It's official: ID really is creationism

[The Pixie]

Since the founding of the ID movement, evolutionists have been saying it is really creationism, and IDists have been at pains to deny it. Finally the IDists are coming out of the closet, as it were:

What's very helpful about this interview with Stephen Meyer, conducted by John Ankerberg, is that Steve details the four, not two, possible world-views: materialism, theism, deism and pantheism. ... Only theism, of course, allows for a source of design that is "transcendent, intelligent, and active in history," and that is exactly what the evidence demands.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04...tur084971.html

[Cow Poke]

Oh

[klaus54]

Since the founding of the ID movement, evolutionists have been saying it is really creationism, and IDists have been at pains to deny it. Finally the IDists are coming out of the closet, as it were:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04...tur084971.html

IMO, there is a key difference. "Creationism" refers to particular creation stories, and thus makes (some) testable predictions. Unfortunately for YEC and Flood Geology those predictions have been falsified. (Deep Time, the complexity of the astronomical and geologic records, genetic and other evidence of common descent.)

ID on the other hand makes no testable predictions, at least that I have seen, so is in principle not falsifiable, thus not science but philosophy. ID uses sciencey terms but hasn't made a testable prediction or even gets off the ground since it has no consistent definition of "intelligence" other than some anthropomorphic form.

Just my two cents.

K54

[rogue06]

Since the founding of the ID movement, evolutionists have been saying it is really creationism, and IDists have been at pains to deny it. Finally the IDists are coming out of the closet, as it were:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04...tur084971.html

As Leonard Krishtalka, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, once quipped: "Intelligent design is nothing more than creationism in a cheap tuxedo." This view is strongly supported when one reads what the leaders of the movement tend to say to friendly audiences. For instance:

Philip E. Johnson (the father of the Intelligent Design movement):


William Dembski:

The Wedge Document:^[1]

Governing Goals ... To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Then there is the book "Of Pandas and People," which was designed to be a school textbook that promoted Intelligent Design. It was originally written as a strictly creationist tract with the original title being "Creation Biology" and was only slightly altered to get around the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard which declared it unconstitutional to teach creationism in classrooms. For instance, the passage

was changed to read

cdesign proponentsists

As a final note about the book, one of its co-authors, Percival Davis, later acknowledged in a November 1994 interview with the Wall Street Journal, that religious concerns underlay the writing of it, saying: "Of course my motives were religious. There's no question about it."



Now to be fair, not all of the advocates of Intelligent Design are creationists. What's more some of the largest creationist groups and their spokespersons have given ID a lukewarm reception at best.

Henry Morris, one of the founders of modern YEC movement expresses his dissatisfaction when he writes in "Design is not Enough
Still it appears that Morris sees ID and irreducible complexity are mere euphemisms for creation and watered down versions of creationism.

John Morris, Henry's son, who inherited the role of leader of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) after the latter's passing, takes a more hard-line approach:

More recently John Whitcomb, who co-wrote the Bible of the YEC movement with Henry Morris ("The Genesis Flood1. Put out by the Discovery Institute, the primary organization backing ID. Although initially dismissed by the Discovery Institute as merely an "urban legend" pushed by "Darwinist Paranoia," one of its co-founders, Stephen C. Meyer, eventually admitted that they were indeed the source of the document.

[rogue06]

I could add quite a bit more to this since I wrote this after further research and will add this to the original. The additional material is in red:

As Leonard Krishtalka, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, once quipped: "Intelligent design is nothing more than creationism in a cheap tuxedo." This view is strongly supported when one reads what the leaders of the movement tend to say to friendly audiences. For instance:

Philip E. Johnson (the father of the Intelligent Design movement):


William Dembski:

The Wedge Document:^[1]

Governing Goals ... To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Then there is the book "Of Pandas and People," which was designed to be a school textbook that promoted Intelligent Design. It was originally written as a strictly creationist tract with the original title being "Creation Biology" and was only slightly altered to get around the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard which declared it unconstitutional to teach creationism in classrooms. For instance, the passage

was changed to read

cdesign proponentsists

As a final note about the book, one of its co-authors, Percival Davis, later acknowledged in a November 1994 interview with the Wall Street Journal, that religious concerns underlay the writing of it, saying: "Of course my motives were religious. There's no question about it."

There are the statements of other leading advocates of ID worth considering here such as those by the Discovery Institute's spokesperson Casey Luskin who spends a lot of time running about insisting that Intelligent Design is not Creationism or religion but pure science. Yet upon occasion the mask slips such as when he attacks the anti-ID book "" as being "an anti-religious polemic" written by atheists. That's a funny criticism for defending a scientific proposal.

