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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.

1 posted on 08/18/2005 5:17:36 PM PDT by curiosity
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To: curiosity
How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)

Well, I don't believe in intelligent design myself. But I'm curious how it makes conservatives look like crackpots in comparison to what many liberals believe:

That America is inherently evil

That abortion is a right but capital punishment is wrong

That it's wrong to pray in school but vital to teach homosexuality

That illegal aliens haven't done anything illegal

That it's a good idea to create diversity of languages and cultures, even though every multicultural country in the past has disintegrated.

I could go on, but there's only so much bandwidth in the world.

581 posted on 08/19/2005 9:32:42 AM PDT by dirtboy (Drool overflowed my buffer...)
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To: joanie-f

> ping! <


594 posted on 08/19/2005 9:55:40 AM PDT by Minuteman23
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To: curiosity
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.

It's interesting that Douthat assumes all liberals are scientifically-savvy evolutionists. My experience with the vast majority of Democrats is that they are, for the most part, scientifically and mathematically illiterate and that they generally believe in creation. The professor/media folks are a different story.

611 posted on 08/19/2005 10:23:48 AM PDT by TaxRelief
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To: curiosity

Boo Hoo hoo

I'm being called a crackpot, so I'll just slink off into the shadows....

NOT!!!!


632 posted on 08/19/2005 12:08:20 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: curiosity
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.

Seeing as this writer describes racism & eugenics as traditional right-wing values, I doubt that he genuinely want to prevent harm to the right.

640 posted on 08/19/2005 12:26:15 PM PDT by Sloth (History's greatest monsters: Hitler, Stalin, Mao & Durbin)
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To: curiosity
The appeal of "intelligent design" to the American right is obvious.

I read that and stopped reading.

656 posted on 08/19/2005 1:17:58 PM PDT by Frapster (Don't mind me - I'm distracted by the pretty lights.)
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To: curiosity; wallcrawlr
and paint their enemies as a collection of book-burning, Galileo-silencing fanatics.

Sounds a lot like the evo crowd here.

686 posted on 08/19/2005 4:18:04 PM PDT by AndrewC (Darwinian logic -- It is just-so if it is just-so)
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To: curiosity

In other words, if we all become athiests, we will be "accepted" by the Left and they won't call us ignorant rubes anymore.


695 posted on 08/19/2005 4:52:20 PM PDT by BnBlFlag (Deo Vindice/Semper Fidelis)
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To: curiosity

YEC INTREP


696 posted on 08/19/2005 5:02:49 PM PDT by LiteKeeper (The radical secularization of America is happening)
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To: curiosity
What next, an article entitled How God Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)?

And what's the next step after that; an irreparable Great Schism of the GOP between the atheists and the people of faith?

Of course, I never fail to find amusement in the observation that the Evo crowd simply cannot pass by anything ID or Creationist without comment. It just cannot be done. There's always something; an epithet; derogation; snide monologue -- something. Thankfully, most stop short of brain-dumping the entire chronology of evolutionist thought, so I suppose I must give some credit for restraint.

But, then, I'm just the sort who, knowing all of this, would pose as a Creationist simply for the great theater it evokes.

CURTAIN!

749 posted on 08/19/2005 7:57:53 PM PDT by HKMk23 (GoT this sweLl tagline on eBay with changE I found in my soFa. It's a "fixer.")
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To: curiosity
How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots)

The title shows a lack of fundamental understanding that is simply ludicrous.
813 posted on 08/20/2005 5:56:39 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: curiosity
The appeal of "intelligent design" to the American right is obvious.

What arrogant idiots these leftist goons are. The American right consists of lots of people who are scientifically sophisticated, and reject the leftists' ridiculous ideas of what makes America tick.

828 posted on 08/20/2005 6:09:08 PM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: curiosity

I would rather stand up for God than be on the side of pure evil like the left no matter what the cost thank you very much.


835 posted on 08/20/2005 6:19:30 PM PDT by ladyinred (Leftist=Anti American!)
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To: curiosity

I am one conservative that says, look God created it. That's what I believe and who I worship. You want me to believe ANYTHING else, you better prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt and even then, no promises.


846 posted on 08/20/2005 7:08:42 PM PDT by trubluolyguy (If you think you're having a bad day, try crucifixtion.)
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To: curiosity
Jorge Luis Borges once said "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

The cat says ""I have always imagined that Hell will be a kind of scientific lab!."

847 posted on 08/20/2005 7:09:14 PM PDT by Revolting cat! ("In the end, nothing explains anything!")
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To: curiosity
In the long run, though, intelligent design will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives.

Don't be so sure of that. There are an awful lot of Americans who are no longer buying into the dogma of evolution.

920 posted on 08/22/2005 9:53:36 AM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
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To: curiosity

Makes us look like crack-pots to whom...other Liberals?
They already see conservatives as crack-pots....it doesn't matter if a conservative has an evolutionary scientific world view....liberals will see them as crackpots any way!


943 posted on 08/28/2005 1:03:27 PM PDT by mdmathis6 (Even when a dog discovers he is barking up a wrong tree, he can still take a leak on it!)
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To: All

Makes us look like crack-pots to whom...other Liberals?
They already see conservatives as crack-pots....it doesn't matter if a conservative has an evolutionary scientific world view....liberals will see them as crackpots any way!


944 posted on 08/28/2005 1:05:43 PM PDT by mdmathis6 (Even when a dog discovers he is barking up a wrong tree, he can still take a leak on it!)
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