The Undectable Threat
by MikeGeneSome of the critics of ID have become so thoroughly politicized that they think anyone who doesn't condemn the ID Movement with sufficient outrage and emotion is a secret supporter of the Movement.
I take a more objective approach. Rather than worry myself with concerns about motives, secret agendas, political nuisances, etc., I focus on the results. Just what has the ID Movement actually done in the last 10 years?
Like the animal rights movement, have they destroyed labs, research, and threatened scientists?
Like the animal rights movement, have they prevented the construction of any new science labs?
Has any scientist not received funding because his/her research explored evolution?
Has any scientist not been able to publish their research because it explored evolution?
Has any scientist lost his/her position because they studied evolution?
Has any teacher been forced to teach that evolution is false?
Has any teacher been forced to teach that ID is science?
Has any teacher lost his/her job for teaching evolution or not teaching ID?
So what can we point to?
Many ID leaders are [gasp] religious?
They sell a lot of books?
They lead/inspire a political movement that keeps making trouble for local or state school boards?
Well…welcome to the reality of a pluralistic, democratic society.
While many may lose sleep over the ID Movement, my trigger for concern is not as hypersensitive as theirs.
July 2nd, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Hi, Mike. You've explored this topic before at ARN, and I was semi-surprised at that time that the staunchest critics refused to acknowledge that the actual science-stopping activities of the PETA/Animal Rights folks was a 'threat'. Perhaps, in truth, it's really not.
I think this dichotomy is a product of the reasoning behind individual's interest/fear of ID, their motivations for engaging on this sociopolitical front. The issue with Animal Rights activists isn't scientific, and it has nothing to do with scientific theoretics. For all that such activism has managed to challenge, end or prevent animal testing/research that is sincerely offensive to animal-lovers and cruel to the critters, it hasn't actually harmed 'science'.
Animal testing is not significantly different from breeding cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. for the sole purpose of slaughter, though it may be crueler (arguable). The PETA vegans are just as adamant against meat-eating, you know. But humans still love to eat meat, and breeding for slaughter is a lot more efficient at producing meat than hunting wild critters, let's face it. Even though it's certainly not more efficient on the balance scale of energy usage, pollution loads, or even usable protein production (in fact, on those levels it's positively catastrophic!) In humans, that translates to obesity, heart disease, colon cancer, etc. Plus arsenic, estrogen precursers and e.coli in the water (and that effects everything). Which means humans get sicker and spend more money on the 'health care' non-system than they should. And medical research is the most significant engager of animal testing outside of commercial product testing (which is more readily compliant to consumer demands than 'science' is).
The effects of wasteful self-indulgence also necessitates way more animal testing than would objectively be warranted in a healthy ecosystem. Those are really 'big' issues.
I can certainly understand these issues. I became a vegetarian 35 years ago because I couldn't justify that environmental/economic waste and destruction. And on a moral level I didn't find buying hamburger from the grocery store any less destructive of life and its support systems than raising and killing my own stock. Which, if I'd raised 'em, I wouldn't have the heart to kill. The difference between me and the vandals is that I recognize this dietary change as personal moral choice - I'll argue loudly, and I don't let guests use my kitchen or crockery to cook meat. But I have a gas grill on the deck and they're free to use it if they've just gotta have pork chops or enter the hamburger hell Mad Cow Sweepstakes. They have to clean up after, too.
Don't get me wrong - if I found myself in certain survival situations I'd sure as heck kill a critter and eat it without a moment's remorse. Yet in most survival situations I could more easily find and prepare vegetable food sources that would sustain me fine - even in the winter, tho' I do live where there's plenty of mast (fruit, berries, seeds, grass[grain], nuts, tubers, etc.) and high-protein legumes/greens most of the year - Kudzu! Poke! Sheep Sorrel! My cells were born to synthesize proteins - keeping them exercised in the process serves me better than pumping already-processed animal proteins into the system to make 'em lazy… and prone to functional breakdown/defective development.
Am I a "radical vegetarian?" Depends on who you ask (to some, all vegetarians are radical). I've never blown up a science lab, though I've argued vociferously against some absolutely horrendous primate research in the quest for consciousness - conducted in Africa and South America because the "civilized world" had already long ago made it illegal. There's a lot of cruel and unusual stuff going on in the name of almighty 'science', and not all of it has to do with "Darwinian Orthodoxy." The PETA concerns are much broader. Yes, vandalism is criminal - a police matter, not a scientific one.