Luskin has said and written many other things that serve to undercut his claims. For example, from the first line of the conclusion of a paper that Luskin co-authored called "Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover:

"The opinion in Kitzmiller is a misguided attempt on the part of a federal judge to settle controversies over science and religion that properly belong to practicing scientists and religious groups respectively.

So according to Luskin, the Kitzmiller case was all about "controversies over science and religion." And here I thought he said ID wasn't religiously based.

Luskin is also the sole author of "Alternative Viewpoints about Biological Origins as Taught in Public Schools" published in Journal of Church & State in 2005 (exactly where one would expect someone to argue the case that ID is science). His abstract is as follows (bolding added):

Reviews several laws to assess the ability to present creation science, intelligent design theory or scientific criticisms of evolution in public school districts in the U.S. which have various teaching viewpoints. Restrictions faced by the teaching of creation science; Background on the Lemon test, a judicial vehicle used by the U.S. courts to determine the constitutionality of teaching creation science; Nature of intelligent design theory.

Um... This does not exactly help his case that Intelligent Design is not a form of creationism.

Finally, on Luskin's biography provided by the Discovery Institute it says that he "is co-founder of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, a non-profit helping students to investigate evolution by starting "IDEA Clubs" on college and high school campuses across the country." Yet according to the IDEA Center website "IDEA Center Leadership" (which would naturally include their co-founder, who is still listed on their Board of Directors and acts as the organizations Secretary) "believes that the identity of the designer is the God of the Bible" although they try to hide behind a disclaimer clause saying that it is "because of religious reasons unrelated to intelligent design theory."

Similarly, a comment from Discovery Institute Vice President John West also seems to acknowledge the religious nature of ID when he declared that allowing schools to criticize ID is "tantamount to state endorsement of an anti-religious view."

Another prominent ID spokesperson, Stephen Meyer, the director at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, is on record saying that the "designer" is God and that sub-optimal designs along with deadly diseases are not examples of an unintelligent design, but rather were the result of the Fall in the Garden of Eden.



Now to be fair, not all of the advocates of Intelligent Design are creationists or "cdesign proponentsists" (David Berlinski is an agnostic). What's more some of the largest creationist groups and their spokespersons have given ID a lukewarm reception at best.

Henry Morris, one of the founders of modern YEC movement expresses his dissatisfaction when he writes in "Design is not Enough
Still it appears that Morris sees ID and irreducible complexity are mere euphemisms for creation and watered down versions of creationism.

John Morris, Henry's son, who inherited the role of leader of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) after the latter's passing, takes a more hard-line approach:

More recently John Whitcomb, who co-wrote the Bible of the YEC movement with Henry Morris ("The Genesis Flood1. Put out by the Discovery Institute, the primary organization backing ID. Although initially dismissed by the Discovery Institute as merely an "urban legend" pushed by "Darwinist Paranoia," one of its co-founders, Stephen C. Meyer, eventually admitted that they were indeed the source of the document.

[phank]

I could add quite a bit more to this since I wrote this after further research and will add this to the original. The additional material is in red:

I recall that Barbara Forrest is the authority on the origins and evolution of ID. Wasn't she the one who discovered the cdesign proponentsists example?

[rogue06]

I recall that Barbara Forrest is the authority on the origins and evolution of ID. Wasn't she the one who discovered the cdesign proponentsists example?

I know that she was the one that brought it up at Kitzmiller but I have no idea of whether or not she discovered it.

[JonF]

Nick Matzke discovered it.

[Duragizer]

While it's highly unlikely, a part of me can't help but wonder if the "cdesign proponentsists" thing wasn't actually put in there on purpose as an "easter egg" of sorts.

[Jorge]

Since the founding of the ID movement, evolutionists have been saying it is really creationism, and IDists have been at pains to deny it. Finally the IDists are coming out of the closet, as it were:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04...tur084971.html

Every time -- I mean, EVERY SINGLE TIME -- that you people parrot this claim you demonstrate one of two things: (1) you are as ignorant as the day is long or, (2) you are intellectually dishonest even longer than that. Of course, I am referring to the way that 'ID' and 'Creationism' are generally defined, not some ad hoc definition.

The worst part of it all is that you refuse to listen. IOW, you willingly choose to (1) remain ignorant or, (2) remain dishonest. That is a sad testimony to your inner self.

Jorge

[HMS_Beagle]

Every time -- I mean, EVERY SINGLE TIME -- that you people parrot this claim you demonstrate one of two things: (1) you are as ignorant as the day is long or, (2) you are intellectually dishonest even longer than that. Of course, I am referring to the way that 'ID' and 'Creationism' are generally defined, not some ad hoc definition.

