Misplaced Pages

I quoted ID theorist Paul Nelson, who wrote: “Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem … we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as ‘irreducible complexity’ and ‘specified complexity’—but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.” The retired Berkeley lawyer, Philip Johnson, considered the founder of ID, made similar comments: “I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked-out scheme.”

— Karl W. Giberson, My Debate With an ‘Intelligent Design’ Theorist

The claim that ID is a philosophical/religious argument masquerading as empirical science is abundantly sourced in our article. I suggest WP:STICK. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:28, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Although I agree with you, maybe the best way to describe it is more or less the way you did above, although maybe with a milder description than masquerading. If there is some limited controversy, as indicated above by the sources he cites, we might be best using language like you do above. John Carter (talk) 23:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Well technically ID is a theory of design. Any argument that said design proves God exists would be a separate item. Markbassett (talk) 08:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

It is neither theory nor hypothesis. ID sent the firing squad to execute Darwin, but (scientifically seen) they only have blank bullets. Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:17, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Struck through edits by sock of Apollo the Logician. Doug Weller talk 15:59, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

My $0.02 on the issue of bias

As the originator of and the first person to elaborate Misplaced Pages's neutrality policy, and as an agnostic who believes intelligent design to be completely wrong, I just have to say that this article is appallingly biased. It simply cannot be defended as neutral. If you want to understand why, read this. I'm not here to argue the point, as I completely despair of persuading Wikipedians of the error of their ways. I'm just officially registering my protest. --Larry Sanger (talk) 05:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree, Larry. It's disturbing how certain pages on Misplaced Pages have a gaggle of overlords who hover over certain pages and make sure their point of view is the only one allowed. They apparently have plenty of time to babysit their precious pages while the rest of us have day jobs and give up editing pages after a few reverts happen. I'm just tired of it. --Rcronk (talk) 05:43, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

This is how Misplaced Pages works: mainstream scientists/mainstream scholars say something in WP:RS. Misplaced Pages repeats what they said. So Misplaced Pages strongly supports mainstream science, there is no way it could be otherwise. See WP:NOTNEUTRAL. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

• Interestingly, your Para 25 on how creationism should be taught in schools is pretty much exactly what happens here in the UK. No other concepts than evolution are taught in biology classes, but the beliefs of all the main religions are taught in Religious Education classes (including atheism and agnosticism), which parents do have the right to withdraw their children from if necessary. I suppose the main difference is that here in the UK "creationism" isn't really a thing here as it is in the US. Biblical literalism is very much a minority view; even many people who describe themselves as "Christian" do not take the Bible to be verbatim fact. Children are taught Christian beliefs in schools, which of course includes the Creation narrative, but few if any links are made to biology; in British life there simply isn't a controversy about it which children need to be taught. Some (a minority) of people believe in creation and that evolution is false or partly so, but there simply isn't the dichotomy that there is in the US. I suspect this may lie behind many of the issues on this page and others (such as pages on the Age of the Universe/Earth, dinosaurs etc.) as I would suggest the dissenting voices may not realize that the "controversy" they are complaining about simply doesn't exist in many other countries. Black Kite (talk) 13:17, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I've read that entire essay, and found that it hinges upon the presupposition that the validity of a point of view and the accuracy, utility and morality of that point of view are independent. Indeed, the whole thing reeks of post-modernist relativism in which truth is an entirely subjective construct upon which reality has very little effect. Once one accepts that there is such a thing as objective reality, the arguments in your essay fall apart. This is underscored by the essays own repeated appeals to critical thought, which pay lip service to ideals likely to resonate with its audience without actually respecting them in any meaningful ways. Some controversies (quite obviously including this one to anyone with any knowledge of it) are not actually controversies among intellectually honest peers with similar levels of expertise and credibility, but manufactured controversies between those who know what they're talking about and those who will lie, cheat and steal to serve their own interests. This is a fundamentally different beast than a controversy between political ideologies in which all sides are both earnest and occasionally dishonest, or a scientific controversy in which all sides are both earnest and honest and differ only in the nature or interpretation of evidence. The equivocation of those sorts of controversies with a controversy such as this one is necessarily the result of either profound ignorance, or a rather hypocritical bias towards post-modernist thought (which, itself, is barely more feasible than biblical literalism).

Furthermore, the insinuation that this represents a failing on the part of the editors of this project completely ignores the existence, utility and meaning of our policy on verifiability. One would expect the founder of WP to recognize just how fundamental that policy is to this project, especially given that it is used in your other project, as well. I suppose the argument could be made that you are implying that this article doesn't actually meet that criteria (thereby implying that reliable sources take ID more seriously than WP does), but that's trivially easy to disprove, as the sources themselves are right there for all to see.

Finally, this is once again, another editor crying "bias!" without ever bothering to point out specific problems that could, conceivably be addressed. The closest thing this comment does to pointing out a problem is -as I previously implied- by calling the article biased and then linking to an essay that claims that biased media "...seem to get the facts wrong so often..." Well, if you are disputing the factual accuracy of anything in the article, you would be better served to actually make a convincing case that there are factual inaccuracies, rather than using this talk page as a forum to promote your own writing. If you are not suggesting that the factual accuracy of this article is in dispute, then given the nature of those claims of fact made by this article, I see absolutely no purpose to your comment at all. Except, of course, by bringing attention to something you wrote. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:53, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

My view is that postmodernism works well for sciences which don't have a paradigm (e.g. psychology, sociology, history), but fails for sciences that do have one (e.g. physics, chemistry, etc.). Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:14, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm with ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants here. What purpose could possibly be service by wafting by just to tell us that the article is biased? Without specifics such a post reeks of simply self-promotion. Larry is no different than all the other creationists who come here decrying the article but without any sense of how it should be improved. For all his pride about writing the neutrality policy, Larry doesn't seem to know what a talk page is for. --Adamfinmo (talk) 05:59, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

I think Moynihan's approach is best: we are all entitled to our opinions but not to our own facts. The argument from is a legitimate philosophical theory that the universe shows design, therefore there was a designer. But when it is presented as a scientific theory it is a lie. It misrepresents that science could resolve issues such as the existence of God. TFD (talk) 02:24, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

From our fans: Misplaced Pages Co-Founder Blasts “Appallingly Biased” Misplaced Pages Entry on Intelligent Design Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:05, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

This is why this sort of self-righteous naval gazing is so fucking immature; people with an audience like Sanger never stop to think about the consequences of their self-righteous naval gazing. Now there's another (broken, but still) arrow in the quiver of creationists who want to show up here whining about our "bias" and another call to arms for more of them to do so. This whole stupid stunt accomplishes nothing except making himself look like a fool to anyone who actually gives this article careful thought and making life worse for anyone who's watchlisted this page. Good job, Sanger. I hope you're proud of yourself. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:57, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

"F***ing immature"? Leaving aside the irony, the tone of this comment reveals a lot about the attitude driving what is, indeed, the "appalling bias" - not to mention poor structure and phraseology - of the article as it stands. Even to those with no horse in the race, the axe-grinding is palpable. The gang of ideologues who have taken it on themselves to enforce this bias would do well to ponder the following quote: "how to succeed - try hard enough; how to fail - try too hard". A subtle critique of ID - for those who wish to flout Sanger's neutrality guidelines - is far more likely to carry weight in the long term. Sam T. (talk) 13:12, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

"the validity of a point of view and the accuracy, utility and morality of that point of view are independent" - My essay neither says nor implies any such thing. The notion that either I am committed to "post-modern relativism," or the essay is, is just funny to anyone who knows me. "Once one accepts that there is such a thing as objective reality, the arguments in your essay fall apart." Nonsense. But go ahead and argue how accepting that an objective reality exists—something to which I'm sure I'm at least as strongly committed as you are—shows that my arguments can't be defended. Pick one and construct your rebuttal. I'll wait.

And if you're right, well—it follows that you are rejecting the neutrality policy. You don't want to let people think for themselves and make up their own minds. You'd prefer to force readers' minds, to bend them to your will, rather than fairly presenting arguments on all sides and allowing readers to make up their own minds. Am I wrong?

Maybe you read the essay, but you didn't understand what you read.

And the purpose of telling you all this, of course, is to give you feedback. You think you understand what neutrality requires; I'm saying that you don't. Or else you do, and you actually reject neutrality, because (maybe) you think standards of neutrality involve a "post-modern relativism." --Larry Sanger (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

My essay neither says nor implies any such thing. The hell it doesn't. In the context in which you have presented this to us, you drew a completely false -and frankly, rather ignorant- equivocation between the validity of ID and the validity of evolutionary theory. You did so while claiming that you don't believe in ID. In other words, you implicitly admitted that there's no utility, accuracy or morality to ID, then made the explicit claim that it's validity is equal to ET's. Whether you intended to do it or not, that's exactly what you communicated.

Nonsense. But go ahead and argue how accepting that an objective reality exists—something to which I'm sure I'm at least as strongly committed as you are—shows that my arguments can't be defended. Pick one and construct your rebuttal. I'll wait. You don't have to wait. See the paragraph above.

And if you're right, well—it follows that you are rejecting the neutrality policy. No, it doesn't. It's amazing how someone who has the audacity to brag about crafting the neutrality policy can be so incredibly ignorant of the most important point, repeated numerous times and upheld by reams of sound reasoning and empirical evidence: that neutrality is not the same thing as a false balance of validity. Because your whole argument was that there needs to be a false balance between science and pseudoscience.

You don't want to let people think for themselves and make up their own minds. You don't want to let people think for themselves and make up their own minds. You'd prefer to force readers' minds, to bend them to your will, rather than fairly presenting arguments on all sides and allowing readers to make up their own minds. Am I wrong? Yes. More so than you can probably even comprehend.

Maybe you read the essay, but you didn't understand what you read. Given that you made it explicitly clear with your comments in this thread that the rationale of your essay tracks exactly with the way I described it, it'd be easier to convince someone that you didn't understand what you wrote.

