ID Revisited
- From: "dave.melvin@xxxxxxxxx" <dave.melvin@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 17 Aug 2005 12:13:42 -0700
Interesting piece. I wish I could talk this good...
\quote\
Steve Champeon was making the point that establishing a genuine debate
between ID proponents and evolutionists is not as direct a project as
we might think. I've never seen that argument made any better than
this:
[Re: Science is for Pansies - REAL Men believe in Genesis!]
It's not a debate - it's a querulous mob looking for comfort. And no
amount of pretending that "intelligent design" is anything else will
bring forth a "debate." You cannot reason with those to whom reason is
a stranger, or with those driven by fear and ignorance. You can only,
at best, make a contrasting emotional appeal, one which is likely to
fail due to the underlying fact of the matter, which is that many
people hold ludicrous beliefs; those beliefs are not remotely
systematized nor falsifiable, and ultimately in any honest person must
be shed as the comforts of a younger and more ignorant child, species,
culture, or community.
I've spent a long time trying to argue with people and wasted many long
hours before realizing that I approached many of those arguments with
an implicit assumption about the rules of the game, all too often not
shared. This assumption? That both parties understood that the
processes and techniques may be manifold, but that the final goal was
to obtain a better understanding, or a belief worth holding, even if
that meant shedding or reexamining other, perhaps cherished, sets of
beliefs, sadly founded on nonsense.
Science's attempt to survive (later mirrored by theology's attempt to
do the same) by splitting off questions of fact from questions of faith
is coming back around on us now, where education has actually made it
possible for the average person to be exposed to questions and
proposals that were once the realm of the natural philosopher and
gentleman scholar and don.
Naturally, the dishonesty of science's (and theology's!) attempt to
sweep under the rug the fundamental relatedness of the basic questions
asked, and often answered, by both, is obvious to anyone who thinks
about it for very long. Unfortunately, for someone to whom the
theological answers are more familiar, more deeply ingrained, the
instinct is to defend the old, rather than to examine either, or
welcome the new.
I don't know if "evolutionary theory" is true, or sound. It seems to me
to make much more sense than the Genesis story. As with all science,
future discoveries may require its extension or modification or that it
be discarded like Newton 's physics or Scholastic mathematics or
Aristotelian dentistry. But I do know that "intelligent design" is
Creationism drawn not from the wells of honest inquiry, but from the
fear of modernity and ignorance of logic and language, and precedes not
from a fact to belief in a Creator, but from a belief in a Creator to a
desire to see science dethroned.
As an old friend of mine used to say: "It's too bad ignorance isn't
painful." We might be encouraged to educate ourselves instead of
remaining in bliss.
An answer came in:
If, as educators, you really believe that intelligent design is bunk,
then use the tools of education to fight that battle. Ignorance is
curable. But dismissing your opponents as uneducable and unlearned by
making dismissive remarks about the quality of their teachers serves no
useful purpose. Show the folly in your opponents' arguments. But then
be prepared to have your arguments examined with the same scrutiny.
Come ... let us reason together ...
Steve responded:
You've missed the point. Yes, ignorance is curable, if the patient will
submit to the appropriate regimen.
Unfortunately, as has been demonstrated countless times throughout
history, long past and recent, religious beliefs have had a dreadful
effect on the ability of those who hold them to "reason together."
Part of this effect is due to the lack of basic understanding or
acceptance of logic, the scientific method, and so on. The usual "and
then a miracle happened..." line.
Part is due to the lack of applicability of the scientific method and
the principle of falsifiability to esoteric beliefs in such as a
Creator who stands outside space and time, or a Messiah who can bend
physics to his will, or for that matter a Prophet who listens to an
angel and in the process is delivered the Qur'an.
But in the long run, for those who have been indoctrinated in a belief
system that involves fairies or angels or a life everlasting dependent
on a violation of physics, faith in a book and a deity and a church
that stands against science over and over again, it is not possible to
"reason together," for those so exposed have been damaged irreparably
by their exposure. Reason is not possible, for at the heart of their
sense of reason is a myth that disallows reason's findings, a myth that
has been so tightly wound round one's hopes and fears and condition
that to reject it is to reject all that is tied to it, to question all
you've been told by those you've trusted and loved.
That is what this "debate" is, not an honest examination of evolution,
but a fear-driven rejection of science based on an excess of emotional
appeals masquerading as religious belief.
The wheel has come round again, from the tragedy of the
"reconciliation" of science and religion (and, more importantly, of the
necessary attitudes of scientist and believer) which was at its heart a
farce decided by the leaders of both camps in order to allow religion
its continued hold over morals and science its utility in politics,
war, industry, and economics. Now, instead of the leaders deciding to
make peace, it is the masses (represented by the woefully ignorant
school boards of places like Kansas ) who are following their heart and
rejecting their children's minds in the name of a fear of the void.
If we had any leadership in this country worthy of the name, they'd be
standing against the destruction of our educational system. Instead,
George Bush thinks we should allow so-called "intelligent design" into
the classroom. Yale and Andover aside, he knows where his power base
lives and how they feel (not think) about the matter.
In no sense can it be said that "debate" is the desired outcome here
- more likely, we'll see other cultures not so bound to the stupidity
of the perceived need to "reconcile" faith and science, simply take
over the mantle of intellectual and scientific leadership, if they
haven't already, and we'll have nobody but ourselves and our shared
history to blame.
\end quote\
yea, what he said.
dam
.
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