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Friday, April 28, 2006

Two Bad Arguments and Two Better Ones

Here's a link to a very good paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski on the ID/ evolution issue. He discusses two arguments often made against ID that he identifies as bad arguments and two critical arguments that he feels are more promising.

The "bad" arguments are familiar to anyone who has kept up on the controversy. The first is the attack on the motives of IDers. Critics of ID often seek to dismiss it as a thinly veiled attempt to smuggle religion into science, but they commit a fallacy when they attack their opponents' motives rather than their arguments. The second argument is the complaint that ID is not genuine science. Koperski skillfully skewers both of these.

The critics, however, are on firmer ground when they point to the the lack of a well-developed research plan for ID. The second "good" argument against ID is that it is too radical. This latter argument is quite provocative, and it will be interesting to see how ID theorists respond to it.

Koperski's paper is a little long and probably not appropriate for the casual reader, but if you've done some thinking about this controversy and are interested in the arguments, it's worth a look.