Wikipedia talk:WikiProject intelligent design/Archive 3

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Kdbuffalo

I recieved an email recently claiming that Kdbuffalo, sockpuppeteer extrodinare, is the same person as http://www.conservapedia.com/User:Conservative Raul654 (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

This is well known. If you want, I can email you supporting information. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Writtenonsand: Introduction

Hi. I've just joined the project. I believe that evolution is an accurate theory of life and that Intelligent Design is not. However, I want to make very clear that my intention is not to troll or make trouble. I will uphold the stated goals of the project as well as normal Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I may make edits or engage in discussions, and I may disagree with other project members, but I will always strive to maintain NPOV and high quality of articles. I hope that everyone is comfortable with that. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 05:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Possible article to include

• Lee Spetner.--Filll (talk | wpc) 17:38, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

A Question

I know many of the people here are supporters of evolution, so if my asking this is not a good idea, just say so. I noticed this was placed as a daughter project of Pseudoscience, and I was sondering if the choice of this term has been considered. I would say that Intelligent Design is not widely accepted by scientists, but it is very possible for the scientific method to be applied to intelligent design, and for some of its supporters to use the scientific method. And the definition of pseudoscience is ideas that do not agree with the scientific method but whose supporters claim are scientifically valid. My issue here is not one of the truth of ID, or lack thereof, but simply whether it strictly fits with POV. Again, if my asking this will just stir up trouble, just tell me and I'll remove the comment. ---G.T.N. (talk) 01:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Intelligent design could be evaluated scientifically by its supporters, it's just not. The same is true of most pseudosciences - there's no reason you couldn't investigate them scientifically. It's just not how it actually transpires (i.e. put on your scientist hat and just measure whether they're evaluating things scientifically or not, don't worry about whether its possible). WilyD 03:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand your position completely, I just think that there is a significant enough group of people who would object to the term pseudoscience so defined. Because of that fact that it is an ongoing debate of great importance to many people, and this categorization takes a side, it is not neutral, regardless of its accuracy. Has this actually been discussed before? ---G.T.N. (talk) 03:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject classification isn't really subject to NPOV, but that's neither here nor there. The general consensus of authoritative sources would concur, which is what NPOV is. It's merited time, not equal time. WilyD 03:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

All right, thank you. I was just making sure. ---G.T.N. (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

WT:NPOV#Religion section - Disputes between historians or scientists and religious views

Because this issue comes up often and can be a source of contention, I am proposing adding a paragraph to the existing WP:NPOV/FAQ#religion with a more careful and clearer explanation of language to use and how to present the subject to implement WP:NPOV in articles involving disputes between religious views and historians/scientists etc. Doubtless the proposal can be improved. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Note: I'm posting mention here for inclusivity, but the intent of the proposal is only to address how to handle controversies between undisputedly religious views and undisputedly academic views, not to address disputes about what class a view falls into. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Sarah Palin supports ID

Hi, just wanted to give a heads up on this. The current Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, appears to be a proponent of ID. I added her to the category here and wanted to give a heads up here so that there is no funny business. You all may wish to watchlist this article. rootology (C)(T) 16:45, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Intelligent design

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

How to improve this article

1. We must neither condemn nor endorse intelligent design, either on this talk page or in the article. We should simply describe it fairly. This means saying what its claims are (in other words, what its adherents claim about it), and summarizing the arguments in favor of those claims. We probably have enough material summarizing the arguments against those claims, but there's nothing wrong with adding more of that kind of material.
2. We should address neglected issues, such as the dispute between (a) those who claim a distinction between ID and Creationism and (b) those who assert that there is no such distinction.
   • I have tried to do this, but statements and/or arguments favoring the viewpoint that they are distinct have been routinely censored. A sysop who said others were tired of my attempts to balance the article by inserting this material chose to ban me from intelligent design and its talk page, which makes it 10 times harder to work together for neutrality

Are we all agreed that Wikipedia and its articles should take no position on ID, but rather report what the position of various scientists, authors and organizations have taken on it? Do we agree that all contributors should put aside their own opinions and just describe ID fairly?

If anyone in this WikiProject thinks its our job to condemn ID as being "false" or "not science", please speak up. It would lead to a very interesting discussion of NPOV policy. --Uncle Ed (talk) 22:04, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Ed, you are a notorious partisan on this topic, so you will pardon the rest of us if we weight your opinions accordingly. In order to "describe it fairly" we need to give WP:DUE weight to the majority scientific and judicial consensus that ID is without scientific merit or foundation and that it is merely a disingenuous attempt to sneak religious dogma into public school science classes. In any case, 'ID' as it was originally formulated is dead (ISCID has closed its doors, Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center‎ is moribund), having been replaced with successively more watered down forms of Neo-Creationism: Teach the controversy, Critical Analysis of Evolution, and fiinally Academic Freedom on evolution and Strengths and weaknesses of evolution, in a vain attempt to meet constitutional muster. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 02:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn, please review Wikipedia:Avoid personal remarks and then respond to the substance of my suggestions.

Every Wikipedia article on ID already gives WP:DUE weight to the majority scientific and judicial consensus.

• Most (nearly all?) science organizations dismiss it as pseudoscience
• U.S. courts have ruled that it is "creationism"

Now that we have accomplished that part of our task, let us move on to ensuring that the minority viewpoint also gets described, and that we do not make the Wikipedia:POV pushing error of endorsing the view that the scientists and jurists are correct in their assessment.

We ought to report - and we do - that scientists and jurists reject ID. There are sufficient names and references to leave the reader no doubt that these sources are opposed to ID. What we need now is to describe the reasons for this condemnation. Is ID "without scientific merit" merely because it disagrees with the mainstream, or are there specific scientific problems with it? If it's the latter, the problems need to be listed.

