Calling Talk Origins atheist is as bad a ...
Then why do you do it? Seriously! What was your reasoning in deciding that talkorigins.org, an outgrowth of the talkorigins newsgroup, is an atheist site?
Is it somehow akin to Dredge misrepresenting evolution as "atheist theology"? Do you somehow believe that there is an inherent conflict between evolution and creation? If so, then please explain.
... is as bad a characterising the Discovery Institute as Creationist.
That looks like a very pointed remark, pointed directly at me. Like you are accusing me of having characterized the Discovery Insitute as creationist. Is that what you are doing? Just come out with it and say so directly, why don't you?
I searched all forums for
Discovery Institute (we have that capability) and the single page of results went back to 13-Aug-2015 7:37 AM. In all that time, I only mentioned the Discovery Institute exactly one single time, which was on 19-Jun-2017 in
Message 536. Is that the one you are talking about? If not, then please link me to the one you are complaining about.
Here is exactly what I wrote, copy-and-pasted from
Message 536:
DWise1 writes:
Now, we have a movement, Intelligent Design (courtesy of the Discovery Institute), whose stated goal is to change science so that it must include supernaturalistic explanations. Science could not possibly exist under those conditions, as should be plain to you by now.
"goddidit" cannot not possibly answer any scientific question, any "how does this work" question.
Do please point out to me precisely where I characterize the Discovery Institute as creationist. And be sure to quote me directly.
Though you do raise a good question: Is the Discovery Institute a creationist organization? As much as they try to avoid that label, they do fit the pattern well enough.
From their Wedge Document:
quote:
INTRODUCTION
The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.
Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art
. . .
Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.
. . .
quote:
FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY
The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy.
. . .
We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
quote:
GOALS
Governing Goals
- To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
- To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
quote:
Twenty Year Goals
- To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
- To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
- To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.
quote:
FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES
5. Spiritual & cultural renewal:
- Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism
- Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s)
- Darwinism Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions
- Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God
"Darwinism Seminaries"? What the hell are they supposed to be?
That's a lot of religious references and objectives despite how much they try to downplay and hide it. So do the major creationist organizations who used to mask their religious agenda behind the smokescreens of "creation science" (claiming that their objections to evolution were "purely scientific, nothing religious about it") and their Two Model Approach with the extremely vague double-talk surrounding its "creation model" which only spoke vaguely about some "unnamed Creator" (but only to the public and the courts; to churches they named that Creator very specifically).
It is obvious by "intelligent design" that the IDists mean Divine Creation by YHWH. Oh yes, they give lip service to LGMs and panspermia, etc, as part of their "we're not creationists" smokescreen. And those other creationist groups, unable to continue to use "creation science" in court since
Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) exposed its purely religious nature, have switched to a new smokescreen, "intelligent design", knowing that it's just another form of creationism. A less vulnerable smokescreen, since it avoids using young earth and Noah's Flood claims, arguably the weakest parts of creationism.
Operationally, creationists suffer from either not understanding science or else deliberately misrepresenting it and the evidence. The Discovery Institute also suffers from that weakness with their own bugaboo: materialism. They think that all forms of materialism are the same and are unable to distinguish between philosophical materialism (that matter is all that there is) and methodological materialism (all that we can work with is the material universe). Science uses the latter out of sheer necessity, since it is incapable of dealing with the supernatural (if you had read the rest of my message,
Message 536, you would have known that already). In doing so, science is not saying that the supernatural does not exist, but rather merely that it cannot work with the supernatural. But the Discovery Institute does not understand that and falsely accuses science of practicing philosophical materialism, called "scientific materialism" in the Wedge Document. And its "solution" is to require science to use supernaturalistic explanations.
We've discussed that before, such as in the topic (closed),
So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY), where I asked that proponents of ID please explain just exactly how science is supposed work if it's required to use the supernatural.
My questions from that topic (started 27-Nov-2007 11:39 AM):
Message 27DWise1 writes:
Specifically pertinent to the question is the line of questioning regarding ID's goal of requiring science to include supernaturalistic explanations, specifically the "explanation" of "Goddidit". Specifically:
Exactly how do they intend science's methodology of hypothesis building and testing to function with the requirement that it include "Goddidit"?
Just how exactly are we supposed to test "Goddidit", as the current methodology requires?
Just exactly how is "Goddidit" supposed to raise new questions which help to direct new research, something that science depends very heavily upon and which is readily and amply provided by the current methodology?
Just how exactly is "Goddidit" supposed to
not serve as show-stopping dead-end to all scientific investigation?
Just how exactly is "Goddidit" supposed to
not kill science?
Message 54DWise1 writes:
But back to the topic: you still have not addressed the question. ID wants to reform science to include supernaturalistic explanations.
Just how do you propose that we test supernaturalistic explanations? Because if we are to be expected to use supernaturalistic explanations, then we will need to test them. Because if we are unable to test the hypotheses that we advance, then science
will not work.
Employing ID's supernatural-based science would require us to test supernaturalistic hypotheses.
How are we supposed to test those supernaturalistic hypotheses? Without the ability to test those supernaturalistic hypotheses,
how could ID science possibly work?
Science works extremely well, but you want to replace it with ID. Haven't you, or any ID proponent for that matter, given any thought to how that replacement of yours would work? Or even
whether it would work at all?
Finally, in summation mode I wrote (
Message 54, 05-Jun-2011 10:27 AM):
DWise1 writes:
Nearly four years and nearly 400 messages. No creationist has been able to provide an answer. Several attempts to change the question, but no answer.
There is still no known way in which science could use supernaturalistic hypotheses nor to survive the attempt.
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world. (from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber,
http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.(Sherlock Holmes in
The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield,
Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
It is a well-known fact that reality has a definite liberal bias.Steven Colbert on NPR
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