Friday, December 23, 2005
The history of intelligent design
I am concerned about the use of the history of intelligent design in the judge's decision. I have not read Creationism's Trojan Horse, but I did read what I thought was a balanced review of it in Christian Scholar's Review (the reviewer was clearly not an ID advocate), and it seemed to me based on that that the book had an extremely tendentious interpretation of the movement's history. It seemed to be portraying ID as part of a vast right-wing conspiiracy to set up a Christian Reconstructionist theocracy in America, and that, it seems to me, was just over-the-top scare tactics and arrant nonsense.
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In the Dover testimony of Ms. Forrest you will see the evidence that shows how ID was developed in order to get around the Supreme Court ruling that tossed creation science out. Because of this trial drafts of the book Of Pandas and People were made public that document this strategy of replacing creation science with ID. And this is only one of the pieces of evidence presented by her.
One advantage to reading her testimony rather than getting her book is that its freely available on the web and you can also read the arguments the ID team had to try and invalidate her testimony.
Greg
The folks at Telic Thoughts have made a helpful distinction between the idea of intelligent design and the movement of intelligent design. See here. I have expanded on that here . I agree that the cries of doom about theocracy are way over the top.
Forrest and Gross's book doesn't argue that ID is part of an attempt to implement theocracy, though it does state, correctly, that the Discovery Institute is heavily financed by Howard Ahmanson, who has also in the past given lots of money to the Christian reconstructionist movement. The ID component of the Discovery Institute was originally called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, and does have a goal of promoting theism as a legitimate component of science.
It also makes an overwhelming case that DI is a political/PR operation rather than a science operation.
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