More sense on ID

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What IS it about the struggle over intelligent design that I find so fascinating? Is it that it's primarily a rhetorical battle? Is it ambivalence about my own atheism? If you're fascinated by the phenomenon, why are you?

Why doesn't a statement like this, from a NYT letter to the editor, end the whole thing?
To the Editor:

In the articles in the 'Debate Over Darwin' series (front page, Aug. 21-23), it's clear that some human beings cannot understand how the complex organisms of today could have evolved over time from inanimate matter. But the concept of an intelligent designer does not rule out the possibility of evolution. Here is why:

An all-powerful intelligent designer who, by definition, is neither finite nor limited can do anything.

Therefore, an all-powerful intelligent designer could have used a process of evolution from inanimate matter to produce the complex organisms of today.

If human beings fail to understand how this is possible, that must be due to the finite and limited understanding of human beings.

Ergo, the evolution of species is compatible with the concept of an intelligent designer.

The only way to exclude the possibility of evolution is to deny either the all-powerfulness or the all-intelligence of the designer.

Do the critics of evolutionary theory want to do that?

Marilyn Friedman
St. Louis, Aug. 26, 2005

Comments

Anonymous said…
i think it fascinates and infuriates people like you and me because of our shared ideas about teaching. even though i work at an actual school and you work in museums and parks, we both strive to set up some little part of the world where students can see the facts, get a few nudges of help, and draw their own conclusions. it's incongruous with our view of the world that there could be any fundamentally unproven "facts" that must be accepted a priori as true, even if observation and logic dictate otherwise. the blatanly logical argument in the letter you reprinted is just painfully true to us, yet painfully flawed to the fundamentalists.

the only belief we hold with anything approaching religious fervor is that:

observation + logic = truth

and that is what's being challenged by ID proponents.

what's particularly insidious about their tactics is that they claim they are all about observation and logic, so they are appealing to your "religion" to try to overturn your "religion". their tactics are rhetorically ruthless. they also claim outrageous stuff, get a biologist fuming mad enough to refute them, and then say "see! there's a controversy! teach the controversy!"

okay, i've gone on long enough. but i think those are some of the reasons the argument is so fascinating.
8/30/2005

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