HuffPo: Intelligent Design's Final Days?

The intelligent design movement has labored under the premise that its attacks on evolution are not based on religion but on solid science and that arguments that promote intelligent design have no teleological motive.  This denial of religiosity on the part of the DI led, of course, to the church of the flying spaghetti monster, a parody based on the idea that the “intelligence” that was not attributable to God could, then, be attributable to any form of intelligence.

Well, now the mask is off.  Michael Zimmerman, the founder of the Clergy Letter Project, which can be thought of as a kind of response to the Discovery Institute's Dissent From Darwin list (but not to be confused with the hilarious Project Steve list) has written a piece for the Huffington Post titled Intelligent Design's Final Days?  He believes so.  This is why:

An article in the TFN Insider points out that Faith Bible Church in the Woodlands north of Houston will host a conference this weekend that explicitly links this form of creationism to "essential Christian doctrines." This is of particular significance because the most important talking point of those who promote intelligent design is that it has absolutely no link to Christianity in particular or to religion in general.
The description of the conference is clearly at odds with this perspective.

As Zimmerman points out, this conference is being attended by the movers and shakers of the intelligent design movement, with such luminaries as John West, Stephen Meyer and William Dembski. In fact, all but one of the speakers is a Discovery Institute senior fellow, with the sole exception being Melissa Cain Travis, who has written several books for the YEC-oriented publisher Apologia.While Zimmerman is quick to say that all of the main speakers have publicly distanced ID from Christianity, it should be pointed out that in 1999, William Dembski was quoted as saying that intelligent design was “the Logos of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” and design leader Paul Nelson has publicly accepted the YEC perspective, co-authoring a book called A Case for Young-Earth Creationism: A Zondervan Digital Short.   Therefore, when these folks say that design is irrespective of Christianity, it is with a wink and a nudge.  The designer could be anybody but really, it is God.

Nonetheless, Zimmerman is correct in his observation that this conference represents a sea change of sorts in the movement.  They have, if you will, gone from latent to blatant.  Zimmerman puts it succinctly: “All three of these intelligent design stars are now comfortable moving away from their previous position and saying what all of us have known from the beginning: intelligent design is linked to “essential Christian doctrines.”  It now becomes clear that they have been “cdesign proponentsists” all along.