Intelligent Design

This week the Times is running a fascinating series about how the politically savvy "intelligent design" movement is threatening the Darwinian bent of high school biology classrooms.  The earlier "creation science" movement was less savvy, because its proponents insisted that Darwin be scrapped in favor of Genesis.  Intelligent design's proponents say instead that it is only fair to give competing claims equal respect in the classroom.  In one corner, Darwin; in the other, the hypothesis that human life is too complex to have arisen by chance. It must have required an "intelligent designer," who you might know as God.

The flaw in this reasoning is clear: the two sides do not have equal scientific merit, even though President Bush said so earlier this month.

So I'm strongly among the 1/3 of Americans who side with Darwin, according to figures cited by Hendrik Hertzberg in last week's New Yorker.  But even so, I found myself greatly annoyed by Hertzberg's condescending tone in the piece. Although he notes that 45% of Americans prefer Genesis to Darwin, he never pauses to consider why this might be the case.    It's pretty simple, actually: It's more inspiring to believe that you arose from a higher being than from a mutated bacteria.  This doesn't mean it's true, but the attraction is clear.

Rather than pondering this aspect of the debate, Hertzberg chose to play it safe and preach to the secular choir. An understandable choice, but the result is a shallower piece of writing than Hertzberg usually delivers.

Comments

[Evangeline]

This is wholly irrelevant, I know, but your post reminds me of a refrigerator magnet I saw at the Fremont Market yesterday, (in Sunny Seattle). It read, "God is not a boy's name." Kinda cracked me up.

Here's to the Darwin fishies! (As opposed to the Jesus fishies...)

[Uri]

I loved Hertzberg's piece. I read it twice!

[Eric]

Intelligent Design is verrrrry politically savvy. Perhaps I'll have to pull out Hertzberg's piece someday, but if it truly is condescending, then he's already played that much more into the hands of the pro-ID crowd. Making fun of religious folks for their ostensibly quaint beliefs only vindicates them. No doubt a certain Southern Baptist minister is pulling that article out right now and reading it to his congretation, and you'd better believe it's not going to result in some of them thinking: "Geez, maybe I'm just a stupid Bible-beater after all..."