[Continues from p. 1 here . . . ]
11 –> Similarly, ever since Plato (as linked above), the contrast that design thinkers have made is not between “natural” and “supernatural,” but between the natural [= chance + mechanical necessity] and the ART-ificial, or intelligent [ = that which shows intentionally and purposefully organised configuration]. That distinction is based on obervations, and assignment of cause is made on characteristic signs, reasoning from sign to signified. In particular, on accounting for the origin of life or of body plan level biodiversity, with the characteristic feature of digitally coded, functionally specific, complex information [dFSCI], the point has been explicitly made, over and over again, that the inference to design is not at all an inference to God as designer.
12 –> For, empirically anchored inference to design as relevant causal factor for life is not equal to specifying the identity of the relevant designer, or placing such a designer within or beyond the cosmos. (Cf, the Epilogue of Thaxton et al in The Mystery of Life’s Origin (warning: fat download), 1984, p 188 ff. [TMLO is actually the very first modern design theory technical work. That is, this NCSE-endorsed slander has been a slander in the face of the accessible truth right from the outset.])
13 –> The slander continues: The creationist groups attempt to masquerade their ideas as science simply by calling the concept “intelligent design theory”. (In actual fact, Creationists, both Young Earth and Old Earth, have often specifically and publicly distanced themselves from Design Theory. For the former, this has especially been on grounds of failure of Design Theory to conform to the Biblical approach as they understand it. The NCSE knows, or should know this. Even more important — and as the NCSE knows or should know: causal inference from empirically reliable sign to signified lies close to the heart of scientific theoretical reasoning and practical reasoning; e.g. cf. medical diagnosis on symptoms and signs of disease. So does the long-term theoretical project of empirically based inference to best current explanation of collected and collated factual observations. The NCSE is being selectively hyperskeptical and dismissive.)
14 –> Worse, the term, “masquerade” directly implies an accusation of fraud. One, that is plainly unwarranted. This is an attack to the man, not a dealing with the issue.
15 –> The willful misrepresentations continue: No testable hypotheses or any form of scientific research has been presented to support their attempts to insert religion into science. (This is a twofer. First, the explanatory filter is eminently testable, as has often been put publicly: if a credible case of say 150 ASCII characters worth of text in coherent and meaningful English can be produced by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity, the design inference would collapse at once — but there is an Internet full of confirmatory instances and not a single valid counter-example. [Genetic Algorithms, from Weasel on, have all been designed and work on intelligently injected active information that allows them to overcome the odds.] Secondly the claimed attempt to insert religion into science is a blatant falsehood. The design filter is an empirically based inductive inference, not a religious construct. In addition, NCSE knows or should know that a significant and growing body of peer-reviewed and published ID supportive research exists. Indeed, such was drawn to Judge Jones’ attention in the Dover case in 2005, not least by the testim0ny of ID researchers in his courtroom, but was willfully ignored by him and those who seem to have written major parts of his decision for him.)
16 –> This turnabout projective accusation is particularly revealing:
17 –> It is not merely suspected, but demonstrated that in recent decades there has been an evolutionary materialist attempt to redefine science, through injecting a priori materialism as a censoring constraint on science. Let us, again, hear Lewontin’s inadvertent confession:
18 –> Motive mongering of course runs two ways. It can easily be demonstrated that a great many advocates of a priori evolutionary materialism as a defining constraint on science, are materialistic atheists or agnostics or the like. It can also be demonstrated that the imposition of a priori materialism through so-called methodological naturalism, censors science from being able to freely pursue the truth in light of empirical evidence. So, wouldn’t it be wiser to simply insist that science be based on observational facts, and carefully reasoned empirically anchored analysis and explanations, regardless of who puts them forth?
19 –> The dismissive strawman argument that “Creationists” argue that “there is no fossil evidence for evolution,” papers over the “trade secret” of paleontology. As Stephen Jay Gould has so aptly put it in his The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002):
. . . long term stasis following geologically abrupt origin of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists. [p. 752.]
. . . . The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section [[first occurrence] without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants.” [p. 753.]
. . . . proclamations for the supposed ‘truth’ of gradualism – asserted against every working paleontologist’s knowledge of its rarity – emerged largely from such a restriction of attention to exceedingly rare cases under the false belief that they alone provided a record of evolution at all! The falsification of most ‘textbook classics’ upon restudy only accentuates the fallacy of the ‘case study’ method and its root in prior expectation rather than objective reading of the fossil record. [p. 773.]
