Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
Recently, Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, and Phil Plait have all decided to stop appearing on BloggingHeads.TV (BHTV), and PZ Myers announced he would not appear on it in the future, after a disastrous decision to have creationist Michael Behe interviewed by the linguist and non-biologist John McWhorter, who failed to call Behe on his standard BS.
I’m hereby publicly announcing that I intend to stay on BloggingHeads.TV.
Why? Two main reasons:
1) Robert Wright publicly said that this was foolish, apologized for the poor editorial oversight that led to it, and says they’re going to try never to do this again. This looks sincere to me, and given that it’s sincere, people really ought to be allowed more chance than this to recover from their mistakes.
2) Bloggingheads.TV has given me a forum to debate accomodationist atheists who are insufficiently condemning of religion—for example my diavlog with Adam Frank, author of “The Constant Fire”. Adam Frank argues that, while of course we now know that God doesn’t exist, nonetheless scientific wonder at the universe and its mysteries has a lot in common with the roots of religion. And I said this was wishful thinking, historically ignorant of how religions really arose and propagated themselves, and a continuation of such theistic bad habits as thinking that things of which we are temporarily ignorant are “sacred mysteries”. And no one at BHTV complained that I was being too confrontational, or too anti-religious, or that it was unfair to have the diavlog be between two atheists.
If BHTV is willing to let me come on and (politely) kick hell out of atheists who aren’t atheistic enough to suit me, then I don’t believe that their unfortunate failure to have Behe interviewed by someone who could call his BS, represents any deep hidden agenda in favor of religion and against science.
Rather, I think it represents a commitment to having interesting discussions by people who intelligently disagree with each other and have something courteous to say about it—even if that discussion wanders into the fearsome death zones where science does (“does not!”) clash with religion—and this commitment managed to go wrong on one or two occasions.
My friends and fellow antitheists, this is an important commitment while most of the world is continuing to pretend that there is no conflict between science and religion. It’s not surprising if that commitment goes wrong now and then. It is not reasonable to expect that a commitment to repeatedly discuss a scary controversy will never go wrong. It may well go wrong again despite Robert Wright’s best intentions. But unless it starts to go wrong systematically, I’m going to stay on BHTV, arguing that science and religion are not compatible.
Of course, if most other non-accomodationists jump ship from BHTV as a result of the Behe affair, then it will become a hangout for accomodationists only. “Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs” is another reason why you should put forth at least a little effort to “Tolerate Tolerance”—to not insist that all your potential trade-partners punish the same people you’ve labeled defectors, exactly the way you want them punished, before you cooperate. Yes, Behe is an enemy of science, but Wright is not; and Wright may also dislike Behe, yet not wish to implement exactly the same punishment-policy toward Behe that you advocate; and that needs to be all right, if we’re all going to end up cooperating.
I very much dislike the strategy of opposing points of view by boycotting venues that give those views voice. If such efforts succeed, they silence voices from which we might learn things. It seems a much more robust strategy to oppose points of view by arguing against them. If a view has a 90% chance of being wrong, it has a 10% chance of being right, and we lose by not letting its advocates make the best case they can. The reason to listen to those you disagree with is, you might be wrong.
Physics journals don’t give every crank a voice, and if one did, I’m sure professional physicists would stop subscribing and contributing to it, and some would loudly complain on their blogs. How is that any different from this situation?
It is similar. But in which direction are you making your implied point?
I was speaking in support of the boycotters. Status is part of what we reward scientists with, to encourage them to make useful intellectual contributions to society. It’s perfectly natural and reasonable if they don’t want to see their status diluted by association with cranks/pseudoscientists, and I don’t think we’d want that either. Nor do we want to reward cranks/pseudoscientists with status for making negative contributions to society.
Of course when you label someone a crank or pseudoscientist, there’s always a chance that you make a mistake and end up not learning something that you could have learned, but that’s just a trade-off that has to be made, and I see no evidence or argument to suggest that the boycotters have set their bar too low.
I tend to agree. There is a trade off involved in accepting status games and power plays instead of reason. But the downsides don’t tend to come with the dramatic boycott situations. The mistakes that lose the learning are most likely to be on the positions that are simply unrewarded and marginalized, not those that must be boycotted to prove your loyalty to Science.
I’m astounded that no one (especially in a blog devoted to rationalism) has mentioned the very obvious motivation for appearing on bloggingheads—self-promotion. Sean Carroll has already said almost everything he’s qualified to say on bhtv, with the exception of promoting his upcoming book. He stands to benefit more from the attention/reputation he gains from ‘taking a stand’ than he does from doing nothing. He loses what? One more interview?
As EY pointed out, there is ample evidence that bhtv does not have a hidden ‘religious’ agenda. To say that only certain viewpoints have enough merit to be heard was never anyone’s decision to make, save Bob Wright and his staff. SC’s actions smack of a play for attention—the squeaky wheel, so to speak—that has apparently worked. If SC was so valuable to bhtv that Bob felt pressure at the thought of losing him, than bhtv has bigger problems with respect to its coverage of science.
And let’s not kid ourselves—SC can have a ‘seen the light’ moment at any time and decide that he would prefer to engage in dialogue and attempt to add to the public’s knowledge rather than subtract from it. Bob would welcome him back with open arms after reading his ever-so-sincere blog post that reflects his ‘changed attitude’. Life goes on as before, except that everyone involved has gotten a little extra attention.
The fact that we are even acting like this has something to do with ‘principles’ makes me a little ill. The only fact worth noting in this entire debacle is the ease with which Bob is/is not ready to throw his guests and his staff under the bus.
I’d add that a good boycott has an end in mind. What’s the point of a boycott without returning once certain conditions are met? This, in my eyes, lends more credence to the idea that this is about drama and self-promotion. It would have been much less eventful had they merely demanded that, say, Michael Shermer appear in interview dismantling creationism, or better yet, a creationist (’s arguments—of course).
