@johnZ
Computer mediated discourse. It’s a thing. People actually publish on it.
Everyone is always throwing around their big sciency words all the time. I know some fancy technical jargon too, dang it! It’s just harder to work into the conversation. 
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=uncommon%20descent&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Discovery%20institute&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Michael%20Behe&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT
This is the SOP. Pretend you wrote something that you didn’t write.
Do you know of some good online tools for stylistic searches?
Do you mean the fundamental aspect of evidence?
Relative to what? All of the scientific books about evolution?
Why should we limit our data gathering to TE books?
[quote]
I think that sales figures give a better indication of reader “interest” than any poll a sociologist could devise.
[/quote]I don’t see your point. Maybe you’re not aware of this, but Google Trends is neither a poll nor devised by a sociologist.
[quote=“Eddie, post:131, topic:746”]
I made a group characterization of the ID position.[/quote]
Eddie, you constantly characterize things that can only come from people as coming from a vague entity you simply call “ID.”
But the policy documents don’t accurately represent the policy of the party, and everyone knows it. For the analogy to be applicable, we’d need someone to repeatedly claim that Republicanism says and does certain things that in reality, people do.
Yes, Eddie, you are perfect. Modest, too!
The Wedge document.
The Wedge Document.
“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
–Bill Dembski
You must be an important part of the DI management to make such a claim with any authority. Are you?
But a private, official one does.
But a major private one isn’t.
Then why did Behe and Minnich testify?
There you go again! ID is not a person. Nor is it the monolithic group that your statements implicitly claim it is.
“Father’s [Moon’s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism.”
–Jonathan Wells
“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
–Bill Dembski
You’re so humble! 
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: you understand biology more than biologists do, you understand the motivations of Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells more than they understand themselves, and you understand the law more than a judge does.
Why hasn’t anyone appealed the Dover decision to a judge with allegedly better epistemological understanding?
[quote]But truth did not matter at Dover.
[/quote]Let’s see…we know that when Behe claimed in writing that something was not addressed in any of the scientific literature in a vast field, that he hadn’t even bothered to read the literature most relevant to his claim.
We know that Behe categorizes ID with astrology.
We know that Behe rejects the fundamental scientific SOP of testing his own hypothesis.
We know that according to Behe, “there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred.”
I’d say those are very important truths for everyone to keep in mind.
Thanks @Christy and @piopio for your support. Let me confirm that I am not Joao and Joao is not me. Though yes, as Christy suggests, we seem to share some perspectives/opinions and I’m of course glad that Joao and I find some common ground.
johnZ suggested a dichotomy that he thought I mentioned. But it was actually his private dichotomy. Then he suggested “a continuum of elementary observation about design towards a more sophisticated evaluation of intelligent design”, which is a rather unclear formulation (e.g. which uses both ‘design’ and lowercase ‘intelligent design’). Is johnZ open to the possibility that IDT might actually be a scientific failure, even simply, evangelical scientific posturing behind the masks of probabilism & specificationalism, but that instead it is a valid topic (e.g. like ‘design argument,’ when not equivocated) in science, philosophy and theology/worldview discourse? Or is johnZ a cdesignproponentsist who has tied his theology very tightly to IDism and insists on IDT’s ‘strict scientificity’ to make ID a valid concept?
Theistic opponents of IDism would go much easier on IDists and their claims if they simply came clean about their equivocation (which is well-documented and understood by many non-IDist-theists) and honoured and respected other varieties of design, as W.L. Craig’s message now enables them to do.
Eddie, please calm down and be open to reasonable conversation. Google Trends is not merely a ‘poll’ devised by a ‘sociologist’. It collects big data from online international news; it is a powerful digital tool. That data show that “Intelligent Design” (and associated terms, HT: Joao) is actually ‘pretty much in decline’ in the public consciousness. Whatever ‘knowledge’ you (think you might) have about IDT or the IDM doesn’t change the data. IDist rhetoric is irrelevant to the data.
This thread, however, is about ‘reclaiming design’, not about Meyer’s book (which is obviously buoyed in its sales by DI funding and advertising channels, e.g. the DI offers Meyer’s book at a discount to ‘members’). BioLogos certainly isn’t in the same PR league as the DI, with its marketing machine based in Seattle. But again, this is simply a distraction to the main point of the OP and better moved to another thread.
have you read the papers i post? i dont think so. they claim that there is no such hierarchy.
