Is ID Creationism?
Frank J
Most people, in the US at least, think that creationism means an
honest belief that God created life, and particularly according to one
of several "literal" interpretations of Genesis. Unfortunately that is
nothing like the current "default" definition implicit in detailed
descriptions by critics, fans, and even the courts. Specifically,
"creationism" is any line of argument that promotes doubt of
biological evolution and proposes some design-based alternate
"explanation" for the origin of species or life. Furthermore, when
critics say that ID "is" creationism, they mean that it is one "brand"
of many, not that the words are interchangeable. In fact the only
common feature among different varieties of "creationists" is denial
of some key aspects of evolution - denial that may be real or feigned
for political purposes. Thus creationism is not any particular
personal belief, but a collection of diverse lines of argument that
facilitate certain beliefs - and misconceptions. When critics speak of
"creationists" they mainly refer to the activists who devise and/or
defend anti-evolution arguments, not the "rank and file" that just
finds them appealing.
To avoid confusion, I often speak of creationism as having two major
subsets: "classic creationism," which directly (if half-heartedly)
promotes "literal" interpretations of Genesis or other scripture-based
origins accounts, and ID, which does not. Classic creationism itself
comes in many mutually contradictory varieties, including YEC, several
varieties of OEC, and others not based on Genesis. While individual ID
advocates seem to personally favor everything from YEC to "virtual
evolution," ID itself takes no official position. Nevertheless, the
line is, or at least was, blurred by a pre-ID form of creationism
(e.g. the pre "cdesign proponentsists" drafts of "Of Pandas and
People") that learned to avoid committing to "what happened and when"
before claiming to be not creationism.
While classic creationism seeks to validate specific accounts of
biological history that contradict mainstream science (and other
brands of classic creationism, giving it some semblance to science),
it bases its conclusions mostly on perceived problems with biological
evolution (which in turn undermines that semblance). Those of you who
don't just dismiss it a quirk of fundamentalism may wonder why
evolution would be singled out as problematic, particularly by YEC,
which apparently disagrees with nearly everything in science. But even
to non-fundamentalists, evolution is simply easier than anything else
to misrepresent, given all its unwarranted connotations. And
misrepresenting evolution, or any science, is easier than trying to
support an alternate "theory" on its own merits.
ID is in effect the "purest" form of creationism, because it attempts
only to refute evolution (usually caricaturized as "naturalistic
evolution" or "Darwinism"), and lets the audience infer the rest. By
insisting that life is designed, but not identifying the designer, and
not committing to any particular timeline, pattern or process of
design actuation, ID technically can accommodate any brand of
creationism, including "virtual evolution." Given the preexisting
beliefs and misconceptions of most audiences, however, what ID
indirectly promotes is almost always either YEC or OEC. More
importantly, ID dismisses such fundamental differences as those
between YEC and OEC as "unimportant." That alone completely undermines
ID's pretense at being "strictly scientific," but as long as the
intended audience either doesn't know or care, ID ironically can be
more effective at promoting YEC and OEC than the direct approaches.
Perhaps the best reason for including ID within the general category
of creationism is the simple fact that most people who find ID
appealing identify themselves as creationists. Furthermore, for all
its "distancing" from classic creationism, ID is the least critical of
any other brand of creationism. In that respect too, ID is the
"purest" form of creationism, not as in "Creationism Lite," but as in
"Pseudoscience Xtreme."
The complication occurs when ID advocates say that "ID is not
creationism." What their target audience usually infers is "ID does
not directly attempt to validate any literal interpretation of
scripture," which is entirely correct. ID advocates then need only to
rattle off a few differences between ID and YEC, and critics who
merely say "ID is creationism" have an uphill battle to convince most
audiences. The Catch-22 is the same for any science-pseudoscience
debate; it's as crucial for us to be clear as it is for them to
obfuscate.
Maybe someday we'll be able to get away with saying "ID is
creationism" without a long-winded clarification. Of course, at that
point, we wouldn't need to say it at all!
For more detail on creationism and ID, see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html
http://www.antievolution.org/people/wre/essays/ea.html
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/HistoryID.cfm
Bobby Bryant
Frank J <fn...@comcast.net> writes:
> Yes, but it's not what most people think "creationism" is.