• If ID proponents offer no way that their theory can be tested (see falsification), then we need a quote from a scientists who points this out. Something like:

  I. C. Klerely of Fairgrounds University wrote in Untestable Notions (MIT Press, 1996):

  "My primary objection to intelligent design is that there is no way to test whether it is true or false. I do not reject it as a disproved scientific idea but as bad science. We may as well examine whether the craters on the moon are the result of Zeus throwing rocks at it 10 million years ago. What test could conceivably disprove that hypothesis?"

On the matter of religious dogma, I would like to read more about how ID originated and 'evolved' (no pun intended). Did it derive from Creation Science? Do both supporters and opponents acknowledge this derivation?

Other religious (or philosophical) questions that need to be treated:

1. Do opponents object to ID on the grounds that it is a modification of an originally religious idea? That is, do they say that no idea can be taken as scientific if it carries religious baggage on its way to the examination chamber? (No fair leaving your bags outside, eh?) If this is something that opponents say - rather than an objection given by Wikipedia contributors, then we should describe it and attribute it.
2. Have ID opponents said that ID is "religious" because it contains a religious premise? If so, I'd like to see something in writing about this, listing one or more of the religious premises of ID. Something like:

   Philo S. Ofikal of the Indian Institute of Biological Research wrote: "Intelligent design begins with the premise that God created the universe and the first living cell. It adds to these articles of faith the preconceived notion that God created every major new species. In this, it is clearly identical to Old Earth Creationism. When they examine the physical world, design theorists look only for evidence of design to bolster their preconceptions.

When we give an account of the religious premises of intelligent design, should we describe the views of opponents only, or should we balance this with the views of supporters? Suppose in our voluminous reading, some of us contributors discover a denial that ID has religious premises.

• If a prominent adherent of ID says, for example, that design theorists make a conscious effort to leave aside their religious ideas when they enter the laboratory, that ought to be in the article. It would be censorship - not due weight - to leave out this kind of minority idea.

Our purpose should never be to prove that the mainstream is right and that the minority (ID in this case) is wrong. All WP:DUE requires is that we ensure that the reader knows which current of thought is the overwhelming majority, i.e., represents the consensus science viewpoint. Also, that we make sure that readers are not mislead by the amount of text which explains the minority viewpoint into thinking that more than a tiny minority hold views counter to the mainstream.

We can avoid violating WP:DUE when describing minority viewpoints by emphasizing before and after the description the numerical tininess of the number of adherents. If 99.8% (or more) of biologists reject ID and only 0.2% (or less) of biologists accept it, then we can say so. That ought to be enough.

Either ID is too insignificant an idea to mentioned at all - in which case why is there a WikiProject for it? -- or it should be described neutrally. Wikipedia should not take sides, saying (or even implying) that the mainstream is correct in its condemnation of the idea. Rather, it should give WP:DUE weight to the majority scientific and judicial consensus that ID is without scientific merit or foundation and that it is merely a disingenuous attempt to sneak religious dogma into public school science classes. Then it should take as many words as necessary to explain the minority viewpoint opposed to this consensus, describing fairly all the facts and reasons which this minority give - while emphasizing (1) that they are a very small minority and (2) that the consensus is against their view. --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

What a load of self-serving codswallop.

1. Last I checked you were under ArbCom restriction for POV-pushing. So it is perfectly legitimate to point this out.
2. There is no legitimate "dispute" as to whether ID is creationism. Yes, ID supporters want to deny that it is creationism, in order to have it taught in schools -- however, this self-serving claim is generally made by bare assertion or only supported by blatantly fallacious arguments. Everybody else says otherwise. Therefore WP:DUE (and most probably WP:SELFPUB) applies and we can omit their claims.
3. Citations have already been given for "not falsifiable" & "not empirically testable". While I'm sure we could find dozens more, and more authoritative, there's really no need to bother, as no WP:RS disputes this.
4. On "religious dogma", we have Haught's testimony, cited in the KvD decision as "anyone familiar with Western religious thought would immediately make the association that the tactically unnamed designer is God, as the description of the designer in Of Pandas and People (hereinafter “Pandas”) is a “master intellect,” strongly suggesting a supernatural deity as opposed to any intelligent actor known to exist in the natural world." Additionally, we have Dembski's word that "Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."
5. "design theorists" rarely "enter the laboratory" -- and on the rare occasion they have done so, they have garnered there no empirical results relevant to ID -- so your point is moot.
6. Which "minority viewpoint" should it explain? The viewpoint that it is legal to teach ID in schools. Or the viewpoint that they never advocated teaching it in schools? The viewpoint that ID is "just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel"? Or the viewpoint that ID is science? The admission that ID has yet to come up with a theory? Or the viewpoint that ID is a theory? Even when their claims aren't self-contradictory, they're generally contradicted by a wealth of sources far more reliable than the IDers. This means that if we cover the IDers claims, we would have to give WP:DUE weight to their rebuttals. There is a limit to how much of such balanced material we can give without bloating the article beyond what is readable.

I would conclude by stating that your claims are without merit. I agree with the Admin who banned you from the ID article, and would wish that somebody would ban you from here -- as your flimsy POV-pushing does nothing but waste time by forcing their repeated redemolition. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 14:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Talkorigins down

I just noticed that talkorigins appears to be down. Does anyone know if this is a permanent condition? If so, it is likely that many links will need to be updated on articles related to creationism, and some discussion may help to determine the best way to proceed. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 12:12, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

A still-active mirror can be found at http://toarchive.org/ (HT dave souza), alternately, Wayback templates can be used. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 14:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems that User:Armchair info guy is systematically replacing the dead talkorigins links with (live) toarchive links. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 15:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC)