It’s being touted that way, though–there are evolutionary theorists who are Christians and members of other religions, despite the painting of scientists with the Dawkins brush. Because the push for creationism (in an ID Trojan Horse) also comes with a push for (Protestant Christian) prayer in schools, (non-historical and religious) Bible curriculums, arguments against same-sex marriage rights on religious rather than social grounds, etc., etc., it’s hard to take it as merely asking questions about science’s methodology.

Only one religious voice seems to get painted as “the religion side”, however, when there are other, perfectly religious arguments supporting the “liberal” aspect. I think Martha Nussbaum’s writings shed a lot of light onto this, and I’d suggest you pick up any of her books, but especially her most recent one, “Liberty of Conscience” to get a grasp of the US debate, if you’re curious.

I read, with interest, ‘the wedge document’, and despite the boo’s and hisses, I can sympathise with their project. I don’t agree with their forgone conclusion and cure for the ills of the world (actually, everyone should do it MY way), but, and I’m interested in any criticisms of this, I think I’m in agreement with their diagnosis.

Although, coming from Australia, we dont have concerted efforts to push creationism in schools and what not, so I can appreicate the social context of the debate in the U.S. Not feeling under siege, to me anyway, under the volleys exchanged by the religious and anti-religious, there seems good questions being asked and answered.

1. No such systems have been found to exist. (All of Behe’s examples have been refuted that I know of).
2. How could you know for sure something is IC? IE, I see this as an argument from ignorance, or argument from lack of imagination.
3. “Gradual Improvement” is quite a simplification of the idea of evolution and natural selection. Exaptation can nicely explain one way evolution could have evolved something that seems “irreducibly complex”.
4. Even if you could prove a case of IC, proof of IC is an attack on evolution, not a proof of ID which will remain forever an unscientific theory. This is important. Even if there were no theory of evolution ID would still not be science!

I suggest reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity especially the dover trial section.

Of course, the experts who make the IC and ID arguments are very smart people. So one thinks that there might be something to those arguments, even though the scientific consensus is that these arguments are fallacious.

One course is to believe it is groupthink. I think a better course is to believe their own words (ID experts at the Discovery Institute):

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf

This is the famous wedge document that describes the intention to destroy science and replace it with Christian theology. To save our souls of course, and reverse the moral decay that scientism has brought about…

I think ID is unfortunately named, because its merits arent so much in its positive component (god did it), but in its negative aspect as a critique. Even if to strike at life’s origins is a straw man, there’s still questions about how irreducibly complex features evolved, if evolution is about the gradual improvement of functionality.

I’m interested in what Dru brought up regarding groupthink. I’ve found that there’s a kind of intellectual asceticism that treats aridity as a virtue in itself - having been that way myself, I think that’s a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.

“Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”

I do believe the forces of the irrational are attempting an attack on science. The Intelligent Design people believe it to be a “Wedge” they can use to invade the space of science. They themselves admit they are attempting to destroy scientific authority.

While many people see the destruction of religion as unacceptable (I see it as unfortunately impossible) I urge them to think what the destruction of this ability to doubt would cause.

@ Dru - yes, yes, I did. Actually, I used it intentionally throughout the post to show that much of this information is easily accessible, even without much digging. And yeah, I am not into physicSalism (as I’ve noted before) and talking about where science goes beyond methodological naturalism to metaphysical assumptions would have been interesting. Unfortunately, all they did was line up evolutionary theorists who are atheists (rather than ones who are not–which are many) and said, “see, look at the scary atheists.”

@ Mike - quite right about the clash of ways to get at truth–however, the movie was fuzzy on this point. Instead of challenging methodological naturalism and the formalized test/predict cycle, they claimed that ID works within that structure and that the larger problem is that of religion vs. atheism.

All in all, like I said, I was really disappointed. If I were an ID theorist, I wouldn’t want to use this movie to defend my views!

http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth

In particular it refutes the idea that these people were “expelled” from academia or journalism. Your point 1.

In response to point 2, one important thing to realize is that science does not tell us ultimately “why” things work or how things “should” work (in a moral sense). A scientific theory is merely a description of how things do in fact work.

Further, my understanding is that nationalism/tribalism predated Darwin.

With point 3, I think I may agree with Stein somewhat. It is a clash of world views. There is the world view that truth is best approximated by iterative steps of a guess, predict, test cycle, and one that believes that this is not the case.

I presume they suggest that one should accept what Charles S Peirce called lower forms of reasoning:
1. The method of tenacity — persisting in that which one is inclined to think.
2. The method of authority — conformity to a source of ready-made beliefs.
3. The method of congruity or the a priori or the dilettante or “what is agreeable to reason” — leading to argumentation that gets finally nowhere.

Or perhaps they don’t agree with the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I guess they can see this as unfair, “people making claims supported by previous evidence have an easier time convincing people than I do, that’s unfair”

Remember even Einstein’s theories were not taken very seriously until he predicted something extraordinary would happen during an eclipse, specifically that the position of a star would appear to be wrong because light would have bent around the sun. When this prediction came true shortly thereafter (but not before) newtonian physics was dethroned.

It’s sad that the movie went the route of promoting ID (not that ID and neo-Darwinianism are incompatible or that I would disagree with certain forms of ID). I thought it was addressing the social-psychological problem of Darwinian elitism in academia, which I know from several friends to be alive and well. It’s not a matter of being pro-ID, but just being skeptical of full-throttle darwinian-primordial-soup-physicalist-cocktail is grounds for academic exclusion in high ranking departments.

I was hoping that there would be some exposure to the dangers of
‘groupthink’ in the technical sense and a case made that current fads in Darwinism exhibit traits of groupthink. But it sounds like they chose to go a whole other route. Oh well, that’s probably asking too much from politically oriented film makers.

I guess that this film, in the end, is just going to end up in the ever-growing heap of docu-trash (i.e. Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, et al, ad nauseum). It’s a shame because the concept of Darwinian academic elitism (as well as any closed-circle schools of interpretation) needs to be publically critiqued in order to prosper.

But as you suggested, a nuanced approach that attempts to avoid conflation won’t ever find favor with a movie-going crowd.

Who is behind this movie? And what is Ben Stein’s motivation? I know he’s a lifelong conservative, but does he really believe in ID, or does he just want others to? I don’t know anything about his religion, but I always assumed (possibly wrongly) that he was Jewish, and I don’t know enough about Judaism as a religion to know whether it embraces ID. Very puzzling.