re: #467 Hhar

Charles, this is not actually true. It is true that ID has been used as a Trojan horse for creationists. It is true that many IDer’s are creationists. It is true that the main financial supporters for ID also support creationists. etc. etc. However, it must be pointed out that one of the main proponents of ID (Michael Behe) is in no way a creationist. He has been very clear on this (esp in his last book The Edge of Evolution, pages 70-73) when he acknowledges the evidence for universal common descent, and (most critically) states unequivocally that the evidence for the descent of man from the great apes could not be better.

ID is crappy stuff: there should be no debate on that, and there are abundant empirical facts to demonstrate that point. But a perfect equivalence of ID with creationism simply doesn’t hold up. Groups of ideas are fuzzy around the edges: what do you make of Brig Klyce, or for that matter Hoyle (the Astronomer)? Why force nuts into shoe boxes? Why not just make it plain that they are nuts?

Michael Behe is a creationist. The fact that he dresses it up in pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo about “irreducible complexity,” and pays lip service to common descent, does not change the fact that he is making an argument for religious creationism. In the Dover trial this became exceedingly clear.

“Intelligent design” is nothing more than a sneaky attempt to get around court decisions banning the teaching of “creation science.” The “intelligent design” textbook Of Pandas and People began as an openly creationist book, then morphed over several editions to remove all references to “creationism,” replacing them with “intelligent design” — a perfect illustration of my point. Again, in the Dover trial this was demonstrated beyond any doubt.

Are there “two camps?” For public consumption, yes - but once you begin looking into this a little deeper than their deceptive public statements, the differences become minuscule. Creationists who promote “intelligent design” are simply better at hiding their main agenda, which is to sneak the teaching of religious creationism into public school science classrooms.