Many blogs have reacted to my post, "Activism and the problem with blog polls". In this post, I described how I had emailed a poll to ID critics, asking them about intelligent design. The poll consisted of the question, "On which points are intelligent design and creationism identical?", followed by various options, of which the last was: "G. None of the above options accurately describe the relationship between creationism and intelligent design."

But this attempt was quickly dashed, as a few critics used their blogs to tell others what to reply. Within 27 minutes of having received his email, Wesley Elsberry of The Austringer had posted the contents of my letter, advising others to reply by choosing “G”. Later, he said, "Hopefully, the issues are now clear to other webmasters and bloggers." John Lynch of Stranger Fruit was hot on the heels of Elsberry, assuring his readers that "The answer is, of course, 'G' and 'G' alone." Tara Smith of Aetiology linked to Eslberry's and Lynch's post, advising people to "check out their comments before sending your answer back." And Paul Myers of the widely read Pharyngula quickly linked to all of these posts, making sure to get the news out to anyone who might have received a poll.

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Wesley Elsberry, anti-evolutionist-labeler extraordinaire, has mastered the art of labeling. But as he notes elsewhere, labels don't amount to anything if they don't have the content to match. (Well, they do amount to something: rhetorical magic in the tribal game - but Wesley doesn't play that game, does he;-).

So lately, I've been wondering what it means to be an anti-evolutionist since apparently, Mike, Krauze, me and the other members of telic-thoughts have been labeled such. Unfortunately, understanding the content of this label proves to be more difficult than you might imagine. After all, an anti-evolutionist can believe the following propositions and still be an anti-evolutionist:

1. All living organisms are related by common descent
2. All complex organisms have evolved from simpler organisms
3. Natural selection, random mutation and various other evolutionary mechanisms have played essential roles in the evolution of organisms

I think I am correct in saying that at least Mike, Krauze and I agree with those three propositions or at least think that they are more plausible than not (correct me if I'm wrong, guys).

Now the reader of our blog should ask herself how people who believe propositions 1-3 could be coherently labled "anti-evolutionists." Well, the whole issue turns on the fact that we throw another proposition into the mix (this is the one that makes us anti-evolutionists):

4. It is reasonable to investigate the existince and implications of intelligent causation in biotic history, probably at the origin of life but also manifested in various evolutionary processes and biological facts (see Conway Morris here)

So there you are. We're antievolutionists not because we deny the reality of evolution, but because we posit the presence of intelligent causation as relevant to biotic history. But in that case, the label misses the mark: its words imply that we somehow deny or stand in opposition to evolution. Since that's false about us, the label is either empty or, at best, misleading.

*Actually, my bet is that we get the anti-evolution label because of paranoia resulting from our bad associations and our refusal to fight the good fight for the pro-science tribe. But, if you're like Wesley Elsberry, and you're concerned with the content of labels rather than the labels themselves, then you should focus on the four propositions above and consider whether the anti-evolution label has any content.

The animal rights extremists have now threatened Richard Dawkins' students and colleagues:

The statement, circulated to activists this month, said: “The ALF is calling out to the movement to unite and fight against the university on a maximum impact scale. We must target professors, teachers, heads, students, investors, partners, supporters and anyone that dares to deal in any part of the university.”

Last week every builder working on the new laboratory was masked in a balaclava and accompanied by a personal security guard when walking outside the perimeter. The identity of the contractor has not been disclosed.

Here

What's the Professor for the Public Understanding of Science talking about? Take a guess.

Update: More examples of a serious threat to science under the fold.
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The 25th edition of Philosphers' Carnival is online at The Uncredible Halq. In addition to my post about how big ideas take time, it features a lot of interesting posts about philosophy. Be the first on your block to read them all!

A well-known problem with on-line polls is when special interest groups attempt to sway the outcome. For example, a national newspaper might put a poll on their website asking if corporate taxes are too high. An organisation interested in lowering corporate taxes might then distribute the link among grass-root supporters, encouraging them to vote "Yes". If they're successful, they will manage to sway the outcome of the poll, creating the impression that "the public thinks that corporate taxes are too high". A similar yet rarely acknowledged problem is when the respondents in a letter poll correspond with each other, coordinating their replies.

For a while, I've been disappointed with the lack of sociological data concerning how those who see themselves as "defending science" perceive intelligent design. There is plenty of evidence that this group suffers from stereotypes (such as Douglas Altshuler claiming that, "People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly."), but no systematic surveys. So I decided to do my own little informal survey, e-mailing various ID critics and asking them about intelligent design.

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Branden Fitelson has written an interesting paper on ID, in which he looks at a number of different questions related to ID.

Fitelson appeals to the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics in the early part of the 20th century in order to illuminate certain parts of the current ID debate. Unfortunately, Fitelson's story of this transition isn't quite accurate. He paints a picture of various anomalies building up in scientific theories until the pressure is so great that the theories literally explode and fall apart.
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To Jason Rosenhouse, intelligent design is nothing but a political and legal strategy to disguise creationism. Consequently, it's not surprising that in his latest reply in our discussion of Michael Ruse's book he has adopted the tone of a shrill politician, presenting simple answers to complex questions and demonizing those who disagree with him. Thus, the arguments for intelligent design are "completely false", "hopelessly flawed", "standard gobbledygook", the concept contains "nothing at all beyond falacious logic and distortions of modern science", and what I'm saying is "ridiculous" and "pure fantasy". At least no one can accuse him of being mealy-mouthed.

In my post, "Big ideas take time", I posted some excerpts from Michael Ruse's The Evolution-Creation Struggle that showed that even after Darwin had published Origin of the Species, it still took a considerable amount of time for evolution to take off as a serious research program. I then made the point that ID critics should keep this in mind when asking when intelligent design will result in a research program. I didn't say that it was just a question of time before intelligent design would result in research. I didn't say that because evolution overcame its "childhood troubles" so would intelligent design. And I didn't say that evolution has never resulted in any research. The reason I start by making this clear is that, when reading Rosenhouse's reply, he seems to be thoroughly confused as to what the point of all of it is.

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In the comments to Mike's blog Sober and ID: Part II, NCSE propaganda director Nick Matzke refers to a 1999 essay by Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center, in which he argues that the evolution vs. creationism debates need "a new script."

Commenter Analyysi offered further observations on the meat of that essay, per how Haynes decries the teaching of scientism in public schools as if it were science. I post below a blog written last year about how evolutionary biology is being taught in my 'economically challenged' redneck corner of the country, to demonstrate that things HAVE changed. For the better.

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Part I

Today I'm going to contrast my grandson's new high school biology textbook with my son's college freshman level anthropology textbook. See what there is to see about how the presentation of evolutionary theory has changed over the past 15 years or so.

My son's textbook is "Understanding Physical Anthropology and Archaeology," Fourth Edition, copyright 1990. It was written by Robert Jurmain, Harry Nelson and William A. Turnbaugh. It is my understanding that later editions of this textbook did not contain the amount of anti-theological argumentation this one did, but the fourth edition is a real classic for comparison purposes in how evolution was presented all those years ago.

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As recently announced, I'm the newest contributer to Telic Thoughts. I've been blogging at prosthesis for over 2 years now, often writing about things that are relevant to intelligent design ideas. I've been pretty reluctant about calling myself an "ID advocate," though, for reasons which I hope will be clear by the end of this post.

One of my major interests is that of reductionism in science and I've written before about how reductionism may fit into the whole ID debate. I think a number of the posts written here about the Philosophy of Mind may also be related to problems with reductionism.

My problems with reductionism have led me to believe that the concept of design shouldn't be taken too literally, even though I think it can be a useful metaphor at times. It might also just be the engineer in me that doesn't like associating biological entities with machines. I like the term "telic" a lot better, but I'm not necessarily convinced that's the best word, either.

I'm also pretty interested in the philosophical aspects of biological function and the similarities and dissimilarities between biological function and technological function. I haven't really written much about this, though, but maybe now is a good time to start.

I've been pretty heavily influenced by philosopher of science Del Ratzsch, especially his Nature, Design, and Science. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

I'm also very sloppy when it comes to double-checking over blog posts for grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc., so please don't hold that against me.