galiel

Today's program featured Stephen Meyer from the Discovery Institute, defending ID, vs. biologist and theist Kenneth Miller, who unsuccessfully battled Meyer at the Ohio Education Board, and physicist and science populizer Lawrence Kraus.
As usual, they did a poor job debating Meyer. I tried for the entire hour to call in, but the lines were jammed, even though they only had two callers on the show. I would not be surprised if the lines were jammed by an organized Fundie call-in campaign, since this has been a tactic they have used before.

Anyway, I email Ira Flatow, host of the show, but it was too late to get my questions in. In case nyone is interested, here are the three questions I would have asked Meyer, as I laid them out in my letter. (At the end of the email, I pointed out that scientists may not be the best people to debate folks like Meyer, who are essentially PR people promoting a political agenda. Just like physicists do a poor job testing Uri Geller--magicians like Randi are the ones who can successfully debunk them--thus ernest, trusting and politically naive scientists may not be the best people to confront ID'ers. I recommended that Ira do a Web search and check out the many laypeople and political pros who have followed the ID movement and its connections to Fundie theocrats other efforts, in terms of the common funders and co-sponsorship of programs of the Discovery Institute and others like the National Reform Association's "Operation Potomac" lobby and PAC. I was careful NOT to promote myself or to suggest participation in any programs, just to fend off the trolls here who will assume that immediately. In fact, I made a point to point him elsewhere)

Anyway, here are the three questions I sent to Science Friday:

1. Ask Stephen Meyer about the Wedge Strategy.

According to the official strategy document leaked from the Center for the Renewal of Culture & Science of the DIscovery Institute, of which he is a fellow, the stated purpose of the Wedge Strategy is to "defeat materialism" by using "wedges" such as, explicitly cited, Intelligent Design.

Here is the relevant section, the first paragraph of the "Five Year Plan" proposed in 1998:

"...we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

Quotes from the Introduction to the document:

"The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built."

"Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science."

"Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."

"The Center is directed by Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer. "

Copies of this document appear all over the place, you can just do a Goggle search on "Wedge Strategy". Here is one source: <a href="http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html" target="_blank">http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html</a>
------

2. Ask about the mission of the Discovery Institute.

From the Institute's Web site, "About Discovery"

The very first area of focus is listed as the following:
"The point of view Discovery brings to its work includes a belief in God- given reason and the permanency of human nature; "

<a href="http://www.discovery.org/functions.html" target="_blank">http://www.discovery.org/functions.html</a>
----

3. Ask Stephen Meyer about the specific lie he was caught asserting, and which he and his organization continue to assert, that the Santorum Amendment is part of the 2002 Education Bill. Prof. Kenneth Miller himself, another guest on your show, confronted Meyer with this in during the March 11, 2002 hearing in Ohio, and his account detailing the lie and document ion refuting it appears in his article, among other online sites, here: <a href="http://www.skepticweb.com/article.php?sid=29" target="_blank">http://www.skepticweb.com/article.php?sid=29</a>

Albion

Why aren't Miller and Krauss hammering him about this Wedge project? I mean, it seems an obvious question.

The Lone Ranger

Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of truth to this, for various reasons. First of all, most people aren't interested in a sober debate. The IDers and YECs know this, and they'll do anything they can to avoid a legitimate debate. Some poor scientist is out there trying to talk about logical inferences and data, while the Creationist issues blatant appeals to emotion, replies to any substantive point with ad hominems and/or jokes, and refuses to honestly address the data. The folksy tactics of the Creationists tend to go over much better with the general public than the careful, sober style of the scientists. Thus, a Creationist is all but guaranteed to "win" a public debate with a professional scientist.

One reason the Creationists almost always "win" such debates (aside from the fact that the audience is almost always on the Creationists' side to begin with) is that scientists are used to dealing with data and logical arguments. As someone once said, "Nature may be subtle, but she doesn't lie." Scientists are often quite unprepared to deal with the staggeringly illogical "arguments" that Creationists put forth, and their outright lies. Any good Creationist "debater" can come up with more lies in an hour than an "Evolutionist" can debunk in a lifetime.