Sorry, but I don't think Animal Rights activism is necessarily a valid comparison with ID per perceived "threat to science" if you look under the surface.
Comment by Joy — July 2, 2005 @ 2:59 pm
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:52 pm
PETA and ID advocates are on the same side of the issue — I think it's fair to say PETA is a bit more radical and offensive, but the aims are similar, to undermine science. Motivations may differ, but the goal is the same.
Dover, Pennsylvania's school board has a policy which orders teachers to teach nonsense. Teachers refused to comply, and probably sensing they'd pushed it too far, the board agreed to have hired readers make the statement for the board at the beginning of evolution units. It's in the courts.
John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution, and jailed briefly. He was convicted, and though the fine was reversed (for violating a constitutional provision that it be no more than $50, when a $100 fine had been imposed), the law making evolution teaching a crime remained on the books until 1967, 42 years.
In one of the wild excesses attributable to John Ashcroft's tenure as U.S. Attorney General, a professor at Texas Tech University was threatened with criminal prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department in 2003 for requiring that students asking for recommendations to medical school demonstrate that they understood evolution.
School districts in Texas have been required to edit out even the word "evolution" from curricula.
Research cuts have been across the board. But if you were to methodically work your way through the major universities in most states, you'd find researchers who will tell you that they fear for their grants if news got out that what they really do is research in evolution.
No, it's not yet as bad as it was in the Soviet Union when Lysenko conducted his pogrom against Darwin and Darwinian theory. In this case, even a hint of Salinist doctrine should wake us up, however.
Comment by edarrell — July 2, 2005 @ 7:52 pm
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:22 am
Hey, Mike, I guess the response that the typical critic would give (assuming they didn't admit that animal rights militants are the bigger threat) is that ID is trying to change the definition of what science is, while animal rights movement is not. That is, animal rights types aren't trying to say that animal experimentation is unscientific (although sometimes they do, as you've pointed out elsewhere), but that science shouldn't be allowed to do it. ID, on the other hand, is trying to expand what counts as science to include teleological causes, they would say.
However, this distinction doesn't make any material difference as far as the actual practice and health of science goes. Being forced to stop animal experimentation would be a severe restriction on science, whether a "philosophical" one or not. Also, the changes IDist are after are expansive rather than restrictive - that is, they're trying to get teleologically minded scientists a place at the table. Conspiracy theories aside, this wouldn't force anti-teleologists to think about teleology, while militant animal rights activists are trying to force animal-experimenting scientists to stop experimenting on animals. And a science without animal experimentation has had it's character greatly modified even if it hasn't had its "underlying philosophy" modified (Personally, I think that in real life, changing the former would almost certainly result changing that latter).
Also, the militant animal right movement's threat, as you have shown, isn't always just a threat, as they have really shut down labs by force. In their case, it's at least plausible that some cures or treatments would have come out of those labs they destroyed, and thus that some people's health/lives actually have been indirectly harmed in some way, something that the more extreme anti-IDers like to say would happen because of ID.
All in all, I think the comparison does a pretty good job of demonstrating the political/social/philosophical biases that actually drive many of the "defender of science" type critics. It's not changes to science (or even threats to science) that bother them per se, but rather changes that they perceive as threatening to their philosophical sensibilities. In fact, the response that animal rights activists are changing only the practice of science, while IDers are changing its underlying philosophy, is essentially a straightforward admission of this. Surely, if one is primarily worried about preserving the service science provides to society, their priorities should be the other way around - restricting the practice should be seen as worse than expanding the philosophy.
The Priviledged Planet flap, as you pointed out, showed that for many critics, it's not really about evolution. Likewise, the animal rights comparison shows that for many defenders of science, it's not really about science.
