On Sat, 4 Sep 1999 00:37:56 -0500 (CDT), Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
[...]
WR>Dembski, whose recent book, The Design Inference, presents in
>great detail how the Intelligent Design argument satisfies
>logic and probability, likes to compare the movement's
>influence on science to the freedom and democracy movements
>and their effect on Eastern Europe. Criticism of Darwinism
>now threatens the hegemony of Darwinism, he says, just as the
>move toward freedom upset the Soviet empire.
>
>[End Quote - S Goode, <http://www.arn.org/docs/insight499.htm>]
>
>The particular bit of rhetoric attributed to William Dembski
>in the above is simply vile, and thus I hope that Dembski was
>misrepresented in this instance by the reporter.
Whether one considers it "vile" or not depends on what side of the `Berlin
Wall' one is on! It sounds OK to me.
I don't know whether Dembski himself has used the `Soviet Union'
metaphor, but Johnson has, in a book that Dembski edited:
"Darwinists have to rely on confining their critics in a stereotype. They
have learned to keep their own philosophy on the stage with no rivals
allowed, and now they have to rely almost exclusively on that cultural
power. These are exciting times. When I finished the epilogue to Darwin
on Trial in 1993, I compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship
afloat on the ocean of reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with
philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with
winch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In appearance it is
as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few years ago. But the ship
has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak widens as more and more
people understand it and draw attention to the conflict between empirical
science and materialist philosophy. The more perceptive of the ship's
officers know that the ship is doomed if the leak cannot be plugged. The
struggle to save the ship will go on for a while, and meanwhile there will
even be academic wine-and-cheese parties on the deck. In the end the ship's
great firepower and ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom.
Reality will win." (Johnson P.E., "How to Sink a Battleship: A Call to
Separate Materialist Philosophy from Empirical Science", in Dembski
W.A., ed., "Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design", 1998,
p453)
[...]
WR>Does anyone know whether this really is or is not an allusion of Dembski's
>own usage?
>
>I would like to have a more direct reference to its use by
>Dembski if it is supposed to be his own. Reporters all too
>frequently mess up these things.
See above. I don't know whether Dembski has actually used the `Soviet
Union' metaphor but I would be surprised if he disagreed with it.
No doubt Wesley will interpret this as Dembski being `anti-science', because
presumably to Wesley science is *inherently* materialistic-naturalistic.
But it is important for Wesley to *try* to realise that Johnson and the ID
movement do not accept Wesley's philosophical assumption that science
must be materialistic-naturalistic. Therefore, the ID movement sees itself as
*liberating* science from the shackles of a materialist-naturalistic
philosophy which has been imposed on science progressively over the last
one and a half centuries. Note Johnson's subtitle above: "A call to separate
materialist philosophy from empirical science"
There is a strong likelihood that the ID movement will succeed in its goal
of separating materialist philosophy from empirical science, and the rulers
of science will lose their power to enforce their materialistic-naturalistic
philosophy on science. As the Kansas issue shows, there is strong public
support for allowing alternatives to Darwinism to have a fair hearing, and
this has had an effect on all Presidential candidates, even liberal ones like
Al Gore.
Although I am by no means an official spokesman for the ID movement (so
this is just my opinion), it seems to there are two strategies in the ID
movement of how to proceed. Some favour a `top-down' approach at
which the universities are targeted first and then when they change, ID will
trickle down to the schools and the public.
Others (including me) see this as unrealistic (Darwinism took several
generations to take hold), and we favour a `bottom up' approach in which
several generation of the public and school children learn the weaknesses of
Darwinist evolutionary theory and the materialistic-naturalistic
philosophical assumptions on which it is based. Over time scientists will
enter the sciences who are less receptive to Darwinism and more receptive
to ID. Then if ID is true, one would expect more and more evidence of
design to come to light (as is happening now even under a materialistic-
naturalistic `regime').
The main point is that 90% of the public continue to reject Darwinism and
its materialistic-naturalistic philosophy, despite decades of compulsory
indoctrination in schools and the media. The only reason the 10% of
Darwinists have managed to stay in "power" is because of the
fragmentation of the 90% of theists along sectarian lines (eg. "old-Earth",
"young-Earth", "God-guided evolutionists") etc. If the ID movement can
weld these disparate groups into a coherent whole, then it should be
expected that ID will continue to grow in power and influence.
Paradoxically ID is helped by the increasingly strident attacks on it by the
materialist-naturalists. It is raising ID's profile among the general public
(including many Christians who aren't even aware of it), and it makes the
materialist-naturalists look dogmatic, inflexible and unreasonable in the
eyes of the voters.
Things are getting tougher for the materialist-naturalists. The tide of
history which has been with them for a century has peaked and is now
starting to ebb away from them. They have only one way to go and that's
*down*!
Steve
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"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to
believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked,
but I'd rather not consider that)." (Dawkins R., "Put Your Money on
Evolution", Review of Johanson D. & Edey M.A,, "Blueprints: Solving the
Mystery of Evolution", in New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p34)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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