LETTER: ID is indeed creationism

In a recent column in the Tribune, Hartwig suggests that Intelligent
Design (ID) is not creationism simply because it doesn't overtly endorse
Genesis-based creationism. Perhaps he thinks that it is possible to have
intelligent design without an Intelligent Designer.

Apart from a lack of cause-and-effect reasoning, what makes his
"non-creationistic" assessment of ID even more ironic is that he continues
the great creationist tradition of misrepresenting evolution to make his
case. Specifically, Hartwig suggests that evolution is a completely random
phenomenon, leading uninformed readers to inaccurately conclude that
evolution is an ill-founded theory.

In this regard, he stands among the great anti-evolutionary creationists
of this world and needs only to openly endorse radical Biblical literalism
before he would be accepted as a fellow at the Institute for Creation
Research.

Hartwig's misrepresentation of evolution is one thing. His further
endorsements of irreducible complexity (IC) and "information" arguments
against evolution, in the face of massive scientific replies to the same,
is still another. Clearly, Hartwig is an anti-evolutionist.

In place of evolution (or maybe in addition to it), Hartwig advances ID.
Consider that fellow ID advocate William Dembski has written elsewhere
that ID requires a breakdown or insufficiency of natural law and that ID
is non-natural. In the final analysis, Hartwig shuns evolution and
advances, in its place, a mechanism of speciation that appeals to
non-natural causes.

Sounds like creationism to me.

One need not endorse Biblical literalism in order to be a creationist, and
the continued assertion that ID is not a form of creationism based on the
painstaking omission of overtly religious terms or Biblical themes is
dishonest. As I have written, any sort of "God did it" explanation of
origins merits the title creationism - how else can you link YEC and OEC
creationists who can't even agree on how literally to take the Bible? It
is for these reasons that KCFS refers to ID as Intelligent Design
Creationism (IDC).

Simply because IDC is creationism, it does not necessarily follow that it
is invalid. Therefore, Pratt citizens require other reasons not to endorse
IDC, which they have. First, IDC sabotages the process of discovery, since
any observation can be explained by the flippant "God (or a non-natural
agency) did it" explanation. Second, IDC has not been accepted by
mainstream science. (Specified complexity and irreducible complexity have
been thoroughly investigated and discredited in the literature, making
Hartwig's use of them in his letter yet another attempt to bypass the
scientific community and snow the citizens of Pratt with pseudoscientific
babel.) Third, there is no controversy about the validity of evolution in
the scientific community, despite the professions of cranks. Moreover,
many in the religious community have shunned IDC, as it pits science's
spirit of discovery against a faith in God. (If the blood clotting cascade
really were an example of ID, what besides a lack of faith would make
scientists seek deeper explanations of its origin?)

To adapt Hartwig's conclusion to my own, surely the children of Pratt and
our society at-large deserve better than IDC.

Burt Humburg
3rd Year Medical Student
Member, Kansas Citizens for Science

Oryginal:
http://www.pratttribune.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2001/January/03-629-news5.txt
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------