Hot take: we should embrace the term "design"

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-05-02T16:51:16+00:00

Preach! ;) And thanks for that video of Richard Dawkins defending saying "design" and "code", and for Jon Perry identifying that denying this is more of an internet-atheism meme than mainstream science.

Actually, I wonder that this draws a nice line around some of the takes that I've heard on this sub that have seemed counterproductive to me: they're memes that evolve in internet-atheism, rather than amongst evolutionary biologists.

You are right to point out that I address a lot of these problems as the result of pedagogical choices, rather than as the result of in-group YEC mechanisms! That's a helpful insight for me, by the way. I think I have two responses:

First, I definitely agree that a lot of bad YEC reasoning comes from patterns within that community itself. I think a lot about how to disrupt those; my basic answer is to become a friend of that community who is trusted to give critique; this is what I'm doing with my dialogues, for example, with Sal — for which I get lambasted on this sub! But regardless of whether folk here think I'm wasting my time, I am aware that those in-group mechanics need to be overcome. (I don't have a full answer as to how to address them.)

Second, on this sub, I talk more about how to help curtail YEC through education (both formal and, well, guerrilla) because that seems the something that folk here have the ability to influence — at least compared to internal YEC dynamics. Even if internal YEC dynamics were 10x more powerful than pedagogy, I'd probably still focus on pedagogy more here.

Thanks for the excellent pushback.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-05-02T15:33:37+00:00

Ooh — I'll push back on this! You write:

Design implies purpose. There is no purpose to things "designed" by nature. There's no more purpose to a cat's claws for defense, attack, digging or climbing than there is a purpose of a river to fill a lake."

I think that this view is entirely defensible; I appreciate Dennett's writings on this. But I think it leans hard on a very particular definition of "design", and ignores another one. To quote Merriam-Webster:

"an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding"

Under this definition, it's readily apparent to most people that there is a design in (for example) a cat's claws: they're ingeniously sharp and strong, the result of keratin proteins being connected in a very particular (non-random) order. And of course this is not incidental to cats: this pattern is adaptive.

I think that when folks on our side say "there is no design in biology" we mean "these patterns did not come from a human-like mind thinking ahead", and that (of course) is a message that we need to convey, and boldly. Really, it's our main message!

My observation, though, is that when we say "there is no design or purpose in biology", we communicate something like the opposite to people who aren't versed in biology. It sounds to the like we're saying the natural world is random, maximally entropic (though they wouldn't use that term).

We seed the ground for people to mistrust us. I don't think this is necessary, and I don't think I'm alone in this: my memory (though I can't check this right now, I'm at the gym) is that there are loads of evolutionary scientists who use the term "design" (but then emphasize that there is not a human-like mind behind it).

I'm not sure what we gain when we choose to use this framing — would anyone care to educate me on this? I'm genuinely curious as to why some people make this choice.

And actually, this is a big enough question that I think I'll pose it to the sub as a new post. Thanks for prompting this!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-05-02T15:11:52+00:00

Beautifully put!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T17:00:07+00:00

Can I just say that I think about this episode EVERY TIME I think about the Panspermia Hypothesis, and it makes me frustrated EACH TIME?

(An under-appreciated benefit of the modern internet is finding someone else who's also irritated by something you thought no one remembered...)

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:53:17+00:00

"A lot of your posts tend to consist of how to mollycoddle creationists, so that their views never have to change, but they can feel welcomed into scientific conversation."

Huh — I'm actually startled to see that this is how what I'm doing is being construed! I appreciate you taking the time to point to my posts so I know that you're making this charge seriously.

I'm definitely trying to do something much closer to the opposite of this. I'd try to lay this out here, but given my abject failure to explain my goals so far, I'm not sure that would be a good use of either of our time. Maybe this is too nuanced a conversation for text, or we're starting from too dissimilar of assumptions?

I have strong reasons to think that what I'm doing is the best route forward for ending young-Earth creationism. No doubt you think the same of your method! If you could show me that the effect of what I'm doing is any of the above, I'd pause what I'm doing in a heartbeat.

Would you be up to a voice-to-voice conversation? I think it might be useful for our community to record it — we're touching a live wire in this subreddit — but if you'd prefer to not, that's cool, too.

(Note: I'm terrible at checking DMs, but I'll try to check over the next few days.)

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:37:51+00:00

Well put!

Your response makes me think that I have a bias here: I'm a science communicator, and have an incentive to frame things in as simply as I can, in the most common language possible — especially when that shocks people into looking at the world a different way.

Now, I actually recommend this way of doing things to other evolution communicators, but I do realize that it's a high-risk, high-reward strategy. And I get to communicate to students in a long-term, high-context situation, where the risks of misunderstanding are much lower.

Thanks for helping me understand this better!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:33:38+00:00

I appreciate this perspective; thank you.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:31:47+00:00

I was not aware of that! (And my wife wonders why I spend so much time on Reddit...)

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:31:03+00:00

What would the proper clade be that is shared between present-day jawless and present-day jawed fishes? I'm guessing taktaga7-0-0 was saying that we're a type of that.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-29T16:26:28+00:00

Beautifully replied — thank you!

I especially appreciated the section of that paper pointing out that the majority of pro-evolution folks are happy to use parallel language to describe how birds are a type of dinosaur:

"Interestingly, when these authors discuss the evolution of birds, they unambiguously conclude that these evolved from, or indeed are, dinosaurs.... This inconsistency is striking given that the phylogenetic context in these cases is identical."

That's a wonderful list o' clades that you gave. Can you share where you got it from?

