11.19.05

Conservatives ditching ID?

Posted in Evolution at 12:17 am by nemo

Phony Theory, False Conflict
‘Intelligent Design’ Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.

I am glad conservatives are ditching ID, we can return to the original Darwin debate, perhaps from a liberal/left perspective, where it always belonged.
But these comments on Newton and Einstein are beside the point. Newton, btw, believed in design, Thomas Ray being a member of the Royal Society, and he also knew the limits of his science, and did not try to foist his physics on subjects where it didn’t apply. He was not like current reductionists, in a word. We all have to revolt against Darwinism sooner or later.

Now we come to what must be the real issue. Seeing the results of the Dover election, conservatives are running scared, and the call goes out to all able bodied ‘rats’, Abandon, Ship. I hope this isn’t snide cynicism on my part. But I am left wondering what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way.

Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.

Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose “intelligent design” — today’s tarted-up version of creationism — on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting “God out of your city.” Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.

Finally,