Faith and Evolution website funnies

I was reading a pdf file from the Discovery Institute's new "Faith and Reason# website, the one they set up to combat Francis Collin's BioLogos website. Well the pdf is titled "The Roots of Intelligent Design" and I was contrasting it with Barbara Forrest's paper "Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals" ad I realized the paper is one big smokescreen.

Basically the paper is an effort to claim that Intelligent Design does not have it's roots in Creationism. It tries to show how the design argument has been around for centuries and quotes Plato and a few others. Actually it makes an interesting read -- but it doesn't address the root issue. It's not the Design argument, which many have voiced over the years . . . but the current modern Discovery Institute-led Intelligent Design Movement that is nothing more than the Design argument wrapped in Creationism underpinnings!

When looked at in that light the "Roots" paper is nothing but more grist for the rumor mill that is the Discovery Institute. Rather than addressing the 'cdesign proponentists' discovered during the Dover Trial, rather than address the obvious Creationist statements of the Wedge Strategy. Rather than address Dembski, Behe, and others, who claim the Intelligent Designer is the Christian God. In fact rather than address the actual reason why the Faith and Evolution website was stood up . . . they take us down a well disguised path full of historical discussions about the argument of Design and try and leave us thinking that the 'argument' and the 'movement' are the same thing, when they are not!

At the end of the 'Roots' pdf are several discussion questions under the heading of 'Conclusions'. I do have a philosophical objections to asking a series of questions rather than drawing an actual conclusions. But I will try and answer them for myself.

24. What are the most important things you have learned from these readings?
25. What do these readings show you about the origins of intelligent design as an idea? Is intelligent design a response to modern court rulings or an outgrowth of “Christian fundamentalism”? Is it dependent on the authority of the Bible rather than the observations of nature and the inferences drawn from those inferences? How long have people been debating about whether there is evidence of design in nature?
These discussion questions are © 2009 by Discovery Institute; they may be freely downloaded, printed, and used for noncommercial purposes.

What are the most important things you have learned from these readings? Not much, I was already familiar with much of the design argument's history.

What do these readings show you about the origins of intelligent design as an idea? Not much other than a blurring between the movement and the argument.

Is intelligent design a response to modern court rulings or an outgrowth of “Christian fundamentalism”? Yes, the modern Intelligent Design movement is an evolution of the design argument based on Court decisions and most certainly related to Christian Fundamentalism. This paper did not address this issue, hence my 'smokescreen' comment.

Is it dependent on the authority of the Bible rather than the observations of nature and the inferences drawn from those inferences? The design argument is not dependent on the Bible, mainly because the Bible doesn't address the design argument itself. However Christian Apologetics have been using the Bible in support of the Intelligent Design Movement for years and therefore should be considered a source document for the movement.

How long have people been debating about whether there is evidence of design in nature? For a long time, but this question still doesn't address the relative youth of the modern ID movement. Plus the author of this paper needs to take a good psychology course on Teleology and the well documented human bias toward seeing design in nature.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the pdf was a short decent read on the roots of the Design Argument, but it never addresses the issue of the fundamental Christian ties and support for the Intelligent Design Movement, which I feel is disingenuous of the Discovery Institute.