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Bill O’Reilly Talks with the Washington Post About Intelligent Design

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Bill O’Reilly has more guts than many in the conservative media. He spoke with Sally Quinn of the Washington Post about his spiritual views, a conversation pegged to his recent book Killing Jesus. She asked:

So what is God to you?

There’s an Intelligent Design in the universe that created the human race. And there is a free-will component to every individual — you either choose to do good or you choose to do evil. And if you sit it out, then you’re in the evil category. And then, what you choose to do in your lifetime will be rewarded or punished by the Intelligent Designer of the universe.

That’s pretty much it. My philosophy is, generally speaking, if everybody followed Jesus’s teachings, then there wouldn’t be any war, wouldn’t be any strife, wouldn’t be any abuse. Everybody would be, not perfect, but certainly in a positive realm.

The theory of ID doesn’t speak to the disposition of our fates after death, or whether there’s an afterlife at all. Instead, I think in referring to “Intelligent Design” here O’Reilly was saying that the God he believes in is not just a subjective but also an objective reality.

That makes sense. Intelligent design doesn’t entail theism, but theism entails an expectation of intelligent design. If no guiding intelligence recognizably played a role in the development of life, stamping it with purpose and meaning, it’s impossible to see by what right God would ask anything from us, or judge us. In a coherent religious view, we belong to him only because, over the course of eons, he fashioned us from nothing.

Hmm, reflecting on this a bit… wouldn’t it be interesting if O’Reilly and his team looked into the anti-ID speech ban at Ball State? That’s the one where the president of a large public research university in the heartland of Indiana has forbade her own scientists from discussing the empirical evidence for design in nature — a startling case of censorship in academia.

This is just the latest attempt to silence criticism of Darwinian theory, and alternatives to it, in public higher education and research. I can think of some ID scientists and theorists who would be happy to discuss that story, and that forbidden science, on The O’Reilly Factor.

I’m now on Twitter. Find me @d_klinghoffer.

Image source: Wikipedia.

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and the editor of Evolution News & Science Today, the daily voice of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, reporting on intelligent design, evolution, and the intersection of science and culture. Klinghoffer is also the author of six books, a former senior editor and literary editor at National Review magazine, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications. Born in Santa Monica, California, he graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an A.B. magna cum laude in comparative literature and religious studies. David lives near Seattle, Washington, with his wife and children.

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