DNAunion: PART 4
[...]
>>>Susan: Some Christians have no trouble weaving the details of the world
into their religion. Their god is merely larger than the world and science.
Other religionists are very threatened by those who examine the world in
detail and are afraid that something will be discovered (or has been
discovered) that will prove their religion to be untrue. I think you, and
nearly all creationists (and I believe that IDists are merely a subset of
creationists) are in the latter category.
DNAunion: [... see other posts for parts 1, 2, and 3]
Equivocation
A working definition of the term "equivocation" is the intentional switching
in the use and/or meaning of a word, usually during a debate or argumentative
discussion, and with the wording constructed in such a manner as to conceal
the switch as much as possible (hoping it goes unnoticed). That is what
those who attempt to conflate Intelligent Design with Creationism seek to do.
Their first goal is to try to show that Intelligent Design proponents are
"technically" some kind of Creationists. For example, an anti-IDist might
ask whether a certain IDist accepts the possibility that a supernatural agent
might have been involved somehow in the origin of life, to which that IDist
might answer yes (can one truthfully state that it is really possible to
completely rule out, scientifically, the possibility that a supernatural
agent or agents - who are not necessarily tied to Christianity, or any known
religion at all, and whose identities need not be known, and who might act in
a manner that avoids our direct detection - could have been involved in the
origin of life? Since the supernatural is outside the realm of scientific
investigation - science cannot address such questions by its standard
experimental processes - science cannot truly exclude the possibility).
During this initial step, the anti-IDist of course ignores all of the
differences between the ID and Creationist camps and instead focuses only on
this one "shared" attribute (but even this property differs between the two
groups - one accepting the fact that the supernatural cannot be ruled out
completely by science, the other stating that a specific supernatural agent
does in fact exist and did in fact create life). Once the illusion has been
created (that is, once they claim to have established a direct correlation
between ID and Creationism), they then no longer discuss how the connection
was made, as doing so would expose their ruse - it would prevent them from
forging forward with the next phase of the deception (which involves the
slight-of-hand, switching of meanings).
Now that the ground work has been laid out (the IDist is now "technically" a
Creationist, at least in the opponent's eyes), the anti-IDist is free to make
broad accusations against ID in general because of the generally-accepted
view that Creation-science distorts science or excludes valid science
(radioactive dating is off by billions of years, the Earth is only 6,000
years old, the Sun can't be more than 10,000 years old, etc.). That is, the
anti-IDist attempts to thrust upon Intelligent Design the scientific
negativism associated with Creationism in order to try to discredit IDists.
But in order for this whole underhanded tactic to succeed, the anti-IDists
must switch the meaning of the word "Creationist" from its original ID
definition: such as "a person who does not accept a fully naturalistic
explanation for the origin of life, but accepts that an unidentifiable
intelligent agent, or agents, were involved" to a purely-Creationist
definition: "a person who holds a literal interpretation of the 6-day
creation account of Genesis, and rejects any science that contradicts the
Bible, and distorts science in order to force the data to fit their religious
beliefs.". If the original definition were retained throughout, then the
effortless accusation of scientific distortion, made by the labeling of
IDists as Creationionists, would not hold up. Thus, this line of argument is
fallacious.
The attempt to earn some quick and effortless "discredit points" by labeling
IDists as Creationists is not valid.
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