Comment by Deuce — July 3, 2005 @ 8:22 am
July 3rd, 2005 at 4:32 pm
"…I think the comparison does a pretty good job of demonstrating the political/social/philosophical biases that actually drive many of the "defender of science" type critics. It's not changes to science (or even threats to science) that bother them per se, but rather changes that they perceive as threatening to their philosophical sensibilities. In fact, the response that animal rights activists are changing only the practice of science, while IDers are changing its underlying philosophy, is essentially a straightforward admission of this. Surely, if one is primarily worried about preserving the service science provides to society, their priorities should be the other way around "“ restricting the practice should be seen as worse than expanding the philosophy."
I admit edarrell's response floored me by virtue of its sheer irrationality. Despite significant and identified differences in motivation, tactics, demographic profiles, targets and political ideology, he likens both AR activists and ID supporters to "Stalinists." Which I'd consider equivalent to the old standard "Nazi" charge, which automatically disqualifies both a responder and his response right out of the starting block.
Yet consider one of the most notable ID critics, say, Richard Dawkins. Far as I can tell from his public pronouncements [since public pronouncing is part of his endowed job description], the AR vandals - with their illegal tactics and pointedly 'science-stopping' goals/achievements - do NOT rate notice or condemnation. In fact, I have never seen him suggest they represent anything like an actual 'threat' to science, so on this particular issue we can suspect that Ed and Dawkins do not agree.
Let me paint a hypothetical scenario - suppose the animal rights radicals were to succeed in having most animal testing [at least, on mammals] banned from scientific research because of its inherent cruelty to the critters and because mice and rats are judged (by sympathetic scientists) not to be as good a model for human physiology as could be used. Of course primate research would be banned altogether, and that could be justified (by almost anyone) by the fact that there are far fewer primates than humans - the sort of chimp/gorilla testing I mentioned in some foreign cog-sci labs (particularly in Africa) poses a direct and specific threat to the remaining populations of those great apes.
Where then might science turn for useful test subjects? And what test subjects would not arouse the ire of those ardent AR activists who value the rights of animals higher than the rights of humans?
Given the known history of science [including medical science] in the service of political/martial power across the ideological spectrum, I think the answer is rather obvious. Then consider who among various groups of humans might be most likely to strenuously object to human testing and why (motivations again).
Over on ARN in Mike's parallel Post-Wedge World a critic who I'd always considered one of the more rational among the live-ins made a very strange statement. I gave N.Wells every opportunity to qualify his remarks as tongue-in-cheek or mere hyperbole, but he surprisingly (to me) stood by the call for "re-education camps" for those who still refused to believe-in neodarwinism even if ID were ruled to be religion.
History gives us ample graphic knowledge of what "re-education camps" mean in terms of totalitarian political power structures. Who are the types of political power structures to have re-education/concentration/gulag "camps." We also can see who the target internees will be from N.Wells' very honest admission that science - in his belief system - must and will be instrumental to any such system set up to 'cure' religious believers (or ID supporters of any variety) of their obvious mental derangement.
Whenever 'scientific' ideologues come off the starting block likening criticism of neodarwinism to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot or any other notoriously murderous tyrant, I get a bad feeling. US history isn't free of some outrageous abuses either, though they have generally been more bureaucratic (thus entrenched) than merely political based on any single administration's temporary leadership. Whenever 'scientific' ideologues excuse, tolerate or even support the terror-tactics of radical extremists such as AR fire-bombers - even against their own laboratories - I am reminded of the very tactics that lead to the institutionalized abuses of tyranny.
I find this very strange inconsistency [as epitomized by Dawkins in my example] quite revealing. I do not think it's something to ignore just because it's easy to believe "it can't happen here."
Comment by Joy — July 3, 2005 @ 4:32 pm
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Where do you guys get the odd idea that animal rights nuts don't get any criticism? Is ID as much a virus as creationism, so that once one has it, no fact comes through accurately?
Comment by edarrell — July 3, 2005 @ 8:37 pm
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:44 pm
The linking of anti-Darwinism to Stalin is purely historical. I suppose to ID advocates, history is just another study in some sort of moral relativism?
Stalin murdered Darwinists. Shot them. Exiled them to Siberia, where they starved to death. Ended their careers. Erased their research. Commanded adherence to anti-Darwin ideas in the lab, and to the deaths of at least four million people, in the agricultural fields.
What tactic of creationism/IDism doesn't mirror a tactic of Lysenko? Oh, one I can think of: Lysenko had an active research program.