Interestingly, at 10:21, Behe accuses scientists including Sean Carroll of committing the Mind Projection Fallacy:
It is disturbing that he can identify this in others, without seeing his own vulnerability to this bias.
Well, that’s probably true of most people… easier to find flaws in the arguments of others that one disagrees with than to seek out the errors that they themselves are making.
This claim seems to be accepted wisdom, but I’m not sure if I believe it. OT1H, it should be easier to detect your own errors, because you have more data about what produced them. OTOH, different people have different sets of error-detectors, and whatever comes out of your own mouth has (one hopes) already passed some sort of sanity check, so by that point, you might not be able to detect whatever errors may remain.
If there were good ways to collect statistics on this, I would bet good money that the fraction of errors which I catch in my own thinking before those thoughts turn into speech is greater than the fraction of errors I notice in the arguments of others who are about as smart as me.
As far as I can remember, I definitely catch far more errors in my own thinking before speaking than I notice in what my peers say.
There’s also the whole motivation thing. The whole “often we tend to instead try to ‘beat the other guy’ rather than actually seek the truth, whatever it may be.”
But actually, that would be an interesting thing to test, if we could think of a good way to test it
That’s what worries me
Wow, I haven’t seen Phil Plait’s post until now. Bloggingheads “called Creationism science”? I can only guess what tortured reasoning gave rise to this claim.
But I think, Eliezer, that you’re being too charitable to those who are jumping ship. Sean and Carl aren’t doing so because they’re anti-accomodationist, they just can’t stand the thought of being within 300 internet meters of Creationists if they don’t think they can leverage the situation against them. Whether this particularized form of distaste is justifiable is an interesting issue and one I look forward to losing more karma points arguing here. Suffice to say, I would be surprised if there’s a non-arbitrary standard that would dictate that advocating Creationism is the most boycott-worthy of all views represented on BhTV.
But this does raise a lot of issues that I’d like to see developed here a little more. We talk about “raising the sanity waterline”, but there’s not much discussion of how exactly this would be done, what exact institutions and rules of rhetorical engagement tend to actually promote becoming less wrong. One thought that I was toying around with was that irrationality, like many other problems of insufficient virtue, is something that should be attacked from the demand side, not the supply side—meaning that boycotts on ideologies should be looked upon skeptically. I suspect that much of my discomfort with “silencing” tactics arises from my background in the social sciences, where politics frequently manages to honest inquiry because of well-intentioned tactics such as those employed by those who would boycott Bloggingheads for daring to host a podcast they found irresponsible.
this is not their stated position
Of course it isn’t.
Well, do you have any evidence or convincing arguments to that effect, then?
Perhaps the “called Creationism science” bit is because the young earth creationist was part of the “Science Saturday” series of diavlogs. I agree that it is misleading and very poorly phrased.
How about the standard of the extent to which you engage with critics using commonly accepted norms of intellectual discourse, the extent to which you update your position when unable to counter critics’ counter-arguments and refutations, and the extent to which your public behavior (including the preceding 2 points and otherwise) suggests you are an intellectually honest person.
It sounds like those are reasons to avoid engaging Creationists, not BhTV in general. If this is going to expand into a point about lowering BhTV’s intellectual standards like you mentioned above… then I find it odd to argue that one podcast could have such a powerful marginal effect on the enjoyment one derives from the site, unless you’re using some weird criteria where your overall evaluation of BhTV is based on the least intellectual podcast it hosts at any given time.
And I would be surprised if the worst podcast on BhTV by the criteria you described were Behe’s—rom a lot of comments on Sean and Carl’s posts, plenty of people would love to see Megan McArdle boycotted as well. I’d imagine that most people’s list of “least rational” targets to successively knock off would end up looking awfully partisan (get Megan, and then Jonah Goldburg, and then that annoying Will Wilkinson!), which fuels my skepticism here. I’d submit that if a diavlog with a “ghost hunter” was uploaded, people would find it annoying but the reaction would be otherwise subdued.
You asked for non-arbitrary standards for believing creationism to be the most boycott-worthy of the views represented on BhTV. I gave you a plausible answer. I don’t know enough about all the BhTV participants to argue that it is actually the case, but you seemed to have difficulty in even coming up with any such potential explanation, which is why I made the suggestion. You were implying that believing creationism is the most boycott-worthy was prima facie an arbitrary, totally subjective choice.
And for the record, I think Eliezer made the right decision based on what is known so far. I think that BhTV does deserve a second chance. At the same time, I am very disappointed in the intentional vagueness of the editorial policy that was posted, for the reasons I’ve talked about above.
People find creationism more disturbing than ghost hunters because (among other reasons) creationism is making inroads in the educational system in USA, which could have very serious effects. I’m not sure why I even have to mention this. Do you really not see that creationism is different than ghost hunters in some pretty fundamental ways and that the repercussions of each being taken seriously and widely debated are very different?
I’m quite sure that there are political participants who would fare worse than Behe on any of the dimensions you’d offer. I guess one could lack the expertise to evaluate more than a subset of participants, however, in which case one could apply the principle consistently..
You have to mention this precisely because it’s disingenuous to hide behind the purely non-political justifications of the boycott—you end up trying to draw up a non-political dividing line which just so happens to exclude the viewpoints you have political objections to. This is precisely why I expressed skepticism that there’s a non-arbitrary principle for the unique objection to Behe, because if the political considerations are a necessary factor in the boycott, there isn’t one, unless one wants to get into a broader defense of one’s particular political sympathies… which most people will avoid because they realize that “people who I dislike sufficiently shouldn’t be given platforms to speak on” is a principle that isn’t going to sway one’s opponents.
And the young-earth creationist? Since you are quite sure about it, which people hold which specific political beliefs that are as utterly refuted by the scientific evidence as the idea that Genesis is pretty much right and that the Earth is on the order of thousands or tens of thousands of years old?
