A man in the arena

The whole Intelligent Design (ID) fandango is important on two levels: one intellectual and the other (more ominously) political.

I will not pretend to be a scientific authority. I read a large amount of philosophy every year, but I am also not an authority on Metaphysics (Ethics is my thing.) Having said that Intelligent Design poses a scientific threat to Darwinism. This threat is considered impotent by most scientists. The idea should be debated, however the scientific community does not currently agree with the paradigm shift needed to accept ID. As far as the existence of God goes, Darwinism was never the the threat that people expected it to be. Of course it destroys a literal interpretation of scripture. The existence of God is not predicated on scripture. The best arguments were laid out by St. Thomas of Aquinas, and I have yet to see that Darwinism overturns any of them (the argument from first cause still seems particularly strong.)

This debate is politically important because it has the potential to morally bankrupt the intellectual right. How? Well, you see that the scientific community has a consensus for Darwinism, and the the ID supporters have not been able to convince the community otherwise. So have they redoubled their arguments? No, they have sidesteped the academic process and tried to use local school boards to force biology teachers to teach ID. Isn't this just the same strong arm tactics that we howl about when done in the name of Political Correctness?

When the Rights acts like the Left has for the last 50 years, it is a sign of the end. It is a sign of arrogance and it makes the truth subservient to the expedient.

**Note: Not being very religious, I have no urge to get into a theological argument. But I will say that if Evangelicals and Fundamentalists had not taken Luther's sola scriptura to it's logical yet completely irrational extreme the "threat" of Darwinism would be non-existent. The average Fundamentalist is completely unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis, Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, Augustine, or with any of the other major theologians after Paul. The ignorance of this rich intellectual tradition, leaves the fundamentalist with a brittle faith that is threatened by anything that does not conform to a literal acceptance of the Biblical text. The Catholic Church has not lost this tradition and subsequently that Church does not fear science.