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Criticisms of Eugenia Scott

She makes some good points about the underlying motives of some of those who call themselves IDers, as well as some systematic points about the inappropriateness of trying to infer beyond the limits of a natural science. These points I accept, but the following arguments made by her don't prove as much as she would hope:

1. While she makes an excellent point about how the bogus faux-science textbook used in Dover was really a slightly modified creationist book, she never addresses whether Discovery was involved in this deception. One gets the impression that the other entity was. Needs clarification.

2. She makes a very good point that all hard core creationists naturally love the arguments they find in ID manuals, as they offer support for creationist conclusions, and they are all found in Creationism. My reply: she is committing a kind of invalid conversion. Just because everything in ID is acceptable to Creationism doesn't mean the converse is true. Consider how all criticisms of laissez faire capitalism are useful to a communist critique of the same. But that doesn't imply that all opponents of laissez-faire are communists.

3. She asserts that an argument for an intelligent cause can only refer to God (after all, IDers have a religious agenda), and then rightly points out that you can't measure a transcendent agent. But some ID proponents have gone to great efforts to argue that their arguments do not necessarily support full blown monotheism. And these points actually undermine Creationism. So it's unfair of Eugenia to put words in the mouths of these fellows. On the other hand, creationists have worked hard to give a different impression, and this apparently has impressed Eugenia.

4. She criticizes the move from complexity to aritificality... more on that later...getting late!

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