Wow, if you thought George Will was a conservative who is annoyed by ID and its attendant anti-evolution nonsense, wait till you see Charles Krauthammer's column today. In his typical fashion, Krauthammer gets right down to brass tacks:
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" -- today's tarted-up version of creationism -- on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
Three cheers for conservatives speaking out against ID, eh?
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Wow, looks like they got the memo the population of Dover sent. Buncha opportunists.
Let's be clearer. Intelligent design is neither interesting as theology nor as science. Intelligent design is a political charade and a theological and scientific fraud.
uh uh...I think Kauchmatcher neocon friends are going to excomunicate him...
Steve Abrams takes on his "critics"... in what seems to be the usual sort of banter we all are expecting from the ID community----
http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=212181&c=96
"Evolution. Creation. Intelligent Design. Is there any truth or facts that can come out of what has been bandied about in the media in the last few days?
Let me first comment a little about what my critics claim. Some of my critics claim it is nothing short of trying to insert the supernatural into the science classroom. Others claim I am trying to insert creation into the science classroom via the backdoor. A few claim that I know nothing about science and that my doctorate must have come from a mail order catalog.
The critics also claim that in the scientific community, there is no controversy about evolution. They then proceed to explain that I ought to understand something about this, because surely I can see that over a period of time, over many generations, a pair of dogs will "evolve." There is a high likelihood that the progeny several generations down the line will not look like the original pair of dogs. And then some of the critics will claim that this proves that all living creatures came from some original set of cells.
Obviously, that is one of the reasons that we tried to further define evolution. We want to differentiate between the genetic capacity in each species genome that permits it to change with the environment as being different from changing to some other creature. We want to provide more clarity to this inflamed issue and we ask that the evolutionists reveal what they are doggedly hiding, but they prefer to misinform the media and assassinate the character of qualified scientists who are willing to shed some light.
In our Science Curriculum Standards, we called this micro-evolution and macro-evolution ... changes within kinds and changing from one kind to another. Again, as previously stated, evolutionists want nothing to do with trying to clarify terms and meanings.
Most of the critics that send me e-mail send four basic comments: They claim that we are sending Kansas back to the Dark Ages, or that we are making a mockery of science, or that we are morons for putting Intelligent Design into the Science Standards or that they also are Christian and believe in evolution.
There are a few critics that want to present an intellectual argument about why Intelligent Design should not be included in the Science Curriculum Standards. They claim that ID is not good science. From the aspect that Intelligent Design is not a full fledged developed discipline, I would agree. But, if one takes the time to read the Science Curriculum Standards, they would see that Intelligent Design is not included. "
I wonder if there are any "critics" that embrace all "five" critical themes??? If ID wasn't intended to be infused in the new Kansas standards then what did they bother changing them for in the first place?? And they certainly wouldn't mention anywhere in any science curricula that are based on the new standards the very notion of ID would they?
Has someone finally beaten some sense into Krauthammer's head? He's usually an idiot.
I wish God would make me a lemur. Those things are adorable.
Zap! You're a lemur. Damn, missed again.
I do have to share this Mike Peters cartoon about ID which in turn reminds me of a classic from my youth, of two goldfish in a bowl, captioned "OK, wise guy, if there is no God, who changes the water?"
Didn't read the Krauthammer column until my local newspaper printed it today... and already, one thing jumped out at me:
Newton's religion was traditional.
If, by "traditional," you mean he viewed the trinity as an ungodly form of polytheism. This was well known even before it was dramatized on NOVA just last week.