Perhaps you should spend less time on putting words in other people's mouths and more on what Wesley is actually saying? Wesley has done a great job at reviewing Dembski's book. (pp. 32 Reports of the National Center for Science Education March/April 1999).
SJ: 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.
Now the presumption has become a certainty in SJ's argument. Why can Stephen not focus on what is said?
SJ: 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"
Nice strawman to attack. But I am glad to hear that ID is merely that and that ID is not trying to present a logical scientific alternative.
SJ: 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.
ROTFL.
SJ: 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.
We all know about the Wedge... It's not about science now is it? It's about a thinly veiled effort to introduce religion into science. That Dembski has tried to come up with a filter for ID is laudable, despite the fact that he failed (see NCSE review article above). Philip Johnson has done little as far as science is concerned. He does make for great rethoric though.
SJ: 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').
Good luck. One cannot blame you for dreaming but until you can show that evolution is seriously flawed, your efforts will fade away like so often has happened before.
SJ: The main point is that 90% of the public continue to reject Darwinism
Perhaps in the US but in more scientifically educated environments, that is not the case. Public view is irrelevant in science. But that ID is trying to play on people's emotions rather than on scientific reality is quite telling.
SJ: 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.
That's what it's all about eh...? Not about science but about politics. No wonder that ID is a dying issue.
SJ: 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*!
So far little of that seems to be happening. But keep trying..