This is an interesting challenge and I’m wondering if anyone has a good candidate for it.
No one ACTUALLY cares that the young-earth creationist was on. They only care about Behe. Note that Eliezer didn’t mention the first interview.
(edit for clarity)
Wrong.
Sean Carroll:
Why would emails be flying back and forth if he didn’t care about the creationist?
Carl Zimmer:
Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer leaving BhTV is what kicked the whole thing off, in case you haven’t followed the affair at all, and they both explicitly stated in the articles quoted above that they were cared very much that the creationist was on but that they were willing to accept it was a one-time mistake that wouldn’t happen again. How do you interpret that as “not caring”?
I’m calling them liars.
They’re lying.
Yes, I have, thank you very much.
If you’re going to call people liars and say they didn’t really have the interactions they said they had with BhTV folk after the creationist was on (which as far as I know nobody at BhTV has denied), you need to provide evidence of that.
I’m not denying which interactions they had. I’m claiming that they would have had exactly the same reaction to the Behe video without being primed by the Nelson video. Maybe “lying” is too harsh, but I stand by the claim that no one actually cares about the other video. People I see linking to Zimmer and Carroll, like Eliezer, usually don’t mention the first video. People who bring it up in the comments to those posts don’t name Nelson.
They’ve both stated that they contacted BhTV and expressed concern about the creationist being on BEFORE Behe was on. I don’t know how you can square that with the belief that they didn’t care about the creationist being on at all and that they would have felt exactly the same way about Behe regardless. You have yet to offer evidence or make an argument, and you are calling them liars, because they’ve publicly said having Nelson on was disturbing and a contributing factor.
Some conspiracy theory! Epistemic hygiene, please.
I don’t think a conspiracy is a reasonable reading of my words. I certainly deny a conspiracy.
Except that it doesn’t exclude viewpoints I have political objections to. It excludes people who are willfully ignorant and who refuse to engage with arguments and follow standard rules of intellectual discourse, regardless of what they happen to believe. It applies to atheists just as impartially to creationists, if they happen to engage in the same kinds of intellectual sleaziness. I never suggested that it would only damn creationists, just that it would be especially damning to creationists. And for what it’s worth, I’ve had this personal test for distinguishing between people worthy of debate/discussion and people who are a waste of my time for much, much longer than I’ve had a distaste for creationism.
Why aren’t you posting any new videos on Bloggingheads.tv any more? From the outside they seemed like low investment at least with regards to the amount of time spent and easily accessible. Some may have even been personally entertaining conversations with interesting people.
I think you should consider making an appearance once your rationality book is out for promotion purposes at least.
I say that depends entirely on the nature of the mistake. Gross negligence should not be forgiven, although the proper response is not necessarily retributive.
I’m astounded that no one (especially in a blog devoted to rationalism) has mentioned the very obvious motivation for appearing on bloggingheads—self-promotion. Sean Carroll has already said almost everything he’s qualified to say on bhtv, with the exception of promoting his upcoming book. He stands to benefit more from the attention/reputation he gains from ‘taking a stand’ than he does from doing nothing. He loses what? One more interview?
As EY pointed out, there is ample evidence that bhtv does not have a hidden ‘religious’ agenda. To say that only certain viewpoints have enough merit to be heard was never anyone’s decision to make, save Bob Wright and his staff. SC’s actions smack of a play for attention—the squeaky wheel, so to speak—that has apparently worked. If SC was so valuable to bhtv that Bob felt pressure at the thought of losing him, than bhtv has bigger problems with respect to its coverage of science.
And let’s not kid ourselves—SC can have a ‘seen the light’ moment at any time and decide that he would prefer to engage in dialogue and attempt to add to the public’s knowledge rather than subtract from it. Bob would welcome him back with open arms after reading his ever-so-sincere blog post that reflects his ‘changed attitude’. Life goes on as before, except that everyone involved has gotten a little extra attention.
The fact that we are even acting like this has something to do with ‘principles’ makes me a little ill. The only fact worth noting in this entire debacle is the ease with which Bob is/is not ready to throw his guests and his staff under the bus.
Link to video
You should link to your comment on BHV.
One thing that has come out of this is that BHTV has finally posted their editorial policy, but I am quite disappointed that it’s so vague. The substantive parts are:
To summarize, anything that “reasonable people” disagree about that is considered “interesting and important” is fair game, as long as there is a contrasting perspective. Since the problem with Behe, from their perspective, was not having a (sufficiently informed) contrasting perspective, we’re to assume that “reasonable people” disagree about creationism/ID and that creationism/ID is an “interesting and important” topic. I disagree on both counts, and I think the fact that they believe creationism/ID is interesting and important and debated by reasonable people indicates that their perspective is out-of-line with science and that of what I consider “reasonable people” (i.e., intelligent, knowledgeable people who are conversant with science and the topics under discussion and are committed to the highest intellectual standards).
I confess that I’m not really a fan of the idea that creationists should never get any space for debate. If prestigious scientists are worried that talking to creationists gives them too much credibility, then find some bright ambitious college student who reads Pharyngula to shoot their little fish in a barrel. But this business of trying not to have debates… doesn’t quite seem to me like the right strategy, somehow, when the cold fact of the matter is that creationists already get plenty of airtime with plenty of listeners. That is probably one reason why I’m sympathetic to BHTV here.
I don’t think there ought to be a debate about whether many-worlds is correct, but there is. Should I refuse to talk about it henceforth? Fundamentally, people talking to each other on public video just doesn’t strike me as such a bad, terrible, awful thing, even if it’s about something you shouldn’t have to debate. Now setting up Behe with a non-opponent was terrible, but I’m willing to accept that as an honest mistake.
You’re right, but...
