Intelligent Design: is it science?

[OzAnt]

Hi DU,

Ummm, I'm feeling like I'm in the twilight zone here. First Marc, and now you. Why are you (both) getting me to read about OPaP? As I said to Marc, I was using that book to back up my argument that ID was creationism in another guise.

It's Pseudonym who isn't aware of this - or to use his words, "hasn't read the book".

What's going on here?!?

Ant

[marc]

Google "cdesign proponentists" to see just how much "OPaP" is without a doubt religously inspired.

That was my point - which is why I said "OPaP backed [the] argument [that Christians were effectively using ID as another way to keep bangin' on the same old drum] up quite well".

Basically it has been shown (in court, Kitzmiller v. Dover PA) that between one early revision of the book (originally called "Creation Biology", then "Creation and Biology") and a later one, someone did a horrible job trying to change "creationists" to "design proponents".

...and change "Creator" to "Intelligent designer". I didn't link Wikipedia's entry for the book because if you google "Of Pandas and People" it's the first hit that pops up. In there are links to the Dover trial etc.

Thanks though, for clearing up why I mentioned it - I probably should have made it clearer.

Ant

Ant,

Sorry, I misread your post. Actually, I read it, re-read it and was still not sure which side you were coming down on. Thanks for clarifying.

[darkumbra]

Hi DU,

Ummm, I'm feeling like I'm in the twilight zone here. First Marc, and now you. Why are you (both) getting me to read about OPaP? As I said to Marc, I was using that book to back up my argument that ID was creationism in another guise.

It's Pseudonym who isn't aware of this - or to use his words, "hasn't read the book".

What's going on here?!?

Ant

hmm... sorry. We're both making the same error I guess. Sorry about that.

[OzAnt]

Hi Marc & DU,

Yeah... I read my post again, then re-read it, then re-re-read it, then re-re... you get the idea. I think I can finally see how, in an effort to make it as succinct as I could, I could also have made the post confusing (it was hard work to see though, 'cause I'm unavoidably aware of my point in my head of course). Thank you (both) for bringing it up, 'cause I'd rather be explaining myself than have people think that I'm defending something I'm not.

Ant

[Pseudonym]

Thanks for explaining, and in the process, clarifying your supposition. It sounds a little too conspiratorial to me and I'm not sure that I'd credit DI with that much foresight and intelligence.

You're right that the proposed idea that I made was conspiratorial. I don't think it was worked out that far in advanced.

However, the DI are extremely good at public relations, and it would shock me if the phrase "intelligent design" hadn't gone through some kind of market research, if only informally.

[Mr. Sluagh]

Thanks for explaining, and in the process, clarifying your supposition. It sounds a little too conspiratorial to me and I'm not sure that I'd credit DI with that much foresight and intelligence.

You're right that the proposed idea that I made was conspiratorial. I don't think it was worked out that far in advanced.

However, the DI are extremely good at public relations, and it would shock me if the phrase "intelligent design" hadn't gone through some kind of market research, if only informally.

This conspiracy is so far within reason that to call it implausible would be naive. The Wedge Document illustrates that the Discovery Institute's main goal is to create cultural change; science is a means, not an end. Marketing is the field concerned with influencing people's emotions on a large scale--that is to say, creating cultural change. I see no evidence that the people of the Discovery Institute are either stupid enough or honest enough not to use the right tool for the job.

[StillSearching]

This conspiracy is so far within reason that to call it implausible would be naive. The Wedge Document illustrates that the Discovery Institute's main goal is to create cultural change; science is a means, not an end. Marketing is the field concerned with influencing people's emotions on a large scale--that is to say, creating cultural change. I see no evidence that the people of the Discovery Institute are either stupid enough or honest enough not to use the right tool for the job.

In 2005, a federal court ruled that the Discovery Institute pursues "demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions", and the institute's manifesto, the Wedge strategy, describes a religious goal: to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".

The Institute's founders, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, are Harvard educated. I don't think these two lack foresight and intelligence. I think we can safely call it a conspiracy. Here is the origin of the term and the story of its adoption by the Discovery Institute.

I think we've all been missing the bigger picture of this rift in society. The DI's tactic is intelligent design. The underlying goals are:

"To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"
"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"

I started a thread about a book I'm reading called Letters To Vanessa, by Jeremy W. Hayward, PhD, and he discusses this problem in much less acerbic language. I'll post some of the points he makes on that thread.

The bottom line though is that there are many people who aren't comfortable with the idea that we're all just abstract matter and energy and physics, and they view evolutionary science (and a lot of other science) as a proponent of that worldview.