Irrational? It's irrational to defend pseudo-science as science. It's irrational to pretend there is material where there is none. It's irrational to attack the "philosophy" of people who don't practice the philosophy attacked (scientists are notoriously non-philosophic when they make their observations).
Re-education camps? Yeah, Darwinists have been the victims. We don't take this stuff lightly. If "N. Wells" suggested or agreed to such a thing, he's probably a closet creationist (that's been my experience). At a minimum he's woefully unlearned.
But then, he's claiming to understand science and stand up for it, which puts him miles ahead of IDists.
I reiterate: More than 100 times in the past 80 years creationists/IDists have asked state legislatures to criminalize, outlaw, ban or dilute the teaching of evolution. Not once has any scientist asked a legislative body to ban creationism research or publishing.
It is irrational to ignore that history and pretend it's the other way.
Comment by edarrell — July 3, 2005 @ 8:44 pm
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:05 pm
Ed:
It doesn't look like you read my blog. I'm not talking about "goals." I'm focusing on results. So let's look at your list:
I confess that I have not followed the events associated with Dover, PA (population "“ 1878). But this is in the courts.
Scopes?! You have to resurrect ancient history to make your point?
Okay, so you are saying America became a leader in science, even putting a man on the moon, when it was illegal to teach evolution in the schools? How did that happen?
This can't be correct, given that Dr. Dini still has this requirement as seen on his web page.
Dini got into trouble not because he required his students to understand evolution, but because he expected them to affirm and accept it.
You'll need to provide some documentation for this one.
LOL. This has to be the most stupid claim I have heard this year. Mysterious researchers afraid to let anyone know they do research in evolution? Er, how do they publish their results?
Ridiculous. Now, why not answer the questions in my blog? They are simple yes or no answers.
Comment by MikeGene — July 3, 2005 @ 10:05 pm
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:10 pm
1. Ed:
The animal rights movement prevented both Cambridge and Oxford University from building new research centers. Can you link to the essay where Dawkins (or any other prominent critic of ID) has criticized this? While you're at it, why not link to some of your criticisms on an animal rights forum or blog?
Comment by MikeGene — July 3, 2005 @ 10:10 pm
July 5th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
Hi, Ed. Just wanted to respond to your denigration of N.Wells [whom I had referred to as being one of the "more rational ID critics" on ARN's forum]. Specifically, you said he's "probably a closet creationist," or at minimum, "woefully unlearned."
It is my understanding that Dr. Wells is a professor of Cladistic Sedimentology, Sedimentary Environments and Vertebrate Paleontology. Thus does not fit under the "woefully unlearned" heading. I have detected no inconsistency in his criticism of ID (though some of his criticisms are themselves inconsistent, but that's a different issue), so I wouldn't say he's a "closet creationist" either.
I merely mentioned my surprise [relatively speaking, since nothing die-hard DarwinDefenders say would seriously shock me] that he displayed so little rationality with the "re-education camps" comment, and less rationality by not backing off when given the opportunity. I've come to expect such hyperbole from foreign DDs, but here in the US of A such histrionics are incredibly self-defeating.
Sentence 2 does not follow from sentence 1, even by tortuous routing, because the objects are entirely different. You can't apply the sentence 1 object - 'teaching' - to sentence 2 and hope to be credible. And you can't apply the object of sentence 2 - 'research' and 'publishing' - to sentence 1 either. I'd like to say the argument is fallacious, but it doesn't make enough sense to qualify.
Please clarify.
Comment by Joy — July 5, 2005 @ 6:50 pm
July 6th, 2005 at 11:53 pm
I have argued that one should look at the rising enrollment in the biological and health related sciences. There is no evidence of decline.
Where the decline has been has been in science disciplines outside of biology. In fact, the ones who have a good pulse on the issue, felt the question of Darwinian evolution was largely irrelevant to technological and scientific advancement.
Cowardice, Creationism and Public Education
I would further argue that Ken Miller was right in saying that the prevailing climate is alienting the general population. And alienating the general population implies alienating those who would otherwise be interested in science. This kind of climate of hostility toward design sympathetic students is alientating a large segement of the population from the study of science. That is a shame. The threat is not only undetectable, it is non-existent. The threat is that the orthodoxy getting in the way of large numbers of enrollment by otherwise interested students.
