How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)

The New Republic ^ | 8/16/05 | Ross Douthat

[curiosity]

Most of the scientific community is actually moving toward intelligent design

Really? Care to back up that assertion?

[AntiGuv]

"And unless Even if George W. Bush imposes intelligent design on American schools by fiat and orders the scientific establishment to recant its support for Darwin, intelligent design will eventually collapse--like other assaults on evolution that failed to offer an alternative--under the weight of its own overreaching."

[Clemenza]

Yes, and I'm sure that if Maureen Dowd came out against Cancer, you would say that "cancer is good."

[6SJ7]

It helps liberals cast the debate as an argument about science, rather than morality, and paint their enemies as a collection of book-burning, Galileo-silencing fanatics.

Book burning? Perhaps the author forgot about the Nazis, as in National Socialists

[plain talk]

I believe its a complex as is our creation. Evo's hide behind micro evolution such as slight changes in a bird's feathers or beaks and then extrapolate that to macro evolution for which there is little to no evidence. They prefer to argue it as a pacxkage deal - you swallow all of it because of evidence of micro evolution. Its the kind of sophistry game democrats play.

[WildTurkey]

I read the Book and there is nothing in it about evolving from a formerly believed primordial cold, recently discovered hot soup.

There is nothing in it about nuclear energy either.

[mlc9852]

If believing in God and believing in the Bible makes me a crackpot, then I proudly accept that label.

[Clemenza]

ID has never stood up to the scientific method. ID's proponents should be viewed as seriously as alchemists and baseball card economists.

[Dimensio]

Was what I was taught the same as "Intelligent Design"?

No. Intelligent Design proponents assert that the universe is too "complex" to have come into existence unless it was deliberately designed by some "designer" whose exact properties are totally unstated except that it (or they) is (or are) capable of creating universes and things in it. Ultimately it comes down to them arrogantly declaring supreme knowledge of how the universe works and deducing that because they can't work out the natural processes required for certain events to occur, an intelligent agent must be responsible.

ID as it is typically presented has no religious overtones, though you'll usually find that those pushing it are trying to secretly push a religious agenda.

[soupcon]

The flaws of mankind are too obvious and too plentiful. These flaws alone should have squashed the ID theory.

[curiosity]

Was what I was taught the same as "Intelligent Design"?

No. "Intelligent design" is the claim that certain things, like bacterial flagella or the blood clotting mechanism are too complex to have evolved through Darwinian processes. In other words, it is anti-Darwinian.

It is not to be confused with the philosophical belief that God designed the universe so that intelligent life would evolve. Nor is it to be confused with the belief that God designed through the use of natural processes, like mutation and natural selection.

It is actually the assertion that man's orgin required SUPERNATURAL intervention, and further, that this can be scientifically demonstrated.

It is, of course, pure garbage.

[mlc9852]

A lot of people think it does.

[MizSterious]

Your problem, with your crackpot theory, is that you don't realize how many scientists have said there MUST be some form of intelligent design. Some of them ex-atheists, some from Hindu and Buddhist faiths, and even some among what's termed "new agers." So many from so many different walks of life, the majority of which are NOT Christians, have said the same thing based on the scientific evidence.

[RightWhale]

the fact that if the "settings" of the universe were off by a billionth of a billionth

Add another billionth to the fraction to get in the ballpark. The universe of the Big Bang with inflation is so much bigger than the Hubble volume that the Hubble volume could be overlooked as nothing more than a grain of sand in the entire earth. The universe can look flat when such a microscopic portion is looked at by itself.

[curiosity]

Yup. As I've said on other threads, Intelligent Design is even worse theology than it is science.

[Fledermaus]

Who cares what they think? They already call conservative crackpots.

What does this writer want? Popularity? Geez.

[tamalejoe]

How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)

Sorry, but I'll take my chances looking like a crackpot. Calling people like Michael Denton and Michael Behe "crackpots" basically makes anybody doing such namecalling look like an idiot in my book.

[RJL]

Do hardline evolution-backers accept Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" in economics? Do they appreciate Michelangelo's Pieta, or Da Vinci's amazing scribblings of inventions?

Do they drive German cars? Or Japanese cars? Or even 55 Chevys, or mega-hp pickups?

They must understand what design is, and how much work goes in achieving it.

Exactly.

If one of our Mars rovers discovers a city on Mars are scientists going to assume that the rocks "evolved" into the buildings, or will they see that an intelligent design took place?

I'd bet on the latter.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Most people think both ID and evolution should be taught and debated in school. So this whole argument is bogus.

[curiosity]

If believing in God and believing in the Bible makes me a crackpot, then I proudly accept that label.

Nope. What makes you a crackpot is disbelieving the scientific evidence for evolution. And yes, you can believe in all three things: God, evolution, and the Bible.