The worst part of it all is that you refuse to listen. IOW, you willingly choose to (1) remain ignorant or, (2) remain dishonest. That is a sad testimony to your inner self.

Jorge

Jorge stock excuse no. 2

1) You're drunk / high on drugs
2) You're too stupid / ignorant / dishonest to understand
3) Explaining is a waste of time / someone is paying you to waste my time.
4) This assertion is true because I said so
5) This assertion is even truer because I said so twice
6) I already provided evidence (in huge detail) but I won't repeat it or link to it.

[klaus54]

Every time -- I mean, EVERY SINGLE TIME -- that you people parrot this claim you demonstrate one of two things: (1) you are as ignorant as the day is long or, (2) you are intellectually dishonest even longer than that. Of course, I am referring to the way that 'ID' and 'Creationism' are generally defined, not some ad hoc definition.

The worst part of it all is that you refuse to listen. IOW, you willingly choose to (1) remain ignorant or, (2) remain dishonest. That is a sad testimony to your inner self.

Jorge

Can you give a scientific hypothesis for ID that's forged in defined terms and that's falsifiable?

Thanks!

K54

K54

[oxmixmudd]

Every time -- I mean, EVERY SINGLE TIME -- that you people parrot this claim you demonstrate one of two things: (1) you are as ignorant as the day is long or, (2) you are intellectually dishonest even longer than that. Of course, I am referring to the way that 'ID' and 'Creationism' are generally defined, not some ad hoc definition.

The worst part of it all is that you refuse to listen. IOW, you willingly choose to (1) remain ignorant or, (2) remain dishonest. That is a sad testimony to your inner self.

Jorge

Jorge- on the old TWEB I believe we went through a rather long series of posts on one of the Pillars of ID 'science', Dembski's attempt at formalizing the idea of Specified Complexity in the paper:

Specification:
The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence


It didn't hold up then and it still doesn't. ([s]BTW - I would not swear it was you I debated, but I think it was, yet if it was you it was one of the few times you actually tried to engage[/s]*) Nevertheless, there is at the current time no robust formulation of the concepts 'ID' wants to call science. They just aren't 'there yet'. There is not harm in admitting that if one is interested in honestly formulating a new branch of research, if one sees potential in the concepts. Many new ideas take a good deal of time and work to grow to the point they become accepted and robust.

In fact, your response above highlights how unscientific, how motiviated by issues over knowledge you are. A real endeavor in the field of knowledge wants to find its place legitimately by crossing it's t's and dotting it's 'i's. Ideologically driven concepts and ideas want acceptance outside those legitimate tests, they want their place because they are what the driver 'believes' is correct, not what they can 'show' is correct.

I applaud Dembski for trying. But nobody gets a pass. If it has merit, someday it will also have substance. Until then, try a little 'honesty' and 'humility'. Meals you've spent most of your life fasting from it seems.


Jim

ETA: *I actually have an archive of this discussion. It was Jorge.

??? TWEB doesn't support strikethrough??? I thought I had seen that before. Tried BB code and html representations

[Cerebrum123]

Jorge- on the old TWEB I believe we went through a rather long series of posts on one of the Pillars of ID 'science', Dembski's attempt at formalizing the idea of Specified Complexity in the paper:

Specification:
The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence


It didn't hold up then and it still doesn't. ([s]BTW - I would not swear it was you I debated, but I think it was, yet if it was you it was one of the few times you actually tried to engage[/s]*) Nevertheless, there is at the current time no robust formulation of the concepts 'ID' wants to call science. They just aren't 'there yet'. There is not harm in admitting that if one is interested in honestly formulating a new branch of research, if one sees potential in the concepts. Many new ideas take a good deal of time and work to grow to the point they become accepted and robust.

In fact, your response above highlights how unscientific, how motiviated by issues over knowledge you are. A real endeavor in the field of knowledge wants to find its place legitimately by crossing it's t's and dotting it's 'i's. Ideologically driven concepts and ideas want acceptance outside those legitimate tests, they want their place because they are what the driver 'believes' is correct, not what they can 'show' is correct.

I applaud Dembski for trying. But nobody gets a pass. If it has merit, someday it will also have substance. Until then, try a little 'honesty' and 'humility'. Meals you've spent most of your life fasting from it seems.


Jim

ETA: *I actually have an archive of this discussion. It was Jorge.

??? TWEB doesn't support strikethrough??? I thought I had seen that before. Tried BB code and html representations

It did before the crash. A lot of functions aren't really available right now.

[Jorge]

Jorge stock excuse no. 2

Hey, Dumbo, if it's the truth (and it is) then it's not an excuse.
Didn't you learn ANYTHING AT ALL while growing up?
Don't bother to answer that - the answer's obvious.

Jorge