Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design is Not Creationism
(No Matter What Bill O’Reilly Thinks)
Last night Ben Stein showed up on The O’Reilly Factor to talk about his forthcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and the fact that scientists are being persecuted for simply questioning Darwinism in some case, or for researching and advancing the theory of intelligent design in others. Interestingly, I would bet that none of the scientists who will appear in Expelled (and by all accounts there will be a LOT of them) are creationists. Unfortunately, Bill O’Reilly simply conflates intelligent design with creationism, mistakenly defining it as an attempt to find a divine designer. Not so. (see here, here and here to start) Compare O’Reilly’s misunderstanding with this letter from a guy who clearly gets it.
It was unfortunate too that Ben referred to the “gaps” in Darwin’s theory, as if those are the only issues that intelligent design theory addresses. To be sure there are shortcomings with Darwinism, the scientific literature of late is full of them. However, intelligent design also provides a robust positive case, and a serious scientific research approach. This is the news that O’Reilly’s viewers need to hear about.