as obviously the abuses themselves have very often been around a lot longer than Darwinism. The creationists like to blame “evolution” for racism, pornography, abortion, euthenasia, Marxism, and sexual promiscuity (did I forget something?), as is none of those things were around in 1500 or even 1500 BC. The fact that this is patently absurd does not prevent a lot of Americans from believing it. ID leaders wisely avoid these specific claims, and IMO care should be taken not to make a similar claim (ie, a claim that goes without warrant beyond local historical circumstances into a global historical claim) in the instance of Nazi Germany–or in the instance of eugenics anywhere else. The connections that stand scrutiny should be noted, and those that go too far should be explicity distinguished from them and avoided. Some of the controversy about “Expelled,” apparently, involves whether or not Stein clearly made that distinction in the film and in his marketing of it.

As for Avalos’ points about the history of the word “creationist,” the only new point (to me at least) is the one about the earliest known use being the one involving traducionism. As I told a fairly hostile crowed at Indiana University last fall, I am myself a “Creationist” if the word is defined broadly enough. However, it’s impossible IMO to note the great signficance of the narrower definition (ie, “creationist” = YEC), relative to discussing ID. That’s b/c American court cases have been about a very specific form of creationism, the type that ID opponents are so quick to equate with ID–to suit their own ideological purposes. Anyone here already knows this. Avalos, no doubt, likes that fact that he can now “defend” his use of the term “intelligent design creationism,” but I’d be happy to face off against him on that one anytime he likes. In the meantime, however, help me make that case more forcefully by taking that creationist language out of the definition of ID linked on this site.

Going back to lurking now.

First of all it was ME who put that definition of ID on this website. Bill Dembski wasn’t even consulted in the decision. I simply googled the web and copied what I thought was the best definition. As it turns out that definition was worked out and adopted by a large group of ID proponents. No wonder I liked it, a lot of work went into it from a diverse group.

You’re reading your own bias, and quite frankly, your ignorance of science into that definition to see demons where they don’t exist.

For example, when I see “origins science” the first thing that comes to mind is the Harvard Origins of Life project which sure as hell isn’t associated with creation science. I can only guess that’s because I’ve been following the scientific quest to discover a mechanism of chemical evolution for decades. I’d never even heard the name “scientific creationism” until a few years ago as I simply never read anything but mainstream science journals, science books, and took science courses in college. Secular “origins science” is quite well established and broad in scope. If you weren’t aware of that then it’s simple ignorance on your part.

Another example is where you think “impacts religion” has some nefarious undertone. More nonsense. Design detection is used in many areas of inquiry and when it doesn’t involve the potential design of life no one, neither secular scientist nor non-secular bats an eye. But let a non-secular scientist apply it to detecting design in living things and all hell breaks loose among the secular scientists. And it isn’t because all the other applications involve human designers. I’ve been following the ongoing Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Exactly the same principles of ID that are applied to detecting design in living things form the basis of detecting extraterrestrial intelligence. No can knows if an extraterrestrial intelligence even exists to say nothing of what form physical it takes. Yet SETI researchers are very confident they can discriminate a signal of intelligent origin from non-intelligent sources. They are confident because design detection works. Except when it’s applied to patterns found in living things. Then the same principles no longer apply. The reason they don’t apply is because it would give people who believe in a creator/God some scientific support for their belief. Thus the definition of ID is quite correct that ID is treated differently in origins science than any other science not because of the weight of the evidence but because of the religious implications.

I happen to not give a tinker’s damn about religious implications one way or the other. I objectively follow the evidence wherever it leads. If it leads to life being the result of atoms dancing to the tune of law and chance then so be it and if it leads to some kind of creator that’s fine with me too. Truth be told I’d rather discover that life ends in eternal oblivion. I don’t believe it because if I somehow found myself alive and conscious in this form it’s a proven possibility it can happen. What can happen once can and probably will happen again. My fear is that the next time I wake into being self-conscious I won’t have such a pleasant life as this one I’ve got now. I’d rather quit the game a winner than chance coming back in some wretched circumstance. But regardless of my personal preference I’ll believe what the data tells me. What the data tells me is that design can be distinguished from non-design in many cases and the same principles that are applied to potentially designed objects and patterns outside the life sciences can be applied to patterns and structures in living things with similar results.