<snip>
>(I haven't heard any ID advocates
>seriously pushing space aliens. That's mainly done by ID critics looking for
>a straw man.)
Chris
I think Raelians do. But, most ID-ers won't do it because they are pushing
*religion*, not science. Aliens as an alternative to God would be
unacceptable to them, probably even if the aliens came and presented a
fairly good case for their having introduced life to Earth (and even
manipulated it along the way, just as the theistic ID folks claim it was
manipulated (despite the lack of any evidence for such manipulation)).
Why is it a straw man? It would actually make ID (slightly) more
respectable, because, even if life could not originate and make it on its
own here on Earth, it might be that it arose naturalistically somewhere
else and then that *that* life created and manipulated life on Earth.
Though there is no more evidence for *this* kind of ID than there is for
any other kind (that is, there is none at all), it is at least the *type*
of theory that can be pursued (with some work) via scientific means.
>Cliff:
> >Of course, the fact that almost all of the main proponents of ID
> >(Johnson, Dembski, Meyer, Pearcey) are
> >evangelical Christians should give it away.
>
>Bertvan:
>This is pure McCarthyism, in my opinion.
Chris
Cliff is merely pointing out that there is another explanation than
scientific evidence for the "selling" of ID theory, and that that
explanation is that these people are motivated by their *religious* beliefs
rather than the evidence (which is still missing). The theory that they are
driven by a particular variant of theism is a vastly better theory about
why they hold their ID theory than is the theory that they hold to it
because it has a scientific basis (and it is vastly more predictive of
their behavior, the nature of the arguments they will use, and so on, so it
has *much* better empirical backing, as well).
Right now, ID is a theory that's held up by a particular kind of religious
belief, ignorance (i.e., "I don't understand it, therefore it's false"),
incredulity (i.e., "I find it hard to believe, therefore it's false") and
severe misunderstanding (i.e., "It's like the theory that a pile of the
parts of a car could spontaneously assemble themselves into a working
automobile, which is impossible, so it's false").
At root is a fundamental failure to grasp that reality is *real*, not
something to be made up, evaded, or pretended into existence. Theism
depends, in almost all cases, on the willingness to suspend one's cognitive
facilities and simply accept what one believes *emotionally* is the case.
Since what one believes in such a way is based on or is simply and
expression of what one has previously learned to believe, this amounts to
nothing more than recycling one's emotion-level beliefs into a conscious,
conceptual form.
This is why I claim that this entire way of thinking (if "thinking" is not
to generous a term) is out of place in this realm. As Cliff suggests,
Johnson and the others are pushing their unjustifiable (and usually
blatantly illogical), emotion-based *religious* beliefs.
So, tell us why you regard Cliff's remark as "McCarthyism," please. Do you
think that Cliff is unjustly accusing them of being theists (when, at least
with respect to some of them, this has been more or less openly admitted)?
Is it because you think that they are being accused of having an allegiance
to non-rational underpinnings that are driving their claims, despite their
uniform failure to find anything scientific about ID theory?
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