[curiosity]

The most important part of the article:

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.

[F.J. Mitchell]

I think the crack pots are those who can look at the wonders all around us, and believe it all just happened. Sounds very fairy taleish to me.

If someone tried to say the auto in their driveway just formed itself out of all the crap they had failed to clean out of the garage. Those who call us crack pots would call that person a crack pot too.

We know who the real crack pots are, regardless of their well oiled propaganda machine and the diplomas on the walls of their abettors.

[Edit35]

Until someone can explain how life just magically "began" out of nothing with the ability to duplicate itself, the average person (especially conservatives) will continue to believe that God has a hand in developing and overseeing life on earth, and everything in this universe.

I am of the belief that God created life on earth and continues to have a hand in its development.

[TAdams8591]

Even if Intellegent design were TRUE and Darwinism false, I understand the Atuhor's point that the left will use conservatives belief in it to their political advantage.

[Revolting cat!]

XIX Century - Romanticism, Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, perpetual motion machines, snake oil;

XX Century - Fascism, Communism, Elvis impersonators, Deepak Chopra;

XXI Century - Intelligent design, Flat screens, End of History, Islamism (unfortunately), new energy sources, another Rolling Stones tour (Hey, it's still early!)

Let's get with the program you monkey uncles!

[Torie]

I don't think a candiate making an issue against a politician who believes that God had a hand in designing evolution will gain much traction. I don't think a politician suggesting that schools admit what we don't know, as well as what we know, per the scientific method, will bite the dust in most places either in America. I don't think this issue has much political traction at all frankly. It is of interest intellectually, but not politically. I think the author is engaging in wishful thinking about the way he wishes the American public square were, but isn't.

Just the opinion of a near Atheist who doubts that anyone was around to design anything. But that is beside the point. Most Americans profess a belief in God in any event.

[kidkosmic1]

"How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)"

You want real debate...bring this topic to a conservative site like Free Republic, a site heavily populated by conservative Christians and social conservatives. You want to debate with Socialists or Communists (who also happen to be evolutionists by an overwhelming margin) be prepared to be labelled as a dangerous radical (i.e. the Taliban).

The crackpot scientist establishment view this site as a danger to all life on our earth. Put the lie to this statement. You cannot.

The same liberals we conservatives decry for spreading POISON on our college campuses with liberal doctrine are the "experts" who "know" we crawled out of the slime pool of chance.

You down with the Ayn Randians? Read her books, and the books written by her living associates. Your beliefs are a mockery in their eyes.

Think.

[Revolting cat!]

There was a good reason why they called these guys 'PREFAB FOUR'

[Holden Magroin]

It seems that conservatives would make more progress talking about the origins of the universe. Here, liberals are the ones in danger of looking like crackpots because it requires a far greater leap of faith to deny the self-evident truth that the universe can't be self-caused.

[loveliberty2]

DaveTesla contributed some Einstein statements, a couple exerpted here:
"I want to know God's thoughts... the rest are details. Albert Einstein

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically. Albert Einstein

God always takes the simplest way. Albert Einstein

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. Albert Einstein

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. Albert Einstein

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. Albert Einstein

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish. Albert Einstein

Let's look at a profound statement from another intellectual genius who recognized "a superior reasoning power" as the Source of life and liberty:

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." - Thomas Jefferson

A concept of "Creator-endowed," therefore unalienable, life, rights, and liberty lies at the heart of the American experiment in self-government.

Ideas have consequences! Are life, rights, and liberty gifts from the Creator, or are they mere chance "grants" from some other individual or collection of individuals in positions of power at any given time and place? The answer to this question has determined either liberty or tyranny for individuals.

If we are to train our future citizens that "science" cannot include an acknowledgement of a "superior reasoning power," then we'd better examine the long-term consequences of that idea on the future of liberty in the world.

Lincoln declared:

". . . it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . .The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. . . . And yet, they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . .All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a . . . revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers [initiators of threatening change] of reappearing tyranny and oppression."

Ideas do have consequences!

Enough of scientific snobbery! One is inclined to suspect scientific subject matter which must be mandated by government!

Jefferson: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

[NewLand]

If liberals play their cards right...

