Talk:Intelligent design movement/Archive 2

message: This article is way too long. Does anybody with more idea of what is and is not important want to chop it down a little... lot? Alister Namarra 21:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been thinking about this, and I think we could create articles for those legal cases and controversies that are significant enough to warrant, and pare down mention of those sections to an overview or summary. FeloniousMonk 19:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I've moved much the long-ish content to a subarticle, Intelligent design in politics. FeloniousMonk 00:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good call, this improves the article.--Gandalf2000 02:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Any other suggestions for moves? FeloniousMonk 04:03, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say just keep an eye on it (which I know you do) and whatever section gathers enough information to become its own article.  Kind of a natural selection process....--Gandalf2000 05:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Hm

message: FM suggested on the intelligent design talk page that the right place for items like Pat Robertson's recent outburst is here rather than there. I note that George Will and Charles Krauthammer have recently published columns critical of ID, and leave pointers here for what they are worth. I don't know if they merit inclusion in the article in any way, especially given the current length of the article, but it seems that this is a possibly significant development. Bill Jefferys 15:31, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The intellectual right weighs in against ID

message: I'm not active at this page, but I assume that something like this definitely belongs on this page, and is best placed somewhere in the higher education subsection?  -Parallel or Together? 10:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Mythology Class

message: ===2005 University of California at Berkeley controversy===
In October 2005, the University of California at Berkeley was sued for running a website for school teachers called Understanding Evolution. The lawsuit has been brought by Jeanne Caldwell, whose husband, Larry Caldwell, is the founder of an anti-evolution group called Quality Science Education for All. The Caldwells argue that Berkeley was "taking a position on evolution and attempting to persuade minor students to accept that position." Michael R. Smith, the assistant chancellor for legal affairs at Berkeley, said that the university would defend the lawsuit "with vigor and enthusiasm."
The suit is about this University of California at Berkeley page pointing to this National Center for Science Education page which contains statements from these religious organizations:
*American Jewish Congress
*American Scientific Affiliation
*Center For Theology And The Natural Sciences
*Central Conference Of American Rabbis
*Episcopal Bishop Of Atlanta, Pastoral Letter
*General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (2002) *
*The General Convention Of The Episcopal Church
*Lexington Alliance Of Religious Leaders
*The Lutheran World Federation
*Roman Catholic Church (1981)
*Roman Catholic Church (1996) *
*Unitarian Universalist Association (1977)
*Unitarian Universalist Association (1982)
*United Church Board For Homeland Ministries
*United Methodist Church
*United Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A. (1982)
*United Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A. (1983)
"In an interview with Higher Ed, an online news source, Larry Caldwell said links to religious organizations on the website indicate that UCB strayed into religion since the listed religious groups stated that evolution and religion were not necessarily incompatible." 
" “In this government-funded Web site, the same people who so loudly proclaim that they oppose discussion of religion in biology are advocating ‘teaching strategies’ in science classrooms to convert students to government-endorsed religious beliefs,” said attorney Larry Caldwell, president of Quality Science Education for All and husband of the defendant Jeanne. Larry Caldwell is co-counsel with PJI in the suit." 
===comments===
I disagree with the alteration. WAS 4.250 03:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleted content (in context)

message: I disagree with the alteration. WAS 4.250 03:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: comments

message: What exactly is the point of including this?  It seems to have nothing to do with the movement and everything to do with some guy and his PhD school playing politics over his thesis.  If someone has a convincing reason to include this let me know or I'll remove in a few days. -- Jbamb 23:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bryan Leonard : Why is this here 

