intelligent design

The Washington Post printed Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman’s short op-ed in today’s “Free For All” section of the Post.

Last week a colleague of Guillermo Gonzalez’s had a decidedly nasty letter published in the Ames Tribune. Rather than address any of the scientific arguments raised by Gonzalez and co-author Jay Richards in their book The Privileged Planet, this letter writer instead pens an ad hominem diatribe full of misinformation and falsehoods.

The Ames Tribune has published Gonzalez’s response. While the letter tries to make out all ID supporters as ultra right-wing zealots — even to the point of comparing ID scientists to the Taliban — Gonzalez points out:

CSC senior fellow William Dembski’s blog about an article in The New Scientist’s recent issue on intelligent design paints the perfect picture of the exact problem ID proponents and Darwinian skeptics face with almost all media.

Reporters sometimes wonder why

CSC fellows don’t immediately stop whatever they’re doing and spend hours answering their questions and trying to explain our side of the issue to them when they call.

Blogger Ed Brayton is fulminating over my comments about those who wrongly conflate intelligent design theory with religion. Brayton responds with proof-texts supposedly showing that key ID supporters think ID makes religious claims after all. Mr. Brayton doth protest too much. First of all, if he had read the article I referenced in my blog post about why ID is not creationism, he would have known that I never deny that ID can have metaphysical implications. As I wrote in that article:

While it’s frustrating when critics of intelligent design mischaracterize what ID is about, it’s even worse when people billing themselves as friends of ID do the same thing. As the term “intelligent design” has increasingly entered the public discourse, the number of people misusing the term to advance their own agendas by calling it “design” has increased. Take the recent proposal by a Utah legislator for something he calls “divine design,” by which he clearly seems to mean creationism. According to a recent article in the Salt Lake City Tribune:

Evolution has not been a big issue in Utah until now. On June 3, Sen. Chris Buttars of West Jordan said he would propose giving equal time to what he called “divine design,” that is, that the world was created by a superior being.

“The divine design is a counter to the kids’ belief that we all come from monkeys. Because we didn’t,” the conservative Republican told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Since the newsmedia have frequently misreported Discovery Institute’s position on the teaching of intelligent design, I thought I would highlight a letter Seth Cooper and I just sent to the Pennsylvania State Legislature opposing a pro-ID bill under discussion there. The Pennsylvania bill would authorize local school boards in the state to require intelligent design as part of their standard curriculum if they so choose. While well-intentioned, we think this proposal is unhelpful for a variety of reasons.

The Washington Post today publishes an editorial prepared by Anne Applebaum (“Dissing Darwin“) that uses the term “intelligent creator” three times to describe the concept of intelligent design. The writer knows better, but apparently believes that if she can lodge the word “creator” (as in “creationist”) in people’s minds, it will reside there forever. The key to understanding such writing: the proponents of intelligent design must never be allowed to speak for themselves or define their own ideas. Instead they must only be spoken about and accept definitions of their terms that are offered by their foes. The editorial also twice describes the film The Privileged Planet as “religious”, though the writer admits it doesn’t mention the word God. (It Read More ›

A new poll of medical doctors suggests that a significant minority (34%) support intelligent design over evolution. This alone is enough to show that there is a lively debate over the adequacy of Neo-Darwinism to explain intricate structures like the human body.

However, if one looks past the press release at the details of the poll itself, one finds that actually a majority of doctors favor intelligent design over Neo-Darwinism.

World has a good news story on the Kansas science hearings, one that goes well beyond the MSM’s rusty boilerplate about scientists clashing with Bible thumpers:

In Kansas, Darwinists won back control of the State Board of Education in 2000 and restored the older standards. But conservatives have now retaken the board, and they are expected to vote this summer to adopt the revisions debated in Topeka.

The Darwinist response to such a challenge is no secret. “My strategy at this point is the same as it was in 1999,” wrote Liz Craig of Kansas Citizens For Science on the group’s discussion board in February. “Notify the national and local media about what’s going on and portray them in the harshest light possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc. . . . we can sure make them look like asses as they do what they do.”

Then there are these facts, widely misreported by several major newspapers and magazines: