"Nu-Uh! Your wrong!"
"Oh Yea? Prove It!!"
"Aha! You are indeed falsifiable!"
Discovery Institute tries to convince its subjects through the subtle use of a variety of methods. The main way is by using words like "Of course there's no way to..." and "honest commentators" playing to our conventions of "common sense" making information easily accessible. To most, "common sense" signifies being part of a bigger being (or being "one of the people"). Many are more likely to accept a fact as true if "all the cool kids are doing it". Also, the language used is of a conventionally accepted "higher-educated" vocabulary, giving the text more agency, while boosting its author high above me as the subject on the intellectual hierarchy. Being brought up in today's culture, where tolerance of beliefs and the promotion of scientific reasoning and logic are high priority, the idea of an intelligent design has seemed far off. My church has given us the generalized version leaving out all of these conditions and specifics that are presented in this article, giving us a more finer detail, thus promoting the acceptance of its authors argument.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI noticed a lot of the same things you said you noticed while navigating the Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture! They used the phrase "of course" plenty of times in their articles. I personally thought it made the writers sound like they were writing with an attitude. I actually quoted something they wrote in an article about why Darwinism is false and it had "of course" in it.
Did you notice all they did was use other sources to support their theories and try to prove other people wrong? If you look at the article I looked at, "Why Darwinism is false", you see this happen throughout the whole thing. I thought it was ridiculous and mean!
I understand what you mean about "common sense" in your blog post because you managed to explain it so well. Great job on getting straight to the point of your post! The text did indeed have more "agency" since the writers of the Discovery Institute's website wrote in an intelligent format.
It's interesting that you brought up what your church has done for you as far as defining what intelligent design is. I'm happy to see you were able to link this assignment with your own personal life. Good idea! I have never even heard of the idea of intelligent design before this assignment.
Thanks,
Ashley Carmichael