You think you understand what neutrality requires; I'm saying that you don't. You have demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of virtually every policy you have addressed in your entire editing history. Absolutely no-one is going to take your word for this. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:20, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

We receive plenty enough feedback complaining about how the Intelligent Design and other Creationism-related articles are "biased" and terrible because they do not discuss those topics in warm, loving, and praise-filled prose mirroring various Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design-themed websites as is. That, and Misplaced Pages does not operate under the idea that "neutrality" and "unbiased" mean "filled with praise" and "censoring unflattering truths in revenge for being being hurtful and unflattering."--Mr Fink (talk) 04:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

In order to "make up your own mind", you need information. Disinformation is not helpful. That is why we need to use reliable sources and not use unreliable sources. But the ID standpoint comes from unreliable sources, so we can't use those directly. We need to follow what the reliable sources say about ID, and the article is the way it is because it simply says what the reliable sources say.

Of course, you can now say that this depends on which sources you consider reliable. Well, if they have a history of misreprentation, they are out. The Discovery Institute is out.

If we didn't do it like this, if we didn't care about the reliability of sources, we would also have to accept pathological liars and fake news sites as sources. Some say Comet Pizza has a basement, some say it doesn't. Some say Roy Moore won the election, some say he didn't. Some say the Jews are the cause of all evil and must all be exterminated, some don't. Of course, one can draw a line somewhere, including the ID proponents but excluding Goebbels, but that line is always subjective. The most objective one is to forbid all the dishonest sources.

In your essay, you completely ignore the reliability of sources. But this is actually the underlying cause of this article being the way it is.

Maybe you are just not as familiar with the dishonesty of ID sources, maybe you fell for the part of their propaganda that says ID is a legitimate idea.

Maybe you do have a point somewhere, maybe this is not what you mean, but as long as you don't say exactly what is, in your view, wrong with the article, we cannot do anything about it. To make that point clearer, consider this dialogue:

Larry Sanger: "This article is bad. Improve it."

Mr Fink: "Oh, I hadn't noticed that. I will remedy it now. Thank you."

So, do you want to give the liars more room? Include quotes that misrepresent evolution without pointing out that they misrepresent evolution? --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:29, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

In what sense are there no reliable sources? No reliable sources about what the ID arguments are? Surely an official ID website is a reliable source - indeed, the reliable source - for what the ID arguments are - and yet these are quoted sparingly, while the opinion of critics have many citations, even ones with little knowledge of the subject such as Bill Nye being quoted several times. You say they are dishonest, but how can they be dishonest about what their own arguments are - surely it's impossible for a person to be dishonest about what statements they are making? If you believe that, it would seem that you are the one lying to yourself. Whether 'ID is a legitimate idea' is irrelevant - horoscopes are not a legitimate idea, but I think you'll find the Misplaced Pages page on that to be fairly neutral, that article merely presents the facts rather than continuously pointing out how many negative opinions many people have of that idea. I think his article said that even if an idea is wrong, the arguments made by its proponents should be presented in their strongest form, and that is clearly not being done here. Indeed, even though there is a section devoted to 'Criticisms', I'd estimate slightly over half of the 'Concepts' section is also devoted to criticisms. Where is the section actually devoted to what the article is actually about, rather than to criticisms of it? I'd say the TL;DR of Larry's article was that if an article is neutral, you shouldn't know which side the writer supports. Can you honestly say you believe that about this article? 81.141.245.201 (talk) 17:07, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Don't squeeze your words into other people's contributions. It is rude and it makes the page harder to understand for others. I remedied that slightly - actually, it should be below Roxy's older contribution, but that one has already been answered.

"how can they be dishonest about what their own arguments are" - I did not say they were dishonest about what their own arguments are. You are drifting farther away from the point.

The ID arguments are strongest when they are proposed to an uninformed person. No, we will not present them like that.

"if an article is neutral, you shouldn't know which side the writer supports." This is concept of neutrality that is different from Misplaced Pages's NPOV. It is the one favored by know-nothings and postmodernists, but it does not help the reader to understand. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:31, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Question. Is Larry a creationist? I know nothing about him except that he was involved in the project in the early days. -Roxy, Zalophus californianus. barcus 07:44, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Ken Ham seems to think Bill Nye is a person qualified to comment on creationism. And if anyone is an expert on this particular conceit, then it is he. Guy (Help!) 20:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• I read Larry Sanger's piece. It does not provide any substantive reason why there is anything wrong with this article. In fact, I think he has been talking to too many cdesign proponentsists.

: The popularity of such views combined with the relative silence about them in the media suggests that journalists would find neutral coverage of such topics to be “false balance.” These also suggest at least two different variants of the argument to consider: a moral variant and an epistemological variant.

Really? How about this as an alternative hypothesis: the media don't cover these views because they are wrong. Sanger correctly identifies these as areas of legitimate scientific inquiry. Science is inherently neutral. Sanger talks about false equivalence and the difference between "balance" and "neutrality". In fact, that has been a core complaint of scientists for a long time: the media give a "balanced" view between cranks and scientists.

The media has, by and large, learned its lesson, at least in respect of global warming. The global warming deniers are no longer given much of a platform, and science is represented for what it is: our best objective understanding of the observed facts. They portray this as suppression of their free speech and a distortion of the marketplace of ideas. It isn't. Actually they are engaing in special pleading. they have lost out in the marketplace of ideas, and want another kick at the can, with an audience less adept at spotting bullshit. The antivaxers' attempts to publish science keep ending up with retraction, so they switch to making propaganda movies and howling about attempts to suppress their freedom to advocate for children dying of preventable infectious diseases. They are wrong. Misplaced Pages can, should, and does say that they are wrong.

What else do you want, Larry? Seriously? Science is the platonic ideal of neutrality. It converges on empirical correctness and has a robust, if fallible, mechanism for weeding out wrong ideas, bias, conflict of interest and the rest. It's the best way mankind has ever devised for telling truth from falsehood.

ID is objectively wrong. Promotion of ID is objectively dangerous: it requires people to learn that religious "truth" and scientific truth are competitors, with definite underlying purpose of then asserting religious "truth" as superior. The entire history of ID is absolutely laid bare in the Kitzmiller trial and elsewhere. It is a Trojan horse to get religious indoctrination into the public school system after it was ruled unconstitutional. The lede is one of the best on Misplaced Pages. It is factual, not polemical, succinct, and doesn't use weasel words. Intelligent Design is a religious concept, a Trojan horse for creationism, and it has been busted wide open in every relevant field: science, philosophy, educational theory, and of course the law. And that's what we say. Because anything else would be a lie.

ID is classical pseudoscience, portraying a religious dogma in science-y sounding language. In fact, homeopathy is the same: the dogmas of homeopathy are quasi-religious. Homeopathists disagree on fundamental questions like the Korsakovian dilution or combination versus classical similimum. You can take two mutually exclusive ideas, test them to see if A or B is false. The result of this test will be either A, B, or both, but "both true" is not an option because they are mutually exclusive. And the actual result, the homeopathists assert, is "both true", because they cannot accept "neither".

Misplaced Pages is a reality-based encyclopaedia. Sanger may prefer the fashionable relativism that views a conflict between science and nonsense as equivalent to the conflict between the alt-right and progressives. He is at liberty to prefer that. He tried it on Citizendium. His articles were hijacked by "experts" on the losing side in the battle of ideas who had failed to get their way on Misplaced Pages. I am sure he likes these people, and I am suspicious that it has coloured his views of Misplaced Pages's approach to articles on subjects like ID, vaccination, homeopathy, global warming and the like which are beset by small, well-funded, vocal and differently rational groups whose commercial interests and quasi-religious beliefs are contradicted by the best available evidence.

If your friends are homeopaths, creationists, global warming deniers and so on, you are going to be subjected to an endless conspiracist narrative in which Big Science is conspiring to do down ideas that challenge it. I have been told by homeopaths and creationists alike that science is "threatened" by their ideas. No, it is not. A scientist who found a new theory of matter that was consistent with the claims of homeopathy would be a special guest in Stockholm without any question at all. Science is not threatened by things it does not understand - the existence of things it does not understand is in fact science's sole reason for existence. As Dara Ó Briain put it, "science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop". However, as he goes on to say, "just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you".

I think Larry Sanger needs to study some psychology. He needs to read up on motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance and the Dunning-Kruger effect. In that order. Guy (Help!) 17:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

The essay is rather long, but the basic point is fine: Misplaced Pages does not follow "neutrality" the way Sanger defines it. His definition is: it should not be possible to infer the writer's viewpoint from what they wrote. So, after reading an article on Intelligent Design, it should not be possible to infer the writer's viewpoint. Should Misplaced Pages follow Sanger's model? I'm not sure.

The essay is rather short on examples, but I noticed that Sanger gives as an example of typical "neutral work" to be textbooks and encyclopedias. Do real-world encyclopedias actually follow his model of "neutrality"?

Consider the question of whether Shakespeare actually was the author of the works attributed to him. Look at the Encyclopedia Britannica article section. Does that look "neutral" to you? It clearly takes a side (the correct side). The article Shakespeare authorship question on Misplaced Pages also clearly takes a side (the correct one). In fact the former is simply dismissive of the whole issue, while the latter presents the controversy in much more detail (because it has much more space).

If the aim of textbooks and encyclopedias is to actually teach what is known, would it really make sense to follow Sanger's model? I don't know, and few or no textbooks follow his model. What they instead do is use a different model. After reading the textbook (and attending class etc.) the student should be able to answer questions in an exam to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the material. The latter goal does not require any "neutrality" at all, from what I can see.

