Posted on 08/18/2005 5:17:34 PM PDT by curiosity
The appeal of "intelligent design" to the American right is obvious. For religious conservatives, the theory promises to uncover God's fingerprints on the building blocks of life. For conservative intellectuals in general, it offers hope that Darwinism will yet join Marxism and Freudianism in the dustbin of pseudoscience. And for politicians like George W. Bush, there's little to be lost in expressing a skepticism about evolution that's shared by millions.
In the long run, though, intelligent design will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives. Like the evolution wars in the early part of the last century, the design debate offers liberals the opportunity to portray every scientific battle--today, stem-cell research, "therapeutic" cloning, and end-of-life issues; tomorrow, perhaps, large-scale genetic engineering--as a face-off between scientific rigor and religious fundamentalism. There's already a public perception, nurtured by the media and by scientists themselves, that conservatives oppose the "scientific" position on most bioethical issues. Once intelligent design runs out of steam, leaving its conservative defenders marooned in a dinner-theater version of Inherit the Wind, this liberal advantage is likely to swell considerably.
And intelligent design will run out of steam--a victim of its own grand ambitions. What began as a critique of Darwinian theory, pointing out aspects of biological life that modification-through-natural-selection has difficulty explaining, is now foolishly proposed as an alternative to Darwinism. On this front, intelligent design fails conspicuously--as even defenders like Rick Santorum are beginning to realize--because it can't offer a consistent, coherent, and testable story of how life developed. The "design inference" is a philosophical point, not a scientific theory: Even if the existence of a designer is a reasonable inference to draw from the complexity of, say, a bacterial flagellum, one would still need to explain how the flagellum moved from design to actuality.
And unless George W. Bush imposes intelligent design on American schools by fiat and orders the scientific establishment to recant its support for Darwin, intelligent design will eventually collapse--like other assaults on evolution that failed to offer an alternative--under the weight of its own overreaching.
If liberals play their cards right, this collapse could provide them with a powerful rhetorical bludgeon. Take the stem-cell debate, where the great questions are moral, not scientific--whether embryonic human life should be created and destroyed to prolong adult human life. Liberals might win that argument on the merits, but it's by no means a sure thing. The conservative embrace of intelligent design, however, reshapes the ideological battlefield. It helps liberals cast the debate as an argument about science, rather than morality, and paint their enemies as a collection of book-burning, Galileo-silencing fanatics.
This would be the liberal line of argument anyway, even without the controversy surrounding intelligent design. "The president is trapped between religion and science over stem cells," declared a Newsweek cover story last year; "Religion shouldn't undercut new science," the San Francisco Chronicle insisted; "Leadership in 'therapeutic cloning' has shifted abroad," the New York Times warned, because American scientists have been "hamstrung" by "religious opposition"--and so on and so forth. But liberalism's science-versus-religion rhetoric is only likely to grow more effective if conservatives continue to play into the stereotype by lining up to take potshots at Darwin.
Already, savvy liberal pundits are linking bioethics to the intelligent design debate. "In a world where Koreans are cloning dogs," Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote last week, "can the U.S. afford--ethically or economically--to raise our children on fraudulent biology?" (Message: If you're for Darwin, you're automatically for unfettered cloning research.) Or again, this week's TNR makes the pretty-much-airtight "case against intelligent design"; last week, the magazine called opponents of embryo-destroying stem cell research "flat-earthers." The suggested parallel is obvious: "Science" is on the side of evolution and on the side of embryo-killing.
Maureen Dowd, in her inimitable way, summed up the liberal argument earlier this year:
Exploiting God for political ends has set off powerful, scary forces in America: a retreat on teaching evolution, most recently in Kansas; fights over sex education . . . a demonizing of gays; and a fear of stem cell research, which could lead to more of a "culture of life" than keeping one vegetative woman hooked up to a feeding tube.
Terri Schiavo, sex education, stem cell research--on any issue that remotely touches on science, a GOP that's obsessed with downing Darwin will be easily tagged as medieval, reactionary, theocratic. And this formula can be applied to every new bioethical dilemma that comes down the pike. Earlier this year, for instance, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued ethical guidelines for research cloning, which blessed the creation of human-animal "chimeras"--animals seeded with human cells. New York Times reporter Nicholas Wade, writing on the guidelines, declared that popular repugnance at the idea of such creatures is based on "the pre-Darwinian notion that species are fixed and penalties [for cross-breeding] are severe." In other words, if you're opposed to creating pig-men--carefully, of course, with safeguards in place (the NAS guidelines suggested that chimeric animals be forbidden from mating)--you're probably stuck back in the pre-Darwinian ooze with Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
There's an odd reversal-of-roles at work here. In the past, it was often the right that tried to draw societal implications from Darwinism, and the left that stood against them. And for understandable reasons: When people draw political conclusions from Darwin's theory, they're nearly always inegalitarian conclusions. Hence social Darwinism, hence scientific racism, hence eugenics.
