A removal of doubt

So I'm back. Not that it should come as a surprise to all five people who regularly read this blog, since I was out with Karen, Naomi, and Alex to the Renaissance Festival, and I've given Katherine a call, and tried to be online with Jennie as much as I could be, wonky DSL line notwithstanding. It's good to be back, and the culture shock wasn't quite as jarring as it was when I came back from my last summer at Jokers' Hill. I have to admit though, being in North America just isn't quite the same now, now that I've spent a month surrounded by tropical forest. I also learned to be less of an arrogant pompous smart-ass as I was before; I suppose Dan Brooks can take some comfort in the fact that I learned at least that much from him.

Right now I'm back at Jokers' Hill: this time I'm working for the director herself, Prof. Anne Zimmerman, on the Garlic Mustard problem that's been a major concern to her and others working on the reserve, along with my friend Anna. The fact that her boyfriend, and my friend Russell, who's doing a Summer NSERC for James Thomson is also there, is, of course, purely coincidental. :) It's really nice seeing them together, but it does make me think alot about Jennie, and the possibility of me visiting her this summer.

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Just for kicks, I decided to drop in on VCF's website to see what they were up to, and that plus a recent conversation I had with Karen brought me back to a comment left by Mark Nutter on an earlier post I made on the Dover court case in Kansas. Here it is, in its entirety:

I've been following this for a while and feel like playing devil's advocate here. I agree in principle and I've posted quite a bit on the Kansas Kourt on my own blog, but I'm thinking, "What makes people think and act this way?" It's ironic, but it may be the same psychological principle that causes people to perceive intelligent design--we perceive a certain pattern and we feel certain that it represents an intelligent and intentional attempt to achieve a particular goal. The ID'ers see scientists speaking a certain way, and perceive it as a pattern of deliberately trying to sabotage faith in God. The pro-science folks (like me) see the ID-er's speaking a certain way and perceive it as a pattern of deliberately trying to lie and deceive. Maybe the perceived "evil intent" is really there, and maybe it's just a trick of perception.

Perhaps being skeptical of ID means we shouldn't be so quick to assume evil motives on the part of ID'ers, or else we risk falling into the same psychological pitfalls as they do. Granted, there are real issues at stake, and we need to take substantive and decisive action to oppose them. But on the level of human understanding, and character assessments and such, maybe we should cut them some slack--maybe they're just messed up and confused. God knows I've been there...

Karen mentioned that, and generally agreed with Mark on his points. And indeed, Mark does make a very valid, if not charitable, assessment of much of the ID movement. Thankfully I feel a lot more calm about it now so I hopefully won't sound like the thundering loud mouth than I usually am.

My general outlook on the ID people pretty much echoes what I told Karen myself: in looking at what people from the Discovery Institute, and their supporters have done and said (mainly in print), it's clear to me that these people aren't stupid. It's easy to think that they are, because of their position (at least, you'd think so if you weren't an evangelical or fundamentalist Christian), but I would argue that they aren't.

Evolutionary biology has one simple thing going for it: the weight of the scientific evidence that supports it. You may have heard endless rhetoric about the "evidence against evolution" or "evidence for creation/design" but that really amounts to little more than reinterpretation and distortion of data via an a priori framework that by default already favours a supernatural explanation. By its very nature, evolutionary biology relies upon explanations rooted in a materialistic and naturalistic perspective. That's what science is: science is not religious; it never has been and it never will be. For all of the whining and moaning and hand-wringing by Creationists, an appeal to supernatural causes is not scientifically justifiable, and there is simply no satisfactory philosophical or scientific arguement that it should be.

That being said, it becomes self-evident that Creationism is simply just an extension of a narrow view of Christianity, and that's where the issue of moral position comes into play. The ID proponents have consistently painted themselves as being supporters of a secular theory that purports to be as scientific (if not more so) than evolutionary biology. But how can that be if they have at their core a supernatural entity who is Himself beyond the investigation of conventional science?

This is the first reason why I believe in the inherent dishonesty and immorality of the supporters of Intelligent Design: they have lied, and continue to lie in press to the general public. They lie in their portrayal of Intelligent Design and its goals. For all of their talk of "fairness", it is really a smokescreen for a wider agenda. One needs only to read The Wedge Document to see what I mean. The second reason comes from my earlier paragraph on "evidence". They lie in their portrayal of scientific research in evolutionary biology; it's enough that they turn the long, hard work of many people in ecology and evolution into a distorted caricature of itself to suit their goals; it's even more incredibly infuriating and incredibly insulting to be accused of being "dishonest".

Which leads me to my third point. In spite of the countless corrections and debunkings of their arguements and their evidence, they still continue to use the same tired arguements in their crusade. They still look to the bacterial flagellum as their example of an intelligently designed "irreducibly complex" system, they still point to things like "CSI", "IC", and "NFL" as examples of their work, and they still use incredibly outdated arguements stretching back to Richard Paley -- arguements that have been long debunked -- as their shining examples of how ID works and evolution fails.

In short, despite the repeated, continual debunking of their arguements, despite the constant stream of work being done which demonstrates the presence and operation of evolutionary forces, they still continue to deny everything they see and hold fast to their beliefs, constantly trumpeting and parroting them to a public all too eager to listen.

Which brings me to my ultimate point. The people behind all of this are not stupid, and they have succeeded where science has failed: by communicating to the public. This is the ultimate example of how making the packaging of your product all shiny and sleek and sexy will always triumph over making a good quality product. It is the ultimate demonstration of vacuous marketing over scientific progress.

This is why I think that at at the very least, the leaders of the ID movement are inherently evil. They know what they are doing, and yet continue to do it; the fact that intellectual ID leader William Dembski charged the taxpayers of Kansas $200/hr. for his testimony while pro-evolution witness Pedro Irigonegaray went to the Dover trial FOR FREE speaks volumes to me about the motivation and mindset underlying the Intelligent Design and Creationist movement.

I'm sorry, but I can't buy into the arguement that this is all due to innocent ignorance on the part of the ID proponents. Perhaps that is true for many people who only casually agree with ID, but for the leaders themselves, it is inconceivable that they could simply be innocently ignorant of what they are doing, and it is inconceivable that they think that they are doing this all in the name of "Christianity". Even the most hard-core zealot will agree with me that lying is a sin. The only way they could be doing this is if they are the "ends-justifies-the-means" type of Christians who think that all churches should be like Landover Baptist Church. Maybe they are, but the rhetoric of even the most extreme of the ID proponents doesn't strike me as being that far gone. My point here is that religion, cannot be purely behind all of this.

So if the ultimate driving force behind this is not scientific honesty, and if it is not religious fundamentalism, then what else is there, really?