Every time Intelligent Design gets mentioned over at Slashdot, the logical fallacies come out in full force.

Your assignment: check out this thread and pick out a few examples of fallacies and report back.

Here’s just a typical example of an evolutionist response to intelligent design:

“Evolution is both a theory and a fact. (un)Intelligent design is pile of crap sugar coated to look like science. It is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it doesn’t have an valid data or methodologies to back it up. I don’t know what state or school you were taught in, but in most classes I have attended, the focus isn’t on the theory but on how and why the conclusion was reached, it a sad day when politic have driven education to put the focus on the conclusion rather than how the conclusion was reached.”

The first fallacies you see are the usual ad hominems and poisoning the well. His insult against ID does both at once—it’s a personal attack, as well as the fact that his choice of words “...coated to look like science” implies that ID isn’t science at all.

Of course, he’s wrong that there’s no valid data or methodologies to back it up: has he never heard of “Darwin’s Black Box,” “Darwin on Trial,” the Discovery Institute, Johnathan Wells, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, Dembski’s design filter? Probably so, but it’s more convenient just to regurgitate what he’s no doubt heard elsewhere, that ID is just Bible thumping creationism “disguised as science.” I’m a believer in a young earth and global flood myself, but critics need to realize that ID does not endorse that sort of thing, and indeed many ID advocates are even angry at young-earth creationists.

In “I don’t know what state or school you were taught in,”  we have another subtle ad hominem. But it would be reasonable to ask him the same question. As a high school science fan and student, the things I read go over how the conclusion of a theory was reached, but the main focus is always the theory itself. In any case, whether or not the progress of a theory is taught has nothing to do with the subject at hand. But the real problem comes in with “...it (sic) a sad day when politic have driven education to put the focus on the conclusion rather than how the conclusion was reached.”

Politics driven education? Intelligent design isn’t widely taught. Louisiana had to struggle and fight just to get this bill in. Meanwhile, evolution has been very politically based. In the words of Johnathan Wells, Darwinists have their hands in a “multi-billion dollar cookie jar” (tax money) that is “refilled every year.”

Or consider this quote from the article linked to by the first post: “She adds that the bill’s language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of “open and objective discussion”, is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial.”
An attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial? If evolution isn’t scientifically controversial, then why is there such a battle over this bill with well-trained scientists on both sides? Evolutionists will not even acknowledge a controversy over their views, though there clearly is one.

One slick claim often made is that ID shouldn’t be taught in schools because it’s been scientifically debunked. But wait, aren’t there scientists who believe in ID and have responded to these rebuttals? Well, they’re supporters of pseudoscience, so we don’t have to listen to them. This is clearly a circular reasoning fallacy: “We shouldn’t allow discussion of ID, because ID isn’t scientific. But we should allow discussion of evolution, because evolution is scientific.” Of course, this begs the question: they might believe ID isn’t good science, but other scientists do and support it. However, since those opposed to ID wield great political clout, they get away with saying things that would never be tolerated from opponents of evolution.

I watched a program awhile back about ID being judged in court. It was regarding a book called pandas and things or something like that. It was clear during the program/court hearing that there was alot of science behind evolution. But only religious belief behind ID. The ID people had nothing but legal arguement of fair access to different points of views, everything else was shot down in flames.

Not only that, but they showed that the book had clear religious over tones before it was rewritten to make it easier to get past separation of church and state. Including one instance where the person replacing the term creationism with ID messed up and left some of the word creationism behind.

Name one of these “scientists” and the legitmate scientific methods to substantiate ID he/she used. If you managed that, name several(I’ll still be amazed if you name one) I do not consider “odds of” a form of proof. What are the odds of a intelligent being arriving from nothing and so on. Absents of proof in the form of hard science showing exactly every step (this is a absurdly high requirement bar of proof, they have shown many steps anyways) is not proof of absents.

Same with global warming. The evidence is almost everywhere if you open your eyes that the world is warming. The science has been proven that these chemicals cause a green house effect. The correlation between green house gases and increased globel temperature has been made. Some of it simply by making graphs of data collected over time.

Some big businesses, oil companies etc, find it easy to muddy the water for non scientist. Just like tobacco companies tried to make whether tobacco was bad for you or not, into a “debate” to muddy the science. Selfish people and hard rights find it convenient to add to the mud rather then admit whats shown to be true by a landslide of evidence and end up having to use less/conserve more or have to alienate their ignorant friends.