Those Defensive Darwinists

THE first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library.

In short order, the School District was dragged into court by a group insisting the school policy constituted an establishment of religion, this despite the fact that the unmentionable book bases its argument on strictly scientific evidence, without appealing to religious authority or attempting to identify the source of design.

The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of attempts to silence the growing controversy over contemporary Darwinian theory.

For instance, after The New York Times ran a series on Darwinism and design recently, prominent Darwinist Web sites excoriated the newspaper for even covering intelligent design, insulting its proponents with terms like Medievalist, Flat-Earther and "American Taliban."

University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers argues that Darwinists should take an even harder line against their opponents: "Our only problem is that we aren't martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough," he wrote. "The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians."

This month, NPR reported on behavior seemingly right out of the P.Z. Myers playbook.

The most prominent victim in the story was Richard Sternberg, a scientist with two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology and former editor of a journal published out of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. He sent out for peer review, then published, a paper arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms 530 million years ago.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel reported that Sternberg's colleagues immediately went on the attack, stripping Sternberg of his master key and access to research materials, spreading rumors that he wasn't really a scientist and, after determining that they didn't want to make a martyr out of him by firing him, deliberately creating a hostile work environment in the hope of driving him from the Smithsonian.

The NPR story appalled even die-hard skeptics of intelligent design, people like heavyweight blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds, who referred to the Smithsonian's tactics as "scientific McCarthyism."

Also this month, the Kansas Board of Education adopted a policy to teach students the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. Darwinists responded by insisting that there are no weaknesses, that it's a plot to establish a national theocracy — despite the fact that the weaknesses that will be taught come right out of the peer-reviewed, mainstream scientific literature.

One cause for their insecurity may be the theory's largely metaphysical foundations. As evolutionary biologist A.S. Wilkins conceded, "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."

And in the September issue of The Scientist, National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell argued that his extensive investigations into the matter corroborated Wilkins' view. Biologist Roland Hirsch, a program manager in the U.S. Office of Biological and Environmental Research, goes even further, noting that Darwinism has made a series of incorrect predictions, later refashioning the paradigm to fit the results.

How different from scientific models that lead to things like microprocessors and satellites. Modern evolutionary theory is less a cornerstone and more the busybody aunt — into everyone's business and, all the while, very much insecure about her place in the home.

Moreover, a growing list of some 450 Ph.D. scientists are openly skeptical of Darwin's theory, and a recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that only 40 percent of medical doctors accept Darwinism's idea that humans evolved strictly through unguided, material processes.

Increasingly, the Darwinists' response is to try to shut down debate, but their attempts are as ineffectual as they are misguided. When leaders in Colonial America attempted to ban certain books, people rushed out to buy them. It's the "Banned in Boston" syndrome.

Today, suppression of dissent remains the tactic least likely to succeed in the United States. The more the Darwinists try to prohibit discussion of intelligent design, the more they pique the curiosity of students, parents and the general public.

Quoting: "Darwin Dogma is dying out, but darwinists just don't realize it yet."

It is ID that is destined for the dustbin of history. Catholics do not support it. Evangelicals do not support it.

You missed this:

from an interview:
Church of the Nazarene
Rev. Ron Moeller, Pastor

"There isn't very much interest here in intelligent design, because we think the most important thing is saving souls for our Lord Jesus. It doesn't matter if people believe in evolution as a way of understanding the flowers and meadows and animals of God's creation. People come to Christ sometimes by the Bible, but just as often by personal experiences of the Holy Spirit and are born again, sometimes by family or friends, sometimes, I hope, by their pastor. Intelligent design doesn't help at all, because it has no foundation in the Bible.

"It has come up a few times in our Adult Study classes, but the 'specified complexity' and stuff didn't attract much interest. Someone asked, "What does this have to do with the Bible?"

The Presiding Bishop said that "ID opens the door to pantheism and every kind of New Age cults. And it does not mention Christ or the soul, so it is not Christian, and doesn't seem to be good science."

"It [Intelligent design] is probably like one of these cults that come along every few years, like New Age. Maybe it will become its own church, like Scientology or Christian Science. I think in two or three years we will hear very little from them."

The Other Creation Story
Well, we have an interesting allegoric creation story from science that states a Blind Watchmaker accidentally created a universe that contains a Blind Gameskeeper (who likes to be called ‘natural selection’ ) and killed accidentally so that we may live ; )

Watch out because the Blind Gameskeeper can kill you with his ‘noodly appendage’ if you don’t believe this story… I’m just kidding, he is actually; blind, deaf, and very stupid… but hey, that’s science.

Scientific Creation Theory .00327/1

“I do think its true that cosmologists are slightly more likely to be theists than biologists. In earlier times biology was the thing that provided the most powerful apparent evidence for the existence of a Creator – Darwin solved all that. I think, in a way, cosmology is waiting for its Darwin. However, I would add this, that biology is supremely complicated. Complexity is the really difficult thing that you might think you need a designer for – Darwin solved that. The universe actually, is not very complicated.”
-Dawkins

Scientific Creation Theory 122134532.765/987

DAWKINS: (snip)"…But yet we have this gathering together of genes into individual organisms. And that reminds me of the illusion of one mind, when actually there are lots of little mindlets in there, and the illusion of the soul of the white ant in the termite mound, where you have lots of little entities all pulling together to create an illusion of one. Am I right to think that the feeling that I have that I'm a single entity, who makes decisions, and loves and hates and has political views and things, that this is a kind of illusion that has come about because Darwinian selection found it expedient to create that illusion of unitariness rather than let us be a kind of society of mind?"
PINKER: "It's a very interesting question. Yes, there is a sense in which the whole brain has interests in common in the way that say a whole body composed of genes with their own selfish motives has a single agenda. In the case of the genes the fact that their fates all depend on the survival of the body forces them to cooperate. In the case of the different parts of the brain, the fact that the brain ultimately controls a body that has to be in one place at one time may impose the need for some kind of circuit, presumably in the frontal lobes, that coordinates the different agendas of the different parts of the brain to ensure that the whole body goes in one direction. In How the Mind Works I alluded to a scene in the comedy movie All of Me in which Lily Tomlin's soul inhabits the left half of Steve Martin's body and he takes a few steps in one direction under his own control and then lurches in another direction with his pinkie extended while under the control of Lily Tomlin's spirit. That is what would happen if you had nothing but completely autonomous modules of the brain, each with its own goal. Since the body has to be in one place at one time, there might be a circuit that suppresses the conflicting motives…"(end snip)

It has been said that Natural Selection “… is empirically, that is, scientifically, meaningless, but it makes a pretty metaphor. It originated in a categorical error parading as an analogy. For the past 150 years, it has deluded unthinking simpletons into mistaking it for a real phenomenon, when it is nothing but a collective anthropomorphization of non-specified natural causes of mortality presented as a mystical, animist 'presence' possessing the intelligence and powers of discrimination necessary to make actual choices, i.e., 'selections'. As such it may be accurately summed up as a childish religious mystique, that is, as a superstition for the godless.” If the universe and humans are the happenstance result of a Blindwatchmaker, than “Natural Selection is the Blind Gameskeeper (he works on the Estate of the Blind Watchmaker), and he kills everything he catches. Natural Selection is a synonym for bad luck, misfortune, and getting the pointy end of the stick.”

Heck, it makes a great story ; )

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