Source: Wikimedia
Source: Wikimedia
Health Impact News Editor
Take a look at the two photos above. Imagine that you were hiking through the South Dakota hills and came upon the first one, not knowing anything about its history. Or imagine riding through the desert, and encountering the object in the second photo, having never previously seen it, and having no prior knowledge of it.
Looking at and studying the features of each of these structures found in nature, which statement is more “scientific” and which one requires a lot of faith?
1. Some intelligent being designed this.
2. Wind and erosion over millions of years created this.
If you choose #1 as the statement most “scientific” (with no guessing or conjecture as to who made the design), then you would be labeled as an idiot trying to force your religious beliefs on others by 21st scientists when applying the same scientific reasoning to other things found in nature.
If you choose #2, however, starting with the presupposition that #1 cannot be true, you have now created a new belief system from which to develop your theories or origins upon. This new religion, fueled mainly by Darwinism, is Scientism.
If you want to understand what Scientism is, this excellent short documentary about the writings of C.S. Lewis does a beautiful job:
Scientism is the basis of much of western culture today. It gave us eugenics, for example, and was responsible for the medical tyranny that unfolded in Nazi Germany leading up to World War II.
What few people today realize, however, is that the foundations of the religion of Scientism is bringing about medical tyranny in many of the same ways as they unfolded in Nazi Germany, today right here in the United States. (See: Eugenics Still Present in the U.S. Today)
If you want to understand #1, however, you need to study Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design (ID) is a branch of science which is constantly under attack today, and labeled as “religion” or something else it is not.
ID is quite different from “Creationism.” Creationism moves beyond the observation of scientific facts and makes statements about who the Creator is, such as what is written in the Bible (a worthy topic of study in and of itself!) ID does not deal with the “who,” however, but leaves that up to religion.
David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute writes about the prejudices against ID by those who have never even studied it.
“We Don’t Have to Listen to the Evidence Because…”
by David Klinghoffer
Evolution News and Views
Excerpts:
What’s so wonderful about the essay is how perfect and undisguised an expression it is of the “We Don’t Have to Listen to the Evidence Because…” school of thought in regard to intelligent design.
Much of the hostility you encounter to ID comes from resistance not to ID’s argument in itself, its reasoning or presentation of the scientific evidence but rather, sweeping all that aside, from a basic refusal to consider the conclusions that ID reaches. This balking stems not from any reasoned process of consideration of the evidence but merely from the observation that the theory violates your a priori view of what should be, whether that’s an aesthetic, theological or other ideological sensibility.
So we have creationists like those at Answers in Genesis criticizing ID because it’s not faith driven: because Scripture doesn’t dictate the conclusions that ID theorists reach. On the flipside, you have materialists who object that ID doesn’t respect the dogma of methodological naturalism, which would mean limiting our findings, our understanding of what drives evolutionary history, to strictly natural causes.
Now we have Derbyshire who slams the theory of intelligent design for its imagined close relationship to “Islamic fundamentalism” — an interesting counterpoint to charges that link us with “Christian fundamentalism.” He criticizes ID for purported adherence to “occasionalism,” a theological view that is the polar opposite of deism. But guess what, ID is also criticized by theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander and others for being tainted, you got it, by deism! It’s in violation for attributing all causation in nature to God, and for attributing none.
Do you see? ID is guilty of every violation of sensibility — as well as its exact opposite. The theory violates religion, and it violates atheism. It is crypto-Islamic, and it is crypto-Christian. It is tainted by occasionalism, and by deism. You name it, whatever you don’t like, ID is that. Which is why you’re free to stick your fingers in your ears and absolutely refuse to give the idea a hearing. You don’t need to understand the arguments or weigh the evidence. ID simply CANNOT BE SCIENCE and it sure as heck CANNOT BE RIGHT.