message: I've yet once again had to restore this article to categories that are necessary for a complete list of topic within the category. ID is viewed as pseudoscience by the scientific community and the courts, and is creationism by definition, something now recognized by a court and long argued by the ID observers and the scientific community. These facts are well-supported and not in contention.
Despite the well-meaning but misinformed campaign to remove ID from the pseudoscience category under the pretense that pseudoscience is a subcategory of creationism, the fact remains that readers browsing by category will be short-changed under this organizational schema. Navigating by category, they will not see that ID is considered pseudosciences, it being absent in the category since readers are left to infer that it belongs there as part of the creationism category. Readers would somehow have to infer that pseudoscience is a subcategory of creationism, something that does not necessarily logically follow. Furthermore, WP:CG does not expressly forbid the article existing in both categories. Indeed, it provides several categorization schema in which it could. FeloniousMonk 16:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: I'm not sure where to put this but under the "Intelligent design movement in the public arena" heading should the attempts within NASA to promote ID by George Deutsch be included? I am very new to Wiki and I'm reluctant to start editing major entries such as this one on the Intelligent Design Movement.  Mr Christopher 18:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. Do you have some cites to articles or good quotes? He seems notable enough, but the extent of his advocacy and it's impact are probably the determining factors for inclusion. FeloniousMonk 18:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Here's the NYT article:  (login req) Since that article Texas A & M has confirmed that Deutsch did not graduate from there, meaning he faked his resume to get the job. Deutsche has since resigned from NASA. (login req) So it's another pro-ID scandal revolving around inflated credentials and claims. Now whether to list it here or not. FeloniousMonk 22:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[George Deutsch]] ID advocacy

message: Link...
* Over 500 Scientists Proclaim Their Doubts About Darwin’s Theory Discovery Institute February 20, 2006 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.67.20.74 (talk • contribs) 
::Please see Project Steve. 733 scientists named Steve have voiced their support. I think it's safe to say that a supermajority supports evolution. 
::Note also that the DI's list contains signatures from just 154 biologists. Chemists and physicists really have no expertise on the subject, and are in effect laymen. 
::Finally, note that the DI is considering creating a website (www.dissentfromdarwin.org) to host the list. Would you dare to guess how many ID websites are actually hosted or maintained by a small number of people? While a google search may yield a large number of hits, when searching for intelligent design, the fact is that very little support for it exists. And it seems that the little support that does exist is continually trying to appear bigger. -- Ec5618 08:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, note the breathtaking dishonesty of the actual question asked versus the creationist interpretation. The statement was: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Most, if not all, scientists agree with the idea of being skeptical about ANY claim. The trouble is the singling out of evolutionary theory. How did they make the leap of being 'skeptical' to 'dissent'?  -- Tenshu 14:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Over 500 Scientists Proclaim Their Doubts About Darwin’s Theory  

message: : FeloniousMonk
"Creationism by Definition" is the perspective of those who oppose ID. The ID community strongly disputes that categorization. e.g., See: Subscript text
"3 The Charge of Creationism
Despite intelligent design’s clear linkage, both methodologically and in content, with existing
sciences that sift the effects of intelligence from undirected natural forces, critics of intelligent
design often label it a form of creationism. Not only is this label misleading, but in academic and
scientific circles it has become a maneuver to censor ideas before they can be fairly discussed. . . . In either case, however, creationism presupposes that the world came into being through a creative power separate from the world. Intelligent design, by contrast, places no such requirement on any designing intelligence
responsible for cosmological fine-tuning or biological complexity. It simply argues that certain
finite material objects exhibit patterns that convincingly point to an intelligent cause. But the
nature of that cause—whether it is one or many, whether it is a part of or separate from the
world, and even whether it is good or evil—simply do not fall within intelligent design’s
purview."
[http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.09.Expert_Report_Dembski.pdf Expert Witness Report:
The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design] Sect 3 "The Charge of Creationism" p 3 and following.
"The references to “creation” and “creation science” in the first two passages quoted above by
Barbara Forrest (i.e., the FTE planning document and the affidavit by Dean Kenyon) are not
referring to a religious doctrine of creation in which God brings the world into being but rather to
a generic intelligence capable of bringing about biological complexity. Precisely because these
senses of the term creation are so distinct, “intelligent design” rather than “creationism” is now
the preferred way to speak about a science of biology in which intelligence plays a key role.
Forrest, to be sure, insists on referring to intelligent design as a form of creationism, but this is
simply to discredit intelligent design, not to clarify the underlying issues."
[http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.09.Expert_Rebuttal_Dembski.pdf Dembski 
Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses], 2.2 ID and Creationism p 8. and following.
etc.
Thus your categorization is explicitly POV and breaches Wiki NPOV policy. See:
"The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly, but not asserted. All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It should not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions." 
You have no right to "assert" this POV position. We need to state both sides in an objective way.DLH 02:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This point has already been discussed many times and settled. Please read Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive6#ID in relation to Bible-based creationism, Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive 11#What makes ID different than creationism, Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive 11#Moving ID out of the "creationism" catagory, Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive 12#Shouldn't this page be merged with creationism?, Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive 16#ID not Creationism? It's safe to say that this is flogging a dead horse. BTW, any notion that argues that the universe was "designed" is by definition a form of creationism. FeloniousMonk 05:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Also, they can claim ID isn't creationism all they want, doing so is a documented part of their strategy after all, but they can't so easily explain away the fact that a significant of element ID evolved from creation science. Dembski's rebutal was not compelling and a red herring here; Judge Jones ultimately ruled in Kitzmiller:"ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." Clearly the judge found claims similar to Dembski's ran counter to the hard evidence. In trial evidence was introduced that Of Pandas and People, the main ID textbook, was in draft stage in 1987 when the Edwards v. Aguillard decision made teach "creation science" unconstitutional. Evidence and testimony in Kitzmiller show that early drafts of Pandas show that it was a run of the mill creation science book, using the word "creation" and cognates throughout. Drafts made after the Edwards decision show that the authors simply substituted the term "intelligent design" for "creation."  Keeping up the ruse that ID is not creationism has got to be difficult for ID proponents considering the facts about it's origins. It's an uphill battle that I do not envy, but I see no reason why Wikipedia should help them either. FeloniousMonk 06:39, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ID POV is that it is NOT Creationism

