Lactose Tolerant Charter School To Teach Moon Made Of Cheese

You’ve no doubt seen President Bush’s controversial, off-hand remarks endorsing “intelligent design” (the re-branding of creationism). Yesterday’s NY Times has some backpedaling:

“At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Mr. Bush’s science adviser, John H. Marburger 3rd, sought to play down the president’s remarks as common sense and old news. Mr. Marburger said in a telephone interview that ‘evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology’ and ‘intelligent design is not a scientific concept.’ Mr. Marburger also said that Mr. Bush’s remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the ‘social context’ in science classes.”

From Catholic World, interesting reader comments including:

“A few oft repeated observations: 1)Darwin didn’t know DNA. He didnt even know Mendel’s work (black peas/white peas) on inheritance. 2) Everything in nature tends to disorder and entrophy… Darwin evolution postulates the opposite and that, Captain Kirk, is illogical.”

And from Islam Online:

“In short, Intelligent Design is not alien to Islam. It is very much our cause, and we should do everything we can to support it.”

As for the free-market, liberatarian organizations which you’d expect to smack Bush upside the head, Cato Institute instead plugs school choice:

“Under a system of school choice, parents could choose the school that best fit their child’s needs — with or without school uniforms, with or without school prayer, teaching evolution or creation, and so on. We’d have no more trials of teachers, and fewer dissatisfied parents.”

And the most novel argument is published in National Review:

“…Intelligent Design aggressively challenges the status of many professionals currently laboring in secular academia. And because one of the hallmarks of the defense of Darwinism is precisely the kind of rhetorical displays of intimidation, threat, authority, and insult that Pinker describes.”

Get it? The scientists are reacting in a Darwinian way — they are animals, fighting to hold onto their beliefs — and therefore they cannot be trusted under their own theory. Nice bit of twisted logic.

GGW’s favorite is from the Pulitzer Prize winning “Betty The Crow News Online

“We would also urge that other neglected areas of science be returned to the classroom. Flat Earth theorists have received short shrift these past several centuries, and when was the last time exponents of Apollo’s charioteering got a fair shot at debunking the notion that nightfall occurs when the earth “rotates” away from the sun?”

– Guest blogger MG

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