March of the Straw-men
There have been times when our critics have seemed a little . . . well . . . silly. Most often, this happens when someone decides they don’t have to actually understand anything about the intelligent design position before they attack it. Krauze over at Telic Thoughts illuminates with a great example of a ridiculous straw-man argument. He writes:
One of the reasons I don't take grandiose statements about how "many scientists reject intelligent design" seriously is because the average scientist has no clue as to what intelligent design is about, having only read some anti-ID editorials in the journals they subscribe to.
In the latest bit of threatiness, Darwinists are claiming that “if there is an intelligent designer, then almost everything else you know about science is wrong. Then your flu vaccine wouldn’t work, your car wouldn’t start, there was no Hiroshima ...”
While the fear-mongering of this is all very familiar, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone try to use working technology to argue against ID. While several of our critics use varying theological arguments from dysteleology against ID, wrongly claiming that personal pain and sub-optimal design disprove design theory, these guys are actually saying that things working properly disproves ID! This is quite the shift in tactics.
It’s one thing to argue over the evidence and engage in an honest debate. It’s another thing entirely to prop up a straw-man argument against ID and hysterically claim that the theory endangers scientific advancement.