August 29, 2005 @ 2:22 PM
Creationism and Intelligent Design
I’m currently slogging through a book that should be ‘must’ reading for scientists, secular humanists, and reasonable Christians: Creationism’s Trojan Horse- The Wedge of Intelligent Design.
I say I’m slogging through it because Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross have written a book that is rich in argument and detail. It is a history and critique of the origin of the intelligent design movement, and an analysis of its failures to produce any evidence of its claims.
I offer a few excepts from the opening pages:
"The Wedge’s efficient and planned repetitiousness is one of our main points. In fact, it is one of the most remarkable examples in our time of naked public relations management substituting successfully for knowledge and the facts of the case—substituting for the truth. For that reason alone, it is both interesting and important. It must be known and understood if there is to be recognition—among scientists as well as the literate nonscientist public—of current anti-evolutionism and its aims.
The authors "provide what they (we) hope is an adequate sampling of technical dismissals and scientific opinions, and they (we) document the sound science and the Intelligent Design anti-science as needed."
And what is the strategy of the Creationists?
"…exploiting the modern, nearly universal, liberal suspicion of zealotry, you accuse the branch of legitimate inquiry, whose results you hate, in this case the evolutionary natural sciences, of—what else?—zealotry. Crying ‘viewpoint discrimination’ you loudly demand adherence to the principle of freedom of speech, especially in teaching, insisting that such freedom is being denied your legitimate alternative view."
And of course this strategy works, even with marginally intelligent Arizona Senators, whom repetition of the big lie has convinced that the two views, Intelligent Design and scientific evolutionary theory, stand on the same footing .
God help us all.
