Anti-ID group (IDCAB) begins again?, Can't tell you how much I missed that friendly bunch. Options

[Doc glasgow]

The Creation Science article contains, not to put a fine point on it, some laughable statements:

If there were credible scientific evidence against evolution, scientists would be the first to discover it, the first to publish it in peer-reviewed journals, and the first to debate its validity and importance. After all, discovering credible scientific evidence against evolution would be a revolutionary accomplishment, worthy of a Nobel Prize. That’s why accusations from creationists and intelligent design advocates that scientists are conspiring to suppress evidence against evolution are, to put it mildly, silly.

ORLY?

If some researcher did (for the sake of argument) discover some evidence that seemed to count against evolution, and tried to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, what would actually happen?

I mean, he'd be ostracised as cook, have every aspect of his research called into question, have journalists dredging through his past to "prove" he was motivated by religion, and then, even if his findings couldn't be dismissed they'd be put aside as an anomaly to be explained later, a freak result, or evolutionary theory would be tweaked by some complexities to explain the new data.

The notion that evolutionists are open minded here, and all they require is some proof for them to rethink is absurd. The notion that theory evolution is open to falsification is also absurd.

FWIW, I do not believe the existence of God can be "proved," because proof is always subjective - and, with enough will, another explanation can always be found. But the same is true of any number of deeply held beliefs - this is not a phenomenon restricted to religion. The problem with most scientists is they have studied too little epistemology - and therefore ignore their own subjectivity.

[Milton Roe]

The Creation Science article contains, not to put a fine point on it, some laughable statements:

If there were credible scientific evidence against evolution, scientists would be the first to discover it, the first to publish it in peer-reviewed journals, and the first to debate its validity and importance. After all, discovering credible scientific evidence against evolution would be a revolutionary accomplishment, worthy of a Nobel Prize. That’s why accusations from creationists and intelligent design advocates that scientists are conspiring to suppress evidence against evolution are, to put it mildly, silly.

ORLY?

If some researcher did (for the sake of argument) discover some evidence that seemed to count against evolution, and tried to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, what would actually happen?

I mean, he'd be ostracised as cook, have every aspect of his research called into question, have journalists dredging through his past to "prove" he was motivated by religion, and then, even if his findings couldn't be dismissed they'd be put aside as an anomaly to be explained later, a freak result, or evolutionary theory would be tweaked by some complexities to explain the new data.

The notion that evolutionists are open minded here, and all they require is some proof for them to rethink is absurd. The notion that theory evolution is open to falsification is also absurd.

FWIW, I do not believe the existence of God can be "proved," because proof is always subjective - and, with enough will, another explanation can always be found. But the same is true of any number of deeply held beliefs - this is not a phenomenon restricted to religion. The problem with most scientists is they have studied too little epistemology - and therefore ignore their own subjectivity.

Yes, no, maybe. It's not that the data and theory would be suppressed, although it might be ridiculed for a while. However, if new data came out to support it, it would eventually become part of the consensus. Read the WP article on Hopeful Monster which tells one such story in biology in more detail than I have time for, here. In general, atheists are happy with "gradualism", whereas any kind of sudden or "saltatory" change tends to make creationists happy, since it's harder to explain as a slowly-working natural process. If there's a sudden change, now you have one more thing to "explain" and that makes natural laws work extra hard. And science is "lazy," as it prefers Ockham. However, the universe is full of sudden changes as parts of natural processes, just from chaos. Consider avalanches and earthquakes and supernovae. Non-linear physics does admit sudden events happening (seemingly) "spontaneously" from deterministic chaos. As also does linear but non-deterministic quantum mechanics.

Another obvious example are a number of biologists who argued that the human eye is an example of a system of irreproducable completity, thereby making very many creationists happy. However, a careful examination has since shown eyes of varying complexity, all partly functional, from the color patch of single-celled euglena, right up to the glorious peepers of you and me. So nice a progression can be seen, that ID people have notably stopped mentioning the eye at all (they used it as a counter evolutionary example all the time, 30 years ago). Much the same thing is true of biological wings, which have many uses other than propulsion. So none of those need saltation. The creationists are now down to arguing at the level of the bacterial flagellum-- see how far they've retreated. But a sort of saltation in the arrival of life on Earth I suspect will end up being necessary; all it means is that life (as single bacterial cells) evolved someplace else in the universe, where it had more time and conditions to do things more gradually than on Earth. There's nothing unscientific about panspermia as an explanation for the rapid apearance of life on Earth (versus local organic evolution to make non-life into life). However, the debate still rages, because we have no good evidence either way. Organic evolution and theories about how life itself arose, are in a very sorry state indeed compared with ideas about how to get from bacteria to people without ID.

