Saturday, December 30, 2006

Bad Arguments Convince Me #2

This series of 1. post, 2. reply post, and 3. reply to reply post between Mike Gene and Ed Brayton is worth a read. Brayton's reply post shows obvious, elementary and quite remarkable errors in logic, which are all too common in the anti-ID movement. Just because two things have many similar aspects does not mean that they are the same thing. One must ask the key question: are there any meaningful differences?

Regarding intelligent design and creationism, the differences are clear. Here is one difference made quite simple:

Creationism is informed by scientific evidence and divine revelation through the Bible.

Intelligent Design is informed only by scientific evidence, and not divine revelation.

Note: intelligent design proponents acknowledge that both ID and macroevolutionary theory have philosophical and religious implications. But ID is not informed by religion and does not look to religion for support.

Now it should be obvious to anyone that the same scientific evidence that supports creationism is likely to support intelligent design. Of course similar arguments will be made by both. But that is not where the difference lies.

Judge Jones made similar logical errors in his Kitzmiller opinion, which I discussed here.

My original Bad Arguments Convince Me post is here.

1 Comments:

At December 30, 2006 11:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well done, and thanks for clarifying. As a YEC, I think it's rather clear that although ID could have religious implications, but no more or less than undirected Darwinism, it neither should need nor want the support of people with my belief system. Indeed, in some cases, ID and Creationism are incompatible and I feel they will ultimately collide. Indeed, I imagine there will probably be a kind of war if Creationists like me somehow wrestle control of ID from those merely trying to understand the world in purely scientific terms. ID should and must stay out of the realm of faith to be an effective influence to topple dogged Darwinists who can't let go of their own faith. Obviously, ID and Creationism are related in their metaphysical implications, but they are certainly not related as science. Creationism is faith; ID is falsifiable science.

By saying Creationism and ID are the same shows the weakness of the atheistic, neo-Darwinist mind and argument.

 

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