Creating the debate is a strategy used by the creationists. Every time you debate a creationist, you perpetuate the idea that there actually exists something to debate. The reason people are so against the debates with creationists is that creationists really like having debates, because it makes it more likely that their perspective will be mentioned any time the topic of evolution comes up even though their beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Okay, so send out a TA in jeans to respond. Seriously, I think that defuses the attempt to manufacture the appearance of serious debate.
I understand what you mean but … seriously, you overestimate the rationalist skill of the average biologist TA in jeans. Even professors have a hard time making their scientific knowledge truly part of themselves. I don’t hold out much hope for TAs.
Don’t send out an average TA. Send out an ambitious, bright TA from a higher-ranked school (or just with good SAT scores, I understand the results are the same) who’s been vetted by P. Z. Myers for ability to debate well, explain well, and respond with scientific accuracy to standard lies. But send out a TA nonetheless, and make sure they’re dressed in jeans.
In other words, don’t give viewers the impression that creationists are to be taken seriously, right?
The thing is, because BHTV has previously limited itself to hosting diavlogs between mostly honest, mostly reasonable people about topics that haven’t been settled a hundred years ago, and because of the participation of scientists like Sean Carroll, merely taking part in a debate on BHTV gives that impression.
Very true. Last year I have seen an interesting Canadian documentary (Denial Machine, on youtube available, worth skimming through) on how the artificial debate on global warming was generated by the same PR firm that was hired by the Tobacco industry in the 90ies. They even funded the same university professors to generate apparent dissent.
Although creationism/ID is a different area, the methods are strikingly similar. A good example is the http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/ with the only purpose of luring scientists (mostly in unrelated areas) to sign the list with the sole purpose of demonstrating that there is genuine scientific debate going on.
Hmmm… Does it also apply to your discussion with Aubrey de Grey?
Objectively (putting asides my own personal (non-expert) views, hopes etc.) It was a diavlog without any clashes but quite far from current scientific consensus.
They requested an interview rather than a debate. Did my best to just expose the BHTV audience to de Grey’s ideas, and query further in one or two places where I disagreed with him (without going too deep).
The actual scenario under consideration in this case is “people talking to each other on BHTV specifically [1], about topics (such as creationism) that the relevant experts pretty much unanimously agree are nonsense [2], with people who refuse to debate (in person and in the literature) in good faith following the standard norms that govern intellectual discourse [3].”
Even if debating creationists and psychics were handled by bright, informed college students, the prestigious scientists would still end up leaving, because those sorts of dialogues affect the general reputation of the site and thus the reputation of those who speak there. Many scientists will (correctly, imo) infer that a site that thinks creationism is an “interesting and important” topic that reasonable people can disagree on is a site that has low intellectual standards.
I just watched Wright’s diavlog with George Johnson, at the end of which he says that he would have gotten an astrologer on right after Obama made the comment in a debate about astrology and Nancy Reagan, if he could have. Wright clearly has different ideas about what is worthy of discussion than many of his academic guests, which is why they are parting ways. The extremely vague and overly broad editorial policy he put up makes this clear.
On your point that BHTV never having creationists on is akin to you never debating advocates of interpretations other than MW, the relevant differences between the two scenarios are that (1) many experts in the relevant science believe those other interpretations (not true of creationism), and most importantly, (2) they present arguments and react to and update on counter-arguments in the manner that we all expect intellectually honest people to do when participating in intellectual discourse (not true of creationists).
because those sorts of dialogues affect the general reputation of the site and thus the reputation of those who speak there.
So is it necessitated for consistency’s sake that those who would boycott BhTV over this incident must also boycott all other forums with lower intellectual standards… which would basically include all mainstream organizations? Somehow I don’t believe that it’s this simple.
The question I’m curious about is why a Creationist video on BhTV apparently creates reputational pollution in a way that a Creationist video on Youtube does not. My guess is that this has to do with BhTV being a smaller and more-exclusive community than Youtube, and this confers some benefits to “insiders”.
Youtube is a free-for-all with no intellectual standards whatsoever. I understood BhTV to be something different.
In terms of consistency, I imagine that most scientists would boycott any forum that presents itself as having intellectual standards and aiming at an audience skewed towards the educated, knowledgeable, informed subset of the population, IF THAT SITE also commonly supports discussion about topics such as creationism, ghost hunters, alien abduction, psychics, astrology, channelers of dead Atlanteans, etc.
I think it’s perfectly fair to have on “silly” topics, if the silly advocates are set up against skeptics who are strong debaters who usually proceed to kick silly butt all over the place. Nothing wrong with it. Seriously. It’s instructive for the nation’s youth.
It’s instructive and worthwhile, and I agree it should happen somewhere. It’s just not what I thought BhTV was all about.
I was pretty young at the time, but if I recall correctly, my father, a PhD physicist, went on TV at one point to refute astrology, and borrowed my star globe to do so. It may be argumentum ad fuzzium but I don’t think my Dad was wrong to do that.
ERV is willing to debate Behe, but BHtv apparently has yet to show any interest.
I just registered here, since I agree with the ‘rationality’ premise. Rational thought is (hopefully) less wrong than a less rational position, the implication being that little that the human mind formulates is totally correct. Less wrong is a goal, and modification of a stated position is often a requisite of nearing a more correct position.
Anyway, back to the topic of Blogginheads (allowed topics), accomodation, and (related) a critique of Michael Behe. Oh, also the question of whether ID is essentially Creationism.
First, RW sets the standards. It’s been said that the stardards are too loose, but some would argue that stricter standards might lead to disallowance of certain positions, a form of censorship. That would be my position. General ‘objective’ guidelines, but not enforced ‘standards’.
‘Accomodation’, with the meaning ‘acceptance’ of one’s religious position by a scientist, does not mean that debate could not be done. While I would agree that debating a YEC position at Boggingheads might be ‘over the line’, and indeed raises the hackles on the backs of scientists, discussing the merits of ID should not. The “appearance of design” equating to actual design is a viable question, and has not been settled in my view.
