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[Phys-L] Re: NYT article on where intelligent design comes from



I wrote in part:
| | The guys driving this are deeply anti-science ...

Rauber, Joel responded in part:

Here I quibble just a tad, I'm not sure that the "guys" are anti-science.
... In a way they are being very "scientific" or perhaps more accurately
stated "social scientific" in there methods. And I suspect that they are
very scientific in how they deal with their investments; and the perceived
value in the functionality of their electronic devices, boats, planes etc etc.

This quibble is on-target. I agree with what Joel says. In particular
I agree that the ID guys are smart and coldly calculating.

I think his point can be reconciled with my point, but I need to explain
my point better. He is using "scientific" in one sense, while I was using
it in another sense.

To illustrate what I mean, consider a non-ID example: a year or so ago,
George Bush gave a speech at the re-opening of an upgraded power plant.
The administration had found a way to allow the plant to not comply with
environmental laws ... and they were boasting about it. They said that
by not enforcing the laws, they were (a) creating jobs and (b) _reducing_
pollution.

Now these guys aren't stupid. They know perfectly well that the upgraded
plant was much more polluting than it would have been if the law had been
enforced. They just don't care. They and their friends can pocket more
money if they don't have to comply with the law, so they made it happen
that way. BTW the speech was a masterpiece of obfuscation; they carefully
said that the plant was putting out less pollution than it would if it
had not been upgraded, which might even be true! They just avoided
mentioning the fact that it was putting out much more pollution than it
would if the law had been enforced ... and they figured nobody would call
them on it. They also avoided mentioning that every other plant in the
country how had to compete with this plant, making it economically
uncompetitive for others to comply with the law even if they wanted to.

Science is sometimes described as a set of methods, the best methods we
know for finding out the truth. (Various paraphrases of this have been
attributed to various sources.)

When I used the word "scientific", I had in mind the idea that scientists
by-and-large (*) want the truth to get out. In contrast, these guys
emphatically do not want the truth to get out. They're smart, and they
know the truth; they just don't want *us* to know the truth.

(*) There are exceptions: For example: I have done some classified
research, and it would be a verrry bad thing if the results became
widely known. But this is an irrelevant tangent. There's nothing
classified about ID, or about pollution from power plants. (Actually
90+% of the secret stuff I've seen could be published tomorrow and
it wouldn't make any difference, but that's yet another tangent.)

To return to the main point: The neo-extremists are like scientists in
being smart and calculating, but unlike scientists in terms of their
fundamental motivation, and in what they do with the information they
come up with.

They are also deeply antagonistic to the existing scientific community.
Scientists have found ways to respectfully disagree with each other.
They argue until a consensus if formed ... as we have seen on this list
innumerable times. But the current crop of neo-extremists doesn't play
that way. If you disagree with them, you're the enemy, and they'll come
after you. Joe Wilson and his wife are just one example of this; there
are many, many examples of FDA and EPA (etc.) staffers who have been
penalized for letting the truth get out.

========

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said everybody is entitled to their own
opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts.

I think that's a lovely expression of a lovely thought.

The neo-extremists are well aware of this saying ... but they disagree
with it. They think they are powerful enough to change the facts. And
in a sense they are. They said in 2003 that Iraq was a hotbed of terror.
It wasn't then, but it is now.