One note to follow-up on my agreement with the title ‘reclaiming design’; of course, it must first be accepted that ‘design’ has been actively ‘claimed’ to begin with by IDists and the Discovery Institute. Does anyone here disagree that the DI has made such a move to ‘claim’ the term ‘design’, i.e. AWAY from others, as its own? The many writings and events trying to monopolize or restrict ‘design’ by DI fellows confirm this quite clearly. And I’ve spoken with several theologians and scientists, at leading institutions around the world over the years, who simply don’t want any longer to touch or even discuss ‘design’ anymore because of the DI and its radical political-educational movement. Somewhere along the line, the term ‘design’ became stained by IDism.
The first way to ‘reclaim design,’ is to not let activist IDists get away with writing the unqualified term ‘design’ when they really mean ‘Intelligent Design.’ Behe, Meyer, Dembski, Nelson, and many others do this regularly. It’s time for them to stop this and for non-IDist proponents of “Intelligent Design Theory” (IDT) to finally come clean about it.
Repeat because it’s obvious: people who promote ‘intelligent design’ but don’t insist on its ‘scientificity’ are not actually defending the DI’s very specific definitions of IDT.
Thus, when Dembski writes books called “The Design Inference” and “The Design Revolution” with ‘answers to critics’, he could have instead named them properly “The Intelligent Design Inference” and “The Intelligent Design Revolution.” Why not? Because otherwise it raises the question inconvenient for the ‘neutral’ DI PR campaign: whence does this intelligence/Intelligence come from? Instead, this kind of terminological conflation is rampant amongst IDists. And one of the main problems is that the DI has articulated no clear or coherent notion of ‘intelligence.’
The philosopher/sociologist of science, Steve Fuller, who many consider an advocate of IDism, but only superficially so, points this out directly: “Until ID has a proper theory of intelligence on the table, there really isn’t an alternative [scientific theory] for people to get worked up about.” That IDists sometimes write ‘intelligent design,’ sometimes just ‘design’ and sometimes IDT while at other times just ‘design theory’, makes their views very hard to pin down. (And it cannot be attributed just to laziness or shortening of terms.) IDists, for their part, often seem proud in their ambiguity and caginess.
Likewise, there are thousands and thousands of ‘design theorists’ around the world who are well respected in their fields, who are not constantly doubted, reviled and marginalised and who are certainly in no danger whatsoever of being ‘expelled’ for their promotion of ‘design’, ‘designs’ or ‘designing.’ They simply design (active verb) without being seduced by any ideological ‘neo-creationism’ about ‘origins of life’ or ‘biological origins’ implied in their work.
So, why don’t IDists openly acknowledge them or at least make an effort to clarify that they really are not speaking for all ‘design theorists’ and all ‘design theories’? They are really just specifically and narrowly interested in biology with aims to be ‘revolutionary’ in that field. IDists, however, play on these kinds of equivocation, apparently to seek honour, pity and support from mainly evangelical Christians (the target audience as in Dembski 2003), many of whom are or previously were YECs. None of this is really debatable, just social facts inconvenient for those few who have claimed ‘design’ wholly for IDism. IDists thus unnecessarily malign themselves with their aggressive ideological posturing.
The real question then becomes: what to do with these kinds of people who are trying to radicalise primarily evangelical Protestant Christians against science and scholarship? Unfortunately, there doesn’t yet seem to be a clear answer or an exit strategy from the current situation for IDism.
“As a clear consequence of my time in the ID movement (as well as my generally Creationist childhood), my faith hinged on science failing.” – Brad Kramer
Thank you for this autobiography of your “time in the ID movement”, which shows the dilemma many young people are facing (I suspect a generation gap with your biggest critic here, Brad). I don’t understand the motivation of someone from ‘outside’ telling you that’s not a possible thing for you to have thought based on IDist teachings, when you experienced it from ‘inside’. Yes, it is undoubtedly true that many IDists are anti-science (and generally anti-intellectual); they are afraid that science might somehow destroy their Christian faith, that they might become atheists because of evolutionary theory and/or ‘Darwinism’. More and more regularly, they have likely seen this happen when children grow up and attend public universities, only to have their YECist and IDist myths busted by rigorous, careful thinking, even compassionate, not only atheist profs, but also religious professors and new friends who were not sheltered in ‘creationist’ churches.
