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Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:
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These questions arise frequently on this talk page. To view an explanation to the answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question. Q1: Is this article unfairly biased in favor of evolution?
A1: There have been arguments over the years about the article's neutrality and concerns that it violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. The NPOV policy does not require all points of view to be represented as equally valid, but it does require us to represent them. The policy requires that we present the theory of evolution from the point of view of disinterested philosophers, biologists and other scientists, and that we also include the views of evolution proponents and opponents. We should not present minority views as though they are majority ones, but we should also make sure the minority views are correctly described and not just criticized. Q2: Should Intelligent Design (ID) be equated with creationism?
A2: ID is a form of creationism, and many sources argue that it is identical. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and Phillip E. Johnson, one of the founders of the ID movement, stated that the goal of intelligent design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept.[1][2]
Not everyone agrees with this. For example, philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that intelligent design is very different from creation science, in that it does not depend on distortion of the evidence, or on the assumption that it is immune to empirical evidence. It depends only on the idea that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and that it is not assigned a vanishingly small probability (see "Public Education and Intelligent Design", Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 36, no. 2, 2008). Although intelligent design proponents do not name the designer, they make it clear that the designer is the Christian god.[3][4][5][1] In drafts of the 1989 high-school level textbook Of Pandas and People, almost all derivations of the word "creation", such as "creationism", were replaced with the words "intelligent design".[6] Taken together, the Kitzmiller ruling, statements of ID's main proponents, the nature of ID itself, and the history of the movement, it becomes apparent—Discovery Institute's protestations to the contrary notwithstanding—that ID is a form of creationism, modified to appear more secular than it really is. This is in line with the Discovery Institute's stated strategy in the Wedge Document. Q3: Should ID be characterized as science?
A3: The majority of scientists state ID should not be characterized as science. This was the finding of Judge Jones during the Kitzmiller hearing, and is a position supported by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community.[7]
Scientists say that ID cannot be regarded as scientific theory because it is untestable even in principle. A scientific theory predicts the outcome of experiments. If the predicted outcome is not observed, the theory is false. There is no experiment which can be constructed which can disprove intelligent design. Unlike a true scientific theory, it has absolutely no predictive capability. It doesn't run the risk of being disproved by objective experiment. Notes and references
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Rejection of evolution by religious groups was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||
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Current status: Delisted good article |
This article was nominated for deletion on December 11, 2004. The result of the discussion was keep. |
This level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To-do list for Rejection of evolution by religious groups:
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Text and/or other creative content from Creationism was copied or moved into Creation vs. evolution debate on October 29, 2004. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |