Intelligent Design as a "Science Stopper"?
Image by the mad LOLscientist via Flickr
Michael Flannery August 20, 2011 1:22 PM |
It is almost a mantra among Darwin’s most devoted followers: Intelligent Design is a "science stopper." High Priestess of the Darwinian faithful Eugenie Scott insists that "Intelligent design is a science stopper. It stops science in its tracks because you stop looking. And I don’t think that’s a very good lesson to teach students" (see her comments in PBS Religion & Ethics).
What is a much worse lesson, however, is to teach students that the philosophical underpinnings of an argument can be sloughed over and that history doesn’t matter. Yet that’s precisely what the "science stopper" argument does — it ignores its own a priori philosophical assumptions and actually stops historical inquiry as if the past doesn’t matter. It, in effect, loosens science from its logical moorings and strips it from all historical context, making it into little more than an ideological tool for a dogmatic methodological naturalism (MN). Read More