Of course, presentation of opposing viewpoints just to show why they are defective is a proper and well-known technique to achieve the latter goal. But again, this does not require that the textbook or teacher not take a side. Sure, a "neutral" teacher (or better yet, a devil's advocate) can be a useful part of teaching. But it does not need to be (nor is it in practice) the organizing principle of the whole material. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:08, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

True: how would this work for Earth and Solar System: WP:GEVAL to flat Earth and geocentrism? Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:57, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Of course, a hypothetical reader who does not know anything about the shape and movement of the Earth would complain that those articles are biased, the same way those readers who do not know anything about evolution complain that the evolution/ID/creationism articles are biased... the application of Sanger's neutrality ideas depends strongly on the applier's individual knowledge/ignorance border, so the idea works only if the knowledge of all parties about all subjects is exactly the same. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:05, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Of course, a hypothetical reader who does not know anything about the shape and movement of the Earth would complain that those articles are biased No, such a reader would simply be informed by the article. A reader would have had to be introduced to the flat earth before complaining about bias. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:27, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Here is a link to the "Neutral Point of View" in 2002, that Larry Sanger refers to. If that were still policy today then Larry's criticism of this article would be valid. But the current policy warns against false balance. Since ID is universally rejected in reliable sources, following current policy will portray it in a negative light. Furthermore, current policy says that consensus opinion in science should be treated as fact, while the older policy would have given equal validity to ID theory. As editors, we are supposed to follow current policy. TFD (talk) 16:33, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Even that version has language that supports the "no false balance" principle, just not explicitly. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:07, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

But what all of you who are opposing Larry Sanger's comment ignore is this, from the top of the current policy:

This page in a nutshell:' Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.

This article violates the "how you say it" part and overtly takes sides. YoPienso (talk) 17:37, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Then, @Yopienso: how do you explain, in a neutral tone, that no science can done with Intelligent Design because Intelligent Design was created by Young Earth Creationists for the expressed purpose of circumventing the First Amendment of The United States Constitution in order to teach anti-science-themed religious propaganda instead of science in science classrooms in the US? Or, are we assuming that "neutral tone" means "censoring unflattering truths because they are not filled with praise"?--Mr Fink (talk) 17:51, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

You know what, Mr. Fink? I returned to revert my comment since I don't really have the time or energy or will to get into this. But since you've already responded, I'll paste in what I was preparing before realizing I need to prioritize my time differently, and then hat the section. Collapse, I guess.

The Encyclopedia Britannica article, in contrast to this one, first dispassionately defines the topic without name-calling or innuendo--not calling it religious nor an argument for the existence of God, nor a pseudoscience: Intelligent design (ID), argument intended to demonstrate that living organisms were created in more or less their present forms by an “intelligent designer.” The author, Thomas F. Glick, presents ID as "an explicit refutation of the theory of biological evolution advanced by Charles Darwin" and then gets into Paley's influence. He concludes that "Meanwhile, intelligent design appeared incapable of generating a scientific research program, which inevitably broadened the gap between it and the established norms of science." I find that unbiased while expressing the facts of the matter.

Yes, lots of sources, particularly from within the community of working evolutionary researchers, are hostile. Say so without adopting their tone.

Glick is a historian and has no axe to grind; he's an expert in the field, as seen on his Boston U. profile, which says he is "co-author of Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877-1902 (2006). He is editor or co-editor of The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (2nd ed., 1988); The Comparative Reception of Relativity (1987); The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe (2008)."

I think the article has been greatly improved over the past few years; my greatest objection is to the wording of the first two paragraphs of the lead. I think the first should give an unbiased definition of ID from its proponents viewpoint, not call it pseudoscience, and eliminate the word "claim." I think the second should focus on the argument itself, not its proponents; as it stands it's a veiled personal attack on them.

Is the intent of the article to inform the public? or to publicly bash an offensive argument? If the intent is to inform, we should try to not alienate readers right at the outset. Talk pages demonstrate that has been the case over and over again, as documented right at the top of this page: "A common objection made often by new arrivals is that the article presents ID in an unsympathetic light and that criticism of ID is too extensive or violates Misplaced Pages's Neutral Point of View policy (WP:NPOV)."

Yes, ID is arguably pseudoscience, and WP has made a special ruling on that. I have no trouble with a subsection devoted to that, but object to the blatant assertion right at the beginning in WP's own voice.

Etc., etc., but never mind. YoPienso (talk) 18:27, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

In fact, Britannica is also biased against ID, but this is not seen at Intelligent design but at Intelligent design and its critics. So, your assumption that Britannica is not biased in respect to ID is faulty. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:12, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

My tuppenceworth – the Britannica web page has the title "intelligent design | History & Facts" and it seems to be one of a group on ID, at least one other is also written by Glick. He defines ID as an argument, but then focusses on Behe's ideas while ignoring the earlier appearonce of ID in Pandas, and not mentioning its broader claims. If you read right through, and relate it to his other article, it seems to come to much the same conclusion as this Misplaced Pages article. It's vague in a way that could appear dispassionate, but in my view is a partial account rather than an overview. In sum, it's not doing the same job as our article. . . dave souza, talk 19:33, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Which raises what might be yet another question this article and a lot of other articles we have here encounter, which is basically pecking order. To what degree any article is the primary article and first place of consultation by readers for a given subject, and what if any parent articles exist and what content should be in which article here is a very real one. And it would help a lot if we had any other highly regarded reference sources, in this particular case probably including specialist sources in science, philosophy, religion and sociology, which could be used to help determine that. I wish I knew of any. John Carter (talk) 19:56, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

The rub lies in the fact that ID presents itself as if it were established scientific fact (ready to be taught in science classes). If it were a theological or philosophical argument, all we could do is agree to disagree, as my sociological theories professor said "To my exam there are no good or bad answers, but only good or bad arguments for those answers." So, all philosophers and theologians can say is that they have agreed to disagree: they exchange arguments, but there is no objective way to tell who is right and who is wrong. It isn't so in science and the philosophy of science distinguishes between scientific statements and unscientific statements. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:09, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Yopienso, we are not putting any kind of editorial judgment on this, the facts were established in a court of law. It's not Misplaced Pages editors who are saying that ID isa copy-paste rebranding of religious creationists, it's a court. The cdesign proponentists themselves provided the smoking gun. Guy (Help!) 22:44, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Larry Sanger weighed in with his two cents, so I'll weigh in with mine. First, I have to wonder about the timing of the comment considering he just recently started working for our competitor veripedia and may have been looking for a particular article to criticize in public statements. Secondly, to an extent, I agree that the article might well be flawed and if it is our policies might as they currently exist might be one of the reasons why. We officially give current scientific reasoning priority over all other disciplines. And we probably have more editors who have a background and personal inclination, sometimes a very strong inclination, toward broadly scientific views than to views of what might be called philosophy of religion. Unfortunately, and this might maybe be particularly true about articles and topics involved in the recent science vs. religion debate in pop culture, sometimes specialists even make fairly big and obvious mistakes in their own speciality as was mentioned in the recent book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. This might be particularly true of both scientists and religious thinkers in this highly controversial topic area. In such a case, my own first impulse would be to try to find any recent highly regarded reference books like encyclopedias dealing with the broad topic area at some length and more or less make our article and coverage of the broader topic an agglomeration of the material in them. I wish I knew of such encyclopedic sources from both sides but don't remember seeing any. If any of you do, it might be nice to mention them. John Carter (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

"And we probably have more editors who have a background and personal inclination, sometimes a very strong inclination, toward broadly scientific views than to views of what might be called philosophy of religion." Observation. Scientific views are based on data, and sciences such as geology, evolutionary biology, and paleontology have done a great job of tracing the history of this planet and all life on it. Philosophy of religion has to do with human beliefs and cultural concepts. By its nature, it is not based on generally accepted evidence, and offers many questions, but very few answers. An ever increasing number of contradictory positions have been offered by philosophers, from antiquity onwards. They make for amusing reading, but I would question their relevance to the human experience. Dimadick (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• I disagree with the OP and do not believe this particular article is pervasively biased. However, I do believe this talk page and other ID-related talk pages have been poisoned by patrolling editors who consider themselves to be the science police so zealously that anyone who doesn’t tow their line is a bad faith actor who must be ridiculed and ignored. Not only does this prevent full discussion and consensus building on these issues, but it also prevents basic article development. The article and others in the ID space are just shoddily written. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) —Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:02, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Edit being reinstated rather than BRD - please check thanks

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Intelligent_design&oldid=prev&diff=814420806

Check what exactly?Michael O'hara (talk) 18:54, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

the veracity of your edit according to the source text used to write the article. Edaham (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

The source explictly calls it a theory, what's dubious abiut my edit?Michael O'hara (talk) 18:58, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

It looks like a partial quote or misrepresented piece of text inserted into the article to disproportionately present a point of view (which is what I wrote briefly in my edit summary). Edaham (talk) 19:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

You should probably just check for yourself then instead of being so lazy. If you check the source you will see I am in no way misrepresenting anything.Michael O'hara (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

See above: ID proponents recognize the fact that they have no theory yet. My two cents are that we all here will die of old age before a hypothesis of ID gets formulated (making concrete predictions of the type "if A then B", not the vagaries at ). Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

UTC)

If a reliable source says something there is no reason not to include it.Michael O'hara (talk) 19:13, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Even credible scholarly works could sometimes be flat out wrong. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:18, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages doesn't censor opinions just because they are wrong. Read WP:CENSOR and educate yourself.Michael O'hara (talk) 19:38, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Inaccuracy. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I did check, that's why I reverted it. However you didn't follow BRD so now I'm inviting other editors to share their opinions. Calling another editor "lazy" is a personal attack. Please don't make personal attacks, thanks. Edaham (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

In what way havery I misrepresented anything?Michael O'hara (talk) 19:13, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I've already stated the issue I have with your proposed edit. Sorry, I'm not here to use the talk page as a discussion forum to go into depth about the subject or Misplaced Pages policy regarding content inclusion per your question above. I've left the link here as a sign post for other editors to review the content you added. You might want to take up the issue with other frequent editors of the article should they decide to revert it. Edaham (talk) 19:21, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

• the only use of the word "Theory" in that context to refer to ID capitalizes the word, making it quite clear that the author is using the title "Intelligent Design Theory" and not making reference to an actual theory of intelligent design. So your edit was not supported by the source. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:29, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Agree, this is my reading of the source as well. The word theory is only use in the context of naming the concept "Intelligent Design Theory" and not in any way to endorse it. As a side note, the question of describing ID as a theory is covered by the Question 2 of the FAQ at the top of the page.--McSly (talk) 19:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Concur, it's just a name, SEP does not claim that ID would be a scientific theory. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:41, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I think there's an element of OR here - this isn't using the Stanford Encyclopedia as a source, it's drawing conclusions based on the choice of wording used in a source. Guettarda (talk) 18:05, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Michael O'hara (talk · contribs) has been blocked as a sock who is likely to return in due course. Johnuniq (talk) 00:56, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Couldn't we block him as a sock that is unlikely to return? -Roxy, Zalophus californianus. barcus 12:43, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

RfC on Lede Paragraph

How should the lead paragraph of the article on Intelligent design read? power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe it will be possible to get consensus for any significant changes to the lede without a full RfC. I'm starting the process now. I expect the proposals to change somewhat over the first week, so I have not added a "Survey" section for !voting yet.