>
> Most people, in the US at least, think that creationism means an
> honest belief that God created life, and particularly according to
> one of several "literal" interpretations of Genesis.
I suspect that that's exactly the kind of creationism ID was designed
to aid and abet.
--
Bobby Bryant
Reno, Nevada
Remove your hat to reply by e-mail.
Frank J
> In article <1186695002.874532.67...@q3g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
> Frank J <f...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> > Yes, but it's not what most people think "creationism" is.
>
> > Most people, in the US at least, think that creationism means an
> > honest belief that God created life, and particularly according to
> > one of several "literal" interpretations of Genesis.
>
> I suspect that that's exactly the kind of creationism ID was designed
> to aid and abet.
But not just that. IDers don't seem to care if their audience actually
believes any literal interpretation, only that they agree that
"Darwinism" is in trouble. No other major IDer seems to care that Behe
conceded not only an old Earth but also common descent. Dembski, who
conceded an old Earth and "plays dumb" about common descent,
nevertheless made it clear that ID is *politically* more sympathetic
to YEC than to OEC. But that's to be expected since there are more
YECs than OECs among the general public. It doesn't necessarily mean
that any IDer is a closet believer in YEC.
What has been occurring me since the days of trying to argue that ID
was not creationism, is that, whatever one calls the various
strategies, it makes no sense to define them in terms of personal
beliefs, but in terms on the strategy to influence beliefs in
*others*.
BTW, I forgot the most important reference of all:
http://reason.com/9707/fe.bailey.shtml
Bob Casanova
talk.origins, posted by bdbr...@wherever.ur (Bobby Bryant):
>In article <1186695002....@q3g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
> Frank J <fn...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Yes, but it's not what most people think "creationism" is.
>>
>> Most people, in the US at least, think that creationism means an
>> honest belief that God created life, and particularly according to
>> one of several "literal" interpretations of Genesis.
>
>I suspect that that's exactly the kind of creationism ID was designed
>to aid and abet.
Didn't Hovind or one of his "soul mates" admit exactly that?
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
Bodega
>
[snip]
The nuances of doctrine among anti-evolutionists are inconsequential,
and of total unconcern to "most people." ID is just a strategy to get
religion into science classes, and hair-splitting, from what we saw in
Katzmiller, ain't gonna do it.
hhya...@gmail.com
Allow those IDer to define the term "science" and then get them to
conform to it.
There shouldn't be two way about it.
TomS
<1186695002....@q3g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, Frank J stated..."
[...snip...]
>To avoid confusion, I often speak of creationism as having two major
>subsets: "classic creationism," which directly (if half-heartedly)
>promotes "literal" interpretations of Genesis or other scripture-based
>origins accounts, and ID, which does not. Classic creationism itself
>comes in many mutually contradictory varieties, including YEC, several
>varieties of OEC, and others not based on Genesis. While individual ID
>advocates seem to personally favor everything from YEC to "virtual
>evolution," ID itself takes no official position. Nevertheless, the
>line is, or at least was, blurred by a pre-ID form of creationism
>(e.g. the pre "cdesign proponentsists" drafts of "Of Pandas and
>People") that learned to avoid committing to "what happened and when"
>before claiming to be not creationism.
IMHO, one thing worth keeping in mind is that YEC was *not* the first
form of creationism. Between the appearance of "On the Origin of
Species" (1859) and Henry M. Morris' "The Genesis Flood" (1961), most
- almost all - of the creationists were not believers in a "young earth".
The only name that comes to mind as a YEC before that is George
McCready Price, a seventh-day adventist, who, I think, followed Ellen
G. White's revelations in addition to Genesis. Recall that William Jennings
Bryan accepted something like a "day-age" interpretation of Genesis. I
don't think that the earliest opponents of Darwin relied much on the
Genesis account. On the other hand, some of the earliest Fundamentalists
didn't make a fuss about evolution.
I have reservations about giving YEC the status of being "classic"
creationism.
--
---Tom S.
"... to call in a special or miraculous act of creation reduces every
conceivable world to accident."
