Comments solicited, when you're able to.
As you know, as a lay leader in our church, the subject that I chose to study this year, so as to be able to teach it later in the year, is creationism vs. evolution.
One of the things I’ve discovered is that, especially recently, the mainstream media and their cohorts in academia have been pushing false representations and skewed comparisons regarding theories of intelligent design. We’re led to believe that ID is simply a covert form of Christian fundamentalism. As a result, intelligent design and creationism are often considered one and the same -- when, in actuality, creationism assumes intelligent design, but the relationship isn’t commutative. :)
The New York Times (of all media outlets) last week published an essay by Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at nearby Lehigh University. Behe is a respected theorist in intelligent design. His essay covered many aspects of current thinking on ID, but his main point was that it is not necessarily a religious-based theory, even though Christians, and followers of many other religions, embrace the concept.
Pure intelligent design theorists do not even necessarily invoke the concept of a Creator, so the mainstream media’s attempts to claim that there is a religious motivation behind the theory of intelligent design are bogus and simply attempts to open the door for cries of separation of church and state when ID’s proponents seek to teach the theory of intelligent design in our schools.
Last month the Wall Street Journal published a piece defending Dr. Richard Sternberg (who holds two PhDs in evolutionary biology), who had the ‘misfortune’ of publishing a pro-intelligent-design paper in the Proceedings of the Biological Society (Washington, DC), after which a vicious smear campaign ensued. Sternberg was labeled a heretic by the ‘scientific elites’ (and that was one of the kinder labels he endured).
Those ‘elites’ (just as the ‘elites’ in much of the rest of academia) appear to refuse to debate intelligent design on its merits, but instead seem to regularly resort to slander, personal attack, and character assassination against anyone (no matter how otherwise respected) who espouses a theory that diverges in any way from evolution without a Creator.
Those who dismiss intelligent design have generally based their dismissal on the fact that the theory is bogus because it has never enjoyed any kind of ‘peer review’ in a scientific journal. And, now that is has appeared in a scientific journal (the Proceedings of the Biological Society), they are claiming that Sternberg’s essay wasn’t ‘worthy’ to be included there to begin with.
Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.
Since the leftist call for separation of church and state is reaching fever pitch, the public awareness of evolution vs. intelligent design (and/or creationism) is surely (and thankfully) going to increase. A large majority of Americans believe in either direct creation by God, or a divinely-directed evolutionary process. And that segment of society that mistrusts the mainstream media is growing daily as well. Let’s hope that the closed-minded, agenda-driven, hostile reporting on intelligent design (as if it were somehow a threat to the mind of modern man) serves to pique the interest and strengthen the resolve of humanity’s search to seek out the truth about our (and our universe’s) origins.
In the Times article, Dr. Behe, concluded (beautifully), ‘Whatever scientists adopt for themselves don’t bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.’
An excellent book (including six riveting essays) by Behe (and others) on the subject:
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters … (one of the most beautiful images in all of scripture)