User talk:Andrew Lancaster/ID FAQ

FAQ Input

I agree with a number of the issues raised. Because you asked, I'll put my thoughts down.

• On sensitivity to the political climate: It seems ID is the subject of a culture-war that is particularly intense on the internet. This culture-war attitude seems to come up in the article itself which detracts from it's quality as an encyclopedia article.

• On Taxonomy: The article sits in a taxonomically awkward position between teleological argument, the Intelligent Design movement, creationism, theology, philosophy, religion and probably half a dozen other subjects. Many editors are insufficiently knowledgeable about how ID fits in taxonomically or have strong culture-warrior positions on the issue that detract from a clear analysis of the issue. From a philosophical perspective, for instance, the conflation of ID and teleological arguments is, in my opinion a mistake (I can substantiate on request). Another common conflation in the article's sources seems to be between the "Intelligent Design movement" and Intelligent Design itself.

• On the problem of sources: Another significant complication is that a lot of culture-warring is present even in quality sources. Certain peer-reviewed publications provide a lot of leeway for editorializing within articles, and this culture-war editorializing is cited as encyclopedic. Assessing this is, to a large degree subjective. A relevant example would be Sahotra Sarkar's review of Bradley Monton's book in Notre Dame's Philosophical Reviews.[1] Could we really include, for instance, Sarkar's personal jibe against Monton in the opening paragraph as an encyclopedic fact just because it is stated in what appears to be a substantive source?

• On censorship: I did witness someone actually delete a comment someone else made. I wasn't sure what the rules are about that, but it creates an unfortunate atmosphere of bullying and censorship (literally) on the talk page. In my opinion, that ought not to happen.

I think dealing with the above three issues is fundamental. Until we sort them out, we don't have a sufficiently sound foundation on which to properly represent Intelligent Design in an encyclopedic fashion. BabyJonas (talk) 20:21, 4 September 2013 (UTC)