Jacob Bronowski, in "American Scholar" v.43 (1974) page 400
Ron O
> "On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:30:02 -0700, in article
You have to separate creationism from the political scams that have
been run over the decades. YEC is "classic" creationism in terms of
the political movements. It is usually the one referred too around
here and in context with other creationist political scams like
intelligent design because it was the first one, and the one that this
group first confronted. A lot of the most vocal advocates of
creationism here and elsewhere are still YEC. Scientific creationism
and the equal time ploy, teaching alternatives (careful not to mention
what alternatives), teaching intelligent design, and now teach the
controversy are all political scams whose major support base is
remains YEC.
You mentioned Bryant, but he actually shocked his supporters by
admitting that he didn't know how old the earth was. His claim that
the Bible couldn't be used to determine the age of the earth was a
major blow to the people that supported the ban on evolution. The
accounts of the courtroom reaction to his admisson on the witness
stand are disbelief and anguish.
As far as creationism goes creationists as a group simply believe that
a creator created something. Some claim the universe and others
everything inbetween. In this forum we usually deal with the
creationists that are antiscience and that have no inhibitions to
using deceit and dishonesty to advance their political and religious
beliefs. Scientists like Ken Miller are creationists, heck, I'm a
creationist, just not the type we usually deal with, here.
Ron Okimoto
Ferrous Patella
[...]
> Furthermore, when
> critics say that ID "is" creationism, they mean that it is one "brand"
> of many, not that the words are interchangeable.
But ID proponents think the words are interchangeable. Like when the
authors of the ID textbook "Of Pandas and People" used the terms
interchangeably, including the identical definition of the two terms.
--
"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."
Annual English Teachers' awards for best student
metaphors/analogies found in actual student papers
Frank J
Meanwhile the various anti-evolution activist groups, especially the
DI, is pedding their "religion" where they really want it, the media.
Some people here keep telling me that ID is losing steam even in the
media. If that's so, classic creationism or some new "species" will
take up the slack. Either way, scammers will continue to get what they
want. They are still defining the terms. And that goes for
pseudoscience in general.
The point that Eugenie Scott made ~10 years ago that no one wants to
hear is "diffuse the religion issue." Sure the creationism = religion
argument is necessary for the court battles - and there *will* be more
- but the point that needs to be emphasized outside the courts is that
creationism is a scam, religious or not. And one that is *rejected* by
leaders of the *mainstream* religion who know what it's all about.
Frank J
> "On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:30:02 -0700, in article
Because the post was getting too long I actually snipped out some
discussion of how OEC was becoming the dominant creationism before the
"Goldilocks" apporoach of YEC sought to compromise between the "too
cold" OEC and the "too hot" flat-earthism/geocentrism.
I am really only considering the "scientific" creationism in the
"classic" category. Anything before that seems to be more "belief-
based" rather than "strategy-based." I'm not sure about G M Price, but
since Morris et al it has been more about pseudoscience than anything
else. The only part of my position that has "evolved" over the years
is that I used to think that, before ID, it was mostly based on honest
belief, but the more I read about it, that does not seem to be the
case.
Again, I never doubted the activists' "honest belief" that adults need
to be told fairy tales. And I still think that the second "critical
point" was in the '80s, when at least some groups realized that
telling fairy tales directly could backfire with some audiences,
because the fairy tales were mutually contradictory, and the public
inferred them anyway from mere misrepresentation of evolution.
Frank J
> news:1186695002....@q3g2000prf.googlegroups.comby Frank J:
> [...]> Furthermore, when
> > critics say that ID "is" creationism, they mean that it is one "brand"
> > of many, not that the words are interchangeable.
>
> [...]
>
> But ID proponents think the words are interchangeable. Like when the
> authors of the ID textbook "Of Pandas and People" used the terms
> interchangeably, including the identical definition of the two terms.
They did, and may still, *think* that the words are interchangeable -
or more correctly that ID is a subset of creationism. But in most of
their recent writing they try to pretend otherwise. As I suggest in my
post and have written many times, it's mainly a scam to bait the
critics into saying "ID is too creationism."
If you look closely enough, the major ID players, if not the promoters
of YEC and OEC, admit a lot of things that they make sure are not in
their "punch lines." A classic example is how they object more to
theistic than atheistic evolution. They ususlly only admit that as a
"plan B" when their neat little stereotype of "real scientific ID vs.
the atheistic religion of 'Darwinism'" does not fly.