Notes from Evil Bender

Martin Cothran, the DI’s media complaints contributer, has taken issue with my post suggesting he was more of the same from the DI. My argument was that Cothran was deliberately attempting to confuse the definition of science in order to redefine it so ID somehow qualifies.*

I wrote:

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.

Cothran replied, accusing me of trying to mind read. Naturally I don’t have to do that, as I’ve had enough interactions with ID advocates to know how they approach a problem. If Cothran really wants to demonstrate I don’t know what I’m talking about, he only has to avoid the above pitfalls. You see, I’ve made a testable prediction, and one that’s not even blind: Cothran knows what I’ve predicted. We’ll see if he can avoid fulfilling that prediction.

It doesn’t look good so far. After engaging in a staple tactic of those who attack me–trying to crack jokes about how evil I must be given my screenname–he gets to his point. Writes Cothran:

Evil Bender’s first charge is that my comments were disingenuous. In other words, he is asserting that I am making arguments in which I do not myself believe.

Correct. Mr Cothran, I’m saying you don’t care who should decide what is science, except to the extent that you’re looking for an excuse to ignore actual scientists and get supernatural BS taught in classrooms. My contention is that you’re attempting to frame the debate about what science is in such a way as to end-run around actual science and claim Creationism Intelligent Design is science.

Does Evil Bender think that the question “what is science?” is a scientific question after all?

I think you’re engaging in the worst kind of sophistry. I think you’re hoping to create a rhetorical trap to pursue your goal of getting a religious idea taught as science. I think if you actually cared about good science, you wouldn’t spend your time defending so-called theories that make no predictions.

He’ll read my mind and conclude I’m asking the question just to be a smart alec.

You’ll notice, despite repeated attempts by commenters to get him to explain himself, Cothran hasn’t done so. He has not weighed in on what science is, nor has he explained why ID should be science. He has not explained what ID predicts, or added anything to the conversation. He’s instead asking a question that brings nothing to the discussion, and steadfastly avoiding coming to any conclusions.

Once again, I’ll predict: this is all about trying to get ID defined as science. If Cothran ever follows up with any real discussion (which I doubt–he completely avoided my point that we’ve already seen ID folks do what I’m predicting he’ll do) and he does not use all this as a prelude to claiming science includes his favorite God-of-the-Gaps theory, I’ll happily retract my claims, and admit it publicly. But I’ll only do so if he demonstrates his agenda is anything other than re-defining science to get ID the credibility it can’t find in the scientific community.

But I only feel it’s fair to indicate to Cothran what the pro-science community expects of him. At very least, if he’s going to argue for ID-as-science, he’ll have to explain its predictive power, how its predictions differ from evolutionary theory, how it could be falsified, and what mechanisms God the unnamed creator used to design whatever it was he designed. Hell, I’ll go further: as soon as ID starts making testable predictions for how ID would differ from evolution, and as soon as it starts actually publishing peer-reviewed science in support of its claims, I’ll be happy to reconsider this question.

Until that time, I’m no more willing to call ID science than I would be to call FSM “science,” or miracles “science,” or to say “what color are unicorns” is a scientific question. ID adds nothing to our knowledge, makes no predictions, and refuses to engage in substantive discussion. Instead, its proponents hang around trying to get science re-defined, instead of actually doing science.

*Not that he’d have any luck. You’d think the DI would have learned something from Behe’s humiliating admission that Astrology counted as science under his definition.