You tell me that it's evolution

The ID monkeys go bananas

August 31, 2005

 

 

Having been frustrated in their attempts to get blatant creationism into the classroom, America's Mullahs continue their battle to sneak it in under the rubric of a pseudo-science called “intelligent design” (ID). And using the classic trick of labeling the country’s most powerful religion a persecuted minority, they are claiming it is the biologists, who use evidence to draw scientific inferences, not the ID advocates who are treating faith-based assumptions as sacred. We've debunked this ID scam before, and we probably will again...

Myth: evolutionary biologists are being closed-minded by excluding intelligent design from public school biology curricula

The theory of evolution is a blend of science and the philosophy of materialism. The evolution establishment has gradually corrupted the science so that it will serve their theoretical model of random evolution in order to support their philosophy of materialism. This corruption includes the concealment of inconvenient evidence, sheltering themselves from criticism, making sweeping generalities from fragments of evidence, and making false charges against intelligent design scientists.

In conclusion, whether one believes in evolution or intelligent design science, one is obliged to consider that at present, the intelligent designers are operating at a higher level of integrity than the evolution establishment.

-- Fred Hutchison, “Evolution v. ID: Which model has more integrity”, RenewAmerica, 08/18/05

Moreover, ID theory is neither faith-based nor results-oriented. It is not a concoction of Christians who were already convinced that God created the world but needed a scientific theory around which to wrap their unscientific faith….

[evolutionists] begin with an irrebuttable presumption not just that evolution is a valid theory but also that the very origins of life are the result of material, not supernatural, causes and any inquiry that proceeds apart from this presumption, by definition, is not scientific.

After all, God's existence cannot be proved in a laboratory. By the clever use of circular logic, they ensure that ID can never be accepted as scientific.

Anyone who does not initiate his inquiry with the obligatory presumption is, by definition, a heretic, a crackpot and not part of the scientific community no matter how many science-related degrees he may have on his CV. So again, through grossly circular logic, they perpetuate the myth that no scientists believe in ID.

-- David Limbaugh, “Intelligent Design Revisited”, Newsmax, 08/22/2005

It's eerie, really. Five centuries ago, lay university professors invoked Scripture and religion in order to attack and destroy an opponent whose views threatened to topple academia. Today, they are doing it again. The only difference is the targets — in the early 1600's, the university professors were trying to destroy Galileo. Today, they're trying to destroy the theory behind intelligent design, using very nearly the same techniques they used against Galileo.

-- Steve Kellmeyer, “Galileo Redux”, RenewAmerica, 08/15/05

REALITY

Mr. Hutchison appears wildly ignorant of history. Charles Darwin was a Christian who did not subscribe to the philosophy of materialism. He based his theory on observable facts about the evolution of species. Modern day biologists who study and refine evolutionary theory are just that: biologists. They are not philosophers, and cannot be fairly accused of subscribing to any philosophy—other than the scientific method. It is intelligent designers, on the other hand, who make supernatural suppositions—namely that an intelligent force must have created life on earth. They are entitled to that view, of course.  But they are not entitled to impose on America’s schoolchildren in biology class.

Limbaugh grossly distorts the issue at hand, which must run in the family. The assumption that natural science should only concern itself with natural, rather than supernatural phenomena is not “circular logic”, it’s the accepted division of labor between the natural sciences and departments such as religion and philosophy at every accredited university in the western world. The assumption on the part of the overwhelming majority of scientists is not that anyone who works outside that framework is a “heretic, a crackpot” it is that insomuch as he does so, he does so not as a scientist but as a theologian or philosopher. Proponents of evolutionary theory do not assert that “no scientists believe in ID”. They assert that as scientists rather than as the Christians or Jews or Hindus they may be on their own time, the overwhelming majority of scientists consider intelligent design, in the words of a resolution passed in 2002 by the 120,000 member American Association, a “philosophical or theological concept” that should not be taught in science classes.

Even richer is Limbaugh’s claim that ID “is not a concoction of Christians who were already convinced that God created the world but needed a scientific theory around which to wrap their unscientific faith.”  Apparently he is unaware that the most prominent ID proponent of them all, Jonathan Wells, is a follower of the eccentric Rev. Sun Young Moon, and that he studied biology in order to better debunk Charles Darwin.

Steve Kellmeyer takes the silliness to an offensive level by invoking Galileo, who like biologists today bravely stood up for science against the archaic views of the Church. The substantive problem with his analogy is falsehood of equating the logic of scientists with that the of the Catholic Church of the 1600s. The Church resisted Galileo’s teachings because they had a book that asserted otherwise. Biologists resist intelligent design because, unlike, Galileo’s theories, it is founded on a religious assumption rather than observable phenomena. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Jonathan Wells is no Galileo.