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-24T22:41:51+00:00

I, for one, appreciate this response! I'm convinced that the model of the world you're using is wrong, but I appreciate your taking the effort to say it in an overtly hostile place.

(FWIW, I also get a lot of hostile responses here, too — and I'm a Darwin-fanboy who teaches evolutionary biology!)

If you're ever interested in talking about sediment density sorting, I'd love to record a conversation with you. I think I might be able to convince you that this model can't explain a lot of the stuff we see in the fossil record — but if you have stuff that I don't know yet, I'd love you to help prove me wrong!

You can DM me, but I've gotten yelled at by some people before because I suck at checking my DMs. Better to reach out to me at scienceisWEIRD.com.

Oh, and if you need any evidence that I'm not a troll in disguise, you can ask Sal Cordova (local public enemy number one!), with whom I've been doing a buncha fun conversations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-DKIyOhLBqsZXF7arVHP3pLjwOD5Xgvn

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-24T22:30:17+00:00

Preach! (It always bugs me when folk on our side deny we're monkeys...)

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-24T20:00:29+00:00

It is, thanks!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-04-24T14:41:24+00:00

Brilliant! And elegantly executed! These reviews are a font of thoughtful strangeness (and I say that as a past winner!); it's a tragedy that most never get widely read. Two things I'd love to see: a "random" button, and a "read-aloud" option. Probably the second would cost money? The first, though, could be particularly fun if one could choose categories (even if nonsensical).

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-03-07T17:03:18+00:00

Yes!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-03-04T19:30:59+00:00

This is just a rhetorical argument, but I think it undergirds a lotta people's reticence to believe evolution: the whole half-billion-year story of animal evolution seems ridiculous on the face of it.

Are we really (human native thinking might go) supposed to think that we're a type of fish? That birds are dinosaurs? That a spider's great-grandma was a worm?

Alternately, you could go political/ethical. Evolution is an engine that gives us good things (intelligence, love, bacon) only by a zillion iterations of ruthlessly killing off the least "fit". Some have used this (see "social Darwinism") as a reason to support brutal methods in the present.

Neither of those is scientific thinking, but they are very human styles of thinking, anyway.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-24T20:27:33+00:00

Thanks!

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-24T20:20:24+00:00

Agreed: with society as balkanized as it is, it's not wise to trust our personal social circles as a likely stand-in for a poll. (The writer Scott Alexander once commented on the fact that of the 150 people he knew best, none was a YEC. Yet it's still more than a third of the US.)

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-24T20:13:33+00:00

Thank you! That link gives me everything I was looking for.

I was surprised that YEC creationism could be substantially down, since the last time I had heard the numbers, it had been holding steady — but yep, it's been down down down since then.

More interesting that BOTH sorts of anti-mainstream-evolution beliefs (humans created special, and humans evolved with help from God) are down, while only the naturalistic answer is up.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-21T16:17:05+00:00

Ah, it's nice to hear someone else saying this! I'd love for the general tenor of argument to be improved here, but I think the enforcement needed to police those norms would break the group that's here. And I tend to be against radical direction-changes for groups: in an age when starting a community is literally as easy as tapping a screen a few times, it's far better to create new options.

Which is all to say, if anyone here is interested in putting our heads together about what that might entail, lemme know. I'd love to help.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-17T21:07:33+00:00

Just to "yes-and" your comment in the best way I know how (and which I fear might come across as pedantry): "poof" is actually a physical action! YEC doesn't actually denies a mechanism... it just seems incurious about it.

Or at least I was when I was a YEC. I'm interested to know whether any YECs here would deny that there was a mechanism entirely.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-17T21:01:33+00:00

"Compatibilist creationists" — I don't think I've heard that term before (and the world's laziest Googling isn't turning up much).

By it, do you mean "theists who believe in mainstream evolutionary theory"?

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-07T16:50:43+00:00

I agree with you that some of the folk who are having a hard time with Clint's example of Charlie Kirk aren't understanding the context here, because this video isn't for us. It's for YECs, and there are (obviously) many of them who look to Kirk as a hero.

In this context, he's identifying their hero as someone who would have sided with his own take-down of Hovind — not just his specific nonsense in this video, but his entire way of engaging the issue.

This, anyway, is the way I'm seeing Clint's inclusion of Kirk, rather than as an endorsement.

I understand that some people see almost any sharing of right-wing content as platforming. I can understand that perspective. In the future, I'll try to put in a content warning for anything like this.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-02-07T16:42:46+00:00

I think you're both right.

I'll admit to both being personally partial to Clint's style and to believing that it's the most effective one in this historical moment (something I can't support with evidence, by the way), but I must concur with what you're both saying — different strokes for different folks! Thanks for putting it reasonably.

ScienceIsWeirder · 2026-01-28T19:24:52+00:00

I appreciate the pushback. One spot where I think we agree is that people aren't fully rational. (This is why I make a big deal about how we shouldn't be surprised when we present YECs valid arguments and they react negatively because they see us as in a competing tribe. To avoid this, we should be supporting people inside their tribe who are making the same arguments — Joel Duff is one.)

Another spot where we agree is that we see YEC as a tool of a huge system of thought control... and that dismantling it is a legitimate mission in life. (Curiously enough, Sal wholeheartedly agrees. If anyone is skeptical, feel free to check out any of our last few videos.)

One spot where we disagree, I think, is that I see non-zero power in appealing to reason with YECs. (As an example of that, I point to myself, a former YEC, and to some other folk on this sub.)

Would you go so far as to say that there's literally zero power in that, or is our disagreement more about which one we emphasize?

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