Lawrence VanDyke has penned a response, of sorts, to my criticisms of his review of the Beckwith book, which appears (where else?) on the Federalist Society blog at Harvard. (For my non-law readers, "the Federalist Society" is a national group of conservative law students, faculty and practitioners. I've already heard from members who are embarrassed, needless to say, to have their group associated with repackaged creationism. For the record: the Federalist Society has no stake in creationism, even if that is where Mr. VanDyke has chosen to hang his hat.)
Mr. VanDyke's response is subjected to apt rebuttal by biologist Dr. P.Z. Myers here (and see also here), and by Ed Brayton here and here. Mr. VanDyke has made the error, I fear, of entering in to debate on the Brayton site (see the first link), where he is, last I checked, being eaten alive for his repeated mistakes and misleading innuendos. There's no point "piling on," so let me offer just one brief comment on a point others don't address.
Mr. VanDyke notes that, "Leiter says that evolutionary theory has ‘naturalistic implications.’ Thank you. That is the central premise of my review...." But that was not, in fact, the central premise of the review, as he soon admits.
VanDyke's actual premise--with which I took issue--is that "physics [and biology etc.] doesn’t just have naturalistic implications, it has an a priori naturalistic methodology [emphasis added]. If you a priori pick a naturalistic methodology (which is a philosophical choice, not a scientific one), then of course you will get ‘naturalistic implications’ - i.e. results that only fit within a naturalistic paradigm - all others were excluded to begin with." Thus spoke VanDyke.
The difficulty, however, is that science did not "a priori pick a naturalistic methodology"; it adopted, based on evidence and experience (i.e., a posteriori), the methods that worked: it turns out that if you make predictions, test the predictions against experience, refine the hypotheses on which the predictions are based, test them again, and so on, you figure out how to predict and control the world around you. This is what the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and a few other ancient events apparently not covered in Mr. VanDyke's education, were about: the a posteriori discovery of the most effective ways to predict and control the world. This, of course, distinguishes the naturalistic worldview of science from the supernatural view of religion, which is genuinely a priori.
I must say that, at first, I was astonished by the "pity the poor student" response of some of VanDyke's defenders. Mr. VanDyke is in the elite of the elite of professional school students (foreign reader: remember that law is a post-graduate degree here, these are grown-ups, not adolescents), a member of the Harvard Law Review, who can, without a doubt, get any job at any prestigious law firm in the country that he wants. He chose to publish an incompetent book review in a prestigious, professional publication; in doing so, he entered the corridors of professional legal scholarship, and may be held accountable, accordingly. His book review was not prefaced by a disclaimer saying, "This review was written by a mere student, and therefore should not be thought reliable or accurate." If one purports to be a professional, one is in no position to complain about being assessed by professional standards.
However, Mr. VanDyke has been so shredded in these exchanges (see the links, above), and has been revealed to be so completely out of his intellectual depth, that even I feel a bit sorry for him now (and my general view--if that isn't clear enough--is that it is almost impossible to be harsh enough on those who want to harm schoolchildren by teaching them lies and misinformation). If Beckwith and his graduate student hadn't dragged this into the National Review On-Line, the whole matter would have no doubt faded away quietly. Now, instead, readers of this site--and the numerous others that have entered into this discussion (including, most damagingly, the Law & Religion listserve, which is frequented by dozens and dozens of legal scholars)--have had it hammered in to their heads, repeatedly, that Lawrence VanDyke wrote a shoddy book review on behalf of pseudo-science. Mr. VanDyke did something both intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible, but any retributivist would have to agree that he's gotten his just deserts at this point. I herewith let the matter drop, and conclude with Chris Mooney's apt summation of the real point:
"Let's face it: To defend Intelligent Design, you pretty much have to misrepresent what scientists know about evolution. You also have to pretend that a theory which has never been shown to have any scientific backing is nevertheless somehow 'scientific.' Those who perpetrate these falsehoods--especially in scholarly venues--ought to be held accountable for that fact."
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