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. 

An Alternative to the Clergy Letter?

You knew this was coming. A story in the Christian NewsWire reports on efforts to get churches to ditch "evolution Sunday." The story notes:

CreationLetter.com is urging churches to celebrate Creation Sunday this February 14th to counter the Clergy Letter Project's Evolution Sunday, scheduled on the same date.

As the Year of Darwin comes to a close and we enter the Post-Darwin Century, CreationLetter.com is renewing its efforts to answer the challenge the Clergy Letter Project represents to the plain, traditional interpretation of Genesis.

Since 2004, the Clergy Letter Project has been recruiting ministers as evolution advocates, promoting the idea that "religious truth is of a different order than scientific truth," echoing an unBiblical notion popularized by the late Stephen J Gould: non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA.

Clever, that "post-Darwin part, as if the age of Darwin is over and a new century has begun. Not hardly. The article continues:

"Jesus refuted the concept of NOMA in John 3:12," notes CreationLetter.com founder Rev. Tony Breeden, "when He pointedly asked Nicodemus, 'If I've told you of earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell ye of spiritual things?' How can you trust the Bible for spiritual things like the Gospel for salvation when you can't trust what Genesis says about earthly things like biology, geology and so on? The Bible isn't a science textbook, but if we can't trust it when it speaks on science, when can we trust it?"

Christ was speaking directly about Nicodemus accepting Him as the Son of God. That is the context of the passage. Nicodemus did not understand Jesus' symbolic language and Jesus is chastising Nicodemus for not understanding the passages in the OT that referred to His coming. The entire passage hinges on whether or not Nicodemus understood who Jesus was and what he represented. It doesn't have anything to do with the NOMA. Breeden's interpretation represents the worst form of cherry-picking.

He then remarks that the Bible isn't a science textbook and then argues that we have to trust it to be exactly that! If the Bible isn't a science textbook then why is it important that we treat it and trust it as such? A bit back I posted an article by Daniel Harlow on the literalism of scripture. His analysis?

If we were to insist that the Bible gives an accurate picture of the physical cosmos, then to do so with integrity, we would have to believe that the earth is flat, immobile, and resting on pillars; that the sky is solid and has windows in it; that the sun, moon, and stars are set in the sky and move along it like light bulbs along a track; that the sun literally rises, moves, and sets; that there is an ocean of water surrounding the earth; and that beyond the waters above the sky is the very heaven of God. That’s what the Bible says.

Mr. Breeden's view of scripture is a very myopic one that, despite having been shown by countless biblical scholars to be completely unwarranted, is becoming increasingly common in evangelical circles. I certainly hope my church doesn't sign this letter. I will dissent.

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Statement of Objectives for an Evangelical Statement on Evolution

Steve Martin, over at An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution has drafted some objectives that are needed to delineate an evangelical statement on evolution. A draft statement like this is long overdue and, as a Christian, I have been delinquent in putting up a statement of faith even on my own blog. I think it needs to be something without the snideness of the "Project Steve" statement on the NCSE, though, and more like the "Clergy Letter" Project, which now has over 11 thousand signatures. That letter says, in part:

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator.

The DI was typical in their response to the Clergy Letter when it first came out:

The Discovery Institute, however, discounts the clergy letter. "Religion is irrelevant to the issue," says Robert L. Crowther II, director of communications for the institute. The beliefs of clergy members, he says, do not alter the evidence for intelligent design in DNA and biological cells.

That would be true if the DI were only about DNA and biological cells, but it is constantly working to subvert the teaching of evolution at the behest of creationist interests. Oh, and by the way, it sure blows your little list out of the water!