Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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Hartwig's "Darwinian Resolution"
Mark Hartwig responds to the AAAS anti-ID resolution with the following:
| Quote | | Placed side-by-side with other public statements, the resolution and op-eds show how widespread Darwinist anxiety has become. [1] More importantly, however, they also reveal why Darwinists are losing ground: namely, because they are misleading their supporters. |
How are supporters being misled?
| Quote | In his op-ed for the Beacon Journal, Leshner attributed the ID movement’s success to “a sophisticated marketing campaign based on a three-pronged penetration of the scientific community, educators, and the general public.” This echoes a key theme of ID foes, which says the ID movement is succeeding by duping the public with shrewd tactics and a big-bucks marketing campaign.
Such claims are a great way to rally the troops: “Don’t worry boys, they’re just shooting blanks.” But they’re also a great way to get those troops mowed down, due to cockiness and lack of preparation.
Imagine someone repeating Leshner’s claim in a public forum. It would be a small matter to show that the balance of marketing power lies with the Darwinists. Indeed, the byline for Leshner’s piece in the Beacon-Journal notes that his organization “has 134,000 members serving 10 million scientists worldwide and publishes the weekly journal Science.”
[details of the marketing plan for the Evolution TV series skipped - WRE]
With the financial and talent resources that the Darwinist establishment has at its disposal, anyone repeating Leshner’s claim in a public forum is likely to end up looking foolish or disingenuous. |
Note carefully what Hartwig does not do: he does not show that the claim in question is false, but rather engages the tu quoque fallacy. AAAS has a lot of members and sends them information, sure, but what has that got to do with the issue of whether ID's success is due to marketing or to content? Where is it that Leshner misleads? It appears to me that the person looking foolish or disingenuous is likely to be the one who had to use tu quoque in order to have the semblance of a response.
Next up, Hartwig tries again on another issue:
| Quote | | The same is true for anyone who tries to defend the notion that there is no evidence against evolution and that ID success is a matter of deception and style rather than substance. Darwinist leaders have repeated these claims for years, arguing that dissent is unreasonable and should be banished from science classrooms. Such tactics are an easy mark for ID proponents, who have responded by publicizing scientific evidence against naturalistic evolution, by documenting the pervasiveness of egregious errors in biology textbooks’ treatment of evolution, and by doggedly insisting that debate be based on facts and reason rather than alleged motives. |
And again Hartwig fails to touch the issue, which is whether ID advocacy has any content of its own. Even Hartwig can't name any, for his list is composed entirely of negative arguments concerning evolutionary biology and meta-arguments about debating style.
Again, where is it that Leshner misled anyone? Hartwig certainly develops no argument that such was the case.
Wesley
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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