Casey Luskin, over at the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, has taken the time to redefine creationism for us:
Despite Holden’s editorializing, ID is not creationism because creationism always postulates a supernatural creator, and/or is focused on proving some religious scripture. But intelligent design does neither.
I’d like to thank Mr. Luskin for taking the time to clarify that point. I’ll try to remember to keep in mind the non-religious nature of the Discovery Institute in the future.
Oh, and by the way, Casey, whatever happened to that old logo you folks had? It was a lot cooler looking than the new one. I’ve got a copy, in case you lost it:
Bwa ha ha ha ha!
Poetic.
So much for that bearing false witness stuff. Must only be nine left …(I forgot, it’s not about “religion.”) Nice catch on the logo.
What’s amazing is that Luskin actually quotes from Of Pandas and People in making his argument. Yes, the same Of Pandas and People that was systematically purged of the word “creation” to get around the Edwards v. Aguillard decision of 1987.
He might as well quote the Wedge Document.
Here’s another quote from Of Pandas and People. Casey, for some reason, didn’t mention this one:
Casey also wrote in the same cited artcle:
“So Science, often via Constance Holden, has a history of a sarcastic, mocking, anti-scientific attitude when it talks about ID.”
…perhaps Casey should have more accurately said:
“So Science, often via Constance Holden, has a history of a sarcastic, mocking, anti-BS attitude when it talks about ID.”
Constance…anti-science???? Danger, danger.…irony meter overload!!!
So his point would be that ID is dishonest creationism? If we take him at his word, the only appropriate rejoinder is that Creationism is closer to being science than ID is, for precisely the reason that it does deal with mechanism and the identity of the putative ‘causal agent’.
hugs, Shirley Knott
With Creationism, we know exactly what sort of Creator they’re postulating. With ID, we know exactly what sort of Creator they aren’t posulating: any. Yep, ID doesn’t posit any sort of Creator, just that there is any sort of Creator. Apparently it’s intelligent, which we can infer about it by looking at the designed stuff. But we can’t infer anything about it by looking at the designed stuff, mind you.
Is Luskin surprised that anyone might have a mocking or sarcastic attitude toward Intelligent Design Creationism? Is he not only truth-challenged, but an idiot as well? ID is so mockable because so many of its proponents are dishonest (in some cases, on occasion, downright bald-faced liars) and stubbornly refuse to examine the evidence. Surely they are aware of how ridiculous their claim of scientific basis looks in light of their actual practice of avoiding scientific research and publishing in favor of public relations activities and preaching to the naive and gullible. As it is, they receive far more respect than they have earned.
Gee, if ID doesn’t assert a “supernatural” creator, then, uh, why do IDiots like Donald spend so much time yammering to us about how science is a “materialistic” and “naturalistic” “worldview”, and how horridly unfair it is that science doesn’t allow us consider any “supernatural” or “non-materialistic” hypotheses?
Donald, perhaps you could answer that question for us on your next drive-by …
IDers are liars. Every single one of them. (shrug)
Gee, that’s not what the creationists themselves said:
Perhaps Luskin is referring to the fact that the courts ruled that YEC’s *DID* have a religious agenda – which they lied about by pretending it was really just “science”.
Just like Judge Jones concluded about, uh, ID.
Just to show that he is absolutely tone-deaf to irony, Casey quotes Michael Ruse as saying:
Well, yes! And, I might add, that goes for astrology as well.
Right, so it doesn’t deal with a supernatural creator. Just one that has existed for all eternity, is omnipotent, is not bound by natural rules, and is completely seperate from and acts in a manner completely different from anything in nature. What definition of “supernatural” is she using?
The Center for Removal of Science from Culture prefers to define creationism narrowly. By any broad definition intelligent design is clearly a subset of creationism. Thus we have classification wars. While DI propagandists constantly promote the narrow definition, we must constantly remind people of the broader definitions.
Casey lied:
The Wedge Document, internal Discovery Institute document marked “top secret”:
Nobody believes you, Casey. You just make yourself look bad.
By the way, if you’ve never seen Casey, here he is.
And ID always postulates one or more supernatural creator(s). They even insist on placing their kind of intelligent design outside the realm of natural causes.
Little Lying Luskin
Journals such as Science and Nature would as soon publish an article using or favourable to Intelligent Design as they would an article favourable to phrenology or mesmerism …
Trust us, Casey.
You don’t really want to see an “intelligent design” article published in Nature.
Learn some recent history. Look up “Benveniste” and “infinite dilution.”
By the way, Casey, how’s the fund-raising at DI going? Your checks still cashing?
Again, it always bears repeating that science has absolutely nothing against the supernatural, per se.
Science is perfectly happy to accept the concept of an afterlife, psychic pets, or giant apes in the Seattle suburbs.
All it asks is that anyone claiming such a thing put some evidence on the table that it actually exists.
The scientific term for supernatural events that are actually verifiable is “cool new sh** we get to go figure out!”
The power of the lightning gods ? Communication at a distance? Little bits of life? Bring it on! Today we call those things “electricity” “radio” and “viruses”.
Ya think you’re the next Edgar Casey?
