Countering ID's anemic arguments

Dr. Novella continues to look at the ridiculous arguments that arise to defend and justify Intelligent Design.

The one utility of the Evolution News and Views blog of the Discovery Institute is that it frequently demonstrates that ID proponents do not understand science and logic (or they simply don’t care, or some combination of the two). Dr. Michael Egnor is especially adept at demonstrating this critical lack of understanding, and he’s done it again. His most recent post lays out a few of the classic ID misdirections and misconceptions.

In response to my post in which I pointed out that the question is not whether there is design in nature but whether or not their is top-down (intelligent) design or bottom-up (evolved) design. Egnor argues:

No. Design is always the result of intelligent agency — by definition. It’s always top-down. Design is a mental act. Complexity can arise without intelligent design, but complexity is not the same thing as design. All design arises by intelligent agency, because that’s how design is defined. Consider the definition of design:

He then pulls the classic desperation maneuver of someone who is relying upon a semantic misdirection as if it were a logical argument - quoting a dictionary definition; as if a colloquial definition is relevant to the science. Egnor is presenting the typical “design gambit” of the ID crowd. They start with the premise that there is “design” in nature - but they don’t define design operationally or scientifically. Then they use a colloquial definition of design - that it implies an intelligent agent - and conclude that by definition life was designed by an intelligent agent. By using this purely semantic argument they bypass the actual scientific question - is the end product of life on earth the result of purposeful intelligence or did it emerge through blind natural processes?

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And the attempt to drag Hitler into arguments.

The scientific community has been working overtime exposing the lies, errors, and fallacies in the Intelligent Design (ID) propaganda film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, staring Ben Stein. It’s no wonder - it’s hard not to be offended by this film. It is a work of deception from beginning to end. As Eugenie Scott reveals on the March 26th episode of the Skeptics’ Guide podcast, the scientists in the film were deceived as to the nature, title, and production company of the film at the time of their interviews. Simply put - they were shamelessly sandbagged. The content of the film is crafted deception. And the rollout of the film has been tainted with blunders covered up by more lies.

But what raises the entire affair to the level of visceral disgust is the manner in which this film attempts to blame “Darwinism” (their favorite term for those who accept evolution as a well-established scientific theory) for Hitler’s holocaust. This bit of propagandistic nonsense (if an ideologue loses the scientific battle of logic and evidence they have no choice but to fight a propaganda war of lies and deception) has been thoroughly refuted by others, even before this film was made. But I want to focus on one logical contradiction that, to my knowledge, has been glossed over (my apologies to anyone who has pointed this out and escaped my notice). Evolution deniers refute evidence for evolution from breeding and cultivation because the human-imposed selection is not natural selection. At the same time they link evolution to Hitler’s program of genocide - even though the holocaust also did not involve natural selection, but rather imposed artificial selection through murder and sterilization.

Many critics have pointed out the latter - that the Nazi eugenics program was more of a breeding program and actually had nothing to do with natural selection. At best it was a twisted and misguided abuse of evolutionary theory. In fact the concept of ethnic cleansing predates Darwin, it does not derive from it. The Nazis simply grafted on a superficial and pseudoscientific justification for their social and political ideology and deeply rooted antisemitism. In short - blaming Darwin for Hitler is demonstrably absurd.

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And Phil Plait on its use in the Expelled film.

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Right from the start, this is an total and abhorrent lie. This false connection between the Holocaust and the teaching of evolution is a gross and profound twisting of reality. Creationist love to say that Hitler used evolution as an excuse for genocide, but actually he makes it clear that religion played a major role in his decisions. For example, in a 1922 speech Hitler said "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter." Oddly, the creationists never seem to mention that.

Despite whatever reasons Hitler gave for his reasoning — and honestly, how much can we trust him? He was Hitler — that doesn’t mean that evolution leads to atheism leads to Nazis. Evolution, like all of reality, is a fact, and how we use it is independent of that reality itself. I can just as easily point out how many people have been slaughtered in the name of Jesus. Both arguments are grossly unfair when used in this manner. I can use a hammer to build a house, or to beat someone’s brains in. In what way is either the fault of the hammer?

It’s unfair to lay the blame of human faults on religion or the lack thereof. It’s how humans use or abuse these tools that’s important.

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And as has been pointed out, the result of Darwin's work was to discover that species evolve, die out, etc due to NATURAL selection. Natural, meaning, not being taken aside and killed. Not being demagogued against and attacked and killed for centuries, then being slaughtered in unimaginable numbers for a sociopolitical end. That is not a natural occurrence.