If this is off-topic, you can table the question, but I’ll ask it anyway. In what way does ID equate with Creationism? First define both, then state the correlation.
ID arose as a way to circumvent the Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard which banned the mentioning of deities in teaching of secular issues.
The creationist text book Of Pandas and People which was being written at the time of the trial subsequently underwent CTRL-H editing to exchange “creator” for “designer,” leading to the hilarious chimera “cdesign proponentsists.”
The people endorsing creationism and ID are more or less the same. By far, most types of argument put forth by IDists have previously been used by creationists. “Irreducible complexity” is merely a restating of Paley’s Watch or, indeed, Darwin’s own rhetorical reservations regarding the complexity of the eye.
Further, the vast majority of IDists have explicit religious motivation (pdf) for their viewpoints, and the ID community uses the same tactics of quotemining, making lists of non-biologist skeptics, and appeals to authority.
Finally, the leading ID “think”-tank, the Discovery Institute, has stated its ultimate goal in an internal workpaper, The Wedge:
Again, what I’m asking for in simple terms is to define the basic beliefs of both camps, and where their beliefs correlate with each other. What are the conceptual differences between the two?
I.E., what does a Creationist believe (seminal concepts)?
What does a design theorist believe (seminal concepts)?
I thought Torben explained well that there is no noticeable difference between the two camps, that they’re essentially the same camp.
That he did, as have Barbara Forrest and many others, but those conclusions consist of ‘blanket statements’, and are subject to scrutiny. Many times when a statement of that ilk is made, there follows a link to one of the Creationist trials (Dover most often), the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, a critique of Forrest’s book, ‘Creationism’s Trojan Horse’, or links similar to those provided by Torben. These are just a few of the plethora of evolution supporting references, but the question we’re addressing here is simply the “more or less” issue regarding the two camps.
Blanket statements abound in the media, an example being “The US has the best health care system in the world”, courtesy of Sean Hannity, and almost on a daily basis. Even given the fact that the US is advanced technologically in many ways, would you buy that statement carte blanch?
First you define a philosophical or evidence based position. Then you debate the validity of its tenets. At that point you can more objectively discuss/ debate the merit of the conflation issue. A complicating factor here is the possibility that there are actually more than ‘two camps’, or that adherents (of either) may have altered their ‘consensus’ positions compared to say a decade ago.
After defining the two groups’ seminal tenets, we can THEN discuss Dover, Demski, the Wedge et al. Any takers?
All right then. According to the Discovery Institute, ID states
and to the question “Is intelligent design theory incompatible with evolution?,” they state
According to Answers in Genesis, creationism states that
evolutionary theory cannot account for life on Earth
God created the earth (exact method & age optional)
death was the result of the Fall
the biblical Flood occurred and was global
God caused languages to diverge at the Tower of Babel incident
...plus some Christian tenets
The latter three are demonstrably wrong and the latter two are not directly related to biology They go on to say
and
Creationism and ID agree that an intelligence created the universe and life, and that evolution cannot explain all of biology. Typically, the same arguments against evolution are used. What’s left is the explicit deference to the Christian bible, and here we can either take DI’s word for it, or we can see what they say to their peers when they think we’re not listening. That’s what the book Of Pandas and People, the pdf and the Wedge document illustrate. I mean, seriously, that book which was supposed to be a creationist textbook became an ID textbook. Authored by creationists (including YEC) who are also IDists. Further, do you really think Phillip Johnson or Bill Dembski would acknowledge anything that does not accord with what the Bible teaches? I don’t.
So what’s left to distinguish them?
On DI’s ‘General Questions’ page, they make their general ID statement as cited above, which is a very general statement, that doesn’t address the common descent question, where there is some divisiveness within the mainstream ID camp. But they do address the question further down the page.
Regarding that question, as well as ID’s compatability with NDE, they state, “It depends on what one means by the word “evolution.” If one simply means “change over time,” or even that living things are related by common ancestry, then there is no inherent conflict between evolutionary theory and intelligent design theory.” Given that statement, they now agree with common descent, although not necessarily a consensus view of its members in its early days.
They also state that ID is not Bible based, nor is it the same as Creationism. They state, “Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism.”
Answers in Genesis, AiG, is however Bible based, and their precepts (cited above) are definitely contra to science. Furthermore, Ken Ham does not endorce ID as a concept.
While Creationism and ID agree that an intelligence created life, the seminal ID concept only addresses biologic life, and not the universe ‘in toto’. ID address biologic life, and the tenetative mechanisms for both adaptability (evolution), and novelty and complexity (gene tweaking).
Due to personal beliefs, there are obviously those within the ID community that believe by faith alone, that one God created everything, i.e. the Universe and everything in it. Some are YECs as well. But ID as a disipline is NOT grounded in, nor even REFERS to scriptural references for substantiation. It looks more at statistical probabilities, possible methods of alteration, and the existence of engineering principles (ligament attachment points and the geometry involved as one example).
Similarly, there are scientists that accept NDE as the sole cause of the phylogenetic cascade, but may accept theistic evolution, a vague concept that allows for an intelligence that set the stage, including for some adherents a preloading of biologic life, then left the theater.
But do those scientists employ their faith based concepts in the lab? No, nor do IDists who are objective inquiry based in their pursuit of design inferences. I am one of the latter, who sees design inferences on many fronts, and who has arrived at his conclusions by a study of the data, including the same data the evolutionsist look at. Simply differing conclusions regarding much of that data.
My predictons: Adaptive evolution, a function of the embryogenetic process, is a ‘built in’ function to adapt to environmental variables as well as to minimize extinctions. Extinctions do happen, many over vast time, but so what? When something no longer functions it is eliminated, or redesigned, take your pick. I further predict that adaptive genes are expressed due to a ‘designed in’ function to produce variability, rather than folding errors/ mutations. This may be a HOX gene process. Time will tell.