Proposal A (Status quo ante bellum): Intelligent design (ID) is a religious argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins", though it has been found to be pseudoscience. Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community have demonstrated that ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses.

(amended by addition of "and so is not science" to clarify implication of lack of empirical support and testable hypotheses, as discussed below. . . dave souza, talk 13:26, 16 December 2017 (UTC))

Proposal B1 (power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)): Intelligent design (ID) is an argument that the universe and all life forms were created by an intelligent cause. It is a modern form of the teleological argument that attempts to prove creationism throughform of creationism that attempts to use primarily scientific arguments, and not religious ones. Most mainstream scientists feel ID is pseudo-science that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses.

Proposal Workshop

Proposal B2 (Markbassett (talk) 09:12, 10 December 2017 (UTC)) Intelligent Design (ID) has been defined by its proponents as the idea that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause."(cite CSC) It is a modern form of creationism crafted to use a scientific phrasing rather than scriptural or theological. It is strongly rejected by the scientific community(cite AAAS) and in the 2005 trial Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case it was blocked from being taught as part of a science curriculum.

Proposal B3 (last amended power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:00, 15 December 2017 (UTC)) Intelligent Design (ID) is the claim that "various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact." (cite Of Pandas and People). While the argument from design has existed for centuries, the modern term originated in the 1980s in response to US legal rulings against the teaching of creationism in public schools. It uses philosophical arguments such as the irreducible complexity to attempt to disprove the theory of evolution by natural selection. While its proponents claim it is a scientific theory (cite), the scientific community views ID as pseudo-science (cite).

General Discussion

1. Can you provide any sources calling ID an argument?
2. Can you prove it is the most common descriptor?Michael O'hara (talk) 19:36, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe you're making a serious request. Are you disputing that Intelligent Design is an argument, a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion? power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:40, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Is that no then?Michael O'hara (talk) 19:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

• Intelligent design: Who has designs on your students' minds? - Nature 434, 1062–1065 (28 April 2005)
• "Intelligent Design" Not Accepted by Most Scientists - NCSE (12 August 2002)

It took me less than five minutes to dig those two up, and I didn't even use the references in the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we should use the word tellyolly...something in the lede. Without wanting to vote just yet, could we find a way of actually writing out what physio-theological arguments entail, and then linking to the teleological page without actually using this term in the lede section. I don't believe this is suitably general terminology even with the blue link included. It virtually guarantees that a reader will have to navigate to another article in order to understand the lede section. (Per WP:TECHNICAL If an article is written in a highly technical manner, but the material permits a more understandable explanation, then editors are strongly encouraged to rewrite it.) Edaham (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Teleological argument basically means "intelligent design, but from before the 20th century". It is in the hatnote, I'd personally prefer the link be in the lead. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:03, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I know what it means because I already looked it up and because you just told me as well. It's not a good piece of terminology for the lede unless it is explained/defined briefly, per WP:EXPLAINLEAD. I think it is well outside a general reader's reading level. It was outside mine anyway and I can almost read without using my finger now. Edaham (talk) 02:13, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the phrase "teleological argument" as requiring the reader to know the word "teleology," because it's referring to a specific argument, like a proper noun. I see this as akin to, in an article about a battle, saying that the battle was preceded by another battle that the reader may not have heard of. The passage is still understandable if you replace "teleological argument" by "another argument". CapitalSasha ~ talk 16:37, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

The reference to the teleological argument is confusing. It is not possible to make a teleological argument through scientific arguments since science excludes teleology. If someone says the moon exists in order to cause tides on earth and light the night sky, they are providing a teleological explanation for the existence of the moon, which may or may not be true. But it's not a theory that can be the subject of scientific study. And its truth or falseness can have no influence on astrophysics. And no amount of study of the tides or the night sky with add to or diminish from the reasonableness of the theory. TFD (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

It is perfectly possible to establish conclusions scientifically through teleological arguments. Paley's watch argument for example is perfectly valid -- as applied to watches, as well as to wide categories of other human artefacts --. Its applicability to non-human artefacts, such as hornet nests is philosophically fraught, but not relevant here and now. Just because some folks might need to look the word up or click on a link does not mean we have to avoid it here; the concept is hard to avoid in evolution, scientifically or otherwise, precisely because the very basis of the concept of "natural selection" is that no teleology is involved and in Intelligent Design teleology is asserted implicitly. The onus is not on the scientist to prove a negative -- the absence of teleology-- but to demand falsifiable support for any positive claims of teleology -- otherwise one could assert a teleological explanation for every rock or bubble or grain of sand. JonRichfield (talk) 10:44, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

When scientists, such as archaeologists, identify artifacts, they are not using teleology, but relying on their a posteriori knowledge about human behavior. Same as when they identify the results of purely physical causes, such as earthquakes. TFD (talk) 02:21, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: Possibly we are at cross purposes. I did not say that scientists in general have much of a problem with teleology, but that "the very basis of the concept of "natural selection" is that no teleology is involved and in Intelligent Design teleology is asserted implicitly". Outside the behaviour of self-aware, technologically advanced organisms, of which our only extant example so far is ourselves and close ancestors we have as yet no clear examples of teleology at all. The human behaviour you mention is in every case teleological, whether in designing a watch or a stone axe or a building or a fish hook or game trap. And it is the absence of teleology in traditional natural selection that is relevant here. Ironically, natural selection will bumble on regardless of whether we introduce teleology or not, it is just that teleology introduces far more radical and more dramatic effects than most non-teleological selection can achieve. The point of this article is that there is no basis as yet for assuming teleology of the type explicit and implicit in Intelligent Design. JonRichfield (talk) 06:51, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

power~enwiki - Well A is word salad and B1 is fairly close, and I've put in a further phrasing near your line. (Although I think the article is irretrievably biased so oddly having it obviously a-jumble is almost OK in the two wrongs almost make a right sense.) I think you're right to start with defining it but that "certain features" (some things) was used rather than the "all" phrasing of "all life forms". I also thought the 'argument' label or stating a label as fact is a bit off, as not the portrayal in sources and previously debated in TALK -- so phrased it as definition with attribution to CSC (alt. source berkley.edu). And I dropped the line about 'most' and 'pseudoscience' as I think that vague pejorative is actually more a WP fad than a WP:V capture and in any case is not lead-suitable since calling it names is not a major part of the article. I cannot tell if this will help but hope it is understandable. Markbassett (talk) 09:43, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

B2 looks pretty good. I oppose anything resembling B1. "Teleological" shouldn't be in the lead, almost all readers will choke on the word. Astronomer's don't "feel" astrology is pseudoscience, and biologists don't "feel" ID is pseudoscience. It's actually all "mainstream" scientists in the field, because by definition you can't be a mainstream scientist if you reject mainstream science. Even if we skip mainstream, word "most" scientists is borderline misleading. Only a small fraction of one percent of biologists buy ID. Any description of ID-advocates as a subset of scientists needs to be clear that it is an almost non-existent fringe view. I skimmed the article looking for a "%" or "percent" of biologists who buy ID, but I couldn't find any figure? I know there was one survey that found 0.15% of earth&life scientists who considered creationism to have any credibility, it would be good if we had some source citing a percentage of biologists who believe ID. If a percentage on that is available, it would be a good to include in the lead. Alsee (talk) 09:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

• Arguing about the word 'most' is irrelevant from a neutrality standpoint: ID is a radical theory which has not gained a strong following, but many credentialed scientists have written books on it. Was Copernicus in the majority? Darwin? Either B is better than the original. I compare the wikipedia article on Scientology. Much more neutral. Not dismissed as a fraud in the first sentence. Stavanyar (talk) 04:23, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
• My reasons for opposing B1: "through primarily scientific arguments": they may be sounding scientific at first but are pseudoscientific; "mainstream scientists feel": it's not a question of feeling. B1 introduces false balance. —PaleoNeonate – 18:02, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Followup: After rereading all three, I still think that the status quo, A, is more complete. It was oversourced over time because sentences were often debated and disrupted; there was a lot of work involved. —PaleoNeonate – 05:04, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• What are the specific issues to be addressed by this RfC? It's going to be hard to come up with any reasoning to !vote that isn't some form of ILIKEIT otherwise. --A D Monroe III 21:49, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

In essence, B2 amounts to us saying "ID is what its proponents say it is". The problem with this is that we have established that ID isn't what its proponents say it is. In addition, this one definition doesn't match the scope of usage of ID - after all, the whole "cdesign proponentsists" discovery showed that, in the case of Pandas it wasn't this - it was simply rebranded creation science. Beyond this, Johnson's core argument in Darwin on Trial is "you can't trust Darwin", and Wells' Icons is essentially about poking holes in evolutionary "icons". Of the classic ID works, really only Behe's central thesis matches this definition.

