Van Tilian dialectic

I have never quite understood precisely the term dialectic as used by philosphers, though I do have an intuitive idea of what it is. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy describes dialectic as follows:

In ancient Greece, dialectic was a form of reasoning that proceeded by question and answer, used by Plato. In later antiquity and the Middle Ages, the term was often used to mean simply logic, but Kant applied it to arguments showing that principles of science have contradictory aspects. Hegel thought that all logic and world history itself followed a dialectic path, in which internal contradictions were transcended, but gave rise to new contradictions that themselves required resolution. Marx and Engels gave Hegel’s idea of dialectic a material basis; hence dialectical materialism.

It appears, then, that the term has picked up various shades of meaning over time. The Encyclopaedia Britannica also has this bit about Kant’s use of dialectic:

More recently, Immanuel Kant denoted by “transcendental dialectic” the endeavour of exposing the illusion involved in attempting to use the categories and principles of the understanding beyond the bounds of phenomena and possible experience.

I wonder if we could use the term for any kind of argument (a meta-argument, perhaps) that exposes the internal tension, contradiction, or absurdity of someone and his method of argumentation. Such a meta-argument does need to be direct. Thus, we might call the example of the sneezing professor a Kierkegaardian dialectic—I vaguely remember reading about the sneezing professor somewhere, but I cannot recall the reference. Likewise, we might call the story of a girl slapping her grandfather while sitting on his lap a Van Tilian dialectic. (A Google search on “Van Tilian dialectic” yielded no results as of this writing, so I can at least for a time enjoy the conjecture that I am the first person to use this phrase. It was two weeks ago at a group meeting that I extemporaneously came up with it.)

It is thus a great delight to follow from a philosophical angle the intelligent design controversy. The Van Tilian dialectic present in some of the arguments of the die-hard evolutionists is just precious. Just ponder on, for example, Richard Dawkin’s infamous saying that anyone who refuses to accept evolution is “ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”

(UPDATE 2005-10-02 20:15): This morning in our conversation a friend of mine, G.B., and I touched on the topic of why evolutionists keep on insisting on their theory despite evidence to the contrary. G.B., who is suspicious of Van Til (to say the least), said, “The problem is that they have a fundamental assumption that God does not exist.” “Does that not just sound like Van Til?” I asked. G.B. continues to deny it nevertheless, noting that I should not label him a Van Tilian just because he agrees with him on something. Fair enough, but fundamental assumption seems to be, well, quite fundamental.