message: The following statement is made about Johnson: "Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design recognized "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message."
Yet the only support for it is this: "Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed."
Those are clearly not the same thing. Johnson does not want people confusing the ID arguments with the Christian evangelical message. He is calling ID proponents not to confuse their Christian evangelism with the philosophical issue of ID by speaking uncarefully and thus misrepresenting both the Christian gospel and the ID arguments. The fact that the document this quote is pulled from is called "Keeping the Darwinists Honest" shows that transparency is what he thinks he is going for, not obfuscation. Calling this an explicit call for obfuscation tars him with a label that seems unwarranted given that there's a perfectly reasonable way of taking his statement that involves no such thing. Thus this statement is clearly POV.
As is the case with all of the Wikipedia entries on ID, this relies on a recurring fallacy. Someone's motivations for wanting others to believe an argument are not equivalent to the premises of the argument. ID arguments are classic philosophical arguments going back at least to Plato, and they do not rely on religious premises. The arguments, then, are not packagings of the Christian message. Some people might be motivated by religious reasons to promote the arguments, but the arguments do not rely on religious premises, and the conclusions need not involve any particular religious viewpoint. (Witness Antony Flew's recent non-religious endorsement of cosmological ID.)
Parableman 18:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: " Johnson does not want people confusing the ID arguments with the Christian evangelical message. He is calling ID proponents not to confuse their Christian evangelism with the philosophical issue of ID by speaking uncarefully and thus misrepresenting both the Christian gospel and the ID arguments." Yes, that's what Johnson tries to get across in his message, but when taken in the light of all his other statements stating ID is the means to a religious renewal of our culture, of which there are many examples I can cite, his message becomes clearly more disengenuous spin. Wikipedia is not here to provide the Discovery Insitute another channel for promoting its messgae. FeloniousMonk 16:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Johnson obviously does want culture to be more in line with Christian principles, as any good Christian would. If it's bad for society to be a certain way, then of course he would want that. If convincing people that there's a designer who has good purposes for the world will help move people along to Christianity, then he will do that. But that's irrelevant to this issue. This issue is about whether the ID arguments are identical with the Christian message, and the answer to that is obviously no. Someone might be convinced to accept racism as bad because they are convinced of Christianity, but that doesn't mean the wrongness of racism is equivalent with Christianity. So why confuse the ID argument with the Christian message? It's the same sort of error. Being convinced that someone moved toward one thing will be more open to another is a very common social strategy, and the tool toward getting someone toward the first thing is not to be confused with the second thing. Johnson rightly doesn't want those things confused. You seem to want them confused, and it's pretty sad to see that POV conveyed in a supposedly neutral encyclopedia. Parableman 17:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an issue of what the definition of Intelligent design is. It's not the simply a argument from design nor teleology, it's a coordinate protocal developed by a movement meant to advance an agenda. People may wish that it wasn't that way, they may believe that the conflation of ID with Christianity is not what they would like for the phrase "intelligent design", but the fact remains that as a popular concept, intelligent design is as the article here on Wikipedia describes it and as the judge in the Dover Panda Case ruled. It's not just a philosophical statement. --ScienceApologist 15:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Simply repeating the fallacy doesn't make it any more true. A person's motivation for giving an argument is not the argument. Some people try to convince people that the standard evolutionary account is true because they are atheists and want to convert people to atheism. That doesn't mean the standard evolutionary account is atheism or a political movement to make people atheists. So too the intelligent design arguments are not a political or religious movement. It happens that a religiously motivated political movement supports the arguments, but the arguments have been around long before that group, and the arguments stand or fall completely independently of the motivations of that group. What this entry does is confuse the motivations of the movement with the content of the movement's basic claim, and that is intellectually dishonest.Parableman 04:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POV issue with Johnson quote