The variability from mutational occurences is accepted as the sole source of novelty and complexity, a concensus viewpoint held by 99.9 percent of scientists (if you want to believe dingbat Brian Alters’ statement). The actual figure, if there was a way to detemine it, might surprise you. As a working biologic engineer, and even viewed through the ‘rational thought’ filter which I employ to assess ALL observable data, there had to be intelligent input, likely a form of genetic engineering, at strategic points in time.
By a god? Not necessarily, but more likely via cosmic spirit entities or design teams, either competitively or merely for something to do, or perhaps surogates of a supreme authority. Further, unless all life forms generate consciousness internally (a jump in logic), they exist as vehicles for spirit entities to inhabit, a kind of sabatical from the cosmic realm.
But feel free to conflate ID with Creationism, a sophmoric and frankly dated position to try to uphold the status quo by discrediting detractors of evolutionary theory as ‘religious nuts’. But please, don’t label it as ‘rational thought’.
Cheers
This is just a word game. If you sleep better not calling the IDists creationists, fine. It doesn’t change reality, even if the ID movement do their best to make it so.
Longer answer below.
I know perfectly well what the IDists claim to the public. The only question is whether this claim is genuine or whether it is an evasive tactic designed after Edwards v. Aguillard. I think the latter is more likely, because
they made a similar change of tactics after the Kitzmiller trial to now endorse the “teach the controversy” meme.
numerous sources (see posts above) point directly to the Christian culture war effort underlying the entire endeavour. The entire ID motivation is explicitly conservative Christian. Their conclusions are given beforehanded: to accord with Christianity’s teachings.*
while e.g. Behe supports common descent, many IDists don’t. To an allegedly scientific field regarding life’s history on Earth, such discordance is simply disqualifying.
the exact same textbook that taught creationism turned into an ID textbook with barely any editing. The authors were: 1st & 2nd ed., Davis (YEC & IDist) & Kenyon (creationist & IDist); 3rd ed., Dembski & Wells (both IDists).
the designer agnosticism is completely indefensible in scientific terms and most obviously a tactical move. No genuinely scientific field would a priori rule out research into the designer’s identity if not to circumvene the Establishment Clause.
even the Templeton Foundation, whose entire rasion d’être is to “reconcile” religion and science, disavows the DI as a scientifically vacuous PR front. As the Vatican has done.
In short, the DI’s insistence on the non-committal to the Bible is a dishonest front. The same people, the same arguments, the same tactics, the same goals, the same lies, the same quote mining, the same books are involved. The difference between OEC and ID is the explicit deference to the Bible, and this difference can be fully accounted for by the DI’s dishonesty.
Once the DI officially has endorsed any finding that contradicts central conservative Christian tenets, I’ll grant them and you the benefit of the doubt. For now, they haven’t earned it.
*: Also, Dembski:
Johnson:
Until I got to this part of your comment, I was about to vote it up. And then I read the above, and decided not to.
Then I read the next couple of sentences about cosmic spirit entities, and decided to vote it down instead, as you’d by that point undermined the one interesting/useful point you had: the idea that there might be a way for genes to increase variability or decrease error correction, without needing some sort of external randomness.
It would probably be a good idea for you to read some of the past OB/LW corpus, particularly the bits on reductionism, optimization processes, and the mind projection fallacy, as you are committing rather big errors on all three fronts. (Specifically, you are positing ontologically basic mental entities, anthropomorphizing “design”, and conflating intelligence with agency.)
The plausibility of my genetic conjectures have nothing to do with the other speculations that followed them. If they are viable, then my predications will be confirmed.
So tell me, do you feel that consciousness is a synapic brain function? If so, what abou OOB experiences? Are they all BS? The brain is an interface to body functions and sensory input. The only thing it has to do with consciousness is to color it, i.e. mood, personality, inherited character traits. These conclusions are based on my own observations, and some emperical testing I have done. But I didn’t expect that you or most others to just ‘accept’ it, based on a few statements.
To the lurkers out there who may be more open to non orthodoxy, consciousness is not only external to the brain/ body, but may allow you non corporeal adventures some day. The body is merelly a vehicle for an earthbound experience.
But the point of my comment (original) was that ID and Creationism are totally separate concepts, though with some commonality. In a venn diagram, I’d give them only about 10% overlap.
Given that one descended from the other and brought a multitude of proponents along the way, this is seriously wrong—even if one grants all your points for the argument’s sake. The one single thing that separates ID from OEC is the explicit deference to the Bible. Every bit of data indicates that this has simply been replaced by an outwardly implicit, but internally explicit deference to it.
The plausibility of my genetic conjectures have nothing to do with the other speculations that followed them. If they are viable, then my predications will be confirmed.
So tell me, do you feel that consciousness is a synapic brain function? If so, what abou OOB experiences? Are they all BS? The brain is an interface to body functions and sensory input. The only thing it has to do with consciousness is to color it, i.e. mood, personality, inherited character traits. These conclusions are based on my own observations, and some emperical testing I have done. But I didn’t expect that you or most others to just ‘accept’ it, based on a few statements.
To the lurkers out there who may be more open to non orthodoxy, consciousness is not only external to the brain/ body, but may allow you non corporeal adventures some day. The body is merelly a vehicle for an earthbound experience.
But the point of my comment (original) was that ID and Creationism are totally separate concepts, though with some commonality. In a venn diagram, I’d give them only about 10% overlap.
By the way, this comment was hidden from view when it incurred −5 points, so I’m reposting it here. But I do have a suggestion: When you disagree, consider posting the point(s) of your disagreement, rather than voting it down with one finger. Or is this too much of an intellectual challenge for you? I think the answer is obvious.
Please don’t do that. The point of voting things down is to make them “disappear from view”. If you want to see downvoted comments you can set that in your preferances. Reposting is just begging to get more downvotes (you got one from me, though I didn’t downvote the first version of it.
