ResearchID.org, the intelligent design database mentioned on an earlier post here at Sounding the Trumpet, is celebrating their opening day. They are continuing to improve their original articles, and have a bunch of fresh content for their opening day. A couple of their new features are: research on ID as a heuristic for developing new scientific research, a new anthology of essays on topics related to intelligent design entitled Paradigm Dawning, the initiation of a Catalog of Fundamental Facts, plenty of biographical information, and a glossary of ID jargon
With these features continuing to grow, and new collaborative projects on the way, ResearchID.org looks like it will be a dream come true for the ID community and a pain in the neck for ID critics.
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June 26th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
The one thing it doesn’t seem to have is any actual ID research. Maybe they should change the name of the wiki to “fawning biographies of prominent creationists”.
August 31st, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Well, as the late Duke of Wellington proclaimed in another context, “Publish and be damned!”
Considering the state of ID “research” to date this little exercise should prove very interesting. Even the home base for the ID movement - The Discovery Institute of Seattle - mounts no scientific research whatsoever, no matter what labels it attaches to its outpourings of propaganda. Rather, it works primarily through PR releases and manuals of argumentation that spin misrepresentation after misrepresentation of current Advanced Evolution Theory (hereinafter “AET”).
In every situation where the IDiots have attempted to demonstrate their arguments by actual evidence (as opposed to their more usual tactic of trying to force the false dichotomy “if AET has error, then Intelligent Design MUST be true” on the debate) they have exposed themselves as fools and/or liars. So, I for one really look forward to the posting of their “research” where it will be openly exposed to the unmediated critical attentions of the scientific community.
At which point it will be torn to pieces.
One wonders why the IDiots have done this - they can’t ALL be so obtuse as to completely miss the risk they are running by allowing their fantasies, obfuscations and pseudo-science to be put to real world tests - and put to those tests right out in the open. But on examination it becoems clear that this move is just an extension of their base strategy to date - creating the impression there’s a scientific controversy over AET where there really is only a cultural and political) controversy over teaching it in public schools.
Further, every time the IDiots lose a public battle they gain more fuel for their argument - the one that stems from their real purpose - that it’s just another case of “traditional values” being overthrown or suppressed by a vile, conspiracy of the atheistic, pseudo-Marxist, neo-Freudians who dominate the “godless liberal scientific elite”.
Yawn.
In the scientific world itself there is no controversy over the basic elements of AET. Of course there is plenty of controversy over the details. Different schools of thought on many aspects of AET exist and openly and honestly contend with each other with great fervor over such REAL issues as the distinctions, differences and balances between “Punctuated Equilibrium” and a steady micro-evolutionary process - as well as over such matters as the exact manner and exact ramifications of allele variation.
But the “theory of ID” has neither foothold nor place in the legitimate scientific community. Nor has it the capacity to achieve either. Simply put, it just doesn’t qualify as a SCIENTIFIC theory, insofar as it is untestable in the real (material) world - the base qualification for ANY scientific theory.
What can be expected from the works posted on this new site are the usual IDiocies. First, there will be a series of attacks on AET built around rhetorical maneuvering and misrepresentations of current AET (attacks usually based on outmoded works from the early 20th and late 19th centuries, for instance). Then, “papers” that are little more than extended argumentation from “common sense” - meaning, in this context, yet another reworking of William Paley’s scientifically and logically fallacious “argument from design”. Finally, there will be rhetoric masking as “research” on the subject of the repeatedly disproven dead horse “Irreducible Complexity”.
(Unfortunately for the ID cabal, that last stalking horse is one which even its semi-intelligent designer, Michael Behe, was driven to admit failed as am theory in every laboratory test of the instances he used to support it. For that spectacle (his public flaying) see the transcript of his cross-examination in Kitzmiller v. Dover.
Yes, let there be a site for the posting of ID “research”. As Justice Brandeis said, ““Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” The more light shed on the odious mold of ID now blooming on the corpus of secondary public school education the better. It will not survive.
Post post post away, ye consummate IDiots. Publish AND perish. Make haste - and speed the day you are hoist by your own petard.