In the News

While the title of these pieces by Dr. Sam Vaknin, found in the Global Politician, may not seem to touch ID at a deeper level, they do. Intelligent design is delegitimized with almost a "wave of the hand". Self-organization of matter and energy is asserted, which leads to complexity, and, therefore, ID debunked rather easily, according to Dr. Vaknin.

Here are two mantras:

"Complexity does not, therefore, imply the existence of a designer or a design. Complexity does not imply the existence of intelligence and sentient beings. On the contrary, complexity usually points towards a natural source and a random origin."

"DNA is far from optimized - it contains inordinate amounts of junk. Our bodies come replete with dysfunctional appendages and redundant organs. Lightning bolts emit energy all over the electromagnetic spectrum. Pulsars and interstellar gas clouds spew radiation over the entire radio spectrum. The energy of the Sun is ubiquitous over the entire optical and thermal range. No intelligent engineer - human or not - would be so wasteful."

Robert Lee Holtz, of the LA Times, praises three books which celebrate Darwinism, and lobs artillery shells of bombastic rhetoric at ID.

He opens with, "In the border war between science and faith, the doctrine of "intelligent design" is a sly subterfuge — a marzipan confection of an idea presented in the shape of something more substantial. As many now understand — and as a federal court ruled in December — intelligent design is the bait on the barbed hook of creationist belief, intended to sidestep legal restrictions on the teaching of religion in public-school science classes. The problem is not its underlying theology — a matter properly left to individual religious belief — but its disingenuous masquerade as a form of legitimate scientific inquiry." There is no doubt where this article/opinion piece is going.

In one of the three books, Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind writes, "Whether or not evolution is compatible with faith, science and religion represent two extremely different worldviews, which, if they coexist at all, do so most uncomfortably. Today, in the United States, science and religion are in an angrier struggle than at any time within living memory. In itself, an intellectual battle of ideas is not at all a bad thing. But what I and many other people find deeply disturbing are the mechanisms that drive the conflict. It seems that both sides are pawns in a bigger game, a game of politics and power."

The "angrier struggle" from the Darwinist's perspective is due to the fact that Darwinian thought is crumbling at its very foundation. Stubbornness is rampant, and a worldview is not easily given up.

Over the next several weeks, commericials will air in Kansas promoting teaching more about evolution. Listen to them from the Discovery Institute Web site Evolution & News.