I've had a post brewing on the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate ever since the Kansas & Delaware rulings last month sparked a spate of posts and columns with which I emphatically disagreed.
The topic is a little bit overwhelming, especially when both sides in the debate resolutely talk past each other. Explaining ID to people --including, unfortunately, many of its defenders (Pat Robertson, this means you) is a bit like talking to non-Catholics about "marriage." We use the same word both colloquially to indicate a legal condition and theologically to indicate a sacrament and a state in life, and the whole conversation starts off on bad footing and only gets more muddled. (If I had a nickel for every time I heard or read some ill-informed Catholic saying he or she didn't want to pursue an annullment after divorce, because that would mean the kids were illegitimate. . . .Sigh. As soon as you hear that, you know you're talking to someone who is utterly ignorant of Catholic teaching; and yet, said person is almost always making such a comment in the context of criticizing the Church very publicly. It's like listening to Emily Litella defending violins on television. Someday the person is going to get wise and say: "Oh. Ne-ver-mind.")
But soft, what light through yonder hopeless debate breaks? It is Dogbert, explaining the situation almost exactly as I understand it (although I'm more sympathetic to ID properly understood than he is). And humorously, too. Here's how he leads off, just to tantalize you into R-ing TWT.
To me, the most fascinating aspect of the debate over Darwinism versus Intelligent Design is that neither side understands the other side’s argument. Better yet, no one seems to understand their own side’s argument. But that doesn’t stop anyone from having a passionate opinion.
I’ve been doing lots of reading on the subject, trying to gather comic fodder. I fully expected to validate my pre-conceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That’s the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting. Allow me to set you straight.
That little post set off quite the firestorm in the scientific blogosphere, as ably summarized by Wittingshire here.
