“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is Released
Current Affairs, Misinformation, Religion, Science April 21st, 2008Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was recently released in the cinemas. It apparently argues that Darwinism is incompatible with religion (which is a false dichotomy) and that it caused the holocaust. I almost want to watch it out of morbid curiosity!
AC1
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Personally I wouldnt bother.
Although I agree that it is propaganda and conspiracy theory making at its worst it does have one valid corrollary of interest.
To quote from the wiki page:
“The consensus of the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science but pseudoscience”…
This is almost certainly true. But, it is true because science as a language game has defined what it is that counts as science and what it is that must be excluded.
So it is possible to get paranoid and talk of an institutional conspiracy to silence the ID community as that is precisely what is happening.
But before any scientists go apoplexic please stop and read the words carefully.
It is the “consensus” of the “scientific community” and that means that the selfsame community is the arbitor of its own internal logic and grammar and therefore it is within the boundaries of its own language game thoroughly entitled to be selective.
The case of ID vs institutional science is a fascinating one purely because it is a clash between a well established institutional language game and a faction that wishes to internally reform that language game… but a faction that may well simply not belong to the language game it is trying to reform.
Hence as AC-1 rightly claims the ID faction are quite probably creating a false dichotomy and wrongfully portraying evolution as necessarily incompatible with theism.