November 18, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE EVOLUTION OF CREATIONISM

A few hundred years ago you could imagine a shaman or priest leading a ceremony to ask the favor of the Rain God, or some other member of the pantheon of nature gods that prevailed in primitive religion. A few days ago Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue led a prayer calling for rain in drought-stricken Georgia. It's just evidence of how superstition still holds a major place in American society. A good percentage of Americans don't accept evolution theory and still buy into the creationist myth in Genesis. In the past few years there has been a movement called Intelligent Design to give creationism a scientific gloss. PBS aired a good documentary about Intelligent Design, the "think tank" that promotes Intelligent Design, and how Intelligent Design fails to stand scientific muster. This article by Gordy Slack is at www.opednews.com:

But like bacteria adapting to antibiotics, creationism has slimmed down once again, this time shedding even a mention of an intelligent designer. A new textbook put out by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank that promotes I.D., doesn't even have the words "intelligent design" in its index. Instead of pushing I.D. explicitly, "Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Darwinism," promoted as a high school- or college-level biology text, "teaches the controversy." Teach the controversy is the new mantra of the I.D. movement.

"We want to teach more about evolution," says Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin, "not less." The "more" they want to teach, of course, is what they see as evolution's shortcomings, leaving an ecological niche that will then be filled by intelligent design.

But not all creationists have embraced the strategy. Many responded to the Dover trial by coming out of I.D.'s big tent, which once gave shelter to young earth creationists, old earthers, academics interested in I.D.'s hypotheses, and anyone who wanted to promote a Christian-compatible view of science. Judge Jones' decision was like a lightning strike on the big top, sending many of the constituents running home through the rain. Creationist groups like Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and Reasons to Believe are now attacking I.D. for not having the guts to call its designer God or to be explicit about such key questions as the age of the world. (Answers in Genesis' answer: about 6,000 years.)