I will say on a happy note, tonight I met another bio major, a devout creationist, a senior at one of the nation's top schools in marine biology. Thankfully she didn't let the anti-Christian, anti-ID environment deter her from progressing in a science career.
But the threat of her career as a future scientist is detectably seen in the prevailing climate, and her career is not threatened by the IDists or Creeationists, but the Darwinists. Her genetics professor said outrightly at the beginning of class, "you can't learn the material in this class if you approach it from a Christian perspective." What jerk of a professor, imho. How many gifted students has that kind of attitude turned away. That attitude is a real threat to the progress of science.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — July 6, 2005 @ 11:53 pm
July 8th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Maybe he's or they're like you and don't want to double the numbers of their opponents?
Comment by Doug McGee — July 8, 2005 @ 10:13 am
July 9th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Translation: Doug was not able to support his claim.
Comment by MikeGene — July 9, 2005 @ 12:24 am
July 9th, 2005 at 9:11 am
What claim? I didn't make a claim. I merely pointed out that perhaps other individuals could be like you claim to be and not want to take to commenting on other issues as to double the number of their opponents.
Comment by Doug McGee — July 9, 2005 @ 9:11 am
July 9th, 2005 at 9:19 am
That could definitely be a factor if they were posting on a troll-infested internet forum. But that won't wash when we're talking about the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
Comment by MikeGene — July 9, 2005 @ 9:19 am
July 12th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
I said: "…More than 100 times in the past 80 years creationists/IDists have asked state legislatures to criminalize, outlaw, ban or dilute the teaching of evolution. Not once [in the past 80 years] has any scientist asked a legislative body to ban creationism research or publishing."
Sentence 2 does not follow from sentence 1, even by tortuous routing, because the objects are entirely different. You can't apply the sentence 1 object "“ "˜teaching' "“ to sentence 2 and hope to be credible. And you can't apply the object of sentence 2 "“ "˜research' and "˜publishing' "“ to sentence 1 either. I'd like to say the argument is fallacious, but it doesn't make enough sense to qualify.
Please clarify.
Comment by edarrell — July 12, 2005 @ 2:29 pm
July 12th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
Ah, so. I guess it was the fact that you didn't separate your sentences to differing antecedents, but presented them as a flat point-counterpoint that led me to think you meant me to read them as dependent. Now you say they are not. That's fine.
Now, would you care to offer your evidence that ID has logged more than 100 attempts to "shut down" the teaching of evolution? You used an "and/or" in this dependency, but I won't assume you mean these separate positions to be dependent. Since in my experience, they're not. And you are in the habit of asserting dependencies and then pretending that's not what you meant when someone notices the dependencies are fallacious.
That's nice to know. Not that I ever asserted there was a "revenge-like reciprocity" from the science end. Discounting you and others claiming to play scientists on internet message boards and blogs, that is.
Well, I'm sure "Creation Science" advocates consider their interpretations of evidence to be scientific. Questions there - as elsewhere - hinging on a priori assumptions about the nature of that which is being studied. "Science" is just the systematic study of phenomena to amass a body of knowledge about them. There are lots of kinds of knowledge, and many ways to interpret evidence accumulated. There's even debate about what constitutes a phenomenon, such that it can be examined.
So while I might concede that "Creation Science" qualifies as science, I would not consider it mainstream science or even acceptable science by current a priori assumptions required for theoretical purposes by science in the fields of evolutionary biology.
If such classes are offered, I have no problem with them falling under the overall directorship of science departments. But they'd have to be relegated to the philosophy/history subheading, as 'alternative' - thus not mainstream - science. Under this hierarchy even astrology and cold-reading could be taught within science departments. There's a huge, ever-growing and very lucrative professional market out there in the real world for astrologers and Psychic Friends.
Then again, perhaps such things as cold-reading belong in psychology departments. I can see the logic on that - more an art than a science. Either way, none of it's a real threat to almighty 'Science' as dominant consensus paradigm/theoretic. Since you say that scientists have never tried to ban the teaching of alternative views anyway, what's your problem with it now?
Comment by Joy — July 12, 2005 @ 5:42 pm