Furthermore, Misplaced Pages articles are supposed to rely on secondary sources, not on the interpretation (by Wikipedians) of the meaning of primary sources. Guettarda (talk) 18:23, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

General replies to above comments: Clearly nobody likes including teleological argument in the first paragraph; I've struck that part. The purpose of the RfC is that I feel the current lead paragraph is bad (the Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community wording is probably the worst part), and I feel it will be impossible to get consensus for any changes here without a formal discussion. I'll read through everything tomorrow and probably propose a new version then. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:13, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

"Bad" how, exactly? Again, I'd like to know what specific improvement this RfC is for -- prose? NPOV? clarity? "goodness"? (And, BTW, I'd think teleological argument is a useful independent detailed definition from a different perspective.) --A D Monroe III 16:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: First, apologies; I seem to have muffed my previous posting, I hope I don't do that again.
  I'm a bit at sea here. I'd like a much shorter lede in all, followed by an opening defining section that introduces the relevance of teleology (which after all, has its own article for those in doubt) and which readers are bound to encounter in discussions elsewhere. Ledes are after all not suppose3d to ramble into justifications and discussions, but to inform visitors what the article is about, just about well enough to know whether to read on. It is not yet clear to me whether re-phrasing the lede is where to start.
  Irrespective of such reservations, and in an attempt to tinker with the wording, I am considering this as an adequate complete lede; the rest of the substance in the lede, where it is not covered elsewhere in the article, should be moved into a second introductory section:

Intelligent design (ID) is the name that the Center for Science and Culture apply to their contention that an intelligent agent produced the information instantiated in life and the universe, consciously and deliberately designing and creating them with a purpose in view. In other words the creation was neither accidental nor incidental, but directed towards an end; that is to say that it was teleological. ID is a modern form of the teleological argument, claiming to prove by non-religious scientific argument, that there has been some form of directed creation. In particular it denies the possibility of evolution by natural selection. In essence ID asserts that the creator's deliberate design and workmanship leave signs in the empirical world, signs that are incompatible with spontaneous, undirected emergence of the universe as we see it. The mainstream scientific view remains that natural selection is favoured by for example the principle of parsimony; unlike ID it requires no assumption of either teleological direction nor of a creator. Intelligent Design in contrast is pseudo-scientific: in particular it offers for the most part neither testable nor tenable hypotheses calculated to discriminate between the implications of its less parsimonious assertions and those of established biology or cosmology. In every pretence at meeting scientific requirements, it achieves neither cogent nor empirical support. JonRichfield (talk) 18:15, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment — I would support the status quo over B1 or B2. The last sentence of B1 is inaccurate: "Most mainstream scientists feel ID is pseudo-science that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses." The phrase "most mainstream scientists" and the word "feel" weaken the scientific critique of ID. An accurate statement would be, "the scientific community describes ID as pseudo-science," or "rejects ID as pseudo-science." The status quo conveys scientific appraisals of ID accurately to the reader. As to B2, I think that the status quo is more complete, and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case is already mentioned later in the lede. -Darouet (talk) 18:17, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I've made a (still not perfect) B3 proposal. Overall, there are two things I want to fix here. First, what is ID? I don't think it is primarily an argument for the existence of God; the part about being an alternative to evolution seems more relevant. Second, can we possibly describe it without resorting to quoting its supporters and opponents in succession? A neutral tone should mean something other than equal time for both sides here; especially when both sides feel that approach is itself biased. Separately, I'd like to demonstrate some of the people who are claiming to object in good-faith to this article what the correct process to try to improve this article is. If they would still rather complain than participate, be it on their heads. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:34, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

power~enwiki - B3 is off, that is the line in Kitzmiller about creationism; the ID description is one below it. But I think it not useable as it is a quote from the lawyer opposing it during the American trial adversarial process, so lacks prominence, authority, and is not the common understanding. The existing article "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." cites to a prominent source of ID. And I think you the AAAS rejection as not science really should be cited, and Judge Jones conclusion of Kitzmiller for the ruling. I also think the line "mainstream scientific view" is problematic and " is that ID is pseudo-science" is not supportable as -- they say 'not science' and use no vague pejoratives. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 04:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

After checking, the quote is originally from Of Pandas and People. I'm not happy with "mainstream scientific view", but I feel it's better than the current "Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community have demonstrated" construction. I would prefer not to quote the Discovery Institute in the lede if a lede can be written well without such quotes. Will reply to the rest tomorrow. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:47, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

power~enwiki - perhaps use "scientific community" rather than "mainstream scientific" ? The "community" concept definition for science is clearly linked to the societies such as AAAS and used in Kitzmiller; but the "mainstream" could be read as 'popular' or 'general public', and portrays ID as a smaller section of science -- when it is not part of science, it's just scientifically done. The 'demonstrated' in the next line seems unsupported by cites (that are not demonstrations) and odd in listing educators since they don't demonstrate or decide what is science. Markbassett (talk) 01:06, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the principal of B2, but mentioning a Court Case against ID is undue (Intelligent design is not an American movement or centered on American education, and a case determining how it is taught in US schools is too specific) and POV (the proper community of opposition to cite is the mainstream scientific community, which the Court deffered to when it blocked the teaching on a legal/constitutional ground, which is irrelevant for the lead, even as it stands now). I don't think the the primary goal of ID is to serve as "a religious argument for the existence of God", its primary goal is, like evolution, to try and explain how complex life exists. God/a deity is of course the obvious direction it points in and should be mentioned in the lead, but to make the very first clause that is an argument for the existence of God and not an argument (even if widely found flimsy) for the existence of life is POV. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:36, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

The fundamental problem with intelligent design is that you can't use it to explain the natural world. It's essentially a negative argument. It says, "Evolution doesn't work, therefore the designer did it. Evolution doesn't work, therefore we win by default."

But when you ask them, "What does intelligent design tell you about nature? Does it tell you what the designer did? Does it tell you what the designer used to design something with? Does it tell you what purpose the designer had for designing something? Does it tell you when the designer did it? Why the designer did it?" It doesn't tell you anything like that. Basically, it's a negative argument. And you can't build a science on a negative argument.

— Eugenie C. Scott, PBS Nova, Judgment Day, Intelligent Design on Trial, 2007

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:17, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm starting a separate vote section now with the two recent vote-like comments, and have moved a comment from @Scope creep: there. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• The FRC is malformed. The author themselves wrote I don't believe it will be possible to get consensus for any significant .... In such cases one has to (a) identify problems and (b) suggest changes to fix these one by one. Otherwise typically it happens what is happening now: proliferation of alternatives and chaotic discussion. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:13, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Votes

(Suggest renaming this section from Votes to Survey, per standard RfC, as we're supposed to WP:NOTVOTE, but hopefully reach a broader consensus. --A D Monroe III 22:53, 17 December 2017 (UTC))

• B1 and B2 Parts of B1 and most of B2. B2 employs reason in the opening argument in non reasonable subject. I have always like the word: Teleological. It both forces the reader to think, and defines the actual root, as in the idea of the argument, of why ID is guff. B2 needs work. It excludes groups who should be included. I agree with Alsee both on the use of language and a comparative figure in percentage terms of who believes it, within the scientific community. It is available, I think it is on here, but easily found. certain features of the universe cant be verified. I don't understand this: being taught as art of a science curriculum. It doesn't sound right. link to

creationism. There is nothing on WP in terms of stats that are up to date, and the ones that are present mostly cover the US. Worldwide community stats are needed.scope_creep (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• A, the status quo ante, is fine. I see no reason to replace it, but am not opposed to refinement. Guy (Help!) 17:19, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
• A, the status quo, is fine. Looking at B1, it has multiple problems. For a start "(ID) is an argument that the universe and all life forms were created by an intelligent cause" is misleading at best: the central premise of ID is the argument that complexity demonstrates an intelligent cause, in other words a modern form of the teleological argument. Next, "form of creationism that attempts to use primarily scientific arguments" is clearly wrong, like earlier creationism it attempts to dress up religious arguments as science, and to do so proposes overturning scientific methodology and accepting untestable supernatural explanations. The problems with "Most mainstream scientists feel" have already been aired. . . dave souza, talk 19:55, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
• A is still the best option. B1, no, per Dave Souza above. B2 is not absolutely terrible but doesn't really deviate too much from A without any advantage. Black Kite (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
• Weak support for B3 The existing statement uses as it's last sentence a statement about verifiability which while accurate will I think strike many lay readers who don't still remember basic science as a bit of a non sequitur, and I don't think it is in our interests to make many of our readers feel confused or stupid from the beginning of the article. I acknowledge that those criteria are the basis for ID's claim to be scientific, and it should be mentioned in the lede, but the current phrasing at least to my eyes doesn't really serve the interests of readers with a comparative!y weak grasp of this comparatively recent development. And there is also, I suppose, a possibly valid question as to whether ID might have qualified as scientific a few hundred years ago, and whether we are inherently obliged to possibly completely reject any earlier definitions of science which ID might qualify under. I don't actually know if my second point is valid, having not looked it over before, but in any event I think there are serious problems for the reader without a firm basis in the modern definition of science in the existing lede.John Carter (talk) 20:57, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Good point that it's been left to the reader to relate the lack of empirical or testable hypotheses as significant to the modern definition of science – on that basis, I've added "and so is not science" which clarifies the point, and links to a modern definition.
    I'd like sometime to discuss with you in more detail the emergence of modern science; in brief, to a significant extent science was defined in the 1820s and 1830s by a group steeped in natural theology, including John Herschel and William Whewell. They followed Paley's version of the teleological argument which is a predecessor or ID, and believed that God was the prime mover but also sought in science natural explanations, looking to find natural laws in the expectation that these would inherently tie in with their religious convictions. Unlike ID, which jumps to supernatural explanations at the first opportunity. . . dave souza, talk 13:22, 16 December 2017 (UTC) clarified 13:58, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
• B1. I have some minor nitpicks with it, but the big problem with the other proposals is the lengthy and unnecessary quotes and the lack of proper in-text attribution for them. Proponents say "X." Proponents say "Y." This is actually false/misleading. No, Numbers says "X," and the CSC says "Y." Version A takes quotations by Numbers and the CSC and attributes them to proponents of ID in general. This is weasely at best and failed verification at worst. On top of that, it's just bad writing to include extensive quotations in the lead section, especially in the first paragraph. Proponents' views should be be readily summarizable in our own words based on the body of the article. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:18, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

