A common technique among the critics of ID is to accuse their opponents of lying. Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire! The problem is that more often than not, this is just a personal attack. Say the ID proponent argues X. If the critic thinks X is false, the critic immediately goes for the jugular and shouts "Lies!" Lies, lies, lies. But with the accusation of lying comes a very tall burden. If X is indeed false, then for the ID proponent to be lying, the ID proponent must know and agree that X is false. Otherwise, the problem is not quite as sinister.

For example, the ID proponent may simply be misinformed. She may simply be mistaken. He may be relying on a different point of view. She may be relying on a different point of emphasis. The critic should always remember that his perception of the ID proponent is not an observation of their mind. A critic may say, "But I have shown that X is false, yet the ID proponent continues to propose X. That makes him a liar!" No it does not. The proponent may not agree with the critic's presentation of X. The proponent may not trust the critic's presentation of X. The proponent may not understand the critic's presentation of X. Etc. Unless the proponent agrees and knows that X is false, he cannot be lying when he proposes X is true. And unless the critic can prove the proponent agrees and knows that X is false, it is irresponsible and inflammatory to publicly accuse the proponent of lying.

Of course, the "liar, liar, pants on fire" accusation is a sneaky and effective piece of political rhetoric. But the self-righteous accuser should remember it is also a double-edged sword. If errors and different interpretations of the world count as lies, what makes the accuser think he can escape his own judgmentalism?

We all know those nasty wedge suppporters, who pretend to stand for principles of academic freedom, but who, when they're among friends, admit that they have quite different motives. Well, it seems that the practice is gaining popularity. Witness Wesley Elsberry, an ID critic and Information Project Director of the NCSE:

Judge Jones' decision clearly lays out how both the specific actions of the Dover school district and the general tactics of "intelligent design" advocates have been based upon deception, subterfuge, and lies. We as Christians should reject utterly the sort of lies, mendacity, and innuendo that not just characterize antievolution, but comprise it. It is a blot upon the reputation of the body of Christ, an erroneous and injurious digression from the serious business of making our lives an example to the world.

Sounds like Elsberry is standing on principle, huh? The fact that he has been explicitly spelling this out as a calculated strategy on the ID-critical blog Panda's Thumb must be a pure coincidence.

If you want to drive a wedge between an audience of evangelical Christians and the professionals in the ID movement, you need a third approach: show that the ID advocate on stage with you has been lying to his followers. Show misquote after misquote; demonstrate error after checkable error, and make the audience understand that if the ID advocate claims that the sky is blue, their next step had better be to look out the window to see for themselves. Evangelicals do want to take Christ's message to the world, but they also have a deep loathing of liars.

We've seen how Professor Paul Mirecki attempted to cover his political agenda with a veneer of academic enlightenment. So now I'm wondering: Is Elsberry genuinely concerned for his ability to make his life "an example to the world", or is he simply speculating in evangelicals' "deep loathing of liars"

While Judge Jones' Dover ruling about Intelligent Design may have significantly changed the socio-political landscape, the concept of Intelligent Design remains untouched. For example, if we begin with the basics of Intelligent Design, ID101, does the ruling damage the arguments in any way? No. Has the ruling established that ID is Creationism? No, ID102 still stands (also, consider this analysis ). Has the ruling established that the identity of the Designer must be stated and it must be God? No, the logic remains.

In fact, let me repost something I blogged about this summer "“

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This message is aimed at that minority of individuals who 1) acknowledge that Intelligent Design (ID) is immature as a scientific research program, 2) recognize that the current generation of intelligent design theorists have laid a unique foundation for exploring the biotic world, and 3) want to be participants (and possible failures) in the development of a telic science.

The next 3 years should prove to be pivotal for any prospective intelligent design research program. It really is time (er, has been time) to stop arguing about the scientific status of ID and to let history play itself out by conducting research and doing the hard work.

Just do it, as they say.

Here's some primitive guiding advice for the small minority.

1. Start small and be meticulous
2. Don't aim for "smoking-gun" results
3. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; take chances - speculate and imagine
4. Don't extrapolate wildly from the data and don't look for grandiose results
5. Explore the world with unfettered curiosity
6. Don't force the data into your model.
7. Ignore the buzzbots and cherish the true skeptics.
8. Resist the temptation to spectate.
9. Don't hold your breath for Mike Gene to publish a book;-)

The Questionable Authority has a post about Judge Jones' Dover ruling, correcting some misunderstandings of the reasoning behind the ruling. However, in so doing, TQA himself unwittingly misleads his audience. On the rationale behind the ruling, he writes:

Judge Jones concluded, rightly, that Intelligent Design is not science. The religious motivations of ID proponents were only one of many pieces of evidence leading to that conclusion. The most compelling evidence for this conclusion is actually totally unrelated to the motivations, religious or otherwise, of ID proponents: the ID people, according to the testimony of pro-ID defense witnesses, haven't done science. They have not been able to devise or conduct any experiment that would be a positive test of Intelligent Design. That is why ID is not science.

But TQA is leaving out a very important part of Judge Jones' decision. From the ruling:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science.

We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.

Obviously, it is this last paragraph that TQA is referring to. But what about the "three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science" We can ignore level two and three, as there could be formulations of intelligent design that didn't position itself against evolution and which didn't rely solely on "negative attacks" to make its case. That leaves us with level number one: "ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation." Remember, it isn't enough that ID supporters say that the designer could be natural, as this would still permit the possibility that it isn't.

TQA has missed a golden opportunity to educate his readers about the nature of science. Instead of emphasizing the lack of experiments confirming intelligent design, he should have said: "There are currently no experiments confirming intelligent design. But even if there was, it wouldn't matter, as intelligent design violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation. ID suppporters could fill up every science journal in the world with experimental evidence confirming intelligent design, but we would still have to conclude that it's unscientific, as it allows for the possibility of a supernatural designer." After all, we can't have people walking around being confused about science.

Scientists have developed a better technique to map brain activity:

Using the microstimulation/MRI technique in conscious, alert primates holds great promise for determining the causal relationships between activation patterns across distributed neuronal circuits and specific behaviors.

Sounds interesting. But one has to wonder if Richard Dawkins' support for the Great Apes Project means he would like to see such experiments outlawed. Y'know, that's the project where experts and intellectuals want to confer human rights on other primates. What's that, you say? Oh, Macaques are only Old World monkeys? I see. Er, but wait. Do I see a"discontinuous mind" at work there?

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Richard Robinson has a brief review of abiogenesis research in the November issue of PLoS biology. The article contains a very relevant observation.

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Yak, yak, yak. There's more blogentaries on Judge Jones' Dover ruling that I know what to do with. Jonathan Witt and Ed Brayton have already scraped some lists together, but there's more out there.

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I support the outcome of Judge Jones' ruling: intelligent design should not be taught as science in public schools. But there are aspects of Judge Jones' opinion that I disagree with.

According to Jones, science can't employ intelligent causes as a means of explanation. So wtf are we going to tell the ancestors of the little microbes that Dr. Venter is building in his labratory?

Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it: "We're going from reading to writing the genetic code," he said in an interview.

When President Bush voiced his support for the teaching of intelligent design earlier this year, many people got scared and saw it as part of a larger agenda to destroy science. Well, Judge Jones' ruling on the Dover case has provided a nice, cold splash of reality. The Bush-appointed judge not only struck down the specific policy under review, but declared intelligent design to be inherently religious and unscientific. So much for the vast right-wing conspiracy.