Help! Some leading Darwinists have cooked up a pot of al dente fettuccini noodles and they are cruelly flogging us with it.
The new rallying cry: “Intelligent design is dead!” So says Jason Rosenhouse, in turn cited as authoritative by Jerry Coyne, and now rounding out the toxic daisy chain, by PZ Myers. Actually, it’s not really a new rallying cry. Darwinists were saying the same thing back in 2005 when an obscure judge in Pennsylvania took dictation from the ACLU and declared ID to be religion instead of science, thus settling the matter forever and ever.
The new rallying cry follows on the heels of others, like “No peer-reviewed research!” (The truth is that, despite ID’s being an upstart in the science world operating without university/government patronage, by our count the 51st pro-ID peer-reviewed research paper recently came out while ID’s leading research lab, Biologic, compares well in its productivity with a respectable research university lab. Darwin apologists studiously ignore such facts, as they do the steady accretion of books, publications in the ID-friendly peer-reviewed journal BIO-Complexity, and even, if they don’t have the time to read a whole book or scientific paper, the daily material appearing at ENV.)
Apart from the science, ID accurately represents the view of most Americans, according to Zogby polling. It has been a fairly major issue in the year’s GOP presidential derby, with liberal reporters grilling candidates on their evolutionary beliefs, and will no doubt figure in the run-up to the 2012 election. That’s “dead”?
The idea that ID is dead would also have to be somewhat belied by the fact that even as fellows like Coyne, Rosenhouse and Myers refuse to fairly represent what ID arguments say — as one Panda’s Thumb writer reluctantly half-conceded this week — they still lash us with a variety of exasperated adjectives supplemented by bitter exclamations that are supposed to be funny.
Dr. Coyne, who if he lived a century ago would have made a fine village atheist in Chelm, thinks he’s represented a characteristic “refuted” argument for ID as follows: “Not enough time for complex organs to have evolved! Ergo Jesus.” I performed a text search here at ENV and was unable to find that one.
Dr. Myers is a curious case. A very mild person in real life from all accounts, he adopts a splenetic alter ego on his blog and writes today on the theme of how he fantasizes about a stroke victim recovering enough to suffer anew for his role in promoting doubts about Darwin.
Adjectives, yes. Childish insults, yes. Sadistic daydreams, yes. Arguments, no.