Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Postmodern language studies weighs in on design in nature

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From Politics in science—High modulation of engagement in intelligent design discourse at Journal of Language and Politics:

Intelligent design is a pseudoscientific concept conceived in an attempt to bring religion-based teaching into the classroom. As such, it is involved in a constant struggle for dialogic space with the dominant scientific discourse of the theory of evolution. Here, we use a corpus linguistic approach to study how intelligent design discourse uses engagement to forward its creationistic propositions and at the same time limit the propositions of the theory of evolution. The results suggest that intelligent design discourse employs engagement far more frequently than evolutionary biology discourse, mainly to counter opposing propositions and to entertain its own proposition in their stead. The underdog position of ID obligates it to highly modulated engagement in order forward its position, which is ultimately aimed at changing the political decision-making related to the teaching of science. (paywall) More.

Yeah, more Tales of the Tone Deaf, Part 29ff.

Here’s Rob Sheldon’s take on the above precursor to a Sokal hoax:

In our post-modern world that elevates the subjective over the objective, the only important thing is how it affects themselves.

When a post-modern accuses you of (a) manipulation, (b) “uses engagement to forward its creationist propositions”, all the while “limit the propositions of the [opposing] theory”, for the ultimate goal of (c) “changing the political decision-making…”

then all you are seeing is Freudian projection. This is what they do. This is all they know. This is why they suspect everyone else of doing exactly the same thing. This is their greatest fear, that others will do it better than they. And since they cannot admit their fear, it torments them day and night.

Most post-moderns do not believe that there is a fact base that humans can apprehend. They know only politics and, when that fails, violence, pure and simple.

Darwinism, however disastrous otherwise, feels so natural to them.

See also: Is origin of life a fluke, physics… or just not a science question at present?

New Scientist: Evolution “more baffling than we thought”

Tales of the Tone Deaf, featuring dim profs writing in dozy journals about why people doubt Science and how to Fix them.

and

Prof claims to know how to slam dunk creationists

Comments
"Highly modulated engagement".... isn't that the design goal of an automatic transmission? If that's not what they mean, then this is just another variation on the old leftist line that the enemy is succeeding because it does a better job of teaching and explaining things. Hint to the left: A teacher who explains things better usually has a stronger acquaintance with facts. If you can't explain your side, it means you need to sort out your facts first.polistra
August 30, 2017
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