Re: Darwinian Meltdown Over Intelligent Design

At 11:40 PM 3/1/2006, Ted Davis wrote:
>This is really weak.
>
>Since *when* have Christian scientists "allowed" Dawkins and company to
>speak for us? Mr Pearcey, like Phil Johnson, Denyse O'Leary, and many
>others representing ID at the moment, just seems so conveniently to overlook
>two generations of ASA authors --not to mention the Ken Miller's of the
>world (did anyone at TDI ever pay attention to Miller's direct assault on
>Dawkins & company, or did they just dismiss that as window dressing). What
>about Howard Van Till's attacks on the "preachers of naturalism," my cover
>story about ID in Christian Century (which clearly placed much of the blame
>for the origins controversy on scientists like Will Provine), or Alister
>McGrath's nice book, Dawkins' God? Does Mr Pearcey not see these things,
>which represent only a fraction of similar literature? Is it selective
>memory or simple ignorance (we are all ignorant of many things)?
>
>More than weak, it's getting tiresome. Someone please forward this to Mr
>Pearcey and invite him to respond.
>
>Ted

### Mr. Pearcy didn't say it - Michael Ruse is
the one who is complaining. See below. ~ Janice

“We Are Losing This Battle”­ And “Knee-Jerk
Atheism” Isn’t Helping
Darwinian Meltdown Over Intelligent Design
http://www.pearceyreport.com/archives/2006/02/darwinian_meltd.php

By J. Richard Pearcey

Feb. 21, 2006 -- High profile atheists and
evolutionists Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins
“are absolute disasters in the fight against
intelligent design.” So says equally high
profile skeptic Michael Ruse, philosophy
professor at Florida State University, in a
letter published February 20 at Uncommon Descent,
the weblog of William Dembski, one of the leaders
of the intelligent design movement.

“We are losing this battle,” Ruse flatly asserts
in the letter to Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University.

Why does Ruse say that Dennett and Dawkins, an
Oxford professor, are doing more harm than good
“in the fight against intelligent
design”? Because, in his view, they are atheist
reactionaries: “What we need is not knee-jerk
atheism,” says Ruse, “but serious grappling with the issues.”

“Neither of you are willing to study Christianity
seriously and to engage with the ideas,” Ruse charges.

For example, referring to Dawkins, Ruse writes:
“It is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral
to claim that Christianity is simply a force for
evil, as Richard claims.” The reference is to
“<http://channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/rootofevil.html>The
Root of All Evil?”, a two-part television series
in which Dawkins appears, which aired last month
(January 2006) on the Channel 4 network in the
UK. In the second episode, “The Virus of Faith,”
Dawkins says teaching children about religion is
a form of child abuse: “It’s time to question the
abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious
ideas of hellfire and damnation.”

Dennett is author of Freedom Evolves and Darwin’s
Dangerous Idea. His latest book is titled
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon. Dawkins’ books include The Selfish
Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.

Make no mistake about it, says Ruse, “we
[evolutionists] are in a fight.” Drawing
attention to the “two new Supreme Court
justices,” Ruse predicts that they “are going to
let [intelligent design] into the
classrooms.” His book Darwin and Design: Does
Evolution Have a Purpose? was published in 2003.

Instead of launching offensive attacks on
Christianity, Ruse says, Darwinists “need to make
allies in the fight” and “not simply alienate everyone of good will.”

For more of this behind-the-scenes and sometimes
coarse exchange (s---, f---) between leading
advocates of evolutionary theory, see William
Dembski’s blog <http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/844>here.

Daniel Dennett’s homepage is
<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/~ddennett.htm>here.

Richard Dawkins’ work can be seen
<http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/index.shtml>here.

The homepage of Michael Ruse is
<http://www.fsu.edu/~philo/people/faculty/mruse.html>here.

J. Richard Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report.
Received on Wed Mar 1 23:59:44 2006