CBEB’s

Over at Evolution News & Views, BPSDB poster boy Casey Luskin points readers to Men’s News Daily and this fabulous article spewed forth from the imagination of Mike LaSalle, entitled, “Darwin Ist Tot: Intelligent Design is Not Creationism“.

LaSalle kicks off his argument by linking to an opinion piece in the Daily Observer penned by the Reverend Eric Strachan. A word of advice to Mr. LaSalle: When you’re trying to make the argument that Intelligent Design is NOT repackaged creationism, it helps if you don’t reference articles containing stuff like this:

Who can improve upon the wonder of a sunrise, the majesty of a sunset, the awesomeness of a baby coming forth from the womb, trees clothed in a garment of wintry white glistening in the early morning sunshine, a golden eagle soaring upon the wings of the wind?

Yet, often the moment we add the human touch, creation loses its pristine beauty.

The Good Reverend Strachan might want to look into how the human touch has made babies coming out of wombs a little more awesome; thanks to science, a lot less stillborn babies are springing forth from wombs.

“Intelligent Design is not creationism” has become the bumper-sticker slogan/talking point of the ID crowd as of late. I’ve got to wonder if this is nothing more than a weak attempt at running interference on behalf of the next supposed nail in evolution’s coffin, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

With the host of Expelled talking like a creationist,

Stein apparently even went into the project with the idea that it might ultimately be titled “From Darwin to Hitler.”

and the producers of the film using creationist tactics to get interviews with academics, the words “ID is not creationism” ring hollow. As it turns out, the filmmakers had to go with another title because there’s already a book entitled From Darwin to Hitler, which has been promoted by both creationists and ID proponents.

Are you confused yet? Don’t worry, it gets worse. It’s been a few years since ID’s Dover fiasco, so the revisionists at the Discovery Institute are hoping the public has forgotten about the “cdesign proponentsists” transitional that was found in early drafts of Of Pandas and People.

Furthermore, most of us are familiar with William Dembski’s famous quote:

Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

In other words, Intelligent Design is NOT creationism, it’s just a bunch of stuff from the Bible made to sound sciency. I’m glad we could work that one out.

What I find more interesting than the increasing claims of “ID is not creationism” is the dearth of headlines exclaiming “Intelligent Design is Science”. Sure, they wish it was science, but as a wise man once said, “Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which hand fills up first”.

I’d like to be Ring Magazine’s Middleweight Champion, but I don’t necessarily want to do things like, oh, I dunno… train or have to step into the ring with someone like Kelly Pavlik. I guess I could redefine the phrase “Ring Magazine’s Middleweight Champion” to mean something entirely different, but there’s a slight drawback to that approach: no one in their right minds would take me seriously.

And so it is with Intelligent Design, with one minor difference. The leading lights of Intelligent Design most certainly wish to redefine science in terms that will allow ID proponents to say that ID is, indeed, science. Like my futile fantasy of becoming middleweight champ, ID proponents want to be scientists without having to do all that messy science. The difference between my dream and theirs is, there are people who earnestly support ID’s effort to turn the word “science” into a meaningless term that would make astrology a legitimate scientific endeavor. As I’ve previously mentioned, there is no idea too ridiculous or offensive that can’t be made respectable by dressing it up with religion.

Let us momentarily put aside all that pesky evidence and pretend that “Intelligent Design is not creationism” is a factual statement. Even if that was true, ID is still pseudoscience. It’s still anti-science. That’s the issue which creationists ID proponents need to be addressing, but instead choose to ignore.