Dispatches from the Creation Wars

In a new post, Dembski's faithful manservant Cato has built a perfectly inaccurate straw man and proceeded to beat the heck out of it while pretending to actually engage an argument being made by the anti-ID side. To wit:

The Vatican Newspaper published an article distancing itself from ID and (once again) embracing Darwinian Evolution.

So when should we expect some outrage from the folks at Panda's Thumb that Darwinian Evolution is religion? They're all over ID as unconstitutional because evangelical Christians are some of its most vocal supporters. Clearly, if they are consistent in their logic, they should now be all over Darwinian Evolution because it is supported by the Vatican. Can we expect consistent application of principles from the folks at Panda's Thumb, the National Center for Selling Evolution Science Education, the ACLU, and other virtuous defenders of Separation of Church and State? I doubt it. Consistency has never been their strong suit.

How amusing. He might have a point if he was portraying our position honestly, but of course he's not. No one claims that ID is unconstitutional "because evangelical Christians are some of its most vocal supporters." All he has to do is look at Judge Jones' ruling in Dover and he will see that nowhere is that argument made. There are several other lines of evidence that ID is inherently religious and therefore unconstitutional to teach in public schools, but nowhere will he find the argument he makes here. It appears to exist only in his mind.

The argument for the religious nature of ID has nothing to do with the religious views of those who accept it and everything to do with the substance of the arguments themselves. For example, the fact that the first ID textbook used the phrase "intelligent design" to mean exactly the same thing that they had previously defined as creationism. And the fact that ID advocates themselves admitted under oath that ID can only be considered scientific and not religious if the definition of science was changed to allow in theistic and supernatural causation. And the fact that they have admitted quite bluntly that the designer could only be supernatural and transcendant, despite their vague claims to the contrary.

All of these arguments, and several more, are offered consistently by our side in making the case that ID is an inherently religious idea. The argument that Cato attributes to us is entirely a figment of his imagination, made necessary by his inability to dispute the real arguments being made. Thankfully, we are only required to act consistent with our own positions, not the imaginary ones he attempts to foist upon us.