Over at Science & Theology News, Matt Donnelly says

There is a sense within the science-and-religion community that the debate over intelligent design has run out of gas. This isn't necessarily because of a lack of interesting topics that could be discussed, but because the usual suspects on all sides of the debate have begun to get noticeably repetitive.

For anyone who has hung around the ID/Darwinism debate for very long it certainly should be apparent that there is a lot of repetition in arguments. Since this type of repetition has been going on for years, I'm not sure it would be a fair inference that the debate is running out of steam. However, I do think that all this rehashing of ideas and arguments presents a rather unique phenomenon in culture. It would be hard to find a contentious concept or issue in scientific exploration that has had such broad exposure. Normally scientific controversies rattle around in academia and the scientific community without much notice by the wider populace. Perhaps this is for good reason because critical struggles over paradigms usually manifest themselves in a dialog among specialists. This is, however, not true for the intelligent design debate. For instance, if one monitors news items covering intelligent design in the media via a Google news search rarely does a day go by without some news media outlet offering a story or commentary on the debate. Whether it is the trial in Dover, a course offering at a university, essays on web sites, or interviews and debates on television there is a steady throng of exposure to the propositions/arguments/evidence etc. concerning ID and Darwinism. Then there are the discussion boards and blogs where both the old guard and a constant stream of new debaters do battle over the issues.

Now one might think that there must be a bottomless pit of propositions/arguments available to maintain this sustained debate. Not so. The number of fundamental propositions/arguments in the debate is finite. It is necessary, at this point however, to delineate between certain elements of the debate. What I am talking about are the propositional/conceptual aspects of ID/Darwinism. These are the issues regarding the nature of science(philosophy, psychology, sociology, and politics of science), the nature of education(what should and should not be found in science education), pragmatic issues(is ID a science stopper) and theological issues(is Darwinism religion, is ID bad theology). All total there are probably no more than two or three dozen fundamental issues. The area of empirical investigation/issues is another matter all together. This arena is wide open as science struggles to describe/explain the emergence of biotic reality. However, that is not the topic of this post.

In the area of argumentation it would be hard to imaging some argument that hasn't already been made by someone, somewhere regarding the propositional/conceptual aspects of the controversy. One has only to check out discussion boards like ARN to see the constant recycling of argument and counter-argument. Some of this is due to obsessive compulsive individuals who just like to trot out mantras on a daily basis. But a lot of it is also because of the constant influx of new people into the debate who jump on the learning curve and have to thrash through previous arguments to "make their bones".

What this means, however, is that given the finite scope of issues, the ever growing influx of participants, and the constant exposure to broad segments of society, the arguments are in a pitched battle for survival. In isolation a concept/argument with few challengers may persist for some time. But when thousands upon thousands of individuals enter into the mix something has got to give. In this environment only the fittest will survive. The scrutiny both within the intelligentsia of the world and the educated populace is becoming enormous. The media has and probably will continue to spin the arguments according to their own bias, but that only goes so far in the long run.

Of course one tactic in an attempt to stem this tide of constant scrutiny is to avoid debate all together. The Darwinists have attempted to do this claiming that to debate only offers credence to ID. That tactic has, however, failed because ID vs. Darwinism has become a cultural phenomenon and on the issue of public education the Darwinists cannot remain silent. And so the debate will continue and repetition of arguments persist. Also behind the scenes there is, no doubt, new research going on both within the ID and Darwinian camps that possibly will add besides new empirical evidence, new arguments/propositions to the mix. With all this comes a constant dissemination of issues and arguments concerning the ID/Darwinism debate both within the scientific community and the general public. Weak or non-compelling arguments will not survive all this scrutiny. Unlike controversies that simmer for years because of relative obscurity, in this highly exposed debate it should not take long for the less fit to feel their power slipping away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 1:50 pm and is filed under The Debate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The trackback link is: http://telicthoughts.com/survival-of-the-fittest-arguments/trackback/