Science and Culture Today | Page 1449 | Discovering Design in Nature

UPDATED, 10:48am, 8.10: Gilder vs. Dawkins is no contest. Literally. Dawkins chickened out and refused to debate, instead preferring to go it alone. So, each of them appeared separately on the program which is now available at “On Point’s” website. Today NPR’s “On Point” will feature Discovery senior fellow George Gilder debating Darwin defender Richard Dawkins. The program airs on WBUR live from 10-11am, and on NPR stations across the country at different times today and throughout the week.

CSC associate director John West has a nice op-ed in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In “Intelligent design is sorely misunderstood” West makes the point that the ID scientific research program is sometimes highjacked by people who have little or no understanding of what the theory is about.

It’s been interesting to watch this past week as media pundits have weighed-in on the debate over intelligent design in the wake of President Bush’s pro-ID comments. Most of the pundits denouncing intelligent design have simply demonstrated how little they actually know about ID and what it proposes. A good example is Jonathan Alter’s snooty anti-ID column in this week’s Newsweek. Alter says a lot of ignorant and inaccurate things, but I will focus on just one:

David Limbaugh has a stellar column out today, discussing the Darwin vs. design debate.

Simply put, Limbaugh’s column gets the facts straight.

Something called “intelligent design” is the “number one” discussed topic on the internet today (August 4, ’05), according to the web and blog watch group Technocrati.com. But what do people mean by the topic? Forget the old fashioned question — what do the scientists propounding ID mean by the term? This is the post-modern age. What do YOU want ID to mean?

Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) invented the famous Rorschach test that long was used to see what different meanings people would project onto a series of abstract inkblots. I see a butterfly, you see a porter carrying water, the man down the hall sees a spy plane. Supposedly, it was a key to understanding personality.

Intelligent design, I am afraid, is in danger of becoming a contemporary Rorschach test. Everyone in the media and all those bloggers seems to have his own interpretation of ID and each and every opiner thinks he really knows exactly what he is talking about.

Update, 10:02am, 8.4: Technorati now shows intelligent design as the number one search term, and the number of bloggers weighing in is growing. The issue indeed has reached a new, fevered, pitch. It doesn’t hurt to have the leader of the free world asked what he thinks of your research. The recent comments by President Bush about teaching evolution have made ‘intelligent design’ all but a household phrase. Technorati.com is reporting that there are currently over 17,000 blog posts about intelligent design, making it the #7 most popular search term on their site at the moment. Media coverage of the debate over evolution is certain to escalate in the near future.

I have spoken briefly with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller who penned the story today that included a misquote attributed to CSC director Stephen Meyer that he welcomed Bush’s statement on intelligent design as promoting “free speech on BIBLICAL origins,” when he actually said “biological origins.”

Update, 8:42am, 8.3: The New York Times web desk has corrected the misquote. Now we will see about a correction in the print edition of the newspaper.

Update, 7:25am, 8.3: Contrary to promises issued last night, the web edition of The New York Times has yet to correct the misquote it printed. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to actually get this correction made.

George Keough on the Times night desk has promised that the New York Times will correct an erroneous misquote they printed and attributed to Dr. Stephen Meyer.