Let us please gain some collective focus in order not to lose track of what this thread is meant to be about. Brad and Jim, please help to clarify this meaning, if I’ve misunderstood.
A couple of people are driving the conversation way off course, and in some cases it appears to be intentional. IDists in particular (it seems there are at least a couple now posting at BioLogos) don’t seem to want this conversation to happen. Indeed, they have a vested interest to derail this conversation, so they need to be treated in a way both welcoming (Colossians 4:6), but also wary of their diversions.
I’ve read and re-read the OP several times and it is not about ‘Darwinism’ and only loosely biographical about people who endorse ‘theistic evolution.’ The OP is specifically about ‘reclaiming design’. It is based on Brad’s introduction and Jim’s review of Jantzen’s book: “An Introduction to Design Arguments”.
Has anybody here read the book except Jim Stump? If not, then we’re all in the same boat. Nevertheless, many of us are probably familiar with different examples of ‘design argument’. William Dembski, for example, insists that IDT is NOT synonymous with ‘design argument’, that they are two different terms with different histories. That is something Eddie does not seem to have yet admitted to himself, perhaps because for him, IDT is a kind of ‘design argument’, whereas for Dembski it isn’t; it is ‘strictly scientific’ theory.
That said, I’d like to ask Jim to clarify. He wrote:
“Time and again I found myself agreeing with the criticisms Jantzen offered, and by the end I almost felt sorry for design advocates as the soft underbelly of their arguments was exposed.”
Did he mean specifically uppercase ‘Intelligent Design’ theory advocates, or rather all advocates of ‘design’, including ‘design arguments’?
While some people may try their hardest not to address the questions I’ve raised above or the OP itself (as if “There are much better Christian apologists in Britain…” has anything to do with ‘reclaiming design’! ) I do hope others have seen the accuracy and clarity of the main points. Brad has certainly managed to stay on topic and this thread imo is a very important one for BioLogos maintaining balance as it moves forward.
BioLogos is clearly and unequivocally not against ‘design argument’, but rather it is against IDT with the DI’s insistence on ‘strict scientificity’. Imo, this is both a responsible and now also a well-established position to take. We should remember that BioLogos is not an ‘activist’ Foundation, like the DI’s CSC is; this distinction should also be understood when looking at ‘reclaiming design’, especially when (at least 1, a) hard-core non-DI IDist activist(s) is(are) participating here.
Eddie may want to persist in yet another of his personal onslaughts against ‘theistic evolution’, ‘neo-Darwinism’ and ‘evangelical pathology’ (a term shocking to come from him here!) at BioLogos, but could he please save that for a different thread? This is a polite and humble request to return to the message of the OP. This thread is about ‘reclaiming design’, which I and some others seem to think is important and needed. Can we please focus on that?
As a non-DI IDist, Eddie has not yet faced the following points (phrased as questions above) and most likely won’t because to answer them, in almost any way, would compromise the DI’s strategy and their IDM. It would reveal ‘gaps’ in their platform. And Eddie’s MO seems to be to try to protect the DI and the IDM against all ‘outsiders,’ even fellow theists such as BioLogos (which in his mind is “even worse than the warfare thesis”, who have a “very, very bad epistemology” and an “unsustainable Christian theology”).
These three points should be emphasised:
1) The DI equivocates regularly between varieties of design (e.g. human-made and non-human-made, mousetraps & flagella);
2) The DI has not yet publically acknowledged calls by well-known Christian scholars for a distinction between uppercase ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory (‘strictly scientific’) and lowercase ‘intelligent design’ (natural theology);
3) The DI still insists that IDT is a ‘strictly scientific’ theory, rather than admitting that the concept duo ‘intelligent/Intelligent’ + ‘design/Design’ actually, properly and centrally belongs as a science, philosophy and theology/worldview discourse.
Solutions appear as follows:
1) BioLogos should write to Stephen C. Meyer and/or John G. West as leaders of DI’s CSC and politely ask them to explain why they equivocate between varieties of design.
2) The DI should publically acknowledge the distinction between uppercase ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ and lowercase ‘design argument’ made by, among others, their own Fellow W.L. Craig (quoted above). This move would create goodwill between the DI and BioLogos; it would serve as an ‘olive branch’ of honesty about what the DI is actually doing in its ‘revolutionary’ activism.
3) The DI, having explained 1) and acknowledged 2) would be more open to triadic discourse and less pretentious about its (revolutionary!) ‘strictly scientific’ claims. Iow, the dream of IDism would fall down to Earth, Thaxton, Meyer, Behe, Dembski, Nelson, Richards, et al. would suddenly become more realistic (and perhaps even more productive, not just right-wing populist) ‘scholars’ not having to exaggerate their claims anymore.
All of the other meanings of ‘design’ and the other ‘design theories’ would then be on the table properly for discussion. This would include not just origins, but also processes of designing and also the ‘designers’, since almost every ‘design theory’ other than IDT studies the ‘designers,’ i.e. human beings. To deny these varieties of ‘design’ is for the DI to stick its head in the sand and ignore valid criticism, even from fellow theists. We are not atheists asking for this openness and honesty of cause and mission.
If the DI were to actually clarify why it equivocates (has equivocated) about varieties of design and made an effort to do it no longer, then one wouldn’t see absurdities like this anymore. “Of course it’s ‘Intelligent Design’, duh! How could it be anything else?” 
The DI has said some amazingly ridiculous things over the years (e.g. the Vise Strategy and Dembski’s ‘Waterloo’ pomposity at Baylor), lassoing people of the past into being unwitting and forced flag bearers for their (postmodern) ideology; Thomas Jefferson was called an IDist, Alfred R. Wallace was claimed to be “effectively the founder of the modern intelligent-design movement,” and of course Plato has also been shamefully made guilty of supporting IDism. It is such claims as these, anachronistically betraying the logic of ‘modern’ IDT, which would be curtailed by ‘reclaiming design’ for ‘normal’ people away from IDists and YECists.
Stop the equivocation, IDists! And the stain on ‘design’ made by the DI and IDM would slowly begin to fade away socially & culturally. But that’s a big if… 
My own private dichotomy? I don’t think so. If you don’t think there is a dichotomy (between scientific and non-scientific intelligent design), then you agree with me. If you think there is a dichotomy, then whether you mentioned it or not, you still think there is. My point was not whether ID was a scientific failure; just whether there was a significant difference between non-scientific and scientific intelligent design. I maintain there is no significant difference, except in degree of rigor, but not in essence. Just as I see no significant difference in “gravity” between a non-scientific approach (objects fall down) and a scientific approach which describes the paths of objects in space.
It’s simply the wrong focus. Nobody brought it (scientific vs. non-scientific) up here but you. That is a fact as obvious and as easy as the DI’s equivocations about varieties of design to identify in the record.
You mean to try to compare two pieces of writing to see if they are statistically likely to be written by the same person? No. Not beyond anti-plagiarism type tools that basically check for matching phrases.
If you wanted something that actually compared writing style (things like tendency to use passive voice or preposed adverbial clauses or rhetorical questions) not just checked for similar phrasing or word use, I would think it would have to be pretty sophisticated. The data you input would have to be pre-analyzed by assigning lexical categories or sentence types so you could compare how the words are typically put together, not just which specific words are used repeatedly.
So darwinists can refer to artificial selection to explain natural selection, bur the DI cannot reference human design to explain design in nature.
That’s just hypercriticism.
@joao @Gregory @Christy @johnZ
In other words, the science of Cryptology would be able to determine if Joao and Gregory are the same person, or not. Design can be empirically detected.
@piopo
I think it would allow you to talk about statistical likelihoods, not empirical proof. Hmmm, that sounds familiar…
Ok, let it be. But also, it is interesting to note that you skillfully added some parameters which can eventually help to discern if Joao and Gregory are or are not the same person:
(1) tendency to use passive voice;
(2) pre-posed adverbial causes;
(3) rhetoric questions;
(4) some pretty sophisticated tools;
(5) pre-analysis of lexical categories.
Of course I am willing to consider that statistics may also play a role in the application of these five items but I really don’t know.
I wonder what an expert Crytographer would have to say about this case. Wouldn’t be surprised to get as an answer, “go ask the Linguist…” 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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