Well, science may not want to believe you can see the future, may not be able to explain how you possibly could see the future, but if you could reliably produce tomorrow’s Dow-Jones number today, then science would certainly accept that such an ability really exists, which is what you seem to want. (Then, of course, they’d go on to figure out how it works and someone would win a Nobel prize for time travel)
Likewise, science has it’s pet theory, called evolution, about the diversity of life, but if you could produce some real, unambiguous, evidence of ID/Creation, something that didn’t rely exclusively on a personal interpretations of a 3000 year old book, “science” would certainly sit up and take notice.
Hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa. Thats a great way to end the evening. Its so funny. They even go on to say “intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot.…”
Which basically suggests to me that they have embraced postmodernism, or else their god keeps changing…
Now now, ID (The Logos of John) doesn’t rely ENTIRELY on The Good Book. It also relies on completely subjective ideas about complexity, design inferences, and unfounded assertions that certain things simply cannot evolve. The fact that ID is an attempt to posit theistic Christian explanations doesn’t mean it’s ALL based on the Bible. After all, the Bible has some fairly explicity rules about false witnessing, so obviously the ID movement can’t claim to be inline with that. Seeing as how science has repeatedly rejected the “A WizardGOD did it” idea as a viable research program, and since the supposedly secular-by-law US Caesar demands religious freedom for its citizenry and therefore no attempts to sneak theism into schools, you’d think that by now certain folks would simply shake the dust from their feet as they walked out the door. I guess some folks just can’t let go.
I wonder if there’s a reason for that.
“Two-thousand years ago a man died on a cross for us. Isn’t anybody going to stand up and not postulate exactly who that man was?”
Can it be that this is really Casey’s personal website?? The design is so terrible I think it gave me glaucoma
If you’re that sensitive you should be careful never to click the link at the bottom of each of Glen Davidson’s posts, it may be fatal.
I like the fact that caseyluskin.com has a section for “Facts.” Which is completely empty. One big clue that it is the “real” Casey Luskin.
From Casey Luskin’s IDEA club website, with the boldfacing added by me.
Steve Number S, I think that deserves to be posted in giant letters somewhere highly public and visible. Be sure to get an archived copy of the page before it goes down.
They’re not going to take it down. They’ve been down this road before.
“Just because we occasionally refer to ourselves as creationists, and just because we global-searched-and-replaced “Creationism” with “Intelligent Design”, and just because we’ve said Intelligent Design “Really means the reality of God”, and just because we said christians are our ‘natural allies’, and just because we said our goal is to promote “traditional doctrines of creation”, and just because I personally happen to be a creationist, and just because we called Intelligent Design “the Logos theology of John’s Gospel”, and just because the Intelligent Design club used to be named the Creation Science club, and just because we require the club officers to be christians, and just because we said the Intelligent Designer created the universe, is transcendent, and a subject for theology, and just because our theorists all happen to work at bible colleges, and just because we used to represent the Intelligent Designer as the christian god in our logo, that does Not Mean Intelligent Design is creationism at all, it’s entirely different, purely scientific, no relationship to christianity. I don’t even know how you got that idea.”
There’s been a debate for a few years about whether Casey is lying, or crazy and stupid enough to believe what he’s saying. Nobody else does, though, and continuing just makes him look bad.
Right, so it doesn’t deal with a supernatural creator.
I think some of their theorists kind of look at it as analogous to a giant game of scrabble. Yes, undirected natural causes can put the scrabble pieces on the board, but if you want meaningful words or sentences you need a directed natural cause, or an undirected unnatural cause, or some directed natural event that was uncaused.
Here, let the Discovery Institue explain their “governing goals” in their own words.
*ahem*
Any questions?
Huh?
WTF are you yammering about?
Then read the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Documewnt, and you find that ID *IS* Creation:
*ahem*
Any questions?
They say that the earth is anywhere from 5,000 years old to 4.5 billion years old, but that it’s an unimportant detail that shouldn’t be discussed.
Now now, Arden, Frank and Henry, let the boy speak for himself. He’ll never get social skills if everyone’s doing his talking for him.
Of course, he’ll never get social skills if he insists on running away from questions either…
Re “It’s whether there’s an intelligence and purpose behind our existence — or our existence is random and accidental.”
A few thoughts on that - evolutionary biology certainly implies that the details are in some ways random (details = exact arrangement of parts and organs, specific chemicals used in metabolism, arrangement of genes in the DNA, etc.).
It doesn’t however imply that our very existence is accidental (I’m assuming that’s accidental as opposed to deliberate). After all, if we can use processes that make use of random events, than any universe engineer(s) could presumably also do so.
Henry
Isn’t creationism implicit in ID? If one claims that an organism did not evolve from a previous one, then where did it come from? If not from a previous organism, then it must have been created. Or am I missing something?
Joe hasn’t completed his normal posting cycle yet:
1) Post self-contradictory, addle-pated nonsense
2) Hurl epithets, sarcasm and invective when refuted
3) Disappear
Maybe he skipped #2 this time.
Chiefley,
Re “Isn’t creationism implicit in ID? If one claims that an organism did not evolve from a previous one, then where did it come from? If not from a previous organism, then it must have been created. Or am I missing something?”
You’re using logic. You’re supposed to use how you feel about the conclusion. ;)
Henry
Sure, Joe, let’s look at what Behe has said. Here’s a nice summary from the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:
Behe’s own testimony
Re Behe’s “ I myself do not find it plausible.”
Trying to resist the obvious comeback to that straightline… Resist… Resist…
Update