20 –> Similarly, “it is impossible to obtain higher complexity systems from lower complexity systems,” is another unworthy strawman. As already pointed out, the issue is not to account for mere complexity, but for the credible source of functionally specific, complex organisation and related information as relevant to the origin of life and the origin of the many diverse major body plans, on undirected forces of chance and mechanical necessity. This has never been satisfactorily done by adherents of the evolutionary materialist paradigm for origins science. And, the only empirically warranted cause of dFSCI is design.
21 –> The strawman claim that Creationists or design thinkers hold that “if you believe in evolution, you are an atheist,” is manifestly false. (i) Creationists spend a lot of time and effort arguing with theistic evolutionists, (ii) the largest single Christian Denomination — the Roman Catholic church — has long been accommodating of such theistic views of evolution, and (iii) many design thinkers (such as Michael Behe) accept common descent. But also, it is quite evident that there are many who would impose a priori evolutionary materialism on origins science, with the specific motivation of promoting their brand of atheism. Of these, noted evolution advocate Richard Dawkins springs immediately to mind. And there are many, many others of like ilk.
22 –> Finally, utterly contrary to the assertion “[t]hey have even invented an imaginary scientific “controversy” to argue their agenda,” for good reason, evolutionary materialism has always been a controversial approach, as a scientific enterprise and on issues connected to the philosophy of science [is it appropriate to use methodological naturalism as a censoring constraint on origins models?], and in the wider culture. In particular, many have long been concerned that evolutionary materialism is not only ill founded as a worldview, but tends to promote ruthless and lawless factions and destructive amorality in the community at large.
23 –> Nor is any of this new. In fact, if we excerpt Plato in The Laws, Bk X (~ 360 BC) as he reflects on the sad story of Alcibiades and his damaging impacts on Athens, we may see Plato speaking in the voice of the Athenian Stranger:
[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.– [Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke’s views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic “every man does what is right in his own eyes” chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [i.e. a root of controversy and power struggles], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [here the suspicion is that such factions tend to amoral tyranny], and not in legal subjection to them. [Emphases and explanatory parentheses added.]
24 –> This ancient analysis has been echoed tellingly in our day by historian of science (with a special focus on evolutionary biology and population genetics) Prof. William Provine of Cornell University, in his well-known 1998 Darwin Day keynote address at the University of Tennessee, as he then went on to try to make the best case he could for an ethics of naturalism:
25 –> Now, such amorality is a serious issue, and one that needs to be seriously addressed; for, the binding nature of ought is a key plank of liberty and self-government. And, if we are the puppets of our genes, memes and other socio-psychological forces, in a materialistic world, not even our minds can be trusted. J B S Haldane summarised this issue in his famous 1932 remark:
26 –> Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the “thoughts” we have, (iii) the beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt and (v) the “conclusions” we reach — without residue — must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or logical validity. And, (v) immediately, the project of rationality itself would collapse if that were true. Happily, the result is such a patent reduction of a worldview to absurdity that we have every right to dismiss evolutionary materialism as necessarily false.
27 –> The only reason evolutionary materialism is taken seriously is that somehow, it has in our day captured the mantle of science. But, as the shrill denunciations and distortions corrected above reveal, the NCSE’s grip on that mantle is plainly slipping.
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Objectively, design theory is not re-labelled creationism, in pursuit of an imagined theocratic agenda to pervert science and science education.
Equally plainly, science and science education should not be held in thralldom to evolutionary materialistic philosophies, agendas and pressure groups, or even to the ideologies of dominant factions in institutions like the US National Academy of Sciences.
Science is too important to be left to the faction-fights in science institutions and the agit-prop games played by pressure groups such as the NCSE. Let us therefore remind ourselves of what science, historically, is understood to be; courtesy high-quality dictionaries published before the recent controversies:
science: a branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, esp. concerned with the material and functions of the physical universe. [Concise Oxford, 1990]
scientific method: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge [”the body of truth, information and principles acquired by mankind”] involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. [Webster’s 7th Collegiate, 1965]
And so, we need to ask: why is it that defenders of evolutionary materialism as reigning orthodoxy in origins science and science education, routinely find themselves resorting to the sort of trifecta fallacy tactics — red herrings, strawmen and ad hominems — corrected [yet again] above?
Similarly, what does such uncivil rhetoric say about the actual strengths and weaknesses of the worldview and scientific paradigm they are so anxious to protect by any and all means, fair or foul?