A clarification. I'm sympathetic to the substantive objections made by Dave Souza. The precise wording could use some improvements. I guess you could say an amalgam of A and B1 would be ideal. {{nw} --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• B2 or A, because they have the “certain features” that defines ID. A is showing the biased, but since the article is irretrievably biased, it seems not so bad to be obvious about it. Markbassett (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
• A Whatever problems may exist in the lead, none of the proposed alternatives are the fix. This appears to be yet another, subtle, attempt to weaken the article and drive it away from accurately representing the established scientific POV. - Nick Thorne 22:07, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I object to your insinuations, both in that I feel that the proposals don't do that, and that "weaken the article" suggests that you are pushing a POV. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
    • You are right, I am pushing a POV. The one set out in WP:PSCI. I make no apologies for this. - Nick Thorne 13:39, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Nick Thorne, no improvements are possible when editors assume bad faith and analyze every single comment solely from the perspective of whether or not it reinforces PSCI. I have edited in similar spaces with Power for a long time and can assure you they have no ID or pseudoscience agenda. —Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:49, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• A Agree with Nick Thorne: Misplaced Pages sides with mainstream science, if some people say this is unfair reporting, it says more about them than about us. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:10, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• A The existing lead has been honed by extensive reasoned discussion. There is no need for change. This is after all a rational publication.Charles (talk) 21:48, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• B in some form. Here's my proposal, editing the various B forms:
  

Proposal B4

Intelligent Design (ID) is the argument that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause."(cite CSC) It is a modern form of creationism crafted to use scientific rather than theological phrasing and support. While the argument from design has existed for centuries, the modern term originated in the 1980s in response to US legal rulings against the teaching of creationism in public schools.(cite) ID attempts to disprove the theory of evolution by natural selection by positing ideas such as irreducible complexity. Although the ID movement presents its argument as a scientific theory, (cite), the scientific community views ID as a pseudoscience (cite).     YoPienso (talk) 23:38, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• (bot-summoned) B3 > B4 > A (status quo ante) >> B2 > B1 "most mainstream scientists feel..." invalidates B1 by itself. I object to B2's mentioning of an American court case as undue weight in the lead (believe it or not, ID is not simply an American topic or even a Christian one), and to crafted to which implies that ID proponents knew which position they wanted to defend in advance and made up arguments to support it (which is likely to be the case, but if so it needs a truckload of cites and it does not belong in the lead anyways). The status quo is awkward but can be lived with. B4 is good except for the "crafted to" part again, though I somehow like in better in context B4 than B2. B3 is good except for the last part which creates a false balance; I feel the best would be B3 but with B4's the ID movement presents its argument as a scientific theory (emphasis added) instead of claims. Tigraan 16:34, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support for A, and opposition to B etc. Per my comments above and @Dave souza, Nick Thorne, and Tgeorgescu: the alternative leads distort and weaken the scientific critique of ID, and ID's historical origin in religious creationism. I find that every strong, clear statement in the status quo, A, is diluted in the alternatives. In this sense the alternative leads do a disservice to readers and, despite the good intentions of editors here, amount to yet another Trojan horse sneaking creationism into mainstream scientific discourse. -Darouet (talk) 19:09, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Agree: ID has been criticized by the scientific community in the strongest possible terms, so that's what Misplaced Pages has to say about it. It is not a beginner's mistake, nor some researching trying to use shortcuts to tenure through publishing highly original claims. ID is an attack upon science: that's the view of the scientific community and that's what Misplaced Pages has to say. ID is not scientific progress, but it is highly obscurantist and reactionary. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:12, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Darouet, I appreciate that you AGF; so do I. How does B4 sneak creationism into the mainstream?

Tgeorgescu, I think we need to employ balanced terminology between the strongest possible terms and an encyclopedic tone. Yes, our stance is with the mainstream, but we're still an encyclopedia. Policy doesn't require us to be brutal. Take, for example, the last paragraph of the Astrology lead. Surely many scientists are more vehement and disparaging than that balanced tone. I agree that ID isn't progress. YoPienso (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Astrology is kind of laughing stock for astronomers, so it is no longer perceived as an attack upon science. ID is an attack upon science, we have to say this. Of course, we don't have to be brutal, honest would do. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:14, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Modern astrology does not challenge astronomy and its adherents do not ask it be taught in science classes. They are not pushing geocentric models of the universe and trying to shut down NASA and the weather service. TFD (talk) 03:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@Yopienso: I oppose B4 for a number of reasons. For example the first sentence of B4 neglects to call ID a religious argument, and does not state that it has been found to be pseudoscience (though it will later state ID is viewed as pseudoscience). The status quo does not make these errors, and for this reason it is more accurate than all B alternatives. -Darouet (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• A. The role of the lead is to summarise the contents of the article. While I don't love it (it has been created with an eye to compromise, not brilliant prose), it does the job of the lead better than the proposed alternatives. Guettarda (talk) 04:08, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
• A; Malformed RFC. The RFC initiator did not explain what is wrong with the current lede, and I do not see why any alternative is overall better. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:07, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
• New Rfc (default to A). I agree that a statement of the issues to be addressed would be better than just having various text versions. Besides the fact that having many alternate versions is very likely to spread the vote about so that none achieves a majority, the best result of an RfC is to hopefully achieve some new middle ground that satisfies nearly everyone; this RfC is structured to avoid that. I suggest starting a new RfC that will be more likely to be worth our efforts and actually improve the article. --A D Monroe III 17:51, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
• B3-4 are nicely terse and provide historical context. The last sentence in each could be strengthened: it's not just that the science community thinks the arguments of ID are pseudoscience; there is evidence that major ID proponents are willing to propagandize & falsify data. A fails to provide key context (re: where ID sits in the history of argument from design, when it started, and its relationship to the 'IDM movement') and has many stylistic problems. – SJ + 15:37, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

• A most accurately addresses the the following article. Additionally, while I do not believe in ID, I think the article must still take a neutral and non-dismissive voice, and A most accurate does this. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 00:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• B1/B2 As others have noted, the lede as it stands is woefully poor. The first sentence from B1 concisely reflects ID as defined by its proponents. From there, B2 is more accurate. I'd support a hybrid of both B1 and B2. Sam T. (talk) 13:33, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Further discussion

It strikes me that we have consensus around 3 items:

1. Version A is the preferred version on substance. The B versions do not accurately and neutrally reflect the body/reliable sources.
2. Version A is poorly written stylistically (a variety of concerns raised).
3. The RfC is malformed and/or unlikely to lead to consensus due to problems with all of the proposals.

In light of this, power~enwiki, if you're amenable to this, I suggest you withdraw the RfC and folks can edit boldly to improve the existing language incrementally and stylistically. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:17, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I have nothing against being bold in general, but this article is under discretionary sanctions and such sanctions would reasonably be a bit of an inhibition to being too bold. And, FWIW, I myself might not say ID is an attack on science, but maybe a wrong-headed response to the idolization of science in the 50s, 60s and 70s and a short-sighted and kinda stupid attempt to keep people from expanding it's sphere beyond it's reasonable boundaries.

I know some people are going to say I sound like Vroomfondel here, but at that time there were in Western society a lot of people thinking honestly, if also perhaps wrong-headedly, that science would be able to explain everything, much like the computer Deep Thought from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Chaos theory and other subsequent developments have done a lot to indicate that such scientific absolutism is unlikely bordering on impossible. So, in one sense, the early ID'ers may have been right in thinking science did not then and probably never will have all the answers to everything like those they disagreed with more or less explicitly assumed.

Unfortunately, although understandably given the current issues of that period, they also chose to try to say science was wrong on this particular issue while at the same time redefining science and revising scientific definitions to serve their own purposes, continuing the wrong-headedness so visible in hindsight. While the overtly religious nature of the evolution debate made this issue a broadly religious one, I'm not myself convinced that this religious issue was necessarily as central as it now seems to have been. Granted, the fact that the ID proponents haven't changed their tune in this long a time doesn't speak well for them, but as is demonstrable in political matters the same can be said for others elsewhere. Personally, I sort of speculate myself if we could find sources independent of the science and religion camps they might say something similar to what I say here, but I ain't found many if any such sources yet. John Carter (talk) 19:02, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

As an aside: it is popularized science that had such prejudices, in general scientists know full-well the limits of science and know that science isn't about WP:THETRUTH. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:37, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

See timeline of intelligent design; ID is a continuation of creation science, part of a sequence of religious attempts to remove evolution from the science curriculum dating back to the 1920s and fears that evolutionary ideas affected the German military in the First World War. It's not an attack on science so much as an attempt to get a privileged position for a a particular religious dogma in public school education.
More broadly, religious objections to photo proto-evolutionary ideas date back to the 18th century when a dogma of fixity of species was introduced, and so predate science and the subsequent but now rather discredited "conflict thesis".
Looking for "sources independent of the science and religion camps" is based on a false dilemma – many of the objections to creationism and ID come from various religious faith groups. . . dave souza, talk 20:50, 18 December 2017 (UTC) struck out odd typo and added correction, 22:45, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

You guys can join a debate society about what ID is or isn't, but really none of this is in response to my comment, which is about how we can all move forward procedurally to improve the article. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:28, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

The best thing I can think of is to scour encyclopedias and similar collective reference books and find their articles on the topic. Maybe making a subpage list of them with indications if the full article on ID (if there is one) in them is available online or not? John Carter (talk) 21:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Dr. Fleischman, you open with the good point that "Version A is the preferred version on substance. The B versions do not accurately and neutrally reflect the body/reliable sources", so any revision has to be equal to A in substance supported by reliable sources. Stylistic concerns can be addressed line by line, or by a rewrite showing the same substance which can be justified by showing it has the same coverage. John Carter, going to other tertiary sources to see if they say something different is a bad approach – and if they say the same in different words, we have to be careful not to plagiarise them. . dave souza, talk 21:59, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

John, you have missed my point completely. You have already registered your position on the substance. Accept the fact that consensus is against you. My suggestion is about making other types of improvements to the article. These do not in the least require looking at other encyclopedias. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:11, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

If your comment were simply about the lead, you are right that I missed that, and my apologies, although even in that regard the similar leads in other short works of a similar nature could be useful in determining the phrasing and points to be made and order of presentation in the lead. John Carter (talk) 22:51, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

• Maybe we should accept that this whole recent round of complaints about bias was set off by a blocked sock who's been nothing but a pest and a liar and allow the article to remain in the relatively stable form it's in. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:52, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

• by a blocked sock -- Who? Please clarify, since some of us were summoned here by the RFC bot and not familiar with article history. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:37, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

