Notes from Evil Bender

It seem the Disco Institute has taken on a new contributer. For a “theory” in desperate need of actual predictions, surely they can top Medved, or at least go with someone who knows science, right? Of course not. Seems they’ve signed up one Martin Cothran, a rhetorician and member of one of those “family”  groups which goes about attacking all the families they don’t approve of.

But it seems Cothran does have one thing on his side: the ability to make disingenuous arguments. Take this one, where he’s eager to claim little old scientists shouldn’t be the ones discussing what is science. After all, that question is outside the range of the scientific method. (I think Cothran would have us forget that any argument’s assumptions are outside the argument’s ability to prove them.)

See, the real goal is to insure that scientists don’t have a say in, say, the Gonzalez tenure.* But of course Cothran’s little DI crew can’t actually let philosophers of science be the ones to decide the question of ID, as Cothran claims to want, because they’re no better help than the scientists. See, it was a philosopher of science, Barbara Forrest, whose evidence of the religious motivations of ID were almost as crippling to the DI in the Kitzmiller case as was the desertion of DI fellows and the testimony of Michael Behe.

No doubt the DI would love to make Forrest go away–after all, their allies seem eager to fire anyone who mentions her stalwart defense of science–but the fact is, the scientific method involves things like testable predictions and refusing to accept “a magic man done it” as sufficient explanation for natural phenomena. My prediction on the upcoming claims from Cothran: he’ll argue that philosophers of science should decide what is science, and then ignore or attack all but the most sympathetic of those philosophers.

I don’t know Cothran, but I know the kind of people the DI recruit. And I feel comfortable in making this prediction.

To recap: according to various DI lackeys, scientists don’t know what science is. Philosophers of science should decide that. Except when a judge uses one of those philosopher’s expert testimony to rule that cdesign propoentsists are just Creationists in disguise, then that judge clearly doesn’t know anything. In fact, we should probably attack both the philosopher and the judge, possibly with flatulence sound effects in the background.
*And we’re back to the “I.D. is science, not religion. But scientists discussing I.D.’s merits, well, we clearly can’t have that.”