The coat-holders are emailing in to ask why I don’t deliver a stinging

riposte to the Intelligent Design pieces NRO has been posting.

The short answer is, there doesn’t seem much point. The I.D.-ers will

continue to chirrup away at their little hobby horse, doing no actual

science whatsoever, while real biologists get on with their work,

pushing our understanding forward, paying not the slightest attention

to I.D. With the Dover case out of the way, and the verdict a

foregone conclusion, there is no legal or public policy issue open.

NR/NRO is “open” on the I.D. issue, willingly letting pro-I.D.-ers

like Tom Bethell and Mustafa Akyol have their say, then generously

giving me space to speak up for true science when I feel inclined,

which at the moment I obviously don’t.

The actual arguments I.D.-ers put forward are all answered pretty

comprehensively here.

(And that site also has links to the court transcripts of the Dover

trial.) For a withering examination of the background, funding, and

methods (some not at all pretty) of the I.D. people, Barbara Forrest &

Paul Gross’s book can’t be bettered. I won’t be responding to any emails on the topic,

since anything I could say is on that site or in that book, for those

who genuinely want to know.

I will just offer this, though, as a parting shot. Malraux (I think

it was) said that there are two reasons to be a socialist: You may

love the poor, or you may hate the rich. There are similarly two

reasons to get worked up about I.D.: You may love science, or you may

hate religion.

My entire and sole motivation in writing against I.D. has been love

of, and reverence for, science, and indignation that people should

claim a place for their theory at science’s table when they have done

no science whatsoever to back it up, and plainly have no intention

of doing any, and when their fundamental premises are not merely

unscientific, but willfully anti-scientific.

There are people taking on I.D. for the other reason, and I am well

aware of that; but please don’t count me among them.