The Worm In The Apple

Via The Panda's Thumb, here is some creationist correspondence with Michael Behe in the March issue of First Things.

I wish the editors of FT would cut the Intelligent Design scow loose. The attitudes on display here evidence a fragility of faith, not a rigor of scientific investigation. It isn't Darwin's, science's, or nature's fault or problem if these people's religious lives are roiled by the idea of evolution.

ID has gotten soundly smacked down in two major court cases, and it'll likely take a third thump once the 11th Circuit returns its ruling on the Cobb County textbook stickers case. These defeats of course do not mean that ID is going to evaporate. Like any other mass mania, it has to rage its course before it subsides, before it loosens its grip on people's minds. It can't be argued away. But it has to be resisted, since it is trespassing on ground that belongs to rationality. If it were unadorned creationism, it could be dismissed as such, same as any other form of primitivism, such as Celtic Chic. But since it deceptively takes on the raiment of science, it is more insidious.

It's like I said some time back, if you will forgive the ipsedixitism:

I would actually think less of the Creator if He was constrained to take a visible hand in the operation of the universe, if our scientific inquiries could actually jacklight Him at His forge, pumping the bellows of Creation.

To believe in things that can't be proved is faith. To disbelieve in things that have been proved is obstinance.