Science and sensibility

Science and sensibility

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Indigenous fundamentalists

One of the scariest things about the rise of the Intelligent Design movement is the way religious fundamentalists can point to it to ostensibly lend credence to their wacky claims. Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church should be proof enough for any New Zealander that we possess our own fundamentalists. One such home grown intransigent is one time talkback host and now editor of Investigate Magazine, Ian Wishart. I recently happened across Wishart’s own online forum and intend to use this post to show how he uses the seemingly sophisticated arguments of ID as a crutch for his entirely half-baked beliefs.

Before I begin I would like to make it clear that the ID movement doesn’t actually present sophisticated arguments against orthodox evolutionary theory. People much more eloquent than I have persuasively refuted their claims, and I suggest you read some of the posts found over at the Panda’s Thumb or Talk Reason if you haven’t already. The problem I’m talking about here is that in the hands of traditional fundamentalists the claims of ID can be used to paint a picture of evolutionary biology as a science in crisis, with serious scientific questions attacking it core principles. So, with that disclaimer out of the way lets move on to Wishart. He sums up his philosophy in one of the oldest posts still archived on his forums, and its that one I will concentrate on here. He starts by saying he had described, on his radio show, some piece of news from NASA that lent support to the theory that the big bang started the universe and a heat death will end it. He follows that up with

A listener wrote to me worried that as Christians we should not be accepting NASA science over what is written in our Bibles. I agree, we shouldn’t.
Ok, so what he is saying is that his personal beliefs, dictated to him by words scrawled by Bronze Age desert scribes on the hides of animals are more likely to be correct than the insights of Galileo, Newton, Hubble and Einstein. And it’s scientists that are for ever being called up as arrogant!
You see, I’m of the school of thought that says there is nothing in the Bible that conflicts with modern science or with history.

Say what now? The bible that describes the stars as small things in the sky; added after earth and set to fall back down to earth come the end of days? The bible that says fleece colour in goats isn’t under genetic or even epigenetic control but based on the colour that makes the backdrop to goat’s rendezvous OK, so now he’s outed himself as a crazy, he takes the word of his version of God as being more true than testable facts – it’s a fairly bizarre way to live you life but he’s welcome to it. You’d think beliefs like that sidelined you from any sort of scientific debate, but Ian is made of sterner stuff:

I’m sure many of you are wondering how Intelligent Design science compares with Creationism when there appear to be some fundamental differences.
Well, I have a fair idea, but go on.

Let me reassure you, the differences are only skin deep.

I knew it!

What Intelligent Design does is that it uses the tools and discoveries of science to prove that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is wrong.

What Creationism does is use the Bible, the inspired and inerrant word of God, to prove that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is wrong.

I guess that’s a special definition of inerrant I haven’t run into before. So, smart arsery aside, what he’s saying is that ID is trying to use science to disprove science, and lend support to his favourite creation myth. What he doesn't say is that is isn't working, there is no massive shift within science to creationist "god did it" explanations of nature. For Wishart and other bible literalists scientists have it wrong until they produce a theory that supports (or actually doesn’t refute) a biblical account of the thing that theory is describing. When such a theory is produced it becomes the banner for the fight which is taken to the atheistic god hating materialists in the holy war against truth. The rest of his message board is full of such "scientific breakthroughs", of course only the ones that make it through his selective filter and most of those emmintate for ID theorists and even young earth creationists. Each one is trumpeted as another step towards the destruction of the Darwinian paradigm. (There is also a lot of mindless reproduction of Jonathan Wells' "Icons".) Apparetnly there are 6000 page requests a day at his website and the vast majority of them wil earn the requester a seemingly scientific objection to evolutionary theory - few will realise how the scientific community actually takes such objections. Bashing creationists is easy, and usually not particularly worthwhile; people that are already infected by religious dogma are unlikely to be rationalised out of it. Ian Wishart’s magazine enjoys a reasonable circulation and actually covers some interesting topics when it steps outside of the traditional right wing fundamentalist agenda. His use of seemingly scientific arguments and lies about floods of scientists repenting there atheistic ways can actually influence peoples opinions. Hopefully this post will help to show that with very little digging it become clear that Wishart is only using ID as a convenient tool for advancing his own backward beliefs.
Posted by David Winter 4:13 pm

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