The one time I was suckered into a public debate with a Creationist (I use the term "suckered" quite deliberately -- they lied to me to get me there), I was simply flabbergasted by the total lack of logic in his "arguments" and the outright lies he used to support his case. Of course, the audience just ate it up. I presented a careful, meticulous, and very respectful case. His response was to make some jokes about the dangers of being "too smart for your own good," and to simply lie through his teeth -- the standard YEC lies; there are no "transitionals," evolution has never been observed, geological deposits show that there was a worldwide flood only a few thousand years ago, etc.

I was utterly disgusted, but the audience clearly thought that he had thoroughly discredited "evilution," and gave him a resounding round of applause.

-- Michael

Albion

But Ken Miller is fairly experienced at debating creationists, and ID is still just creationism. In fact, it ought to be easier for him because IDists aren't going to be able to fall back on a lot of the well-known YEC rubbish. And I'm sure Miller knows as well as the rest of us that ID is basically a political strategy. If he's arguing science with these people, he's missing the point. Which is strange, because I assume he knows what the point is as well as we do.

Clutch

galiel's right. However smart they may be, most scientists are trained to function in a practice (or set of practices) that simply assumes that everyone is honestly seeking truth. Fraud in science is establishable by the irreproducibility of results. Since ID offers no results, it comes to down to spin and rhetoric. And on these counts, there is no reason to expect even an outstanding scientist to have a gift for defusing obfuscation and outright lies.

Randi tells a lovely story about a girl being tested for the ability to read while blindfolded; of all the intriguing and ingenious explanations offered by the testing scientists, none took seriously the prospect that the girl was actually making quite extraordinary efforts to cheat.

lpetrich

Has anyone ever had success in making a creationist look stupid in a debate?

galiel

I should have explained that Meyer was explicitly DENYING that ID had anything to do with promoting belief in God, that he was not interested in discrediting "Darwinism" (he carefully avoided using that term, which creationists use to make it sound like an ideology), and that he was part of an ongoing debate [i]within the scientific community]/i] about evolutionary theory having reached a "dead-end" in its explanatory power. Of course, he tangled his opponents up by making it seem like they were trying to stifle debate and prevent our young people from "making up their own minds" by being exposed to "all the facts"; and he, as well as an Ohio school board member who spoke on the issue, kept bringing up public opinion polls showing that a vast majority of people want "all theories" to be taught in school.

These are all points best debunked by people who have studied the political movement behind all this, the public relations tactics they use, and the dissonance between the rhetoric they spew in public, and the rhetoric they feed the salivating Fundie hordes at their closed events. Scientists who are used to collegially debating specific nuances within a generally accepted framework with other scientists passionately devoted to following the evidence are not well equiped to challenge these folks. They also do not have the time or the interest to do the kind of bahind the scenes research about the true agendas, bedfellows and funding sources of the theocrats, for which ID is but one phalanx of attack.

PandaJoe

Every creationist has managed to do that.

Albion

This is strange, though, because both Ken Miller and Niles Eldredge have written books where they make very clear what the creationist agenda really is, and it isn't scientific. Sounds as if they need to have people like Howard Van Till and other theistic evolutionists as well as scientists and philosophers out there having a go at Meyer and his pals.

After all, if Meyer is saying that ID isn't stealth religion and that he doesn't have a problem with Darwinian evolution (as far as it goes), then it's legitimate to ask him what he actually is supporting. Anyway, how can he have a debate within science about anything? The guy isn't a scientist.

Philosoft

Heh. They should try coming up with a theory, then.

Has anyone every tried that tactic - imploring the creationist/IDer to present his theory?

Scientist: Good sir, would you be so kind as to present your theory of the process behind intelligent design?

Creationist: Certainly. Evolution does not explain x, y and z...

S: I'm sorry, I guess you didn't hear me. I asked if you would present your theory...