deadman_932
Posts: 3094
Joined: May 2006
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Turncoat -- There are atheists, agnistics, and believers of various stripes in this forum, united largely only by a desire to point out what is clearly wrong with ID.
It will seem to some that you are advocating public-relations politicking and compromise with the deliberately dishonest.
I'm writing this late at night, and I'm sure I'll find better ways of phrasing things in the AM, but this whole problem is one of the most complex I know of, and I don't think complex social problems are regularly solved by anything less than complex solutions.
(1) I don't personally have a problem with using PR ; I tend to believe that *IF* believers were in fact being honest with themselves and others, that they'd see the futility of trying to "prove" that which requires faith (or so they say) by their own teachings.
Allowing them that leeway without attacking directly might in fact be useful in a public-relations sense.
(2) However, I also don't believe most *people* are honest with themselves -- not about many, many things -- including about what ID represents and ID goals.
ID/creationism itself is about power, at least if we are to take them for their Wedge Document word. They want their beliefs to be shown true, to the exclusion of all others and they were/are interested in social dominance and power. They are not interested in truth when it doesn't suit that agenda.
Religion itself is often about social control and power, but it's also about dozens of other things; fear of death, comfort, strength, feeling joy and at-one with the universe, "ultimate meaning and purpose" etc, etc. It's the ultra-Swiss Army knife of memes, so to speak. It is at the root of many people's identities and no amount of evidence or PR will easily convince them otherwise, if ever. Very often, conservative true believers will die first, or kill you and seek salvation later. Either way, not good.
Anyway, power ultimately trumps honesty more often than not, in my experience.
While you feel that Christian conservatives highly value honesty, I think it's possible to point to many examples of high-profile Christian leaders that have been caught lying, cheating, sinning, whatever, and then forgiven because it's built into Christianity that such things can be forgiven.
So honesty may be valued in the conservative Christian mind -- but dishonesty can also be excused and forgiven, particularly when power is at stake.
Granted, the idea is to expose ID as fraudulent, AND to win over the minds of the public, but up until recently, straightforward Young Earth Creationism held sway in the conservative christian mind. YEC was defeated evidentially (and it is defeated in terms of evidence) by straightforward science -- not PR and compromise.
Yet, if polls are to be taken as evidence, MOST American conservative Christians STILL adhere to young earth special creationism, some of it clothed in ID terms. They do so not due to the evidence (which honesty would compel them to agree with -- like radiometric dating and a hundred other points). Rather, they continue to believe because it's what they want to believe, regardless of the evidence and honesty be damned.
None of these things speak well of a single-focus strategy, not of just PR work and compromise, nor of *just* battering with evidence. I'll just end by saying that carrots and sticks can obviously be used simultaneously, but I'm not sure what else is missing. You're not completely wrong, but you're not completely right, (and neither am I). I'll try to think about this more and see if I can make my words more succinct and less abrasive in future posts on the topic, but as I said, it's late here.
Cheers, anyway.
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AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
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