On the pro-IDism side, sadly and conspicuously, the ‘news’ desk at Uncommon Descent (most popular IDist internet blog) has demonstrated more outrageous contempt for scientists and their ‘science’ and against peer review than just about anyone I’ve ever read in my life. And one of my professional fields as a scholar is the sociology of science, so that only emphasizes the point. Yet somehow stupendously, IDist proponents, even Canadian ones, won’t in any way call Denyse O’Leary out on this behaviour publically. As others have said, one would have to be amazingly and concertedly blind not to be willing to see and identify this kind of fear and bias among IDists: Should We Have Faith in Science? | Evolution News
Jim Stump and Brad Kramer are quite accurate sociologically speaking in their claim that IDists from the DI promote anti-science widely across their evangelical networks. That fact is not in doubt to any sociologist of the IDM (there are only a few of us). Philosophical opposition & wordsmithing doesn’t change this social reality.
Let us therefore clarify a few important things:
The ‘design argument’ is not the ‘same thing’ or even ‘one of the same things’ as IDT, as someone here has suggested. Dembski attempts to make this clear, but fails with his flip-flopping in several papers and books (e.g. he says there is a single ‘design argument’ and also multiple ‘design arguments’ - but wait for the exaggerated criticism of this point). Here’s what Dembski wrote:
“If intelligent design [theory; IDT] cannot be made into a fertile new point of view that inspires exciting new areas of scientific investigation, then (even if true) it will go nowhere. … The validity of THE design argument, on the other hand [i.e. to distinguish from IDT], depends not on the fruitfulness of design-theoretic ideas for science but on the metaphysical and theological mileage one can get out of design.” (2004: 65)
Yes, the DI is attempting ‘mileage’ out of ‘design.’ That is why it needs to be ‘reclaimed’ from the extremes. Jantzen’s book seems to make sense when the “on the other hand” Dembski mentions is allowed to be carefully considered.
> “The dichotomy between design and nature, which I had been busy maintaining, plays directly into the hands of militant atheists.” – Brad Kramer
Yes, I definitely agree. However, speaking to their consciences, I don’t think the DI’s IDist leaders even realise they are intentionally doing it. They still haven’t publically acknowledged the distinction between Uppercase Intelligent Design and lowercase intelligent design, but instead continue to cause untold damage to IDist followers, especially youth. Since even W.L. Craig has acknowledged this distinction, when will other IDists?
“Chance is, in fact, the hand of God.” – David Wilcox
“[I]t is accidental to us, not to God.” – John H. Newman
“Divine providence does not exclude fortune and chance.” – St. Thomas Aquinas
And the same goes with the dichotomy between chance and design. Rev. Michael Heller’s book “The Philosophy of Chance” deals with this in part. He is yet another theologian, this time also a physicist, who effectively denounces IDT. IDists, for their part, conveniently leave him out of their anti-TE/EC ‘promotional’ material, like they do with so many others.
“evolutionary creationism is the only real and radical alternative to the scientific/modernistic worldview” – Brad Kramer
Well, now on a slightly different tone, cautioning against a different non-IDist ideology; in case you hadn’t seen my attempts at clarity in the past, Brad, I have to disagree with you in the sense that accepting ‘evolutionary creation’ does not make one into an ideological ‘creationist’ automatically. Creationists are by definition (English language) ideologists, even ‘evolutionary’ ones. That said, I agree that ‘evolutionary creation’ or ‘creation using evolution’ or however one wants to call it, is the largely mainstream position of the Abrahamic faiths today.
Otoh, a small few Protestant IDists (even those who so badly want to be ‘revolutionaries’ ala Johnson & Dembski), even scholars, seem content to intentionally miss themselves out on the mainstream while shooting for the margins. The ‘militancy’ began with YECism and then later ‘cdesignproponents,’ i.e. IDism; it did not ‘begin’ among TE/EC folks. The record shows this quite clearly. Whereas another way seems possible with the notion of ‘reclaiming design’ suggested in this thread or looking for a third ‘change’ oriented option.
p.s. comparing Lutherans with ‘Meyerites’ was pure comedy, likely intended!