William Dembski, well-known Intelligent Design spokesperson, had a very funny article the other day entitled Evolution and the Stages of Grief. I just *have* to summarize it ;). In the article, he outlines three models for the process of how new truths are recognized. You’ve probably heard of them, but as applied to evolution, they are especially poignant. Check out the original article for Dembski’s commentary.
Schopenhauer’s Stages
All truth passes through three stages:
- Ridicule
- Violent Opposition
- Acceptance as Self-Evident
Haldane’s Stages
Theories pass through four stages of acceptance:
- this is worthless nonsense
- this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view
- this is true, but quite unimportant
- I always said so.
Stages of Grief
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
I’d say we are at stage 2 in all three models. On the stages of grief, Dembski notes
I expect soon enough evolutionists will start bargaining, attempting to minimize the importance of ID while trying to incorporate some of its legitimate insights.
As for acceptance, I doubt that much of the old guard will ever get that far. Rather, acceptance will come from a younger generation that is able to throw off the shackles of materialistic thinking.
Hey, if I promise to ease up on you guys supporting Intelligent Design, will you allow for a teaching of the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Obviously, if you're willing to have two versions of creation taught in schools, you surely wouldn't mind three, right? Because, obviously, you're just interested in getting different ideas out there, right? Right?
Right?
(Or are you really only interested in Christian theology being taught in public schools?)
Also, this is absurd. You're simply ignoring the requirements of science while you claim that ID is somehow valid. It obviously isn't. It obviously is an attempt to indoctrinate all children with Christian ideology. Any claim otherwise is just a flat out lie.
Actually, I listened to an interview of Dembski today on the Tavis Smiley Show (NPR), and he made it very clear that he has no intentions of pushing ID in the schools at all.
Like him, I think we need to do only one thing – explain that macroevolution is a theory, not a fact, and that it has a growing number of doubters. It is not basic science, though it might be basic philosophy of science. As I have said, proven mechanisms such as adaptation and natural selection, both of which are compatible with creationism, should be taught as valid natural processes.
But as to a theory of origins, it is a non-sequitur to say that they prove common descent. And if students can hear one day of Creation Science, which, contrary to evolutionist rantings, does involve science, that would be fine. Let's keep the liberal thought police at bay for at least a day a year.
I'm sure you doubt this, so I'll have to attempt a post on how the Creationist model fits the facts, and how it is predictive. Also, based on the predictive model, I hope to discuss what research should and is being done. Not to prove God, but to prove that the Creationist world view and the processes it relies on (like entropy and the gradual slowing and degredation of the universe) are true.
Most of biology and the sciences can be taught without reference to evolution because it is not really material – it's just one philosophical world view, or model into which people try to fit the facts.
As a trained biochemist, I was aghast to discover that the facts support evolution poorly, as do statistics. I remember studying the genetics of the phi-174 phage, one of the simplest of organisms. It's genome is so complex, that even my non-religious biochem teacher remarked on how unlikely it was that such an arrangement of genes could happen by chance.
Atheistic, naturalistic macroevolution may have never occurred. Our future scientists and citizens, in the name of logic an intellectual honesty, need to know this so that they don't feel betrayed by the priests of science evolution, as I did.
BTW, the humorous spaghetti monster, while a nice satyrical jab, is fraught with poor analogies to creation science and ID, and further exemplifies the type of ridicule that will give way to anger or poo-pooing as the truths suggested by ID take root. Good luck with your evolution thing – science will continue on, but hopefully, it will return to a deist world view rather than the erroneous materialistic view that now stifles it.
I understand the need to keep superstition and religion out of science, but as a philosophy of science, it should lead us to better conclusions and discoveries if it is correct. And it has in the past. And please don't bring up the tired flat earth myth or the whole Copernican thing – many of our greatest scientists had Xian faith which informed their science.
Yeah, don't bring up those things which proved your point Sam – that's not innappropriate. Instead, play by my rules. If you don't, I'd probably lose, and since I wouldn't enjoy that, it won't happen.
Seeker,
The point about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is this – you can't disprove it, and who are you to say that what somebody else believes is wrong. In fact, how dare you? You sit here playing the poor victim card that nobody will believe your precious ID, and then when somebody else proposes another equally unprovable theory, you brush it off.
