Riding the Evolution-Design Roller Coaster
Seems ID activists do not shy away from inflation after all… In this case inflation of claims about a course taught by Allen MacNeill at Cornell.
The Cornell IDEA Club then posted a notice on their blog about the course, pointing out that it would be a seminar in which intelligent design theory would be discussed in the larger framework of its relationship to evolutionary theory. However (perhaps because of the source), this was immediately picked up by several websites supporting ID (most notably World Net Daily) and spun as “Cornell to Offer Course in Intelligent Design.”
Of course our friends at Uncommon Descent decided to join the fray with Cordova’s posting ID Course at Cornell.
Seems ID is desperate for attention but why not spend all this effort and energy on making ID scientifically relevant? Or is that too hard? Let’s read on:
MacNeill sends a strong message to science supporters as well
MacNeill wrote:
Despite the fact that the topic is ostensibly the philosophy of science, the debate over the validity of ID versus evolutionary theory is fundamentally a scientific debate. If scientists refuse to debate the subject, we will leave the floor open for not-quite-science, pseudoscience, and (worst of all) anti-science to claim victory, and believe me that will be what the general public perceives the ID community has achieved.
And while it is true that ID activists are quick to turn any mention, positive or negative, of Intelligent Design into PR, it is far more important to show how ID is scientifically vacuous. This means that scientists cannot and should not ignore the often overhyped claims of ID activists and should point out how ID has remained scientifically vacuous.
Only by reducing ignorance can we best combat the philosophy of ID which is founded fundamentally in our ignorance of sciences.