This is more of the 'henny penny' so-called conservatives who are afraid of liberals and what they think of them, afraid to confront liberals and liberalism in the theater of 'battle', afraid to stick by their professed convictions. This is no way to win in the market place of ideas by living in fear of what the liberals might think about us, or might do to us.

Pure and simple, this article is hogwash.

The leaders of the successful wing of the conservative movement over the last 25 years (Reagan, GWB, Rush Limbaugh, etc) would never take the fearful positions that you advocate.

Additionally, all of them professed publicly their belief that our Creator was exactly that...and that we are directly a result of God's creation.

All this nonsense about believing in Creation being the downfall of conservatives flies in the face of any facts, results, trends, etc. If anything, the last 5 years have proved mostly otherwise.

On a personal note, I have yet to read the testimony or expressed personal beliefs of faith from anyone who professes that evolution is compatible with being a biblical Christian. I've seen rhetoric, but no 'beef'. Mostly I have seen some pretty hateful things said about Christians, and about God.

For those who try to be legalistic about The Bible, all I can say is to read the words of Christ, our saviour:

John 3:12
"I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?"

[porkchops 4 mahound]

There is a large portion of American people who do not find the idea of GOD or intelligent design "crackpot".

That any so called "conservative" would be embarrassed by the honest expressions of people of faith's beliefs, shows that they are self serving wannabe CINOs, if for no other reason that their contempt for their fellow citizen's honest religious views, which exposes them as the narrow and closed minded folks they accuse people of faith of being.

The true crackpots are those who live in this forest and cannot see it because of the trees.

[syriacus]

You say crackpot and I say crockpot
Great piece of lab equipment for cooking primordial soups

[MaxMax]

/Stands up

Hi, my name is MaxMax and I must be a crackpot.

[MNJohnnie]

Ah NO. Because the Hysteric Left loses the argument on Embryonic Stem Cells on science's terms as well. Notice how they are always careful to use just the term Stem Cells to confuse the issue?

BTW, I would be really, really careful about taking anything the Hysteric Leftists at New Republic say too seriously. When they offer the Right advice, it is a really good idea for the Right to look for the hook. This is just another example of the Left writing what they WISH would happen.

[Kevin OMalley]

With over 400 posts, there must be something worth reading here. Bump for later.

[TheClintons-STILLAnti-American]

"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."

So what.

Anyone who has read the Bible knows that it clearly says "The wisdom of God is folksiness to them that are perishing." They aren't ever going to respect what they are unable to understand.

We should honor their "wisdom" over God's, so we don't look foolish to the lost and dying? What do we give up next, so as not to offend fools?

I'll pass on that deal, thanks.

[Publius6961]

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.

This statement summarizes the silliness of the debate.
The two positions are not mutually exclusive, unless the goal is to bludgeon the other into adopting "your" position, when neither can be "scientifically" proven. Inferred perhaps, but not yet proven and not ever likely to be conclusively proven.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Eveolution = Christ/evolution

Perhaps, just perhaps, the monolith in "2001 a Oddyessy" ended up in Mecca and Arabs are the descendants of violent chimps and apes. If the Islamofastists do destroy western culture and create a world Caliphate, we'll have a repeat of "Planet of the Apes." My point is that if we have evolved from the apes to this stage, the final stage may be a return to Ape rule.

To offset this eventual possibility Christianity and evolution should reveal themselves merging in ID: Eveolution. They are not mutually exclusive.

As well, the Left is known for calling GW Bush a chimp and not a Christian, which reveals their sympathies with the terrorists/monkeys. They are projecting their latent and nascent fantasies forward, toward a future ruling Muslim Ape. The left still has to evolve with Christianity.

[Vaquero]

Politics do make strange bedfellows.....Social conservatives and Fiscal conservatives have provided a powerful voting block.....

I tend to gravitate toward aspects of both with a little Libertarianism thrown in to satiate my anarchistic side. But not ID or Creationism....please people think...its right there in the fossil record....tangible evidence...don't let yourself be ruled by the archaic scribblings of the desert wandering, sandal wearing, Bronze age goat herders (or perhaps fishermen).

[trisham]

bttt