I only did it to make a point, that I stongly disagree with the protocol, and frankly, I have better things to do than post here. To me, negative votes w/o any comment(s) to substantiate them, are ridiculous. I once debated a retired lawyer, Tim Beazley on Amazon.com, a debate that went on for weeks. Points were made, rebutted, sometimes rephrased, etc, by both sides. Beazley used a lot of ad homs, his favorite being IDiot for ID’ist.
I enjoyed the debate, feeling that my args trumped his, and none of mine utilized ad homs of any kind; only logic, and ‘reference based’ when needed. At some point down the road, Amazon not only banned Beazley from commenting, but they deleted the scores of comments he had made over several years. Shortly after that, they banned his close associate John Kwok from posting there as well. I assume it was the result of complaints (none by me), or of having assumed a more conservative position than in the past.
Later, I criticized Amazon for their actions, and got plus voting numbers for that comment. But hey, I don’t give a shit about the voting points, neither here, there or on youtube. At least in my case, they count for nothing, nada zip. My arguments are logic based, and the result of fifteen years of biologic study of genetics, ten years of blogging, and around forty years of engineering experience. Negative points can actually increase the scrutiny and review of comments, and in some cases, actually help to make a point. It’s hiding or deleting comments that I strongly disagree with, and as I stated above, I’m outa here.
If you still think that censorship (or burying comments) is the way to go, read Yudkowsky’s original post again, since he makes my point. And if you’re the least bit curious regarding my past dialogues, search leebowman, “lee bowman”, beauleeman, or “beau leeman”.
(Burying comments like this is perfectly acceptable on LW, btw. Though not necessary, since a parent is already under most viewing thresholds. I’m not leaving BHTV over Behe, but I wouldn’t have bothered to have him on myself, either.)
I know perfectly well what the IDists claim to the public. The only question is whether this claim is genuine or whether it is an evasive tactic designed after Edwards v. Aguillard. I think the latter is more likely, because
they made a similar change of tactics after the Kitzmiller trial to now endorse the “teach the controversy” meme.
numerous sources (see posts above) point directly to the Christian culture war effort underlying the entire endeavour. The entire ID motivation is explicitly conservative Christian. Their conclusions are given beforehanded: to accord with Christianity’s teachings.*
while e.g. Behe supports common descent, many IDists don’t. To an allegedly scientific field regarding life’s history on Earth, such discordance is simply disqualifying.
the exact same textbook that taught creationism turned into an ID textbook with barely any editing. The authors were: 1st & 2nd ed., Davis (YEC & IDist) & Kenyon (creationist & IDist); 3rd ed., Dembski & Wells (both IDists).
the designer agnosticism is completely indefensible in scientific terms and most obviously a tactical move. No genuinely scientific field would a priori rule out research into the designer’s identity if not to circumvene the Establishment Clause.
even the Templeton Foundation, whose entire rasion d’être is to “reconcile” religion and science, disavows the DI as a scientifically vacuous PR front. As the Vatican has done.
In short, the DI’s insistence on the non-committal to the Bible is a dishonest front. The same people, the same arguments, the same tactics, the same goals, the same lies, the same quote mining, the same books are involved. The difference between OEC and ID is the explicit deference to the Bible, and this difference can be fully accounted for by the DI’s dishonesty.
Once the DI officially has endorsed any finding that contradicts central conservative Christian tenets, I’ll grant them and you the benefit of the doubt. For now, they haven’t earned it.
*: Also, Dembski:
Johnson:
Behe is like the soft center a loaf of bread.
These theoretically righteous Copernicanism practicing cranks, (Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait, and of course, PZ,), have a lot of room to talk… speaking of religious fanatics.
I want to laugh as the negative points begin to pile up since science doesn’t give a damn what other people think, but unfortunately, science is also parametrized by a consensus of like-minded liberal ideologues who don’t care what the science says if it doesn’t conform to their religion:
http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2#
Creationists can post their crap freely on YouTube—and I don’t see YouTube getting its editorial policy criticised for allowing them on.
Basically, that site allows viewers to use their own editorial policy, and to get their video recommendations from any source they like. That seems to me to be obviously how a video hosting service should operate.
Critics claiming bloggingheads.tv is not being sufficiently censorious seem about 180 degrees out of whack to me. For me, the more compulsory content filtering a hosting service implements, the less usable it becomes.
Bloggingheads.tv is NOT a hosting service (it could be, but it’s not). It is a thematic forum, with an audience.
Moreover, the diavlogs in question were “Science Saturday” diavlogs.
ETA: actually, the Behe one wasn’t a “Science Saturday” diavlog, but the young earth creationist one was.
A “thematic forum”? Could you elaborate on this?
Technically speakiing, it is a hosting service.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_hosting
Yes, your statement is not technically a lie.
If you feel misled by my comment, I don’t see how I am to blame—and it seems to me that I do not deserve your link.
Bloggingheads.tv is a video hosting service. It hosts videos on its server and streams them to clients.
Your totally inaccurate comment on this topic seems more likely to mislead than my accurate one.
Fine, your homepage is a text hosting service. This is idiotic—the aspect of your comments that generates downvotes and annoyance. I shall say no more.
It would indeed be rather stupid to call my home page a text hosting service.
“Hosting service” is generally construed to mean a service provided at large, to the public, not a private moderated website that hosts videos. Calling BHTV a hosting service implicitly compares it to sites like YouTube and Vimeo, which it has little in common with. Neglecting to point that out suggests a greater interest in being technically correct than in being helpfully informative when you could easily have been both.
Er, the range of the customer base is not involved in the definition of hosting service. Hosting services need not target the general public—they target whoever they think needs their service. There are all kinds of exclusive hosting services out there. If you think otherwise, surely you ought to at least support your strange idea with some kind of reference.
I didn’t really implicitly compare with YouTube—rather I explicitly compared with YouTube—mentioning their service by name. Both sites host videos, though YouTube has a much better player and search facilities, and is much closer to being unmoderated and uncensored.