See #Argument? above, and the last comment: "Struck through edits by sock of Apollo the Logician. Doug Weller talk 15:59, 16 December 2017 (UTC)" . . . . dave souza, talk 22:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

User:Michael O'hara was the one who set off this entire recent round of bickering. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:58, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

My motivations was partially based on my earlier comments in the (hatted) "Article is persuasive against ID, not informative on the topic as it should be" section, and partially based on Larry Sanger's entirely-inadequate response to perceived bias. Michael O'hara was an obvious troll I tried to just ignore. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:35, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

• ... I'd like to demonstrate some of the people who are claiming to object in good-faith to this article what the correct process to try to improve this article ... We also have talk page archives and sources. To editors claiming that NPOV is being violated, please see WP:RS, WP:PSCI and WP:FALSEBALANCE. We don't give equal weight to apologetics. Reality unfortunately is a POV; in this case it's a question of evidence versus religious arguments, which reliable sources and the existing lead already point out. Even when we say "by the scientific community" or "the scientific consensus", which is right, it is even better to say "is pseudoscience", "was found to be pseudoscience", etc. (WP:YESPOV). I'm not claiming that all suggestions have been trying to give equal weight or resulted in false balance, some are obviously better than others. —PaleoNeonate – 22:50, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: the discussion still seems to be progressing, but I don't object to an early closure when discussion dies out, especially if somebody wants to propose changes in an RfC designed for a clear vote. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:54, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: re your interest in procedural alternatives, you should start aseparate thread, and here are a few ideas

• As 11 to 8 seems a significant non-consensus, perhaps you might start a new thread to follow up on those.
• Approach discussion of this lead in a smaller and more specific part like just the initial line.
• Identify which specific words lead to dispute and why, then find any alternative words.

Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:13, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

As 11 to 8 seems a significant non-consensus Consensus is not a vote. We go by not only the numbers, but also the relative value of the arguments used. Given that the cries of bias were raised predominantly by socks and inexperienced editors (Larry Sanger has fewer than 500 edits in the past 15 years and many of them consist of pointless whining like this; indeed, he's only made 9 mainspace edits since 2004), and given that their specific objections were all answered, I think Power~enwiki has hit the nail on the head in making their three points. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:39, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Thinking outside of the box

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Following on from the above discussion, I wonder if a different approach to the lede might be helpful. Rather than focusing on specific wordings and sources, perhaps we can find / build a consensus that includes editors across a breadth of perspectives by starting with a macro view. In that spirit, may I ask for perspectives on what is essential for inclusion in the lede, leaving aside the sequence in which they might be presented and the language to be used. Sources relevant to content are helpful but not essential. For example, it seems to me that the following are necessary:

1. what ID actually is, according to its proponents
2. how ID is described / defined in mainstream sources
3. links to creationism as revealed in Kitzmiller and the establishment clause issues
4. historical antecedents
5. features of ID such as irreducible complexity and specified complexity

I particularly invite input from Larry Sanger and DrFleischman as critics who may not be watching this page. Please, if we can avoid debating ID itself and focus on what topics / areas relating to ID belong in an encyclopaedic article, that would help. I'm hoping this is the non-contentious precursor to provide a frame for looking at what (if anything) in the lede might need / warrant removal / redrafting / resequencing / adjusting / whatever... Thanks. EdChem (talk) 22:16, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Note: I've numbered your list to make it easier to respond to, revert if you desire.

My take (from my reading of the sources, of course) is as follows:

1. ID is a re-framing of creationism in scientific terms, in order to pass it off as science.
2. It is almost unanimously described as pseudoscience and an act of deception (note that I'm distinguishing it from creationism with the latter; creationism apologetic have a lot of deception in them, but the idea isn't deceptive itself).
3. Already well-documented in the article, see cdesign proponentsists.
4. Creationism and the Discovery Institute.
5. I believe we have articles on those, but they should be summarized here, as well.

I'm not entirely sure there's even room in the lede for good coverage of all of that. I'm not opposed to a re-write, but the first two points are overwhelmingly supported by the RSes, and as such should definitely be included. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

The most bestest and properest approach to the lede is to summarize article content. Therefore the correct questions to be asked are:

• C1:L0 Which essential parts of the Content are not covered in the Lede?
• C0:L1 Which parts of the lede are not covered in content?
• C0:L0 Which essential elements of the subject are missing at all?
• C1:L2 Which parts of the lede incorrectly or inadequately summarize content?

And EdChem's bullet points must be considered from this perspective. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:33, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Tend to agree with Staszek here, even if implicitly at least they involve a review of the whole article not just the lead. John Carter (talk) 22:54, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

While those are the correct questions to ask about a lede in general, I should point out that EdChem's questions aren't inapplicable; they're just specific to this article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:00, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Regarding MP's summary, I think personally maybe the best way to summarize in the first paragraph might be that ID or whatever else it gets called ultimately originated as a misleading rephrasing of creationist thinking for the purposes of getting such thinking to rise to the level of science and on that basis be able to receive equivalent attention in the classroom as per the court ruling about teaching a variety of scientific theories. John Carter (talk) 23:40, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

...for the purposes of getting such thinking to rise to the level of science... You mean for the purpose of making it appear to rise to the level of science? The RSes are quite clear that the originators knew very well the numerous ways in which ID failed to actually be science, and yet presented it as science anyways. ID is, at it's heart, pure deception. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:53, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Right. The definition of what qualifies as scientific in general, and possibly whether something that doesn't meet current standards might meet earlier standards could still perhaps be relevant and worth discussion later in the lede, depending on whether it is relevant here I guess. But the implicit subtext regarding it qualifying as science sufficiently to be seen as such by the courts to be taught in schools should be spelled out. And I used the milder word misleading only because the word you proposed, fraud, seems to be primarily legal and on that basis maybe not used unless clearly expressed or implied by a court. In my own haphazard review of scientific developments of all sorts in the early twentieth century, in many if not most of the revolutionary changes proposed then many or most received some serious scientific opposition, so some oldsters who had opposed cosmological and evolutionary thinking might still have at least thought of themselves as being scientific, even if others didn't. John Carter (talk) 00:24, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

relevant and worth discussion later in the lede - No. The article is about ID, not about scientific approach. And don't start this "misunderstood science" and "prosecuted Galileo" bullshit. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:45, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Relativity was rightly disbelieved when there was no evidence for relativity, the Big Bang was rightly disbelieved when there was no evidence for the Big Bang, that's pretty much normal, see Mertonian norms. And quarrels among scientists are normal, they are part of legitimate science. But what the scientific community and philosophers of science say is that ID isn't anything like a legitimate scientific hypothesis, even not a speculative one (which would be still awaiting for subsequent proof). Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:01, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

More or less agree with Tgeorgescu above, although there might be grounds for argument if science had not said the same thing as strongly earlier in the history of the idea. And, actually, agree with Staszek too, with perhaps an indication somewhere prominent in the article or maybe lede to relevant articles regarding scientific method and/or maybe philosophy of science where appropriate.

At this point the main thrust of the ID argument seems to be in a sense the definition of science and related terms. If that's correct, it would be hard to avoid links to the most directly relevant subarticles of science for the purposes of further information. John Carter (talk) 01:23, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

• What problem are we trying to fix, exactly? The lede summarises the subject very well. I know that creationist sympathisers hate it, but it is the nature of ID that any properly neutral article will be hated by them, just like all the articles on evolutionary biology. Hence the existence of Conservapedia. Guy (Help!) 12:13, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure. But any changes to the lede are fine by me, so long as they include the facts I posted and answer the questions Staszek Lem posted. The current lede does that already, but if people think re-writing it will help... ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:20, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Er, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.... Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:07, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Problems with the lede: a) ineffective first sentence b) wordy, repetitive in places c) doesn't provide historical, philosophical, or political context d) doesn't clearly connect this concept with the closest related concepts, IDM & arg. from design.

Some examples of what's missing or needed  :

• ID is an argument for creationism, a specific variant of old philosophical arguments (AFD & irreducible complexity), often presented as a scientific theory.
• It grew out of a political/religious creationist movement in the 1980s, as a way to present creationist ideas as comparable to scientific ones. This branch of the creationist movement is called the IDM.
• Unlike the general philosophical argument from design, ID is presented as a scientific theory that disproves evolution and natural selection.
• The scientific community classifies ID as pseudoscience, and its scientific claims as false or deceptive.

These points need internal links and cites. AFD, IDM and creationism should be linked from the first two sentences. – SJ + 17:02, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, yes, but that mainly comes from bending over backwards to appease creationism apologists, so the purported "problem" will only get worse if we fix it :-) Guy (Help!) 17:11, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Points raised are covered in the lead, if not in the first paragraph: are there any points not currently included or lacking sources? Is this a discussion about how much to get into the first paragraph? If so, what's needed is a checklist and proposals for wording that improves style for each point, and at least maintains clarity. Points should each be separately listed for purposes of discussion. . . . dave souza, talk 17:39, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Knowing that at least some will likely decry what I say as promoting some sort of philosophical or religious bias, one thing I do not currently see in the lead, maybe because some might say it is at best dubiously related, is an implicit view that there is only one meaning to science. I do note that the article on social science rather prominently refers to science in it's "stricter modern sense" and includes a link there to history of science#Modern science. I get no sense from this article or lede that the word science has ever been used in any sense but the modern sense. Some such discussion would be helpful and useful. And I might also introduce you to some guys I know with a bachelor of science in the clearly scientific field of business administration.

I also don't see in an admittedly quick review of the article any material about how ID proponents might criticize the reliability of modern science based on possible overgeneralization or using dubiously sufficient evidence to "prove" their points. I imagine they might well regularly use some of the objections to evolution and similar arguments and if they do that probably should be prominently indicated.

As a final point, admittedly outside the scope of this particular article, if we can find people to find sources about the battle for the use and definition of the word science in at least the US in the mid 20th century between the hard sciences and everybody else who described their disciplines as scientific, that would be particularly useful. Again, at least to me, that perceived "hijacking" of the word for virtually the exclusive use of the hard sciences provided a lot of the attention which fuelled the early days of the ID movement.