message: Seems rather unnecessary to me and now the front page looks cluttered. ID is a subcategory in Creationism - does it really need its own template too? --Jmast7 20:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Intelligent Design Template

message: I see a whole new section has been added titled "Intelligent design on the Web". It is largely another diatribe against the Wedge Document. There is a whole WP article on that subject, as well as other descriptions. There is even a section on the Wedge earlier in this article. This seems to be a major preoccupation of the anti-ID WP editors.
Thanks for putting in the reference to the web page with the email address to complain about the biased nature of the entries on intelligent design. I agree that the article is biased from beginning to end, and I sent in my complaint. Roger 02:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sigh. Roger that address is not to handle content problems. Your email will be ignored. Content problems stay on talk pages. Now, what precisely is your complaint about this article? JoshuaZ 02:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intelligent design on the Web 

message: As per the discussion at intelligent design I've added the material on creationism in the UK here. I think it's good material but I'm not sure if it's well-placed at the moment. I think that if we can find more evidence of pro ID teaching in other countries it might be worth its own section, and its interesting to note here how categorical the government was in asserting that ID was neo-creationism and unscientific. --Davril2020 18:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good start.  I just started following this development and it's also interesting to note they use the same arguments and materials as the Discovery Institute.  Have you had a chance to read much of the Truth In Science web site?  You'd think they were the UK version of the DI.  Same sneaky, wedge type tactics. The name itself is pretty funny when you read what they're selling.  Most of their board members are clergy or in non-scientific fields.  Mr Christopher 18:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This group is very dependent on the DI and it appears that their material is more or less taken directly from them. In their weblinks they describe the DI as "the institutional home of the Intelligent Design movement." --Davril2020 19:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Material on ID in the UK 

message: Saw this and found it gives a nice background to the ID movement attempts to do science,  http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19225824.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19225824.000 
Mentions all the usual characters. From the article, "It was Discovery that provided the funding to get the Biologic Institute up and running." , quotes a Douglas Axe saying that "Biologic Institute will "contribute substantially to the scientific case for intelligent design"., and I think that about kicks off the rest of this opinion piece describing this bun-fight. Ttiotsw 09:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The story is covered in the Discovery Institute article. .. dave souza, talk 00:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biologic Institute mentioned in Newscientist opinion. 

message: Here's a brief run down of the accomplishments and developments within the ID movment since Kitzmiller V Dover by John Lynch at the Stranger Fruit blog, The Year in ID Mr Christopher 23:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ID movement's accomplishments over the last year

message: Please read this article in its entirety and then comment if it should be linked under "see also".
Struct 03:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I posted a comment here, but someone removed it. Roger 08:19, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I'm saying that the ID movement conforms to the opening paragraph of Cult:  "In religion and sociology, a cult is a cohesive group of people (sometimes a relatively small and recently founded religious movement, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands) devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture or society considers to be far outside the mainstream, sometimes reaching the point of a taboo. Its separate status may come about either due to its novel belief system, its idiosyncratic practices, its perceived harmful effects on members, or because it opposes the interests of the mainstream culture. Other non-religious groups may also display cult-like characteristics." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Struct (talk • contribs) 13:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My comments were removed. Roger 20:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw Poll