If you want a third example, consider the Big Bang. Read the WP article, which is pretty good. Lemaître, a Catholic priest who argued for a "primeval atom" exploding into the universe in 1927, was ridiculed as promoting religion by the back door, even though his general relativity math was perfectly consistant with Einstein and Friedmann's (Einstein said to Lemaître that his physics was good, but his insight abominable). Lemaître's theory preferred an expanding universe, which was one of Friedmann's theoretical alternatives, but not one supported by any data in 1927. Both Einstein and Friedmann, as pinko secular Jewish types who rejected any sort of personal God, preferred their universe to be comfortably uniformitarian and deterministic; they didn't like big jumps or indeterminism (for that matter, Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics, either!). And there's nothing quite as saltational and indeterministic, as a Big Bang, where known laws of physics all break down.

Alas for the uniformitarians, Hubble found the universe was expanding in 1929, forcing Einstein to call himself stupid for not keeping his mind open. Lemaître, the Catholic priest, had called the shot, and nailed it.

From 1929 to 1962 scientists argued about the Big Bang, which looked suspiciously like a Creation Event out of somebody's mythology. But in the early 60's the microwave background was discovered, and by that time it had been realized that nothing but a Big Bang could explain the primordial concentrations of hydrogen, helium, and deuterium. So the scientists gave up and accepted the religious-looking theory. According to you, this sociological revolution in science toward a theoretical alternative proposed by a priest (!), and looking like Genesis (!) should never have happened. Except it did.

[Lar]

Cla, do you honestly think that intelligent design is a scientific theory?

That's the wrong question.

He doesn't. I don't.

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

[lilburne]

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

I say fuck 'em. Hold their feet to the flames and burn 'em . There are plenty of encyclopaedias of nonsense and fallacies they can hang out at.

[Milton Roe]

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

I say fuck 'em. Hold their feet to the flames and burn 'em . There are plenty of encyclopaedias of nonsense and fallacies they can hang out at.

As both Thomas Jefferson and Josh Billings said, the things that really hurt you aren't the things you don't know, so much as the things you know, that just aren't so.

WP, as a summation of "knowledge," makes no progress in this area. It summarizes the things people think they "know" that just aren't so (like acupuncture and "energy medicine") with the same zeal as it summarizes the most empirically tested and toughest scientific knowledge, like the conservation of momentum and energy, or the constancy of the speed of light.

I'm one of those people who think that WP neither hurts nor helps the cause of education, but is rather neutral, like television or the internet itself. Wikipedia is sort of like a pre-accumulator of trash, something I've likened to WALL*E, whose job it is to sort out a planet-load of crap (trash, junk, and treasure) into neat piles, but has no way of telling the diamonds and the Van Goghs, from the empty pop cans and egg shells. However, the sorting process is helpful. One MORE filter (the one Sanger first proposed) will convert the sorted mess into something amazing. Those of us who use our brains and other knowledge to do that NOW, find WP very useful. The problem is that we weren't trained in epistemology by reading Wikipedia. The next generation might not have that advantage. That's what worries Jon.

Every scientist, as part of their Ph.D. or (at least) post-doc training, has a moment when they stop being an epistemological virgin, and have one or more magical moments in which they realize that for one small item, ALL the experts are wrong. They've missed something, and their underwear is showing. And this can be demonstrated in a way that makes them all blush. At that moment the student becomes part of the club of masters.

WP isn't part of that experience. It's explicitly designed not to be. And if WP is all there is, where will future generations go to avoid remaining "40 year-old virgins" when it comes to knowledge?

[lilburne]

He said he knew no reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second; for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.

As with proponents of ID: they poison the minds of the young.

[Cla68]

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

I say fuck 'em. Hold their feet to the flames and burn 'em . There are plenty of encyclopaedias of nonsense and fallacies they can hang out at.

Yes, but Wikipedia's not supposed to be a forum for doing that. In my opinion, the ID article should first present the theory as its proponents present it, then go into an extended discussion on its merits and problems, as Kelly Martin and few others here have eloquently elucidated. The current IDCab watching that article won't let that happen, IMO, because they're apparently afraid that if there is any section in the article that presents ID in any kind of favorable light, some reader might, just might be influenced to believe that there is something to the ID theory. They can't allow that to happen.

