Is ID Scientific? (was "Abusive Assumptions")

Well, I'm aware that his mightiness, Admin, believes that creationism is not science, but IIRC (search appears to be down right now) his stated purpose is not quite so blatantly anti-creationist.

I don't know of any good pro-ID forum. TalkDesign | Critically analyzing the Intelligent Design movement is a pretty good anti-ID oneI may get chastised for this, but John Wilkins put it so well at Design continued: Rosemary's Garden that I have nothing more to add or say:

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Explanations fall in what Alan Garfinkel once called a "contrast space" set up by the variables of the question the explanation seeks to address. "Is Rosemary's Garden designed?" specifies a set of alternatives, and these together make a space of possible "yes/no" answers. Garfinkel illustrated this with the famous question asked of bank robber Willy Sutton: a priest asked him why he robbed banks. Sutton answered, "That's where the money is".

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The priest was expecting a moral answer - Sutton robs banks because he needs the money or because he can't get a job. But Sutton has no moral issue here; it's purely a matter of practicalities. He robs banks rather than, say, druggists, because there's more money there. Sutton has a different contrast space than the priest. Explanations are relative to the contrast space required.When I explain that Rosemary's Garden is the product of design, there's a whole set of contrasts I am relying upon.

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But the way the Intelligent Design crowd employ both the notions of "design" (to be a rarified rather than an ordinary notion), and the notion of "explanation", there is no actual contrast space here - all is fluid. All that matters for them is "saving the theology", not "saving the phenomena". So long as something like a God can be made to seem sensible, all is done that need be done. This is not science, and it's not even compatible with science. It is, and remains, epistemological despair, epistemic nihilism, Knownothingness.

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Sigh.I get so tired of the D.I. spinning (well, really, lying about) that list and the people who fall for it and rush off to their friendly local discussion board to tell all the evil evos about it.There is just so much wrong with that list. First, (and, IMHO, most important), signing that statement is absolutely not equivalent to expressing skepticism about the existence of evolution or the mainstream theory of evolution. The statement starts with "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life." Any knowledgable mainstream scientist would agree with that; the mainstream theory of evolution includes other processes (e.g. neutral drift) that are required to account for the complexity of life. The statement continues: "Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged". Well, any mainstream scientist should agree with that; careful examination of the evidence for any scientific theory should be encouraged. It would be interesting to poll the signatories and find out their real views; a few are known to be not questioning the theory of evolution (see Doubting Darwinism through Creative License).Second, science is not a popularity contest. Ten million wrong people are still wrong; one right person is still right. Of course, if you do want to play the silly game of "how many people will sign a statement about evolution", the mainstream will play along just for grins; Project Steve has over 500 signatories to a very specific and strong statement in support of the thory of evolution, and only people named Steve or some variant may sign (there's at least one female). That certainly dwarfs the DI's measly 400-ish of any name. There's also a list of a few thousand Christian clerics who have signed a similar statement in support of evolution, but I can't dig up the reference right now.Finally, if you examine the DI list, you can note some interesting features of the signatories:

• Some are known to be anti-evolution for religious reasons alone, e.g. Dean Kenyon.
• Many of the signatories are not scientists; their training is not is science nor do they practice science.
• Many of those that are scientists are not in biology-related fields, and there is no particular reason to suspect that their opinion is meaningful.
• In the more recnt versions of the list, the signatories names have been rearranged so that a disproportioante number of biologically qualified people appear on the early pages. I wonder why.

This cr*p has gotten so prevalent that it's earned an entry in the INdex of Creationist Claims.

Where are you reading their stated objectives and concerns? The statement they signed has no such information. We are not interested in your assumptions. They are not all PhDs. Nope. E.g., I immediately see that Harvard, RPI, and Brown are not reperesented. And far more non-research and non-teaching fields Interesting. You have no idea whether or not they have performed any valuable scientific service, you have no idea whther their work has anyting to do with evolutionary biology (hint: most of them don't), yet you calim to know what they will do in the future. We don't care what you suspect. You are lying. There are no department heads at Rice (one of the signatories is director of the Rice Space Institute, which is noot a department) and there are not even any faculty members from MIT on the list, much less department heads. (BTW, Walter Brown is living proof that an MIT degree is no proof agains looniness and significant sciwentific error).

FWIW, Richard Forrest classified the current list of signatories' school affiliations in this message (they seem to be essentailly all reputable, with a fair number of Christian colleges) and classified their fields as 2% don't know, 42% irrelevant science, 33% relevant science, and 23% non-science in this message.

I did not assasinate anyone's character. I merely pointed out that you are a liar, and presented the evidence as to exactly what your lies are. No ranting, no character assasination. But, you know the old saying:

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If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.

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So you have nothing to do but pound the table.