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The New Yorker: Why intelligent design isn’t.

A growing peeve of mine lately, which I attribute to rubbing off from Christine (soon to be doctor of Biological Anthropology), has been how mainstream media and even publications with a more science/technical readership (like Wired) make blatantly wrong statements about Darwinism/evolution in relation to the religious right's attempts to have schools teach "Intelligent Design" as part of its larger "moral" crusade of telling Americans what they can and can not do/think. (Yes, I am the king of run on sentences) In contrast there is a great article in the latest New Yorker about "Intelligent Design" that everyone should check out. It does a good job going over just exactly what the "science" behind the political movement is and makes well informed responses to them.

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By chris at May 26, 2005 - 8:35pm |

For all those fighting the good fight against [un]intelligent design creationism, I heartily recommend a couple links off the blogroll - the Panda's Thumb (the more serious of the two), and Pharyngula (the more scathing of the two).

and don't forget TB

By chris at May 26, 2005 - 8:39pm |

*Plug alert*

Also, I expect that there will be none too few articles dealing with the subject in the upcoming Tangled Bank, which will be hosted right here.

I have some serious doubts

By Eric (not verified) at May 27, 2005 - 5:18pm |

I have some serious doubts about the scientific qualifications and abilities of most of Wired's readership. It's like Vogue for people who wish they were smart enough for popular science/ Popular Mechanics.

Wired and ID

By Hungry Hyaena (not verified) at May 30, 2005 - 1:27pm |

Eric,

Four or five years ago, I might have disagreed with your assessment of Wired, but the magazine has gone downhill fast. Today, most of its coverstories pitch Hollywood blockbusters or the latest Wi-Fi upgrade and on energy, population, climate and the environment, the contributors often sound like a wing of FoxNews.

As for Intelligent Design and the New Yorker article - which is absolutely terrific - I would point out that just as "Darwinism" - since when are we calling evolution Darwinism, anyway? - is misunderstood by many people, so too is Intelligent Design. ID is notably different from creationism, which believes the Bible's Genesis account to be accurate. In fact, many ID proponents accept evolution on some level, they just insist that life is too complex to be without a grand, initial design. I reject this notion as simplistic malarky, but do think that a worthwhile scientist could marry ID to the study of evolution without compromising the integrity of his science. However, there are also those in the ID camp that do not accept natural selection as a random, unguided process. Those folks are just in denial and any contributions they make to evolution will surely prove tenuous at best. As for teaching ID in schools, well....don't even get me started.