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Author Topic:   The Absurdity of Rebutting ID
Percy
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Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1 of 2 (309322)
05-05-2006 8:04 AM


With the subtitle, "The irresistibility of nonsense".
I'm currently reading God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory by Niall Shanks of East Tennessee State University (checking the Internet, more recently of Wichita State University). It addresses in some detail some of the key positions of Intelligent Design theory. It's a good read if you like this kind of thing, though somewhat dry.
I'm posting this not to promote the book, but to post my reaction to some of the passages. Shanks is evidently sufficiently involved in the debate that people like Behe and Dembski have troubled themselves to respond to his criticisms. As you read some parts of the book you are profoundly struck by the absurdity of the whole exercise.
It is often objected that ID isn't really doing science but public relations, and this is very obvious in this book, though that is not Shanks point at all. In fact, Shanks treats every response from the IDists seriously, in detail and with evidence, which is when you begin feeling how absurd and ridiculous it all is. Though it isn't at all Shanks intent, the IDists come off like little kids making up possibilities off the top of their heads which they haven't thought through and for which they have gathered no evidence, while Shanks comes off like the overly didactic patient parent enduring and responding to children's' naive ideas to the point of absurdity. There's that word again.
It is the evidence that makes an idea worthy, and what is copiously obvious throughout Shanks book, though he never focuses on it, is the complete lack of any evidence from the IDists. For one out-of-the-blue ID idea after another Shanks patiently offers evidence in rebuttal, but never seems to notice that there was never any evidence offered for any of the ID ideas in the first place. They are just plucked revelation-like from thin air.
We often forget this fact in discussions here, becoming mired in ever more complicated attempts to find rebutting evidence for an ID position, forgetting that it isn't the evidence against an idea that makes it weak, but the evidence for an idea that makes it strong.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by PaulK, posted 05-05-2006 8:45 AM Percy has not replied

  
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 2 of 2 (309333)
05-05-2006 8:45 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
05-05-2006 8:04 AM


Methodology
quote:
Though it isn't at all Shanks intent, the IDists come off like little kids making up possibilities off the top of their heads which they haven't thought through and for which they have gathered no evidence...
Because that is often what they are doing. The IDists are as much religious apologists as they are PR people and they are following the methodology of apologetics, as opposed to the methodology of science.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Percy, posted 05-05-2006 8:04 AM Percy has not replied

  
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