[snarks_when_bored]

This is the Introduction to the book, Creationism's Trojan Horse:  The Wedge of Intelligent Design.

Here is the Oxford University Press description of the book:

Forrest and Gross expose the scientific failure, the religious essence, and the political ambitions of "intelligent design" creationism. They examine the movement's "Wedge Strategy," which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than through scientific research. Analyzing the content and character of "intelligent design theory," they highlight its threat to public education and to the separation of church and state.

[snarks_when_bored]

Ping.

[Samurai_Jack]

This Book Sucks,

It's condescending to creationists. It's not written to convince the creationist that darwinism is wrong, it's written to provide ammunition for darwinists to defend their lofty and humanist positions.

[FederalistVet]

Darwinists are the religious fanatics. Am I the only one who gone back far enough in the historical record to link the Freemason, Baptist, Unitarian, Puritan, Quaker, and social gospel movement to the forced instruction in the Dogma called Evolution? Let's be real. Evolution was elevated to a theory not by scientists but by protestant, unitarian and freemason nutcases.

[Fatalis]

I'll stipulate that Intelligent Design is a Trojan Horse for Creationism.

Now look at this statement from the top of the article, placed there with no aparent sense of irony:

I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.

Steven Weinberg,
1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics

"Impersonal laws" are a Trojan Horse for atheism.

Weinberg has reached a completely ascientific conclusion. He has stepped boldly into metaphysics with that staterment, and about the mind of man, no less. Science can not inform us about purpose in the Universe, nor whether the laws of it are personal or not.

Hilarity ensues when the author of this otherwise reasonable critique of the nonscientific underpinnings of I.D. unwittingly chooses to highlight Weinberg's equally egregious revelation.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Some good points. The article does elucidate the essential identity of Creationism, PostModernDeconstructionism, and New-Ageism, (along with Scientology and a few others.) All are soul-mates in their desire to destroy the idea that the scientific method is a legitimate means of inquiry.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Wow! Battling Creationists is a business now. Who would have thought? Here's a better way for the evolutionists to spend $50.

[stremba]

Hopefully this helps:

The theory of evolution is just a theory

The word theory means something different in science than it does in common usage. Theories are the result of a hypothesis, or educated suggestion, being tested and found to be consistent with observation. A theory coherently explains a large range of observations. It is in contrast to a law which simply expresses a regularity seen in observations without attempting to explain that regularity. Theories do not become laws. Laws are not somehow more certain than theories. Both are on equal footing in science.

There's no way life could have arisen from non-living chemicals/There's no way to get from the big bang to humans

Neither the origin of life nor the big bang is covered in the theory of evolution. Evolution only applies once life has begun. It makes no difference how life began.

The second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible

The second law of thermodynamics states that IN A CLOSED SYSTEM, entropy always increases. The earth is not a closed system. The earth receives energy from the sun. This release of energy from the surface of the sun at a temperature of 6000K to space at a temperature of ~3K represents an enormous increase in entropy. Therefore, even taking evolution into account, the entropy of the earth/sun system does indeed increase over time.

Creationism is just as valid a theory as evolution/Evolution is not really science

To qualify as a theory in science, an idea must explain observations in such a way as to be falsifiable. This means that it must predict something and finding that this prediction is not true would require abandonment or serious modification of the theory. Evolution meets this requirement. For example, evolution predicts that in billion year old rock layers, no fossils of modern humans will be found. It predicts that all organisms on earth will have nucleic acids as their genetic material. It predicts that it will be possible to observe changes in the genepool of organisms. All of these predictions have been borne out by observations. If any of them are not, then evolution would have to be seriously modified or abandoned. I am sure that someone with more knowledge of biology could provide many more such examples. Creationism, on the other hand, by its very nature can offer no such predictions. The most basic premise of creationism is that there is an omnipotent God who created the universe. By virtue of God's omnipotence, there is no possible observation that could falsify this premise. God could have made the universe appear any way He wanted it to appear.

Evolution has never been proven

Neither has quantum theory, or relativity, or any other scientific theory or law. Science never offers proof, merely strong evidence for an idea. Evolution is backed by a large amount of observational evidence.

[185JHP]

Gould tried a trojan horse to protect the hoax with his laughable "punc. eq." He knows better now - but I doubt he's at "room temperature."