Goldston On ID
David Goldston on Nature.com (as quoted on UncommonDescent.com):
Intelligent-design advocates try to sell their wares as science rather than religion partly as a legal gambit, but also because science and scientists are held in high esteem.
The overall tone of Goldston’s article (subscription required) is that of a reasonable, unopinionated analysis of the relationship that exists between the science community and the general public. So it’s surprising and disappointing to see a statement like the above-quoted one mixed in with the rest of the article.
So the ID people say that their position is scientific not because they think it really is, but to jockey power in the court system and in the mind of the general public? Gee, I thought I was reading Richard Dawkins’s site for a second there. I suppose Michael Behe, credentialed biochemist and researcher at Lehigh University, and one of the two or three most prominent pillars of the ID movement, says his work is science in the hope of convincing the public that he is a scientist and therefore worthy of “high esteem?”
ID advocates (as a group), believe that science is a method by which conclusions are reached, and that method is to apply logic and math to evidence to find out which theories are plausible and which are not. ID advocates think that this method renders Darwinian evolution implausible, and thus some sort of designing intelligence is indirectly inferred.
ID advocates reject the idea that science is a certain type or category of conclusion, such as the category of conclusions that include no actions by an intelligent agent.
Seeing such a glib dismissal of ID motives (never mind the content of their arguments), in such an apparently dispassionate discussion, is a dismaying reminder of what an uphill battle ID yet faces to achieve mainstream credibility.
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