Check out: http://www.youtube.com/user/Bloggingheads
I’m not a fan of Behe. He’s like the center of a slice of bread.
“decision to have creationist Michael Behe interviewed”
Errr.… wrong…
Behe is not a creationist, he actually takes the view of intelligent design which is different (don’t believe me look it up). The stereo type you are reacting to hasn’t been true in “christian science” community for years.
Think whatever you want about Behe but at least do him the courtesy of not misrepresenting his views so you can go on an anti-religious rant, because and I am just being blunt (its a character flaw some would say) it just sounds foolish.
ID is not different than creationism, it just uses different terminology with some additional quasi-scientific obfuscation. Consider the creationist textbook, Of Pandas and People:
Can you think of any other 2 intellectual theories where you could take a book written about one and do a global search-and-replace on a few key terms in order to yield a good launching point for a book about the second theory?
For an analogous case, consider Lee Smolin’s “Life of the Cosmos” hypothesis. That posits natural selection between universes—and black holes as the birth canal for new universes.
That seems literally incredible—since black holes have no insides. However, the rest of the logic of Smolin’s hypothesis does not depend critically on the origin of the new universes—so if you replace “black holes” with “basement universes” the hypothesis becomes much more credible.
This discussion over whether creationism and ID are distinguishable confuses principle with practice. It also conflates the public tenets of a movement with the views of the members of the movement.
Are creationism and ID distinguishable in principle? Yes. I think this is the point that several people here are trying to make.
Are creationism and ID distinguishable in practice? I’m highly skeptical, since as you also observe, ID seems to be a stripped-down obfuscation of creationism.
Looking at their public tenets, ID and creationism are not interchangeable, because any day some folks could come along who believe in ID but not in creationism. However, until such folks come along, I think it would be safe to say that IDists and creationists are empirically interchangeable, even if ID and creationism are not. Is there anyone out there who believes in ID but not creationism?
P.S… Scientology is a potential example of IDists who are not creationists, because this says that “With respect to evolution, Scientology holds that life forms have evolved, but that a much greater force is directing those changes”, though Hubbard’s views seem far too muddled to say for sure. At least, Scientologists do seem to believe that humans contain a “genetic entity” that has progressed through many stages, including Clam and Sloth, before ending up in humans, and that aliens have caused “incidents” in this process. So it sounds like Scientologists would agree with a broad formulation of ID (directed evolution), even though they are not involved in the ID or creationism movements.
Communism and socialism?
It is different—according to Behe himself:
“Although intelligent design fits comfortably with a belief in God, it doesn’t require it, because the scientific theory doesn’t tell you who the designer is. While most people—including myself—will think the designer is God, some people might think that the designer was a space alien or something odd like that.” (Michael Behe, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 02/08/01).
Wrong....
http://www.discovery.org/a/1329
http://www.slate.com/id/2118388/
Again the profound ignorance you guys have of the ideas you disagree with comes out. Its a common mistake to say they are the same with different terms look at the actual view points and you find they are not.
Educate yourself...
Creationism: based on the Bible and the Christian God
Intelligent Design: does not necessitate the Christian God and centers around the idea of irreducible complexity
Seriously I don’t agree with it but at least before I go off half-cocked I actually bother to educate myself.
I guess you didn’t read the wikipedia article I linked to:
That textbook [the later 1993 edition] was the first significant published use of the term. It’s the same book where they started with a creationism book and used hundreds of passages verbatim by replacing “creationism” with “intelligent design”. It was obviously a ploy to repackage creationism in a way that wouldn’t run foul of separation of church and state, and would thus allow it to be taught in public schools. Just as obviously, if “intelligent design” centered around the idea of irreducible complexity, why did it not figure prominently in the 1989 edition of the intelligent design textbook?
“I guess you didn’t read the wikipedia article I linked to”
If your knowledge of this comes from Wikipedia no wonder your clueless… read the links I posted: “Intelligent Design adherents believe only that the complexity of the natural world could not have occurred by chance. Some intelligent entity must have created the complexity, they reason, but that “designer” could in theory be anything or anyone.”
As I said not necessarily the Christian God.
“Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. Instead, intelligent design theory is an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature observed by biologists is genuine design (the product of an organizing intelligence) or is simply the product of chance and mechanical natural laws. This effort to detect design in nature is being adopted by a growing number of biologists, biochemists, physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers of science at American colleges and universities. Scholars who adopt a design approach include biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University, microbiologist Scott Minnich at the University of Idaho, and mathematician William Dembski at Baylor University. (3)”
From the discovery institute… again as I said the two are different…
http://www.intelligentdesign.org/faq.php
Do your homework...
Any further commentary please direct to the email address I failed to provide...
That fails to make your case. You claimed “ID is not different than creationism”. That is simply wrong—see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
Pointing out that the intelligent design movement had its roots in creationism does not imply the concepts are interchangable. Rather obviously, they are not. Creationism posits a supernatural creator. The idea that living things were intelligently designed does not.
This is the real reason to ban debates with ID proponents.
It’s flipping annoying.
ID.png
Of course, that’s not a screen shot of the current Wikipedia page.
I also found this:
“Q1: Should ID be equated with creationism? (Yes.) [...]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Intelligent_design
All that proves is that you can’t trust Wikipedia to get its facts straight :-(
Which is a serious mistake: there is too much gibberish in the world to learn it all before turning down.
Wow, you guys truly are useless...
Apparently there is to much information that is above you head since you guys follow EY who can’t do the math for QM.
“Which is a serious mistake: there is too much gibberish in the world to learn it all before turning down.”
So thats why you guys can’t do technical work, and don’t understand advanced math… I get it… its above you… cool...
Well whatever I am finished… I don’t care what you do… If average people like ones here want to look foolish great what do I care…
So have fun winning your popularity contest to get a good boy from EY...
Cheers