I like that sentiment even more because of the way it changes the rules of discourse. Of course, if we are talking high school, then the consensus of the masses carries much weight. You would definately not want your lil’ freshman to be exposed to any ideas outside what the Bulk of The Peers (even the really smart ones, or the ones wearing the spiffiest lab coats) holds to be valuable and true. Such openness would undermine the very moral fabric of the institution.

But regarding discourse, it tongue-in-cheek makes the minority position wrong (and “insignificant”) entirely because it is the minority position. A nice bit of circular reasoning, that.

As for Steves being funny, you’ve also got Hey! Steve! of the Hey Steve fame.

There are many reasons why the list is unpersuasive in that regard, but the point of Project Steve was to show that collecting dozens signatures from people with PhDs doesn’t change the fundamental fact that ID has effectively zero support among scientists. If that’s irrelevant, then fine — the DI should just say so and quit trotting out their silly list every single press release. Until they do, there will be Project Steve to provide people with some much needed perspective.

RBH

Thanks much for the comment. Don’t let it be your last.

The part where I said, “Remember that the List was intended as a parody of the practice of my own cobelligerents,” was the part where I acknowledged that ID people do this. Now, the Discovery Institute’s ads may or may not be defensible, and I will not be drawn into a defense of them here. Perhaps, based on what they intend to communicate through those ads, they are a worthless contribution to the discussion and should be abandoned. If this were the case, I would be happy to see them dropped. I would be less happy about trading tu quoque defenses of one another’s tribal genealogies–and not just because yours is bigger.

Again, I do not accuse Steve’s List itself of any fallacy. It is clearly a bit of appreciated humor intended to make a point, with explicit qualifications given that we do not make scientific inferences based on nose counts. However, Dr. Inlay’s comments in Linda’s column seem to take the idea in a different direction, one which I attempted to discuss in my post. Inlay and Seebach certainly seem to think the preponderance of scientific opinion should affect the conclusions we draw.

And remember, I do allow for the practical reality that we all make private arguments from authority. There’s just too much subject matter in the world to think we can make informed evaluations of every claim on its own merits, especially where non-experts are concerned. Hence it might be handy for the layman to know what the experts think; it’s just that the experts in this case (biologists) are not necessarily experts in the issues that are really being decided here. This, at least, was the idea I was attempting to float.

By the way, I appreciate your scare quotes around “Darwinism.” Do you guys have a word that you prefer for purposes of this discussion? “Evolutionist” sounds awfully political to me, and “Darwinism” sounds simplistic, if not inaccurate. I’d use an alternative if I knew of a good one. (As an aside that is probably completely uninteresting to you, this same problem attends a particular theological debate between evangelicals regarding the ordination of women to ecclesiastical office. Labels are required to support concise conversation, but no non-lame labels exist. Life is hard.)

RBH:

Good point! I would probably surrender my whole argument if it had just one. (Although I confess I am not old enough to get the joke.)

Thanks for posting.

I knew it! The conspiracy of the Darwinist academy is exposed yet again!

:)

“complementarian” and “egalitarian” aren’t good enough for ya?

Granted, the first is a bit clunky, but it’s at least a self-designation, and the second seems to fit the bill of accurate and non-pejorative.

I hate the term “complimentarian.” It’s totally clunky. “Egalitarian” is actually just fine, but that helps me very little.

“However, Dr. Inlay’s comments in Linda’s column seem to take the idea in a different direction, one which I attempted to discuss in my post. Inlay and Seebach certainly seem to think the preponderance of scientific opinion should affect the conclusions we draw.”

I see what you’re getting at. I’m fairly certain that Matt’s take on the matter is a bit more nuanced than a short quote in a brief editorial can accurately convey. If you asked him, I don’t doubt that he would say that mere authority shouldn’t drive our conclusions (other than in a practical manner, as you mention).

My own view is that school boards at least should follow the consensus of the experts, and should do so for every subject, because it’s extremely unlikely that they have either the time or the background knowledge to fairly judge culturally contentious issues. And I think that’s probably what Matt was getting at in the section where he’s quoted above. I can’t speak for him though.

“…it’s just that the experts in this case (biologists) are not necessarily experts in the issues that are really being decided here. This, at least, was the idea I was attempting to float.”