Also, obviously, having not checked all the sources, I imagine ID journals probably provide the most detailed and reliable sources for ID as a whole, specific books being more the discussion of the individual author's personal views. They would probably qualify as RS for the purposes of sourcing such arguments.

And, finally, believe it or not, my personal academic background (and at least one scholarship) was in astronomy. I deal with a lot of the religious and philosophical content around here because I live near good religion libraries and that material was in particularly miserable shape when I started. If certain individuals, including at least one or two in this section, might not react negatively so quickly to anything that doesn't toe the line of modern scientific orthodoxy they might find a possible real ID proponent willing to discuss things reasonably if they perceived themselves being treated that way. John Carter (talk) 18:39, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

See Intelligent design and science. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:21, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

See also the last phrase in the first lead paragraph (as amended in response to a point raised above) – "and so is not science." It may interest you to find that the first paragraph of that article defines science as "a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." As reliable sources show, the central argument of ID is inherently untestable. As discussed above, the "hijacking" of the word "science" for testable explanations dates back to the 1820s, and natural philosophers including Herschel and Whewell (who coined the term "scientist"). It's not a matter of "toe the line", anything untestable such as an omnipotent god is inherently unworkable as a scientific explanation, and should not be taught in science classes. However good it may be as theology. . . dave souza, talk 21:57, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I just had a look at the entry for Intelligent Design in Larry Sanger's alternative encyclopadia, Citizendium. It's actually pretty good - certainly by contrast with this article. While it notes the scientific consensus on ID, both sides are given space to breathe, resulting in an interesting and enlightening discussion that touches on science, philosophy, history, theology and contemporary politics. We should take some cues. http://en.citizendium.org/Intelligent_design. Sam T. (talk) 14:06, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, but articles on it are generally written with a generalized audience in mind (instead of a serious scholarly audience) by editors cognizant of the way the vast majority of readers use those articles, as we tend to use WP ourselves. One inescapable fact of this is that as you count sentences, the number of readers who are still reading decreases. Aware of this, we tend to front-load articles with everything we consider to be important. Hence why we cram important details like "it's not actually science" and "it's deceptive" into the first sentence or two. This gives the appearance of bias, because it doesn't read like a detached, disinterested robot spitting out text in a formulaic manner (first describe, then present supporting claims, then present opposing claims, then characterize the debate). But in reality, the ledes of WP articles are designed to ensure that the largest possible number of readers will stop reading having already gotten the facts that they need. WP ledes thus may look biased to those who are sympathetic to fringe views, but end up being more informative to a larger number of people.

Also, that article does demonstrate a pro-ID bias. There is a section, prominently titled "Does science stand in opposition to intelligent design?" This is deceptive. First, there is no real question; as ID is pseudoscience, then by definition Yes, science stands in opposition to it. To frame it as a question in an encyclopedia implies that the answer is unknown or unknowable, which is blatantly untrue. Second, reading that section does not immediately provide the correct answer. In fact, two paragraphs in, I cannot see where it answers the question at all. Instead, the section presents ID talking points in voice of authority as if they are well-accepted axioms of science without ever providing a single reference for them. The second paragraph even falsely implies that there is scientific legitimacy to ID. It does so by falsely claiming that the "core question" of ID is something which it is not. In fact, the "core question" of ID is "can we formulate creationism as a scientific theory, or as something similar enough to it that it will be accepted as science?" The "core" of the resultant pseudoscientific "theory" of ID is not actually a question, but a statement; "Some features of living organisms could not possibly have evolved through natural selection." So even assuming a serious scholar, previously entirely ignorant of ID took the time to read their entire article and ruminate upon and internalize the information contained therein, they would be significantly less well-informed than if they had simply read the lede of the WP article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:48, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi MPants. A couple of points. First, "cramming the lede" with pejorative descriptions because one feels strongly about a topic doesn't "give the appearance of bias"; it's just bias, pure and simple. Everyone on both sides of the ID debate, up to and including Misplaced Pages's co-founder - with the exception of a small handful of dedicated editors - can see the problem here. It's like a sore thumb. The only question is how to resolve it tactfully in the light of said handful.

Second, while I certainly agree that articles should be written with general readers in mind, this shouldn't entail a lack of scholarly fairness. As it stands, the article reads like fundamentalist propaganda, where everything is black or white, and there's only the good guys and the bad guys. Anyone versed in the philosophy of science knows, for instance, that the scientific status of ID, like the Demarcation Problem as a whole - the question of what separates science from non-science - is a complex (and interesting!) issue that requires thoughtful explanation. This isn't surprising given that ID is, after all, and despite its political motivations in the US, just the most recent incarnation of the teleological argument, which occurs in some of the most famous philosophical and scientific works of all time, from Plato's "Phaedo" to Newton's "Principia".

As I say, the Citizendium article supports the overall consensus on ID, but it also covers these intriguing topics instead of railroading the discussion with a terse, poorly-worded charge of pseudoscience. The fact that you view even the airing of these facts as pro-ID indicates the level of neutrality with which you are approaching this article. Sam T. (talk) 17:23, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The above explained pretty clearly why it's not POV. Because one feels strongly about a topic attempts to transform this into an opinion game which is not what this is about. —PaleoNeonate – 17:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

First, "cramming the lede" with pejorative descriptions because one feels strongly about a topic doesn't "give the appearance of bias"; it's just bias, pure and simple. Only if those pejoratives are inaccurate or unimportant to an understanding of the subject. That is not the case, here.

...this shouldn't entail a lack of scholarly fairness. If we held to a principle of scholarly fairness, the entire article would consist of nothing but the sections about the controversy, court case, and the failings of ID as a science. We would not include any meaningful description of ID, nor any arguments in favor of it because there's absolutely nothing scholarly about any of that. We take a documentary approach; which means yes, we document the claims of and arguments for ID, but we also document the controversies, its failings as science, and notable criticisms of it. The fact that its failings, controversies and criticisms produce a lot more text than its claims and arguments is a failing of the subject, not the article.

Anyone versed in the philosophy of science knows, for instance, that the scientific status of ID, like the Demarcation Problem as a whole - the question of what separates science from non-science - is a complex... Bullshit. I'm very well versed in the philosophy of science. The problem with ID is that it's not falsifiable. That's about as simple as it gets.

The fact that you view even the airing of these facts as pro-ID... Our article covers all of those facts, and I've never advocated for removal of them (or even implied that I don't like them), so you can take your "fact" that I view things this way and shove it. Don't presume to tell me what I believe. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

There was no need for any of this - you'd already made your prejudices abundantly clear. I'm not here to argue with ideologues, I'm afraid. I've made a point about Citizendium, and you've registered your disagreement. Let's leave it at that. Sam T. (talk) 18:07, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, it was left at that until you responded by making a bunch of false claims and casting aspersions on me. But if you're done making the same tired argument that's been shot down countless times since this article was created, then that's a good thing. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:19, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Plenty of attitude here. I'm not done with helping to restore neutrality, no - just with the smorgasbord of nonsense. No wonder the article's a mess. If that requires a quick explanation, take your comment about falsifiability. Guess what? You can't have your cake and eat it. Is ID known to be false or not? You seem to be claiming both. In any case, leaving aside the question of whether ID is falsifiable (as in fact claimed by its proponents), plenty of bona fide scientific theories are themselves unfalsifiable, for instance the principle of "no action at a distance". It can't be falsified because even if object x appears to be influencing object y at a distance, it's always possible to posit some hitherto undiscovered substance mediating the two. Popperian falsificationism is a useful guide to how science generally works, but philosophers of science know that it breaks down under sustained scrutiny (see also e.g. the Duhem–Quine thesis). It's tempting to throw assertions around if you lack the expertise to handle these topics properly, but an encyclopaedia needs to demonstrate what it claims.

On another issue, since when have the political motivations of a theory's founders had a bearing on the evidential status of the theory itself? That's a textbook ad hom, I'm afraid. As I said above, you're not doing the consensus on ID any favours by overcooking its defense. Sam T. (talk) 19:49, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

To cut the long story short: our article is indeed biased, it is biased for mainstream science, like a serious encyclopedia should be. See e.g. WP:NOTNEUTRAL, WP:ABIAS and Daniel Okrent#Okrent's law. This is not the place for "unbiased" treatment of geocentrism, flat Earth and ID. And falsifiabily is restricted to hypotheses, ID proponents did not even bother to produce a hypothesis (falsifiable or not), they just keep repeating catchy slogans which in their view are in place of real scientific work (good or bad). Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:32, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

take your comment about falsifiability. Guess what? You can't have your cake and eat it. Is ID known to be false or not? You seem to be claiming both. And with that, you demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the very field you had the audacity to make claims about in your last comment. We're done here; I'm not engaging with a sock who doesn't even understand the subject they feel so passionately about. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:07, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

More assertion, MPants. Oh, a sock? Sam T. (talk) 20:20, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oh yes, let's look at Citizendium. Let's especially look at the number of articles it has had to basically nuke because they were taken over by "experts" with fringe views. Guy (Help!) 15:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Let's drop the sarcasm, shall we? Expert input is precisely what we're lacking in the current article. Sam T. (talk) 17:23, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

So you think our sources weren't written by experts? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Sam T., having had a look at the Citizendium ID article, its lead is badly written, ungrammatical, and laughably dismissive of mainstream expert opinion on ID. You've made your prejudices abundantly clear, but have failed to present any workable proposals for article improvement – I suggest you should study WP:NOTAFORUM. . . dave souza, talk 20:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if User:Larry Sanger would agree with this assessment. I'll leave it to others to take a gander at the page and decide who's prejudiced here. The article certainly isn't perfect, but it's a far sight better than this one, and the level of bias is roughly the same as in, say, Britannica, which is to say essentially nonexistent - unless I missed the bit where it's "laughably dismissive of mainstream expert opinion"? Give us a pointer if so - I haven't read the entire thing. Sam T. (talk) 20:42, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Irresistible quote: Meyer's "review questions whether whether conventional biological theory can explain the information explosion evident during the Cambrian period." So the Cambrian was the scene of exploding information? Who knew. And this nonsense is presented uncritically. . . dave souza, talk 20:30, 20 December 2017 (UTC)