Wednesday, August 10, 2005
It's official, ID is Creationism Light
I normally don't post about Intelligent Design (ID) and all that here, all my in depth biology blogging gets done over at the Panda's Thumb (and rarely, as I take so long to research and write those sorts of article). But in the light of the Campus Crusade for Christ trying to lobby politicians, religious leaders and scientists in an effort to get an ID propaganda DVD, "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" distributed to every high school for inclusion in the Science Curriculum (see this link for the text of an article in the West Australian about it, of if you have a subscription, you can see a similar article in Saturday's Age), I thought I would pass on this bit of news.
ID tries to promote itself as "science" (even though ID promoters do no original research), and to that end uses the term "designer" when talking with politicians and the lay public to try and give the impression that they are not identifying the designer with God, even though they do so when speaking to conservative Christian groups. ID promoters complain loudly and often that they are inappropriately labeled as Creationists.
But they are Creationists, there is a court case going on in the US now over the teaching of ID in schools. Documents recently released during preparation for the trial have revealed that ID was a strategic rebadging of plain vanilla Fundamentalist Christian creationism. The details are in the plaintiff's brief opposing the teaching of ID (WARNING HONKING GREAT PDF file), over at the National Centre for Science Education.
Brendan Nelson, our Federal Education Minister, has been given one of these DVD's and apparently supports their distribution, so this unmasking of ID is timely.
ID tries to promote itself as "science" (even though ID promoters do no original research), and to that end uses the term "designer" when talking with politicians and the lay public to try and give the impression that they are not identifying the designer with God, even though they do so when speaking to conservative Christian groups. ID promoters complain loudly and often that they are inappropriately labeled as Creationists.
But they are Creationists, there is a court case going on in the US now over the teaching of ID in schools. Documents recently released during preparation for the trial have revealed that ID was a strategic rebadging of plain vanilla Fundamentalist Christian creationism. The details are in the plaintiff's brief opposing the teaching of ID (WARNING HONKING GREAT PDF file), over at the National Centre for Science Education.
Brendan Nelson, our Federal Education Minister, has been given one of these DVD's and apparently supports their distribution, so this unmasking of ID is timely.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:13 pm 
Comments:
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Not quite. Creationism argues for a literal, six day, evolutionless orgin for life; ID simply argues for purpose in it, and can be quite compatible with evolution.
As a hypothesis (as opposed to a controling presupposition), I personally find it hard to fault ID's legitimacy. Easy to disagree with, sure. But then, is utter randomness any more legitimate a controling presupposition?
Or, to put it another way, isn't science always provisional, always questioning, always open to revision
in the light of new evidence? And if so, isn't an atheistic dogma as unscientific as a theistic one?
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As a hypothesis (as opposed to a controling presupposition), I personally find it hard to fault ID's legitimacy. Easy to disagree with, sure. But then, is utter randomness any more legitimate a controling presupposition?
Or, to put it another way, isn't science always provisional, always questioning, always open to revision
in the light of new evidence? And if so, isn't an atheistic dogma as unscientific as a theistic one?
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