Well, ID hasn’t exactly taken the philosophical world by storm either, so I don’t know that it matters much which experts we’re talking about. And while I understand that there are issues of epistemology that get raised, I think much of it is contrived and not really all that contentious. I mean, try critiquing meteorology or medicine by complaining about “naturalistic presuppositions”, and see how long it takes you to get laughed off the stage. I for one have never heard a good reason why accusations of naturalism should be limited to evolutionary biology, and not applied to every other branch of science.

“By the way, I appreciate your scare quotes around “Darwinism.” Do you guys have a word that you prefer for purposes of this discussion? “Evolutionist” sounds awfully political to me, and “Darwinism” sounds simplistic, if not inaccurate. I’d use an alternative if I knew of a good one.”

Well, that makes you a lot more considerate than most ID advocates.

The best term is “modern evolutionary biology”, but that’s awfully hard to say in one breath. I honestly don’t know a good short term. “Evolutionist” is ironically one that gets used a lot by proponents of evolutionary biology, such as Johnathan Weiner in The Beak of the Finch, which I just finished reading. But everytime I saw the word, it still made me cringe. Things are further complicated by the fact that people who are proponents of evolutionary theory, which are most educated people, are not necessarily the ones who study it. When Weiner used the term “evolutionist”, he was referring to evolutionary biologists. But when creationists use the term, they refer to anyone who accepts evolution. Even still, it’s better than “Darwinist”, which is loaded and partly inaccurate as you note.

It would be nice if Matt would jump in. I suspect what you say is correct, but further speculation will probably not be fruitful. I will say that to make me walk away from this with a smile on my face, a partial retraction of his quoted words would be helpful, but I’m not holding my breath.

I have to admit that I don’t know the state of the art among philosophers in the ID debate, so I’ll defer to your statement that ID doesn’t hold much favor among them. I would that this were not so, but in my defense, the man in the street probably wouldn’t want to do the Private Argument From Authority thing with a philosopher anyway. Maybe this is a bad thing–they’re trained thinkers after all, and learned in the history of theoretical thought–but when it comes down to questions of Ultimate Reality and Knowing Things, Americans normally seem content to be their own experts. These are very important questions that touch on the things that have the power to keep us up at night. No, reason can’t take a back seat in the discussion, and no, individuals don’t get to invent their own true answers to the questions, but few (say) nominal theists are willing to drop their commitment to theism at the urging of an expert. The case for naturalism may be similar, and I would expect laypeople to decide differently on the educational merits of ID and evolution if the issues were framed philosophically, rather than as purely scientific issues cloaked in layers of technical subject matter. I think ID’s seat at the public table is more secure when the problem is viewed in terms of core philosophical commitments rather than the preponderance of current scientific opinion.

Regarding me being more considerate than most ID advocates, you give me an idea for a new tag line: “TimBerglund.com: Because you shouldn’t have to be any more irritated than absolutely necessary.” (This would replace “TimBerglund.com: Because it feels so good when you stop.”)

I think we’d agree that there is no one handy label that avoids unnecessary politics or simplifications, so we’ll probably just have to live with the words we have while self-consciously downplaying any unnecessary negatives associated with them. Please know that if I ever say “Darwinist,” I’m not trying to pin all the writings of Chuck D.* on anyone living today. That said, modern evolutionary biology certainly preserves the legacy of Charles Darwin in some meaningful sense, and it is this idea that I would want to convey by using the label, not some kind of fixation on the man himself. I may try to stick to “evolutionist” instead, if we can agree that I don’t mean “evolution booster” or “evolution partisan” unless I specifically say so. Which I may do, as that is a meaningful part of the discussion–but only sometimes, and only intentionally. I don’t mean to imply it by default.

(As an aside, I would appreciate it greatly if you guys would quit saying “Intelligent Design Creationism.” I don’t know if you do it personally, but it seems like I read it at Panda’s Thumb often enough. Maybe it’s technically accurate–although I don’t know that it always is–but it certainly evokes memories of the 1980s political battles over “Creation Science” and its attendant young-earth commitments. The term is almost certainly intended to be pejorative, and if leading ID theorists don’t ascribe the term to themselves, you probably shouldn’t use it as a matter of course.)

Some of this clearly needs to be broken off into its own post. Don’t feel the need to keep after everything in the comments section if you need to be moving on to other things, especially if I continue to lack the time to be concise.

*Didn’t know he was a rapper too, did you?