They don't seem to understand that their approach to the article is counterproductive for their agenda. By ensuring that the article remains as an obvious attack on ID, it provokes people into wanting to know why Wikipedia hates ID so much. Also, people will continually try to NPOV the article in ways the IDCab don't approve of, so they'll be forced to constantly watch the article 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If the article was written more fairly, then it wouldn't get messed with as much. As Kelly says, hardcore ID proponents would probably still have a problem with it, but I assume they're fewer in number than the general reader who happens on the article and realizes that, as it is currently written, it is a thinly disguised hit piece.

This post has been edited by Cla68: Thu 20th January 2011, 10:21pm

[lilburne]

But some people seem to, and if there are enough of them that do, under WP's wacky rules, it should be reported as such in the article (and duly categorized).

I say fuck 'em. Hold their feet to the flames and burn 'em . There are plenty of encyclopaedias of nonsense and fallacies they can hang out at.

Yes, but Wikipedia's not supposed to be a forum for doing that.

Then someone should work on that. You don't discourage flies by smearing honey around the place.

[quote name='Cla68' date='Thu 20th January 2011, 10:19pm' post='266253']
In my opinion, the ID article should first present the theory as its proponents present it, then go into an extended discussion on its merits and problems, as Kelly Martin and few others here have eloquently elucidated.
[quote]

I though Kelly Martin said that once they get started you need a book's worth of facts to unravel the crap. Its like engaging with a conversation with the Jehovah Witness lot, you'll just waste years of your time.

Let the IDers use ID to explain this:


7 spot ladybird with parasitic wasp cocoon DSCF7766 by hedgerowmobile

[Kelly Martin]

The ID/anti-ID fight is one between committed ideologues. Both parties are equally guilty; both sides want their religious beliefs (theistic Christianity on one side, and strict atheism on the other) imposed on others by force. I have no more love for strict atheists than I do for any other sort of fundamentalist evangelical. The thing is, neither side is going to compromise, not even to the point of allowing a fair presentation of the claims made by intelligent design or the very legitimate arguments as to why they fail to comprise a scientific theory (which is a different beast than a "theory about science", which is one of the equivocations that ID proponents are fond of using).

The sad thing is that the argument for intelligent design is so intellectually and rationally bankrupt that there is no need to get all mean and nasty about it; it is certainly enough to dispassionately set forth the case against and let people make up their own minds. Everything I've seen is that the only people who will believe this stuff are those who are already predisposed, by religious belief, to accept it uncritically.

The problem is that "rationalists" (as they sometimes call themselves) tend to be unable to suppress the urge to be snarky about their own belief in their superiority over all those "stupid people" who have not seen the light of reason. And since they have both David Gerard and Jimmy Wales on their side (more or less), they have no reason to restrain themselves on Wikipedia.

[Doc glasgow]

The ID/anti-ID fight is one between committed ideologues.

Looks to me like a lot of it is a fight between people who believe in NPOV on one hand and people who don't understand the concept on the other. Either of groups may or may not have religious convictions or be atheists, but that's largely irrelevant. Even a fair-minded atheist hasn't got a look in.

[Milton Roe]

The ID/anti-ID fight is one between committed ideologues.

Looks to me like a lot of it is a fight between people who believe in NPOV on one hand and people who don't understand the concept on the other. Either of groups may or may not have religious convictions or be atheists, but that's largely irrelevant. Even a fair-minded atheist hasn't got a look in.

How can you describe ID when it's not close to being a single POV? Those guys know they want a God-of-the-gaps, but they can't decide which gaps need a god.

Once upon a time, god was the Prime Mover, and was necessary to make the planets go around the Sun. Now, it's admitted that they can do that without Him. Then, we needed God to form babies in the womb. Now that's starting to look pretty mechanical. Then anti-evolution proponents gave up on microevolution and admitted that you didn't need God to make teacup pomeranians or Great Danes from wolves, or even different subspecies on different islands. Now that can be automatic. Less and less for God to do....

So, what jobs are left? Do we need god to make humans from other types of apes? How about splitting other apes from each other? Or just to make primates from other mammals? Or make mammals from reptiles?

The reason Father Georges Lemaître won on the Big Bang question, is that he put his theoretical cards on the table and "placed his bet" on a prediction. The ID folks, by contrast, are "not even wrong." They are like nailing jello to a table. When Hubble found the universe expanding, Einstein (father of modern physical cosmology) said "I have made the biggest blunder of my life." (he had inserted a fudge factor into an equation just to make the universe static, because he thought it should be). Einstein saw that had he trusted his own math, he'd had the chance to make one more astounding prediction, like Dirac and the positron. But in both cases, the inventors didn't trust their own mathematical inventions.

