The American Spectator

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Kudos to you for your excellent recent article on the Darwinian intolerance of any dissent from orthodoxy.

The grip of naturalism (materialism/determinism) in our era is epidemic and a major cause of so much that is wrong today. In this regard, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn’s piece in the NY Times was simply superb, echoing what C.S. Lewis and others so well stated earlier.

p>So, thank you for your great work. br> — David J. Theroux br> Founder and President br> The Independent Institute br> Oakland, California /p>

I never thought I’d see the day that TAS lowered itself to Victim Ideology. But there it is in your article: Poor, simple, truth-seeking Intelligent Design proponents being systematically repressed by a vast “bright”-wing conspiracy of evil Darwinists. Maybe the government should step in and pass a law to protect the victims, do you think? The Protection for American Proponents of Intelligent Design Act has a nice ring to it. Then, as with all victims, the Intelligent Designers would be “entitled’ to their opinions, in spite of the mere inconvenience of being wrong.

As I see it, most people, including many of the staff at TAS, seem to have a warped idea of how science works. In this view, you seem to think that scientists sit around and debate every passing fancy with genteel indulgence. Science is a blood sport, a bare-knuckle brawl in which people defend their ideas tooth and nail. If a new theory wants to break into the world of science, especially a new theory that attacks a well-proven theory that has been accepted by generations of scientists, then the new theory has to expect to face an uphill fight filled with derision and animosity.

But science is one of the few human activities where results will win out in the end. If a scientific theory is correct, it will prevail. Go look up the history of Galileo and the Catholic Church. Therefore, if Intelligent Design is correct, then you should take comfort in the fact that no amount of “conspiracy’ will keep it down.

The problem with Intelligent Design is that it is not science. To be considered scientific, a theory must do three things: explain all facts relating to the theory, make predictions, and be subject to testing via experimentation.

Example: Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection says that if two groups of animals of the same species are separated from one another over a period of generations, the groups will evolve in different ways and ultimately become separate species. That is science that considers the facts, makes a prediction and is subject to testing. Work with short-lived species, such as fruit flies, has proven this very kind of theorizing.