Ed Brayton links to an interview with Michael Medved1 in the Jerusalem Post. (Paragraphs in bold are from the Ruthie Blum, the journalist conducting the interview.)
[Y]ou are a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute that studies and believes in Intelligent Design. How do you, as an Orthodox Jew, reconcile with this kind of generality - with the view of their being a hierarchy with a chief "designer" - while believing in and praying to a very specific God?Let's look more closely at each of those answers.
The important thing about Intelligent Design is that it is not a theory - which is something I think they need to make more clear. Nor is Intelligent Design an explanation. Intelligent Design is a challenge. It's a challenge to evolution. It does not replace evolution with something else.
The question is not whether it replaces evolution, but whether it replaces God.
No, you see, Intelligent Design doesn't tell you what is true; it tells you what is not true. It tells you that it cannot be that this whole process was random.
Intelligent design is not a theory
Intelligent design creationism is a crock
So if intelligent design creationism isn't a theory and if intelligent design creationists don't even understand the theory they're "challenging", it's pretty obvious that there's no more reason to teach intelligent design creationism as an alternative to evolution than there is to teach that the earth is flat rather than round.4
1In case the name Michael Medved doesn't ring any bells, he's "a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host and movie critic heard every afternoon" (michaelmedved.com) and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
2I'm ignoring the fact that most mutations, whether favorable or unfavorable are lost as a result of genetic drift while they're still rare. Even so, mutations that enhance reproduction and survival have a greater chance of becoming common than those that are neutral or detrimental.
3Evolutionists still argue, and argue a lot, about the relative importance of natural selection and genetic drift, but everyone agrees that natural selection is responsible for what looks like design in the natural world. We simply disagree about how much of what looks like design is really just taking advantage of what was already there -- like fingers for typing on computer keyboards.
4Yes, Virginia, there are still flat-earthers in the 21st century.
Intelligent Design is ... not a theory ... It does not replace evolution with something else.So here we have a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute admitting what scientists have known all along. Intelligent design creationism is not a credible scientific theory. And it's not as if Medved was speaking out of turn or unable to get his facts straight. Philip "Father of Intelligent Design" Johnson said much the same thing last year.
I also don't think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that's comparable.Medved doesn't understand natural selection
[Intelligent design] tells you that it cannot be that this whole process was random.Natural selection is not a random process. Organisms with features that enhance reproduction and survival leave more offspring than others. If those features are transmitted from parents to offspring, they will become more common.2 That's not random, and that's how evolution by natural selection works.3
Intelligent design creationism is a crock
So if intelligent design creationism isn't a theory and if intelligent design creationists don't even understand the theory they're "challenging", it's pretty obvious that there's no more reason to teach intelligent design creationism as an alternative to evolution than there is to teach that the earth is flat rather than round.4
1In case the name Michael Medved doesn't ring any bells, he's "a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host and movie critic heard every afternoon" (michaelmedved.com) and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
2I'm ignoring the fact that most mutations, whether favorable or unfavorable are lost as a result of genetic drift while they're still rare. Even so, mutations that enhance reproduction and survival have a greater chance of becoming common than those that are neutral or detrimental.
3Evolutionists still argue, and argue a lot, about the relative importance of natural selection and genetic drift, but everyone agrees that natural selection is responsible for what looks like design in the natural world. We simply disagree about how much of what looks like design is really just taking advantage of what was already there -- like fingers for typing on computer keyboards.
4Yes, Virginia, there are still flat-earthers in the 21st century.
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