Re: [asa] DI Professor: 'Religion' behind tenure dispute

At 12:37 AM 7/14/2007, PvM wrote:

>...The real question of course is: Will Janice
>correct her position and claims? ~ Pim

@ I didn't state any "position" or make any "claims". Duh.

I see you've AGAIN used what Behe illustrated as
the Miller "style of argumentation" using "the
principle of malignant reading", and "passing off
your own tendentious view to the public as mine". [See Behe below]

~ Janice .... repeating what I wrote yesterday:
"Some of Ken Miller's style of argumentation as
presented below, seems almost identical to that
I've seen employed by Pim van Meurs. Has anyone
ever seen the two of them together in the same place at the same time? :)"

At 08:30 AM 7/13/2007, David Opderbeck wrote:

>I note with interest Behe's accusation that
>Miller cites sources as authority that don't
>really stand for the proposition cited:
>........"... this is a tactic I know
>well. People often cite cases as authorities in
>legal briefs that, on careful reading, don't
>really support that party's position. Often
>this is a result of laziness, not malice, but
>it's also done as a way of "padding" a list of
>authorites to make it look more
>impressive. ....... And, it seems to me, Miller
>and others have done this before. I often see a
>list of papers cited as evidence that science
>has found an evolutionary pathway for the
>bacterial flagellum. On close examination, if
>you actually read the papers, they are a
>disjointed collection of studies that hint at
>something here or there. None of this is to
>say that, at the end of the day, Behe is
>right. Yet, much as we rightly decry the bad
>and nasty arguments in places like Uncommon
>Descent, I wonder if we should also recognize
>that the vehemently anti-ID crowd is playing
>exactly, exactly the same game. It is
>unfortunately a "culture war" issue not only
>because of the ID side, but also because of the
>tactics of the anti-ID side. ~ David O.

>Response to Kenneth R. Miller, Continued ..
>
>6:28 PM PDT, July 12, 2007
>Yesterday, in
><http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html/ref=cm_plog_item_link/002-1611024-5243226?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fblog%2Fpost%2FPLNK1WNX2AI5EMGXN&token=140366954749F2F36BBAC56DF4E2F0C31778BC1E>the
>first part of my response to Kenneth Miller’s
>review, in which I addressed his substantive
>points, I ended by showing that a reference he
>cited did not contain the evidence he claimed it
>did. In this final part, I more closely examine
>Miller’s tendentious style of argumentation. ...
>
>...Miller writes: “Telling his readers that the
>production of so much as a single new
>protein-to-protein binding site is ‘beyond the
>edge of evolution’, [Behe] proclaims darwinian
>evolution to be a hopeless failure.” But the
>book says plainly that it is two, not one,
>binding sites that marks the edge of evolution.
>That was not an obscure point. Chapter 7 is
>entitled “The Two-Binding-Sites Rule”; Figure
>7.4 has a line at two binding sites, with a big
>arrow pointing to it labeled “Tentative
>molecular edge of evolution.” What’s more, the
>book goes out of its way to say that Darwinism
>is certainly not a “hopeless failure”, that
>there are important biological features it
>clearly can explain. That’s why one chapter is called “What Darwinism Can Do”.
>
>Regrettably, that’s Miller’s own special style.
>He doesn’t just sneer and thump his chest, as
>some other Darwinists do. He uses less savory
>tactics, too. His tactics include ignoring
>distinctions the author draws (cellular
>protein-protein binding sites vs. other kinds of
>binding sites), mischaracterizing an argument by
>skewing or exaggerating its claims (“so much as
>a single ...”), and employing inflammatory,
>absolutist language (“[Behe] proclaims darwinian
>evolution to be a hopeless failure”). He turns
>the principle of charitable reading on its head.
>Instead of giving a text its best interpretation, he gives it the worst he can.
>
>Call it the principle of malignant reading. He’s
>been doing it for years with the arguments of
>Darwin’s Black Box, and he continues it in this
>review. For example, despite being repeatedly
>told by me and others that by an “irreducibly
>complex” system I mean one in which removal of a
>part destroys the function of the system itself,
>Miller says, no, to him the phrase will mean
>that none of the remaining parts can be used for
>anything else — a straw man which can easily be
>knocked down. Unconscionably, he passes off his
>own tendentious view to the public as mine.
>People who look to Miller for a fair engagement
>of the arguments of intelligent design are very poorly served.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Jul 14 11:41:35 2007