By CASEY LUSKIN - WASHINTONEXAMINER.COM
Added: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Casey-Luskin-Lets-restore-civility-to-the-debate-on-evolution-and-intelligent-design--69969312.html

In his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” biologist Richard Dawkins brands those who doubt Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolution as “history deniers,” even stooping to compare them to “Holocaust deniers.”

In today’s highly charged political climate, scientific debates over controversial subjects such as climate change and evolution increasingly substitute such overblown rhetoric for careful analysis.

We commonly see one side depicting the other as not only wrong, but as unreasonable, irrational, or immoral. As a result, two terms are presently in vogue to describe those who question scientific ideas: “Skeptic” and “Denier.”

In practice, the terms have virtually the same meaning – a person who questions an idea - but vastly different connotations are associated with each. “Skeptic” is used when one wants to sound like a critical thinker, portraying oneself as a rogue academic who bucks the trend in order to break new ground.

In contrast, “denier” has all kinds of pernicious connotations and is used to dismiss critics as close-minded, relying on sinister motives to reject some obvious fact.

These connotations often slip by unnoticed, subconsciously shaping public perceptions of an issue. They are powerful tools of persuasion in our conformist culture, where everyone wants to be a chic, hip, and intelligent skeptic, but no one wants to be a clumsy, dimwitted, or even worse, morally deficient denier.

To be sure there are deniers of certain recent historical facts who hold unquestionably false and abhorrent views. But evolutionists abuse those connotations when co-opting the denier rhetoric into the debate over intelligent design (ID).
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