After watching as a number of threads descended into chaos from interesting starts, an underlying oddity seems to beg attention from the fisticuffs over word usage that has become so prevalent of late. In the Post-Wedge World the perennial dueling metaphysics hasn't waned one bit, but something new has come to the fore.

We've been mixing it up with a commenter who calls himself "aiguy" to identify with the field of computer science called "Artificial Intelligence." It would appear that he has a problem with ID's use of the word "Intelligent" to describe its focus. Aiguy tells us that we have no definition of intelligence for either AI or ID, but he wants ID to drop the term anyway, perhaps so he can feel better about the use of it in his own discipline of science. Who knows?

If it were just this one critic who was bent by the terminology it would just be a single critic with a single issue about terminology. Instead, aiguy is just the latest in a string of critics who have lodged complaints in recent months about ID's use of the word "Intelligent" and insisted that it be dropped from the lexicon.

It strikes me that with such universal focus on the word - whether the complaint is that it's a metaphysical concept or an ill-defined term - the 'other' word has slipped under the radar into mainstream usage. Is it now okay to speak of biological systems in terms of "Design" so long as "Intelligent" isn't attached?

Christian university biology professors are keenly aware of the creation-evolution cultural war. Fueled by misrepresentation and misunderstanding by both secular atheistic scientists and fundamental Christian literalists, this controversy continues to sow unjustified and unnecessary seeds of discord and division. Both ironic and tragic, the champions of these secular and claimed Christian worldviews fail to recognize the counterproductive consequences of their flawed and self-serving pronouncements. By failing to articulate the messages of science and faith in intellectually honest and religiously credible ways, they unwittingly inflict great damage to the vital causes of rational evidence-based learning (science) and also to the credibility of Christian faith.

As a Christian biologist, I am also keenly aware that land mines abound for anyone within the Christian community possessing the temerity to speak authoritatively regarding the realities of evolution. These people tend to get run over by both extremes of the discussion - branded as an enemy of the faith by Christian fundamentalists, and professionally discredited by the secular science community for suggesting that God might have a role in creation.

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Bradford originally posted an article about naïve realism:

Naïve realism is the conviction that one sees the world as it is and that when people don't see it in a similar way, it is they that do not see the world for what it is.

Over the years, I have tried to help people see that this contentious debate is not purely a matter of "the evidence," but instead deeply involves such things as stereotypes, confirmation bias, disconfirmation bias, and tribalism. We can now add naïve realism to the pot, as it may play a central role.

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An article in The Daily Gazette entitled Lee Ross's Lecture on Barriers to Conflict Resolution, is authored by Elizabeth Hipple. It discusses a concept called naive realism. From the article:

Naïve realism is the conviction that one sees the world as it is and that when people don't see it in a similar way, it is they that do not see the world for what it is. Ross characterized naïve realism as "a dangerous but unavoidable conviction about perception and reality". The danger of naïve realism is that while humans are good in recognizing that other people and their opinions have been shaped and influenced by their life experiences and particular dogmas, we are far less adept at recognizing the influence our own experiences and dogmas have on ourselves and opinions. We fail to recognize the bias in ourselves that we are so good in picking out in others.

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…A New Generation Of Denial

Today - May 1 - is official Holocaust Memorial Day. Being as I am a political leftist, I got myself into a strange back-and-forth over on DailyKos that started innocently enough when someone mentioned the Godwin aspect of the Expelled movie. Given the remembrance today, and the UMC's official apology for eugenics, I innocently mentioned that I'd like to see - sometime before I die and my promise to my godparents dies with me - an official apology by science for its support of eugenics. Particularly biological and evolutionary science.

Talk about opening a can of Holocaust Denial worms! At first I got complaints that 'science' has nothing to apologize for, since science played no part in eugenics. We know that's not true, and the truth is voluminous out there for anyone to access, so I mentioned that. Quite levelly and without rancor. Yes, 'Darwinism' was indeed used to justify eugenics in this and other countries, gladly handed to Hitler as legislative models for his racial purity policies in 1934. That's history, it's well-documented.

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Our semi-annoying, semi-enlightening commenter and sometimes contributor Thought Provoker has spent the better part of the past week valiantly attempting to defend Charles Darwin from Ben Stein's charge in the movie Expelled that Darwinism led to eugenics, and eugenics led to Adolph Hitler's eugenics laws, which led to… The Holocaust.

I admit to sensitivity on this issue, as both my Godparents were Jews, very recent immigrants from Europe. Both of them had tattoos and had lost their entire families in the Holocaust. They never had any children of their own. Can you guess why? So I got 'indoctrinated' very young in the importance of what Never Again! means.

My husband's Aunt Melba (still spry but blind at 96) was sterilized as an adolescent when she and her sister were dropped off at an orphanage back when being an orphan was considered a symptom of "undesirable genetic inheritance" in America. So both sides of this family have some eugenics horror stories in the family album and a serious commitment to making sure it never happens again.

These family stories are related. Such things were as common when I was growing up as unfortunate survivors of polio and thalidomide babies and radiation-induced cancer clusters from atmospheric bomb testing. What happened to my Godparents had its insidious roots in what happened to Aunt Melba years earlier in Oklahoma. Direct, irrefutable connections, as history amply documents in collections from Cold Spring Harbor to the Holocaust Museum.

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Martin Wagner, with help from a talk by expert Barbara Forrest, helps us further appreciate that Intelligent Design is no longer part of The Wedge. Wagner draws attention to this key part of Dr. Forrest's presentation:

What stood out most to me was how she described the way the ID movement, having been dealt a decisive body blow in Dover, has, in quintessential Darwinian fashion, adapted to its circumstances and is now presenting a new face to the public. Now even a number of ID proponents and old fashioned creos are disdaining the term "Intelligent Design."
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But…don't get too smug and complacent, Forrest warned. The ID movement is now talking in code. They're simply recycling old creationist buzzwords from the 80's and redressing them to reflect what we're all supposed to think is a more moderate, conciliatory, even pro-science stance. They talk about "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution; in the same interview, after distancing himself from ID, McLeroy criticizes current science textbooks for not presenting the "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory well enough. (Which, of course, means they don't talk about God enough.) They're chanting the mantra of "teach the controversy," a phrase designed to persude the scientifically illiterate general public that there must be some raging controversy within the sciences regarding evolution. Sure, there are controversies within biology regarding evolution. But the idea that evolution doesn't happen and has never happened in the first place ain't one of 'em.

We at Telic Thoughts are often accused of being part of the ID Movement/Wedge. Yet it should now be clear to reasonable people that such accusations are rooted in stereotype and sloppy thinking.

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The Religious Belief and Mental Health thread is too long to follow, yet keeps going on a lengthy tangent anyway. Obviously, the combatants aren't done yet. So this thread is for those who still want to carry on the conversation.

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