Intelligent Design on Trial . . . on The View?

Recently one of the hosts/guest hosts on 'The View' made mention of Intelligent Design and she was immediately challenged by one of the others.  If you hadn't seen it,here it is.

The whole story is "Joy Behar leaves Kirk Cameron’s sister dumbstruck by asking her to defend creationism".  I do like how the article mentions her brother, is he an evangelist actor or an actor who is also an evangelist?  Now what interests me not at all is Kirk "Banana Man's Helper" Cameron's sister and her various statements.  I did have to laugh at a few, like 

"I don't believe in evolution, but intelligent design, there are many people and great scientists that are all over the world that believe in intelligent design"

Really?  Name one 'great' scientist who 'believes' in intelligent design?  The highest profile one I know of is Michael Behe, but since his belief in intelligent design has not shown up in any of his actual scientific work, I'm not sure that counts.  I also laughed aloud at:

"But I believe that the two are not mutually exclusive. And Ben Carson is a man of science, he's a doctor. I mean, he is a great and intelligent surgeon"

Well now that we know her criteria for 'great' I am not sure any scientist would like to be counted on her list. I can't imagine any scientists putting a plaque on the wall saying "I'm Great, just like Ben Carson!"

But what interests me more is the Discovery Institute's response.  As usual if you mention ID in any public forum, the DI has a knee-jerk reactionary response to it.  There were a couple of standard comments like:

" . . . it appears no one on the panel knew what intelligent design means . . ."

Which is pretty standard.  No one, outside of a secret clique at the DI seems to be able to define ID.  At least define it so when you say something the DI doesn't like, their first salvo back is nearly always  . . . they don't understand Intelligent Design.  What this does is give them an immediate whine.  I have news for you, DI, why don't you define it and explain your definition is a way understandable by people not in your clique.  Like maybe try something like, oh I don't know, maybe like scientific methodology so your explanations are more than just wishful thinking?  Then at least we could avoid this particular whine in the future.  Next, my irony meter nearly popped a gasket with:

"The View isn't a philosophy seminar, nor do the co-hosts include any scientists or science journalists." 

So wait . . . the DI is loaded with philosophers, lawyers, historians, ethicists, theologians, political scientists, astronomers,  at least one metaphysician  (what ever that is!), . . . in fact among the leadership of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (its original name), there are only two listed with advanced degrees in any biology-related fields (Denton and Behe).  So the DI with this extreme lack of biological training and experience is claiming that The View isn't the right venue for such a discussion?  Hey, Pot, Kettle called . . . do you really need to hear the message?  Hint, it's a really dark color.

Here are two other comments, one from the View in response to one of Bure's comments:

"[Joy] Behar argued that anyone who visited the Museum of Natural History or studied anthropology should be able to accept that evolution was a fact."

and the DI's response to that, from little davely 'klingy' klinghoffer:

"Joy Behar's rejoinder about the Museum of Natural History isn't really relevant. A museum can display a spectrum of fossils demonstrating that animal life has a very long history and has changed very dramatically over the course of hundreds of millions of years. That says nothing about the mechanism or agent behind that change, which is the question that the theory of intelligent design addresses." 

Wait a minute, I need to repeat this part:  "the question that the theory of intelligent design addresses".  The 'theory' of intelligent design addresses the mechanism or agent behind that change?  Really?  Oh it mentions the agent, but didn't we just read a post from Ann Gauger that says not only do we not know the mechanism, but that we don't really care?  We talked about it (In short . . . we don't know!) here it her comment, part of her non-answer to Larry Moran when he asked about the mechanism of ID and how ID worked:

"We can't really say how our own minds work to interact with the world, yet we know they do. It is our universal, repeated, personal experience that shows us that our consciousness interacts with our bodies to produce information, but exactly how it works is not known. So why should we expect to know how the agent(s) responsible for the design of life or the universe may have worked?"

So klingy say the 'theory' of ID addresses this, and Ann 'where's my lab' Gauger says we don't know and it's not something we should ever expect to know.   And here is the kicker . . . . they both reference Meyer's philosophical meanderings called 'Debating Darwin's Doubt'.

Don't you just love it!

Occam's Razor used to explain the difference between Creationism and Evolution

Caught this from the Immoral Minority Blog.  It's not one I regularly read, but I might have to add it to my list. "Never has the difference between Creationism and Evolution been explained quite so well."

Could it be much more succinct?  I don't think so.

If you aren't sure of the meaning, let me place it in context . . . you might remember Kirk Cameron as an actor from the old show 'Growing Pains', starring Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns and ended over 20 years ago.  Towards the end of the show he converted the Christianity, and not just the run-of-the-mill, but the Evangelical variety.  He partnered up with Ray "Banana Man" Comfort and they run a ministry to train other Christians how to be Evangelicals.  (Evangelicals need to learn how to be Evangelicals?)  Ray's the guy constantly claiming the banana is the evolutionists' nightmare, forgetting to mention that the banana he continually fondles doesn't exist in nature but the results of selective breeding by man . . . yea, that Ray Comfort.

You might also remember Kirk from a few years back he, and others, distributed free copies of an altered version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species on college campuses.  The book consisted of Darwin's text with four chapters of the book removed, and with an added introduction by Ray Comfort reiterating common creationist assertions about Darwin and evolution, such as the whole 'Darwin is responsible for Hitler' creationist canard.

Hopefully you didn't need any explanation, but if you did, now you can place the image in an appropriate context.  I gave serious thought to not writing this, but Kirk isn't exactly a household name anymore.  Now, if you need info on physicist Stephen Hawking, just Google it -- there's a ton -- much more than Kirk.   I believe Hawking's list of awards is considerably longer than Cameron's entire filmography :-) 

It is, I peeked at Wikipedia.  In fact it looks like Hawking's filmography is longer than Cameron's . . . well it made me laugh.  In any event, now you have context for the image and the caption, which really made my day!