Which is why however useful intelligent design may be as a rhetorical ploy, liberals eager to claim the mantle of science in the bioethics battle should beware. The left often thinks of modern science as a child of liberalism, but if anything, the reverse is true. And what scientific thought helped to forge--the belief that all human beings are equal--scientific thought can undermine as well. Conservatives may be wrong about evolution, but they aren't necessarily wrong about the dangers of using Darwin, or the National Academy of Sciences, as a guide to political and moral order.
Above link is bad...
Sorry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1466277/posts?page=331#331
And this differs from the arrogant declaration that "Science" proves "Evolution" is a "Fact" how?
Oh that's right. Everything designed by man is so perfect and flawless that obviously any ID would of created BETTER people if it had existed
I'd guess that the non-ID scientists should be happy to hear the ID folks won't be getting any funding. The funding pie can be cut into fewer, larger pieces.
Predictable results and predictable non-results pop up all over the science landscape.
That doesn't seem to stop researchers or science students from putting questions to nature.
The second statement is not a reflection of what scientists think.
The first is an accurate statement of what IDers claim.
I say claim rather than think because I do not trust the moonies intentions
Which one?
This one maybe?
Nope. That would be a poor choice
Check out the one who manifested himself as a man, gave restored sight to the blind, walked on water, resurrected dead people, proclaimed himself to be Lord and Saviour and the ONLY path to God even while they were nailing him to a piece of wood, resurrected HIMSELF after 3 days, and emboldened many eye witnesses to proclaim Him as their Lord and Saviour while they themselves were being tortured to death for doing so.
That would be a significantly better choice :-)
The lack of predictabiliy is notforthe results, is is for the meaning of the results.
If ID there is no reason that what is true for organism A should predict anything at all about organism B because at any point the intelligent designer may have changed the rules.
I find declaring there is only one road to travel to living the good life, ie the Christian road, or as some would say only one sect of it, as interpreted by those of a religious monnopolist bent, to be hubris. I see it per my own experience. Your mileage obviously varies.
Which is exactly what Jesus said would happen. We would be hated because of Him.
Unfortunately, that's what happens when the sinful nature of man comes in contact with the Truth of Jesus.
You hate Christians because they tell you how to get to God. Christians tell you that you can only get to God through Jesus Christ, because that is what Jesus Christ himself said.
That's either true, or it's not.
If it's true, as Christians believe, then don't you think it's pretty generous of them to tell you, knowing full well that you're quite likely to hate them for it? What benefit is it to them if you don't know the truth that they know? Better to just keep quite about it, which is what a lot of Christians do in order to just "get along" (myself too, most of the time, much to my disappointment).
Which is my point. I am suspicious of anyone who claims to have "truth" cornered. When ever anyone tells me "You must think this (example "global warming"), my first reaction is WHY? How do you KNOW your right?
My favorite example is Aristotle. For centuries the Dogma was that Aristotle "proved" the earth was the center of the Universe. "Science" has condemned the Inquisition for stifling any questioning of that dogma. Funny how Modern "Science" now has set up their own Inquisition to stifle anyone who questions THEIR dogma.
Such as?
Are you suggesting there are no flaws in Darwin's theories?
The "hate" word is quite misplaced as you use it, quite.
From what I've read it's hard to interpret Torie as "hating" Christians.
No, I actually agree with you. I believe that religion is something that must be found in the heart, and the head, of each individual in their own way. My point is that many times those who condemn "hurbris" have their own dogmas they defend just stridently. I actually love the scientific method and think it is gets us closer to truth. What I resent is when some elements of our society try to use science to validate things that scientifically cannot be prove. I would prefer the scientist to say "I don't know" on some issues instead of insisting on their THEORIES as being absolute truth
I suggest you re-read my post.
Scientific research is transparent, procedures, materials, conclusions etc. must all be included for a paper to get published...
How many people know the extent of moonie funding of the Discovery Institute? How many papers have they published involving genuine research?
I agree. Read my posts on this thread. We seem to have misunderstood one another.
Your opinion on this is widely shared. It's normal. I once shared it with great passion.
Consider these points:
1) Jesus performed a lot of miracles, with a lot of witnesses, and there is very good reason to believe that the stories are not myth or legend. A great number of very intelligent people have studied the stories, and have come to believe them based on the merits of the evidence.
2) Jesus was killed for, and while, proclaiming Himself to be the one true God, and the only path to God.
3) Jesus resurrected himself, and that event was reliably witnessed by hundreds of people.
4) Countless people have accepted Jesus' words as truth, and have found that simply by doing so, amazing things have occured in their lives.
If all of that is true, is it not in fact being generous for a Christian to tell you about it? Keep in mind that the Christian fully expects you to resent or hate them for it, because often they had "been there, done that".
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