These intelligent design advocates crack me up sometimes. While the leaders furiously insist that 'it's all about the science', the grass roots behind them are constantly giving away the store.
Check out this barely literate solicitation from the elders at Trinity Baptist Church in Norman, Oklahoma, where they are trying to raise funds to bring William Dembski to speak at OU. Could the religious motivation be more clear?
"Our prayer for this entire effort is for God to open doors so the power of His gospel would be made known to groups of people who need to hear the truth."
This group is so intellectually bankrupt that they don't seem to care whether or not Dembski's claims are true -- they only want to use him as an evangelical tool. (And if they really needed $10,000 for the event, they might wind up financially bankrupt, too!)
I want people to understand and accept the theory of evolution because it's true, because it makes a nontrivial statement about the world we live in, because it's essential to understanding HIV, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and other important public issues, because it offers deep insights into why we behave the way we do, but not because it will 'lead people to atheism'. I'd much rather have scientifically-knowledgeable theist neighbors than ignorant atheist ones.
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I wonder if Michael Higgins' lecture across the creek It's tough being God these days piques your curiosity. My guess is that as a theist (but non-creationist) he'll have some objective things to say. Unlike, say, the healing-power-of-prayer series you attended and wrote about.
Dembski as an "evangelical tool" - sounds about right.
Both the pastor at Trinity on Sunday, and Dembski on Monday night, called ID a "ground clearing operation". Dembski pretty clearly said that removing "Darwinism" as a viable worldview would allow theistic worldviews to bloom in the space left, and that while he had a preference for what would replace it (Christianity), ID was not linked to any specific theistic worldview.
Of course, overthrow "non-theistic science" and we're back in the Dark Ages. But is that really too high a price to pay for being, um, free to impose one's religious views on one's neighbours?
Thanks, Michael, for the heads-up about the Higgins lecture. I'll try to go if I can swing it. (Although. to be honest, Higgins has never impressed me as much as he has everyone else on campus.)
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