In other words, its totally hypocritical.
First of all, there is a difference between nonsensical claims (spaghetti) and claims that have supporting evidence.
I'm not sure what you are referring to about "claiming someone else is wrong." I am merely claiming that ID is raising good questions, and evolutionists are ignoring them to their peril, all the while claiming sound factual footing that is doubtful at best. The longer they claim themselves on solid ground, the more they will slip, because they are ignoring truth's queries.
BTW, I'm not a super ID supporter, I think it is interesting and fun to poke the evolution monster.
I am a huge doubter in evolution and a young-earth creationist sympathizer. My main beefs with evolution are:
– it keeps claiming itself as fact when it is merely unobservable theory, a philosophy of science that is moderately, if not poorly supported by the data
– it has theological implications that evolutionists like but refuse to acknowledge. These implications support a system of faith (or anti-faith) that evolutionists in general claim is not a faith, even though it functions that way for them – it is a worldview that they claim is innocuous when it is not
– i find the creationists arguments compelling, interesting, and better than those of the evolutionists, so I like fighting for them
Go figure.
Where is your science? Prove ID Seeker, without simply arguing that the world is so complex that it MUST have been created by God. (Also, how do you know that the Intelligence that created our world wasn't any of the other religious worldviews? There's no more evidence for God zapping the world into existence than there is for all of riding on the back of an elephant or whatever else. Your Christian supremist view in arguing ID is infuriating.)
For the last time, I don't base my creationist position on ID, nor do I feel compelled to defend it. ID is demanding that evolutionists answer the question that they avoid: if you saw design in nature, how would you know it? If information must have a designer, what about the amazing information stored and transmitted in DNA? Do you really expect us to believe that chance processes over millions of years made this? That is your theory? And you say it is fact, and that I must believe you or be labeled a rube?
That's what ID is about.
Now, if you want science about why I doubt evolution, and why I think Creationism is a better model for origins, then we can talk. We can talk geology, astronomy, fossils, particle physics, vestigial organs, etc. But none of that is ID.
None of that is "the world is so complex their must be a God." I'm not crazy about that argument myself – but that's not really what ID is saying, exactly – it is asking "prove to me that this is natrual and not designed." Evolutionists are avoiding the challenge, as I see it.
Sam, you obviously (that seems to be your favourite word) do not really read, what others write. Not more till you understand, on wich side one stands.
The point in the posting is: You are at stage two: Anger. And all you do is showing that you truely are angry.
And for your flying spaghetti monster: It simply is a straw man. An so, detected with Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit as a baloney, poooof! – there it goes, blasted away.
Wait, there is a baloney detection kit? Where can i get one? ;)
Joachim,
I am not angry because I am afraid that you might be right. I know that you aren't right. I am angry because Seeker ignores everything that he is demanding from everybody else.
For instance, while we have to prove evolution to him, he isn't required to prove ID to us. For instance, while he argues that God created the universe, he believes that homosexuals evolved.
For me, I am angry because of the inconsistency. Also, Christianity is one giant straw man, a creation of powerful people who desired only to lord over those followed it. Because it is a straw man, it no longer has to be taken seriously at all. Right Joachim? Right?
Or are you right simply because you're a believing Christian, and you know that I don't believe in the Spaghetti Monster?
Sam, I told you, I am not defending ID, nor am I saying that they prove there is a god. I only admit that they ask good questions which evolution does not answer.
In fact, I would much rather defend creation science, which does not depend entirely on the statistical impossibility of evolution (although it does attack that as well as bringing up evidence that seems contradictory.)
The way you talk, it sounds like you are arguing or mad at another "seeker" who claims ID is the gospel – maybe the seeker in your mind, but not this one.
Anyway, this post was really only about the acceptance of new truths, and the stages it goes through, and my somewhat provocative and unsubstantiated claim that evolution is going through said stages.
faith-based arguments by their very definition can be neither proven nor disproven, and are inherently unscientific…
I do have one concern with teaching ID, Evolution, Creationism, or any theory on the origins of the universe. I'd prefer to teach those things to my kids myself, I really don't trust schools to pose the pros and cons of the various theories, especially the ones rooted in faith-based logic as opposed to empirical observations. This is the same fear I have about formalized school prayer. Kind of a tangent, but I think worth throwing out there.