In the postings this week, I have been looking at the way that IDC people have been using language to blur crucial distinctions and to hide their true agenda.
In order to combat this, the scientific people have to be very careful and adopt two strategies. The first is to not let the IDC people control the vocabulary of the debate. The second is to constantly expose the long-term agenda of the IDC people.
In the first case, we should not let the IDC people pretend they are not talking about god when they refer to an ‘intelligent designer.’ If they claim that what they are proposing is science, we should demand that they, like any scientist who invents a new concept, produce an operational definition for their concept of ‘intelligent designer.’ Then we can compare their operational definition with that of an operational definition of god to see if we are talking about two different things or the same thing. For a definition of god we can tentatively propose (following the Oxford English Dictionary definition) “A superhuman person….who is worshipped as having power over nature and the fortunes of mankind.” But is this operational? An operational definition of god might be “an entity who cannot be detected by measuring instruments but is yet capable of influencing events in the natural world.” Of course, this definition does not rule out other entities like the devil and other spirits, so it needs to be fine-tuned. I am open to suggestions for improvement.
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