Faith & Science
Intelligent Design
Another Way to Defeat the ID = Creationism Meme
Darwinian logic often contends that because a given proportion of ID proponents are creationists, ID must therefore be creationism. It’s a twist on the genetic fallacy, one I like to call the Darwinist “Genesis Genetic Argument.” As noted, it implies that each and every argument made by a creationist must be equivalent to arguing for full-blooded creationism. This fallacious argument is easy to defeat on logical grounds by pointing out that some ID proponents are not creationists, and in fact have been persuaded to support ID in the absence of religion. Thus something other than creationism or religion must be fundamental to the set of views underlying ID (big hint: it’s the scientific data indicating real design in nature)!
Michael Egnor recently observed that William Provine and Gregory Graffin have published the results a poll which provides a poignant rhetorical rebuttal to the Darwinian “Genesis Genetic Argument.” Provine and Graffin (both evolutionary biologists) surveyed 149 evolutionary biologists and found that 78% were “pure naturalists,” and strikingly, “[o]nly two out of 149 described themselves as full theists.”
So the next time a Darwinist tries to tell you that ID is creationism because some percentage of ID proponents are creationists, you can remind them that polls indicate that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists are atheists who reject traditional theism. By the logic of the Darwinist “Genesis Genetic Argument,” evolutionary biology would be equivalent to “pure naturalism.” Of course, that logic is false, which is why ID is not creationism any more than evolutionary biology is atheism.