Creationists often pretend that getting criticism that points out their ideas are completely invalid is a validation. It's enough that they can get a scientist into a debate; even if they are hopelessly outclassed, babble and lie and treat a scientific debate as if it were a tent revival, they will afterwards strut and preen and pretend that their participation alone makes them a legitimate member of the scientific community. Dawkins made this point in his essay, "Why I won't debate creationists",

Sometime in the 1980s when I was on a visit to the United States, a television station wanted to stage a debate between me and a prominent creationist called, I think, Duane P Gish. I telephoned Stephen Gould for advice. He was friendly and decisive: "Don't do it." The point is not, he said, whether or not you would "win" the debate. Winning is not what the creationists realistically aspire to. For them, it is sufficient that the debate happens at all. They need the publicity. We don't. To the gullible public that is their natural constituency, it is enough that their man is seen sharing a platform with a real scientist. "There must be something in creationism, or Dr. So-and-So would not have agreed to debate it on equal terms." Inevitably, when you turn down the invitation, you will be accused of cowardice or of inability to defend your own beliefs. But that is better than supplying the creationists with what they crave: the oxygen of respectability in the world of real science.

Well, now Francis Beckwith has now fallen squarely into that good ol' creationist tradition of crowing triumph where there is none.

Intelligent Design's Growing Importance?

Although the intelligent design movement (IDM) is small, certain recent events seem to signal its growing importance, though the verdict is still out: the controversy over the Harvard Law Review book note of my monograph, the creation (pardon the pun) of a blog by a group of serious scientists who disagree with ID, the publication of Creationism's Trojan Horse (Oxford University Press, 2004), God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory (Oxford University Press, 2004), and Why Intelligent Design Fails (Rutgers University Press, 2004) (three books critical of ID) as well as the publication of the book edited by two ID advocates (which includes opposing views as well), Darwin, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003) and the forthcoming book edited by Michael Ruse (ID opponent) and William A. Dembski (ID proponent), Debating Design: From DNA to Darwin (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Sorry, Francis, the verdict is in. Intelligent Design creationism is a load of horseshit. What has happened is that the movement has made some inroads solely in the political and legal arenas, where the absence of a scientific basis for the belief is little handicap, and now scientists are rousing themselves to point out its glaring deficiencies. This is not a sign of its growing importance. It's a sign of growing corruption that demands a response. Read the books. Scientists are not coming out and saying that there is something to this intelligent design idea; they are announcing, with near unanimity, that it is worthless crap, junk that has no place in the lab or the schoolroom.

This site and The Panda's Thumb are not indications of growing importance (except perhaps in a purely negative way) of Intelligent Design creationism. Their goal is to inform and educate about the importance of evolutionary biology; IDists are nothing but peddlers of lies and fantasies that we want to clear out of the public consciousness.

Look at it this way. In a few months, every time I step outside the door of my house, I am going to have to do battle with Minnesota mosquitos. That I trouble myself to swat them is not a sign that they have achieved intellectual legitimacy and have earned a place at the high table. It does not mean that they have joined the community of scholars and scientists. It means nothing more than that they are a damned nuisance. Intelligent design creationists are distracters, pests, and clowns, not co-participants in the pursuit of knowledge.

Oh, and Francis? Bubeleh? When you aspire to being a rational contributor to the scientific discourse, being a buzzing, annoying, disease-carrying, blood-sucking parasite instead is not something to be proud of, OK?