[Kelly Martin]

Looks to me like a lot of it is a fight between people who believe in NPOV on one hand and people who don't understand the concept on the other. Either of groups may or may not have religious convictions or be atheists, but that's largely irrelevant. Even a fair-minded atheist hasn't got a look in.

That's utter nonsense. None of the combatants in that fight is fighting for NPOV, which is a concept that's even more incoherent than intelligent design. They're all fighting for their preferred religious belief, or else proxying for someone else's preferred religious belief. All of them are going to claim that they're fighting for the "neutral point of view", of course, because the game requires it.

The "neutral point of view" is that intelligent design is a system of religious belief that has been expressed in a manner so as to appear to naive individuals to be a set of scientific claims, created as a political gambit to displace the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States. However, neither side of the conflict is willing to leave it at that; the anti-ID people feel the need to heap scorn and condemnation on everything anywhere near intelligent design, and the pro-ID people are obviously unwilling to admit to the status of intelligent design as political theatrics. The true shame is that the difference between the neutral point of view and the point of view espoused by the anti-ID crowd is mainly one of tone.

[taiwopanfob]

So, what jobs are left? Do we need god to make humans from other types of apes? How about splitting other apes from each other? Or just to make primates from other mammals? Or make mammals from reptiles?

God is the sysadmin for the Great Big Computer In The Sky. Science is us trying to steal the source code from that motherfucker, fix the bugs, and get our sorry posteriors off this planet. Can anyone really have lived until they have B.A.S.E. jumped the Verona Rupes on Miranda?

But in both cases, the inventors didn't trust their own mathematical inventions.

Well, in some ways he was a number of decades ahead of the game: the cosmological constant has since re-appeared in modern cosmologies as one of several free parameters.

This post has been edited by taiwopanfob: Fri 21st January 2011, 2:31am

[Milton Roe]

So, what jobs are left? Do we need god to make humans from other types of apes? How about splitting other apes from each other? Or just to make primates from other mammals? Or make mammals from reptiles?

God is the sysadmin for the Great Big Computer In The Sky. Science is us trying to steal the source code from that motherfucker, fix the bugs, and get our sorry posteriors off this planet. Can anyone really have lived until they have B.A.S.E. jumped the Verona Rupes on Miranda?

B.A.S.E. jumping in environments with no atmospheres? Sounds exciting... for a short time. Then SPLAT. Maybe you're rather bungee jump that one.

But in both cases, the inventors didn't trust their own mathematical inventions.

Well, in some ways he was a number of decades ahead of the game: the cosmological constant has since re-appeared in modern cosmologies as one of several free parameters.

Bleh, it doesn't count unless you have data to explain. He should have noted that it was a constant of integration, set it to zero, noted that that made the universe expand, predicted THAT, and then said it could be resurrected again, in case the rate of expansion was not constant....

[Sxeptomaniac]

The sad thing is that the argument for intelligent design is so intellectually and rationally bankrupt that there is no need to get all mean and nasty about it; it is certainly enough to dispassionately set forth the case against and let people make up their own minds. Everything I've seen is that the only people who will believe this stuff are those who are already predisposed, by religious belief, to accept it uncritically.

The problem is that "rationalists" (as they sometimes call themselves) tend to be unable to suppress the urge to be snarky about their own belief in their superiority over all those "stupid people" who have not seen the light of reason. And since they have both David Gerard and Jimmy Wales on their side (more or less), they have no reason to restrain themselves on Wikipedia.

And that's it. The anti-ID group likes to make dire predictions about the quacks taking over WP if they aren't there to be its saviors, but really it's all about their own egos.

Even the most glowing WP article would be unlikely to convert anyone to believe in ID. They pick that belief up in their homes and churches, not the internet.

[EricBarbour]

And that's it. The anti-ID group likes to make dire predictions about the quacks taking over WP if they aren't there to be its saviors, but really it's all about their own egos.

Even the most glowing WP article would be unlikely to convert anyone to believe in ID. They pick that belief up in their homes and churches, not the internet.

That's exactly where Wikipedia falls down as a "reference". The admins support snarky "science"
POV pushers, who battle pointless and unending wars with equally-snarky Christian POV pushers.

And nobody shows the slightest concern for the average Joes and Janes who are reading ID articles
on WP and trying to make sense of them. If WP's "elite" (what a funny thing to call those mutants)
really wanted to stand up for the scientific view, they'd go out and debate the ID people--in person,
in homes and churches (and other public places). But no, they are (all) cowards and backstabbers.

It's easier, safer and more fun to snipe at the "enemy" on an "encyclopedia-MMORPG-thing".

[Doc glasgow]

The "neutral point of view" is that intelligent design is a system of religious belief that has been expressed in a manner so as to appear to naive individuals to be a set of scientific claims, created as a political gambit to displace the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States.

