They said it: NCSE endorses the “design is re-labelled creationism” slander
In the short term, a smear campaign can be very successful, and will poison the atmosphere, perhaps even poisoning the general public’s perception of your opponents. Usually, it works by using what may be called for convenience the trifecta fallacy, unfortunately — and as we shall shortly see — a now habitual pattern of all too many evolutionary materialism advocates when they deal with Intelligent Design. Specifically:
ii: lead it away to a strawman caricature of the issues and arguments of the opponent
iii: soak it in inflammatory innuendos, guilt by invidious association or outright demonising attacks to the man (ad hominems) and ignite through snide or incendiary rhetoric.
The typical result of such an uncivil, disrespectful rhetorical tactic when used on a naive or trusting public is that it distracts attention, clouds, confuses, polarises and poisons the atmosphere for discussion. Especially when false accusations are used, it can seriously damage reputations and careers. So, the trifecta is at minimum a violation of duties of care and respect. At worst, it is a cynically calculated propagandistic deception that through clouding the atmosphere with a poisonous, polarising cloud, divides the public and points their attention to an imaginary threat elsewhere, so that an agenda that plainly cannot stand on its own merits can gain power in the community.
But what happens when the smear begins to unravel as more and more people begin to understand that you have failed to be fair or truthful, in the face of abundant evidence and opportunity to the contrary?
Let us see, by examining the NCSE-hosted (thus, again, endorsed) page for the ironically named New Mexico Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education. Excerpting:
The creationist groups attempt to masquerade their ideas as science simply by calling the concept “intelligent design theory”. No testable hypotheses or any form of scientific research has been presented to support their attempts to insert religion into science. Furthermore, it is suspected that the aim of these religiously motivated people is to redefine the meaning of science; if they were successful, science would become useless as a method for learning about the natural world. CESE decries the very usage of science terminology where there is no sound use of science. CESE also decries any political attempt to discredit the Theory of Evolution. Creationists present false statements concerning the validity of observed evidence for evolution such as: “there is no fossil evidence for evolution,” “it is impossible to obtain higher complexity systems from lower complexity systems,” etc. They call into question the motives and beliefs of scientists with claims such as, “if you believe in evolution, you are an atheist,” etc. They have even invented an imaginary scientific “controversy” to argue their agenda . . .
This needs to be exposed and corrected in steps, and it is worth the while to immediately pause and look at the Dissent from Darwin list to see that: yes, Virginia, there is a real controversy on scientific matters tied to Darwinism. Also, let us list links to the series so far: background, and “They said it . . . ” 1, 2, 3.
So now, correcting in steps: Read More ›