No, that certainly not the neutral point of view. It may well be that that's THE TRUTH, it may well be that that's the VAST MAJORITY POINT OF VIEW or even (dare I say it) the SCIENTIFIC (whatever that means) POINT OF VIEW. I'm not seeking to refute any of that.

However, your statement is ultimately an assessment, a judgement, a commentary, an editorial.

A neutral article would seek not to assess, but only to report the assessments of others (giving due weight to their prominence). The opening paragraph, which I grant would be incredibly hard to write, needs to be extremely minimalist, and seek to find a description both sides could accept (yes, that's the lowest common denominator).

I'd expect it to be:

"Intelligent design is a hypothesis/argument that scientific data is best explained by postulating a designer.... The term was first coined by xx in 19xx, but it has earlier antecedent in the [[argument from design]] dating back to Thomas Aquinas. Proponents typically describe it as [quote from leading ID proponent], but critics typically dismiss it as [quote from leading anti-ID authority].

*Paragraph expanding on how ID self-describes
*Paragraph expanding on critique
*History of the movement
*Account of support, number and prominence of advocates
*Account of opposition, evidence that there is a "scientific consensus"
*Account of variations in the ID argument (is it monolithic?)
*Account of variations in the criticism (are there people who have said 'NO, but')
*Narration of flashpoints, legal cases and controversies

Not saying it is easy, but the essence of neutrality is attempting to find wording that (sane people on) the other side could grudgingly accept

[lilburne]

The "neutral point of view" is that intelligent design is a system of religious belief that has been expressed in a manner so as to appear to naive individuals to be a set of scientific claims, created as a political gambit to displace the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States.

No, that certainly not the neutral point of view. It may well be that that's THE TRUTH, it may well be that that's the VAST MAJORITY POINT OF VIEW or even (dare I say it) the SCIENTIFIC (whatever that means) POINT OF VIEW. I'm not seeking to refute any of that.

That is the problem. With no editorial decision making the whole thing is open to continued sniping. You will never get rid of it, there will always be someone wanting to battle.



Draw the line, and close it off.

Intelligent Design: Anything but - total CRAP - move along nothing to see here.

There fixed it.

[lilburne]

Back in the mid 80s I was the duty chemist in a chemical factory on the night shift. I had a young guy as an assistant which they used to call "Basher" as he could be found testifying in the shopping mall at the weekend and doing the same in the pubs in the evening. Nice enough kid and we sort of got on OK - until this one night when there was little to do, and he was bored and wanted something to read. Without thinking I gave him the latest issue of the "New Internationalist" to read, it was sponsored by Oxfam, Save The Children, and Christian Aid, amongst others.

Anyway he took one look at it, put it down, walk out of the lab and I never saw him for the rest of the shift, also he didn't speak to me for a month. The reason was that particular issue had articles on dinosaurs and fossils.

[Doc glasgow]

Back in the mid 80s I was the duty chemist in a chemical factory on the night shift. I had a young guy as an assistant which they used to call "Basher" as he could be found testifying in the shopping mall at the weekend and doing the same in the pubs in the evening. Nice enough kid and we sort of got on OK - until this one night when there was little to do, and he was bored and wanted something to read. Without thinking I gave him the latest issue of the "New Internationalist" to read, it was sponsored by Oxfam, Save The Children, and Christian Aid, amongst others.

Anyway he took one look at it, put it down, walk out of the lab and I never saw him for the rest of the shift, also he didn't speak to me for a month. The reason was that particular issue had articles on dinosaurs and fossils.

A long time ago a picked up a book on Creation Science - it sat unread on a bookcase among thousands of others. When studying in a liberal university, a friend was doing an essay on a related topic, and I offered to lend her the book for her interest. When I brought it in for her, I was seen with it in the common room. What happened next astounded me: liberal, broad-minded people, responded with scorn and anger to the very idea anyone would even read the book. It was book-burning anger.

I am NOT (and never have been) a proponent of Creation Science, but it struck me that had I entered that same liberal common room with a copy of Mein Kampf people would have given me the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps even applauded a broad reading scope of even objectionable books.

Intelligent liberals tolerate horoscopes, Scientology, new-age mantras, feng shui, and any other amount of unscientific mumbo-jumbo. Why is it that ID so causes their blood to boil? If they are so confident of the strength of the intellectual argument against it, why are they so bloody defensive? (Even here in the UK, where there is no history of interference with education.)

Kelly is correct, if the anti-ID position is so strong, then gaming the article should be utterly unnecessary.